Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat…

David Arnoff: Be honest with yourself and don’t take pictures that you’re told to take. Don’t take pictures of weddings or birthday parties if you don’t feel like it. You know, you have to take pictures of things that inspire you. That way it’ll, it’ll look like something special instead of just a nice picture.

Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden, a podcast for the creative mind. StoryBeat explores how Masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment.

Here now is your host, Steve Cuden. 

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on StoryBeat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, David Arnoff, began his career shooting photos for the Cramps album Songs the Lord Taught Us. Since then, he’s contributed to dozens of releases by artists including the Dream Syndicate, X, Ramones, The Gun Club and Nick Cave, among many others. A collection of David’s work Shot in the Dark has been published in the us, the uk, and Spain. I’ve read Shot in the Dark and can tell you it’s a stunning visual feast of dozens of photos of some of the most iconic punk rock musicians of the seventies, eighties, and beyond.

David’s photos are in the collections of the Grammy Museum in la, the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He’s also had solo exhibits in Berlin, London, Tokyo, the Hague, and Los Angeles, as well as group shows across the US and in Paris. David has never photographed bands he doesn’t like, and he proclaims himself to be the oldest, angry young man in Chiswick West London.

So for all those reasons and many more, I’m honored to welcome the brilliant prolific photographer, David Arnoff to StoryBeat today. David, welcome to the show. 

David Arnoff: Well, thank you very much, Steve. Thank you for the kind words. 

Steve Cuden: It’s my great pleasure. So let’s go back a little bit in time to where all this began for you.

How old were you when you first noticed photography and where it meant something to you? How old were you? 

David Arnoff: Uh, I guess I was probably still in my, in my teens. I did it a little bit in, in high school. 

Steve Cuden: A little bit of photography. 

David Arnoff: Yeah. Yeah. I just did. I did one course. Nothing. I just took pictures of my girlfriends and stuff like that.

You know, 

Steve Cuden: you gotta start somewhere. Uh, when did you get your first camera? 

David Arnoff: Uh, a long time I was using my dad’s old camera till it, it literally fell apart. It just, it fell off of it. 

Steve Cuden: And certainly that was, that was in the day and age of actual film. You, it wasn’t digital at all, 

David Arnoff: I assume? No, this was film, this was it.

It fell apart when I was watching Free at the Fillmore. 

Steve Cuden: Oh, wow. Okay. And did you have a sense then that you would be continuing to take photos for most of your life? 

David Arnoff: No, not really. I had a sense a bit later on and when in the punk days that I just wanted to see my name in print once. I wanted to see just in, in a magazine in cream or trouser press or somewhere just to see there’s my name and that means I’m an actual photographer now.

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. And how many times do you think you have seen your name in print at this point? A lot. 

David Arnoff: Very many times. 

Steve Cuden: What do you think you learned in those first? Early days of taking pictures and we’ll get to the detail of that in a moment, but what do you think you learned back then that you have continued to use throughout all of your career that’s hold, held you in good stead all this time?

David Arnoff: Okay. Well I think I learned my own limitations, which are many ’cause I’m not very technical with things. Mm-hmm. And I, I just learned what was comfortable with, for me. Canon was more comfortable than Nikon for some reason. I don’t even know why. I don’t know. I, I just like things to look a certain way.

It’s in my head and I, I could tell if I could, would be able to get that. Or not, not even an effect, but just to achieve what I want it to look like. I knew that you can’t really take good live pictures if the lights are red or blue or too dark, and, uh, I want to use a flash as rarely as I can. Things like that.

Just little, little bits. I notice 

Steve Cuden: the, the book is full of black and white images. Were you shooting on black and white film or did you reduce color film down to black and white? 

David Arnoff: Oh, it’s all, it’s all black and white. I always shot in black and white. The only time I shot in color was uh, when the cramps wanted the album cover, and that was really stressful for me ’cause I’d never shot in color and I kind of didn’t know what I was doing.

I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing. So I shot in black and white and color for those sessions and you figured it out clearly. Yeah. Or slightly grainy, but clear. Yeah. 

Steve Cuden: I would think grainy can function quite well in that particular world. 

David Arnoff: I mean, the last thing I had in prints was, uh, it’s not even out yet, but there’s a Rhino Deluxe Talking Heads package coming out, and I’ve got some color pictures in that, which is really unusual for me.

Really, the cramps in that. The picture I wanted to use for the Cramps album, clever was a black and white picture. And I, I wanted to color it by hand. I used to use these old Marshall oils, these oil paints that you just take a Q-tip and rub the paint onto the picture. Right. And that’s what I had in mind.

But are you still shooting on film or do you, have you moved to digital? Uh, no, I’m doing stuff digital now. It’s just cheaper. 

