My VERY First Rolling Stone Assignment with the Violent Femmes

It was my biggest dream come true. My first assignment for Rolling Stone.

I had just finished a year working with Annie Leibovitz and suddenly I was being paid $75 to photograph the Violent Femmes in Brooklyn. I showed up with one 35mm camera, one lens, one strobe light, and no assistant. That was it.

As I started setting up, the sun was dropping fast. I needed my strobe — but it wouldn’t fire. Nothing. I was heartbroken. It felt like one of those early career moments that felt like it could define everything. If I blew it, that was it.

Then Victor DeLorenzo, the drummer, totally saved me. He said, “Why don’t you come stay with me in Milwaukee and take all the photos you want?” Just like that.

There were a few problems. I didn’t have a credit card. Annie hadn’t paid me yet, and I was flat broke (Annie was broke then too). I found a cheap flight to Chicago and somehow tracked down one rental place that would take cash so I could drive to Milwaukee

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Staying with Victor was getting to be with the most generous person I had ever met. His wife, Karen, was very pregnant and kept us fed with amazing meals. Gordon Gano took me to church one Sunday morning — he was the only white guy there, skinny and smiling, singing his heart out. The music was wild and joyful. When they started casting a Bible play about slavery, they asked Gordon to play the overseer. No one knew about Gordan’s other musical life.

We shot photos on and off for a week — on an abandoned highway in the freezing cold, at the Old Streets of Milwaukee exhibit, and everywhere in between. We all became friends. Their first album was full of songs Gordon had written in high school, and I was lucky enough to be in an audience of one, hearing them live over and over again while taking photos.

Twenty years later, Brian Ritchie called me to come see him play at a jazz club in New York. On drums was Malachi DeLorenzo — the baby Karen had been pregnant with when I stayed with them. Meeting him was amazing. Malachi ended up working with me in the studio, mixing music for my shoots, before going on to play with and produce Langhorne Slim.

This past weekend the 40th anniversary edition of that first Violent Femmes album was delivered to my house.. It’s beautiful — packed with so many of the photos I took back then. There was one photo from above that Stephie said, “This is a great one but it is not one of yours.” I told her it was one of mine! My boys who know the Femmes from baseball games were impressed.

Sometimes it takes a long time to appreciate some of the work I have done. My father always wanted me to look into the mirror and pat myself on the shoulder. Looking at this beautiful package of the first Violent Femmes album full of the photos we made together made me proud.