![]() ![]() When Roger Waters was hired as a junior draughtsman at the architecture firm her father worked at, a 15-year-old Furmanovsky was captivated by stories of a “rather gloomy man” who donned psychedelic shirts and played in a “pop group” called Pink Floyd: “I thought they sounded fabulous!” Her first encounter with the prog pioneers came not long after, sitting on the beer-soaked floor of the Railway pub in West Hampstead – and, in four years’ time Furmanovsky would be on tour with them. “I always felt like a bit of a foreigner,” she says, “but music in the 60s was a cultural movement.” Her introduction came via the TV shows Ready Steady Go! and Top of the Pops: “You would be embarrassed, almost, if your parents were in the room, because Mick Jagger was so sexual.” “He has a very happy expression on his face, but he was having a lot of problems with the police, so I thought it best to avoid actually showing him smoking – I’ve cut off where the spliff would have been.” A retrospective of her work at Manchester’s central library, guest curated by Noel Gallagher – a frequent Furmanovsky subject – and photo historian Gail Buckland, pays homage to her this month.īorn in Zimbabwe (at that time Rhodesia), Furmanovsky relocated to London with her family when she was 11. Seemingly impervious characters elevated to godlike status become humbled in her lens, caught in moments of quotidian intimacy: Roger Waters jokes around with a cupcake during a studio session Bob Marley, “entirely lovely” as Furmanovsky recalls, reclines in a haze of post-performance weed smoke. From the smouldering sex appeal of a young Billy Idol (with a kitten), to the Slits, the Clash and Siouxsie Sioux on stage, Furmanovsky’s lens has captured musicians with unfiltered intensity. In the half century since that spontaneous snapshot, the photographer has spent her career married to the moshpit. It would say: ‘Paul’s moved house’ – they’d virtually give you the address.” “The Beatles were very generous about that sort of thing. “I took the picture outside his house,” she says. Keeping track of the band’s whereabouts in a fanclub magazine she and tens of thousands others received in the post each month, Furmanovsky read that McCartney had recently moved to St John’s Wood and decided to pay him a visit. It was 1967 – if her memory serves – and she was 13 years old, whiling away her days outside Abbey Road Studios in the hope of befriending a Beatle. T he first rock photograph Jill Furmanovsky ever took was of Paul McCartney, two friends and an elbow. ![]()
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