Revisit: The Photography Of Bleddyn Butcher
this interview originally appeared in the Monster Children Photo Annual 2015.
words by Jason crombie. photography by Bleddyn Butcher.
You might not know it but one of your life’s greatest regrets is never seeing the Birthday Party perform live. Perhaps you weren’t born yet, or maybe you were just stupid—either way you missed them and you are poorer for it.
The Birthday Party were one of the most incredible bands in the history of rock ’n’ roll. They were vicious and violent and unapologetically different at a time when most bands were sporting shoulder pads and putting the world to sleep with synthesisers. Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Rowland S Howard, Tracy Pew and Phill Calvert were the Birthday Party, and they were a hot spray of bloody spittle in the face of those dreadful bands that filled the void left by punk. God they were good. I never saw them of course—I’m stupid—but photographer Bleddyn Butcher did, and his new book, A Little History: Photographs of Nick Cave and cohorts 1981–2013, is about as close as you’ll get to seeing the band in full flight. It’s also as close as you can get to Nick Cave without him saying ‘Why are you standing so close to me?’ and punching you.
Monster Children talked with Bleddyn about how he got started, his escape from Perth, and how he came to document Nick Cave’s career for more than three decades.
Bleddyn, you’ve got a new book: A Little History: Photographs of Nick Cave and cohorts 1981–2013.
Yes.
I want to get into that, but first I want to ask you about your name.
What about it?
I’ve never heard of Bleddyn before. Where’s it from, Germany?
It’s Welsh.
Welsh.
It’s Welsh for ‘wolf cub’.
Interesting.
I’m named after a rugby player—my dad’s a rugby fan. Bleddyn Williams was his name.
Was your nickname Bleedin’ Butcher in school?
No, they called me Butch. Nobody could ever pronounce my name.
Am I saying it wrong?
It’s actually pronounced Ble-thin. The double ‘d’ is a ‘th’.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in England and I have dual nationality. I’m a Ten Pound Pom.
How old were you when you first came to Australia?
Four.
And where did you live then?
Perth. Which is why I came back to England. Perth is a fucking shithole. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but it’s horrible.
No, I haven’t been, but people from Perth are generally some of the nicest people I’ve met. All my friends from Perth are really nice people.
Yeah, but that’s because they’re from Perth, they’re not in Perth. They had the good sense to get the hell out of there.
When did you move to the UK?
In 1980 after I’d done my degree.
Did you study photography?
No, English Literature—I got an arts degree, basically.
“Right, hang on. I better think about what I’m saying here because you’re actually going to quote some of this, you bastard.”
How did you get into photography?
Well, I had to make a living while I was at uni, and I was into music and… Right, hang on. I better think about what I’m saying here because you’re actually going to quote some of this, you bastard.
I’ll be quoting all of it, man.
Right, well I did a poster for a band, which was, like, a cartoon of them that I drew, and they said, ‘Oh, you’ve got a visual eye, why don’t you try taking photos of us?’ And that’s how it started.
Who was the band?
You never would have heard of them. They were a Perth band called Roadband. Anyway, I took these photos and they turned out okay, so I went and bought a camera.
How’d you end up working for NME?
I was into music. And NME was a good magazine—once—and I wanted to work for it. There were no good magazines in Australia; there were rock magazines but none of them were any good. They were basically shit. There was no real critical depth to them, and no real interest in what anyone was writing, so I figured there was no point in going to Melbourne or Sydney, may as well go straight to London.
How were you received in London in 1980? Was it like being a second-class citizen?
As an Australian?
Yeah.
Yeah, of course. Australians were expected to work behind the bar in Earls Court; they weren’t supposed to do anything else. It was very tiresome. Racist jokes. Just the constant stereotyping. So it was hard to make inroads.
But you did—you got a job at NME. How?
Full-frontal assault: I went straight in there, you know, because I was already out there taking photos.
What happened?
I was rejected. Then maybe eighteen months later they had a photo competition and I entered a picture—one that’s in the book—and I came second.
What was the photo? Wait! Congratulations!
Ha ha! It was in 1982, mate!
You still won! What was the photo?
It was one of Nick and Rowland. It’s the one where Nick’s eyes are drooping.
Oh yeah, I know that one. Then what happened?
So I rang up the editor and I said, ‘So what’s the prize for this competition?’ And he said, ‘Well, do you want to come work for us?’
That’s great. Did you get to choose your assignments or—
Oh, no way.
Did you ever have to shoot a band you didn’t want to—like, ‘Oh fuck, I’ve gotta go shoot Duran Duran today.’
No, no. NME didn’t cover Duran Duran back then. But I have actually taken pictures of either Duran Duran or Simon Le Bon, I can’t remember which. I also used to work for Countdown magazine in the early ’80s, and that (Duran Duran) was the sort of thing Countdown covered. Countdown had no clout whatsoever. No English band had even heard of Countdown unless they’d been to Australia—
Right.
—and met the delightful Molly. But all the assignments were going onto the set of a video or a TV show and basically snatching whatever you could get. I took pictures of David Cassidy for Countdown, and that was a very memorable photo session.
What happened?
I took one photo and he said, ‘That’s it, mate,’ and I said, ‘Come on, give us another one.’ So I took two photos of David Cassidy once.
That was it? What an asshole.
He was an asshole, yes.
Have you got a big record collection?