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s a lot, it’s a lot cheaper and you can shoot a lot more. Right. 

David Arnoff: Yeah, you don’t have to worry. I mean, I, I was worried it was really expensive. Sure. And I would be worried about actually running out of film and then having the band come on and do something amazing at the end of the gig or something, so.

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And now that you’re shooting in digital, I, I assume that you’re setting the camera in its color settings and then going into a computer or something like that and stripping the color out and making it black and white. 

David Arnoff: Yeah, kind of. Not that I’m, most of what I’m doing photographically now is just personal stuff.

I think there’s a, there’s a couple digital shots in the book, in, in the, um, English edition that I just made it black and white. What, what is it about 

Steve Cuden: photography from day one that spoke to you, just spoke to your heart, that still speaks to you today? 

David Arnoff: Um, it’s just, it is visuals, but more than photography.

It’s like graphic art and old comic books and Phil Noir that kind of look. I just like Phil. No. And I like, um, the way bands used to look. It’s just the way things look and it’s something I thought I could do. You know, I think I could look at a band. I think they, they would look good if they did this or that, or turn their heads this way or that way, whatever that I, I thought what I know what their good side is.

I was kind of amazed looking at old pictures of like great looking bands like The Kinks and The Beatles and the Yardbirds, and there’s so many pictures that of them that are just really dumb. They’re just, they’re pulling faces and just looking silly and, and they used to get people that were not into the music to take pictures of the bands.

They would just get some house photographer for a magazine that, you know, he is taken pictures of models or cars or sporting events. And say, right here’s this band. You know, take pictures of these guys. And they weren’t into it and they had pictures that come out looking silly a lot of the time. What then do you think 

Steve Cuden: makes a great image?

Great. 

David Arnoff: I dunno. 

Steve Cuden: I think it 

David Arnoff: is in the eye of the beholder, really. I mean, 

Steve Cuden: well, certainly all, all of art is, isn’t it? But I guess my question is, when you’re taking pictures, you must be looking for something or are you just shooting. 

David Arnoff: Yeah, no, I, I, I am looking for something and if I think I’ve got what was in my head and the, the light is right and the, the composition’s right, and the subject looks like I wanted them to look.

I mean, I don’t know if I would think it was great, but I would think it’d be right. I noticed 

Steve Cuden: that a certain number of the photos in the book, they’re not super crisp and sharp. There’s a little bit of an edge to them. They’re maybe a little bit out of focus or maybe a little bit on the move, so that there, there’s a tight, slight blur to them.

My assumption is, is that really appeals to you? 

David Arnoff: Yeah. Well. I hope they’re not that blurry. I think there’s one or two. 

Steve Cuden: They’re not blurry, as in, as in, I can’t see them. They look beautiful. They’re artistic, but they’re not, they’re clearly not posed and they are, uh, you’re running and gunning as they say.

David Arnoff: They’re pretty much not posed, especially the live stuff. There’s more movement, so things can be, that’s what I’m talking about, the movement in them. It, it’s really quick. All the stuff I did off stage was really, um. Fast. 

Steve Cuden: Well, I would assume if you’re working at a concert, you have to move pretty quickly, don’t you?

David Arnoff: Yeah. Well, I, I usually don’t have any room for me to move. I have to get in a sort of a position and stay there all night. Mm-hmm. And move just to get people to stop jumping up and down my back and stuff like that. Are you in the crowd when you’re shooting in a 

Steve Cuden: concert? 

David Arnoff: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could tell in the pictures.

They’re just, they’re right there. I mean, most of the pictures I did. Live stuff. It’s small places. It’s really close to the stage at the whiskey. You know, there’s some pictures from like the Santa Monica Civic. It’s a bigger venue, but I’m still not more than a few feet away from the stage. I never had any like long lenses from that.

Steve Cuden: For listeners who may not know, when David refers to the whiskey, you’re talking about the whiskey a go-go on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, correct? Right, yeah, and, and the Santa Monica Civic is clearly in Santa Monica, say in the same city. Basically, 

David Arnoff: most of the pictures are from 

Steve Cuden: clubs. They’re from clubs.

In la. In 

David Arnoff: LA or, or over here, but you know, small places. 

Steve Cuden: So when you say over here, just so folks know, you’re, you live in London, right? Yeah, yeah. West. You grew up in the US though. Am I, am I correct about that? Yeah. Cleveland. In Cleveland, but that my childhood. So we here in Pittsburgh won’t hold it against you.

Uh, how long have you been living in London? Uh, since 1984. 1984. So you were, you know, you’re practically a Londoner then. 

David Arnoff: Yeah. 

