I heard Othello Woolf is about to be a pretty big deal, he sounds like a soul singer and dresses reeeeal smart, what’s not to like? I sent him a disposable camera and told him to send it back when he’d taken all the photos on it. He blew his load in one day- on the set of the video for his new (first) single, which is called ‘Stand’. In an long and drawn out process that sometimes makes me wish I didn’t get people to do this, he sent it back to me, I got it developed onto cd, made the photos small enough to email, emailed them back to him, he put the photos into an order he liked, wrote captions and then sent it back to me. They came back pretty good and I guess there’s a pretty great atmosphere to them… enjoy.
This is a Dylan quote: ‘art is my artillery’. That’s his chin you can see. I took this photograph before I went to bed - I had one shot left at the end of the day so looked around my flat for something of interest.
The view when I wake up. It’s here that I work on and record songs. Not quite Abbey Road! You can see the top of a late ’80s Rickenbacker guitar poking out in the background. I saved up for and then bought it years ago when I was obsessed with The Byrds. It’s the most beautiful guitar to look at but I don’t like the feel of playing it much compared to say a Telecaster, so you won’t hear it on many of my recordings. I keep it in open-tuning, mainly so I can play Stones songs on it!
All of these photographs were taken on the day of the video shoot for ‘Stand’, my first single. This is the first thing I saw when I arrived at the shoot at 11pm. The crew had been setting up since 8am.
Stragglers gathered in the aforementioned waiting area. Chinatown is on the big screen in the background.
Joe Doyle, who is on guitar when I play live - he plays a banged up old Gretsch, soon to be replaced by something more weighty-sounding. He’s also an actor and has his right hand in a cast from some kind of accident on set.
Old friends that I invited to be in the video. Duncan (with his arms crossed) knows the words to most songs I’ve ever written - the good and the bad.
Charlie Casely-Hayford gazes into a part of the shoot to check every one’s looking tip-top. He’s immaculately dressed as per usual.
Debbie, who manages me with her twin sister Katie, and Ronojoy, all-round legend and the main reason this video is even happening.
This looks like the worst party ever but I have faith that on film it won’t be the case…
As soon as I arrived, my first scene was dancing in the middle of this pitch-black basement in total silence. Joy.
Dan Spinney, wielder of the bass guitar live. Chewing on a home-made flapjack in between takes - standard.
After the basement, the second location for the shoot was Highgate woods. We headed over there and hung around in this pub for hours while the directors and crew set up pyrotechnics in the woods.
…oh, and they put a bath there.
Him again. Christopher James, who captures London nightlife on www.iknowwhatyoudidlastnight.com is in the video and also took some fantastic photographs throughout, documenting the day.
End of an exhausting and surreal day, the shoot is wrapped but on our way home we stumbled across this house. It looked like something out of Mulholland Drive.
Lisa, Ronojoy and Sophia in the freezing cold outside the spooky house. I wonder who lives there? Perhaps Robert Smith.
Galadrial.