Yeah, and it’s a millstone when you move. All my records are in Sydney—after having been amassed in London—and now I’m thinking of moving back to London again. But, yes, I have a shitload of records.
You don’t have a spare copy of Rowland S Howard’s Teenage Snuff Film, do you?
Of course I’ve got it!
Do you have two, by chance?
You want to know if I’ve got a second copy?
Yeah.
You can’t get it?
“So I rang up the editor and I said, ‘So what’s the prize for this competition?’ And he said, ‘Well, do you want to come work for us?’”
No. It’s as rare as hen’s teeth.
Haven’t they just re-released it, or was it Pop Crimes they re-released?
Yeah, it was Pop Crimes. I got that. And they’ve recently done a box set as well: Six Strings That Drew Blood.
Have you got that yet?
No, not yet. Right now I really want his first solo record on vinyl.
Oh, okay. Well, I can look into that for you, if you’d like. But my records are all in Sydney and I’m in London right now.
That’d be amazing. Thank you. So how did you meet Nick? You’re still mates with him now, right?
Well, as much as someone from the journalistic profession can be mates, I suppose. But yeah, I like him. We’re friends.
That’s interesting because Nick has had a notoriously prickly relationship with the press. How did you guys end up having a good relationship?
Well, I liked his band when a whole lot of other people didn’t like his band. I thought they were fantastic and I used to go and see them all the time. I’d see as many gigs as I could blag my way into, or afford to pay for, depending on what the circumstances were. There weren’t that many people going to those gigs—they were small, in pubs. There’s a picture in the book of the crowd at a gig, and I think Nick has leather pants on, throwing his head back, and Rowland is wearing sleeve braces. It’s a picture at the Moonlight Club anyway, and you can see the audience. Now, that’s not every member of the audience, but I can tell you, that was half of them, that’s how many people were at those gigs.
So, like, twenty people. That’s crazy.
Anyway, after a while the band came to know some members of their audience, especially the persistent ones who were obsessed with them, like me.
Wasn’t there a guy with a Mohawk who was always up the front going batshit at Birthday Party gigs? I think he eventually became their unofficial security guard or something.
Oh, you’re talking about Bingo.
Bingo!
Bingo. Nick used to throw himself into the crowd and try to goad it into doing something more than just pogoing up and down, and Bingo was someone who responded to this injunction to express yourself. One time he grabbed Nick’s leg and wouldn’t let him go; another time he appeared in the crowd with all the malarkey you need to do fire-breathing, and he started breathing fire at the band.
Jesus.
Another time, and I can’t quite believe this, he bit through the microphone cable, but I don’t really see how you could actually do that—he must’ve had a pair of pliers and pretended to bite through it. Bingo was kind of a jester. And, yeah, he was an unofficial bouncer; he actually became more officially a driver and a roadie for the Moodists when they arrived a year or so later.
Do you remember the first Birthday Party show you went to?
I went to see Colin Newman from Wire. He was playing a solo gig at the Venue in Victoria, which was owned by Richard Branson. It was this great old Victorian music hall; it was a wonderful venue, but it only lasted about two years before it was shut down for some reason—Branson was always changing businesses. Anyway, I used to go and see lots of bands there including Wire—or in this case, solo Wire. And the Birthday Party were playing support. I lost interest in Colin Newman at that point because I just thought the Birthday Party were fantastic. There was something about them… The way they were quite distinctly four individuals—I say four, but at that stage Phill Calvert was still in the band—but the other four were amazingly strong individuals, not the same; they weren’t four mop-tops, and it was apparent they were very strong and they had lots of ideas going on their heads.
They were a really interesting band in that sense, weren’t they? They looked like they were cobbled together from four different bands, certainly Tracy Pew with his cowboy hat and fishnet t-shirt. What was Tracy like?
Well, Tracy wasn’t really much like his image. That whole Village People look was kind of a joke. Presumably you’ve seen some of those videos of him in leather pants being the ultimate nightmare of a throbbing bassist.
Yeah, I have.
But he was a lovely bloke. He was very smart, very funny, and very reckless.
What about Nick, Mick and Rowland back then? Sorry, I’m fanning out now. I told myself to be cool, but it’s over.
No, no, don’t worry about it, it’s fine. They were all very young men at that stage, you know? They were still under twenty-five and full of lust for life. I suppose we all a have a lust for life, even at my age, but when you get out of school you start feeling your oats, and when you’re in a band like the Birthday Party and you’ve actually achieved something memorable…
When you were photographing the band did you have the feeling you were documenting something important?
Well, I felt it was, yeah. I mean, it felt important to me; I didn’t realise other people would come to agree with me, but it was definitely important to me.
Your new book features photos of Nick (and cohorts) from 1981 to 2013. How did you end up shooting him for so many years?
We made a connection, you know, and I was pretty dedicated.
Why Nick Cave, though—what made you want to shoot him all these years?
Well, in my opinion he didn’t really make an impression on the world until ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’. Before that it was even difficult for him to get into NME. So that was an Everest to climb for a long time, and he finally turned the trick when he became obsessed with bashing Kylie’s head in with a rock. That caught the attention of the world. So he didn’t make an impression on the wider world until that single, so in some part I felt I had a mission to make everybody else see what I saw: that he was great. Not that I’m solely responsible, but I felt it was my mission to help do that.
I think you’ve succeeded.
Thank you.