Steve Cuden: What drew you to London? Why did you go over 

David Arnoff: there and why’d you stay? I came here once I, I always wanted to come here just because of the British invasion basically. And because at that time I was in la, which I wasn’t comfortable.

I was not comfortable at all there. I wasn’t. Surfer and a beach kid and all that kind of thing. Mm-hmm. And I just thought all the English stuff looked better. Anyway. I managed to come here in 72 for a, a little while, six months, and I could relate to things more here. I was more comfortable here. Why, 

Steve Cuden: what, what did you relate to?

What made you stay? 

David Arnoff: I could, I was more comfortable with the weather, believe it or not. I liked it being, you know, cool rather than hot. I like, I just related to the people more. I got on with the people. I didn’t have that much of a social life really in la. And, uh, I’m spoil for choice here. I I can’t go out my front door without talking to somebody.

Does that then inspire you in your work? Uh, no. It’s just more in my life. Just makes me more Your social life. Yeah. I should say talking about London, it’s, it’s chisik, what did I say? Chiswick 

Steve Cuden: and it’s Chisik. Chisik, 

David Arnoff: yeah. 

Steve Cuden: That’s, uh, that’s the pronunciation I would not have known. And so how long do you think it was that you were taking pictures as a professional where you’re being paid before you thought to yourself, I’m really good at this.

Or did that happen before you started to get paid? 

David Arnoff: When I was getting paid, you would not believe how little I was getting paid. I mean, I had a one cover the New York New York rocker. Magazine, which is like a big deal. That was like, you know, maybe my favorite magazine at the time. And that meant instead of getting the usual $5 for a picture on the inside, I got $10.

So this was not a money making thing, you know, this was, I always had jobs, had day jobs all the time. It was like, sorry, what was the question? When did I feel comfortable with it? Or 

Steve Cuden: when did you think that you were good at it? Did you think about that? Did you think you were good right from the very beginning or did it take a while?

David Arnoff: As soon as I saw something in print, I thought, yeah, this is good. I, uh, you know, I was happy with the pictures I was taking, whether, whether somebody. Publish them or not. 

Steve Cuden: So who in the world of publishing or museums or whatever did you then admire? Was there, were there photographers that you went Yeah, that’s my, my bag.

And that’s something that I want to try and be like. 

David Arnoff: No, I like, uh, you know, oui, the Yes. That was my photographic hero. I like him. That’s true noir. Yeah. And some of the photos I’d like, I don’t even know who took them because like on the backs of Beatles albums, it doesn’t even say who took the picture.

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. Well, there’s that famous, I can’t remember which album it is. It’s the Beatles album with the four heads in black turtlenecks. And it’s black and white. 

David Arnoff: Yeah, that’s Meet The Beatles. And I used to know the name of that photographer. The, the picture I really liked was, there’s a picture of John Lennon on the back of, uh, Beatles, six in America.

It looks like it shot between somebody’s legs. And I just like that. I like the blurry foreground thing and I, I like that picture. And I also like the picture of, uh, I should know the guy’s name, but I don’t, Michael Cooper maybe. I’m not sure the guy’s name, but the cover of, um. December’s Children by the Rolling Stones.

I really like that covered. I kind of ripped it off for a, a picture of the scientists. I have that in mind when I was doing it. So when you were starting to put 

Steve Cuden: the book together, which is called Shot in the Dark, clearly that comes from the fact that you both shoot in dark settings where there’s limited lighting and you also shoot pictures that are themselves dark in some way.

I assume that’s where the title came from. Yeah. 

David Arnoff: And there’s also the third more kind of literal of not knowing what I’m doing.

Do you still think you don’t know what you’re doing? Really? I do know my limitations and there are many. 

Steve Cuden: Well, well, if you know your limitations and you play to your strengths, that’s really what it’s all about. Uh, it is for me. 

David Arnoff: Yeah. I’m not that into punk music anymore, but at one point I thought it’s.

This is like three chord photography, you know, it’s just, and it’s not frog rock. It’s no synthesizers, you know, that kind of photography. 

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s guitars and drums is what it is. And a And a lot of screaming in the singing. 

David Arnoff: Yeah. 

Steve Cuden: Yeah. So you must have had to go through, I’m gonna guess, thousands of pictures to decide what to put into the book.

David Arnoff: When, when somebody approached me, the, um, long gone John at sympathy for the record industry, the record label. Mm-hmm. Said, he said, you know, we should do a book. And I thought, okay. And then I started looking through my stuff and I thought, I really thought I did not have enough for a book. I thought this is gonna be a, a pamphlet.

Really? Yeah. I thought there’s a, can I come up with 50? You know, I just, I wasn’t that confident. But he put me in touch with a really, I was having a hard time laying it out. I didn’t know where to begin. And he put me in touch with somebody in Chicago that pretty much moved to Chicago right around the time I moved to, um, London.

So he was an English guy and we really hit it off. I only spoke to him over the phone, but we, he is, he is a, a great designer. We just laid it out page by page. It took us a year and a half. Every day on the phone for hours moving pictures up and down. I wanted them to flow. I wanted it to be so you, it does flow.

I want people to look at it from the beginning to the end. It does flow. Thanks. Were you, were you attempting to tell a story? No, not a story, but I just, I like segues. I want things to not be jarring. 

Steve Cuden: It’s challenging to do segues with photos when you’re not telling a story. 

David Arnoff: Yeah. But there are things that flow for.

A reason, you know, this picture after that picture because all the way through it, it’s not this, here’s a bunch of pictures of one band and here’s a bunch of pictures by another band. It’s how they look on the page opposite each other and what you see when you turn the page. So, so you’re 

Steve Cuden: thinking graphically at the same time as who’s in these pictures?

David Arnoff: Yeah. Yeah. I wanted it to start with Patty Smith and end with, with Steve. You did 

Steve Cuden: that? Yeah, it’s the, the pictures of Patty Smith. They’re just spectacular. Thanks. 

David Arnoff: Thank you. Did you work with her? Did you know her? No, no. I met her, I met her once before. I took those pictures really briefly. I said hello to her, you know, Lyft, that was it, you know?

And then, uh, I met her in more like 20 

Steve Cuden: years ago. So how many times did you take pictures at concerts where? You were just in the audience, you weren’t invited in, you didn’t have a special pass or anything like that. Did that happen? 

David Arnoff: Just about every time. Every time I worked in a record warehouse in la, in the sales office, and I could get on the guest list for anything because the record company, people wanted to you to promote stuff and they’re going, yeah, come to the whiskey and see whoever, and we’ll give you an open drinks tab and all this stuff.

And that was my in, you know, to just go. That sometimes I could get a pass from somebody, but usually you didn’t need a pass places like the Whiskey and the Starwood. You just bring your camera. Well, 

Steve Cuden: that, that then leads me to wonder if you were not being hired or brought in specifically, or you had no pass, did you need to obtain rights to put these pictures into a book?

David Arnoff: No, no, it’s, it’s my stuff. It’s my Right. It’s your stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You don’t have, I don’t have to get their permission. The thing is, I, I would’ve, if I needed to, I, I would take pictures, like stuff that’s not in the book, like Tom Petty, I, I saw him at the whiskey and took some pictures and. Got really, really drunk and took some pictures in the dressing room now that I think about it.

And the manager gave card and then um, I went around their apartment the next day and you know, they said, yeah, it’s great, you know, but we don’t have a lot of live pictures and stuff. And that’s how it would work. Usually I’d talk to somebody, I take the pictures and maybe talk to somebody in the dressing room.

How would you get into a dressing room? How did they just let you in? I was pretty regular. At the Starwood, it, it is kind of who you know. It’s either the, either the bouncer recognizes you or somebody in the band, just gives you a nod or the manager. The thing is, if you’re not acting like an idiotic teenager, you know, just acting a rabid fan and you act kind of reasonable.

You go back there. 

Steve Cuden: So when you went to shoot a particular band, one band or another, would you then have a preparation in mind before you went to the, to the club or the arena or wherever you went? Would you prepare as to what you were gonna try to find? Or did you always find it in the moment? 

David Arnoff: So you mean live pictures?

Live pictures, yeah, certainly live stuff. The only thing I would have in mind is maybe if I, if I’d never seen the band before and I. Saw pictures of them, you know, in the NME or something. Uh, I kind of saw what, a little bit of what they’re like. I’d seen pictures of the bands before, so, you know, I would, I would plan where to stand, like maybe which side of the stage or something.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s what I mean. You would know which side of the stage you were on. Would you know what the lighting would be like in advance? 

David Arnoff: No, you never know the lightings. I know I did learn do’s and don’ts and one is don’t stand right in front of somebody. ’cause you’ll just have a microphone right in front of his face.

You know, the mic stand. So you need to be a bit to the side of whoever you’re taking pictures of. 

Steve Cuden: You have to have a bit of an angle. 

David Arnoff: Yeah. And wait for, you know, if you can make eye contact, that’s good. And I don’t know, wait for certain moments. 

Steve Cuden: How many pictures would you shoot at a concert that never made it anywhere that they were discarded?

Most of them. 

David Arnoff: Most of them. Most of them? Yeah. If, if, if I shot a roll of 36 and and one of those turned up in a magazine or something, that would be as a result, well, did you 

Steve Cuden: then go in thinking of yourself as a visual storyteller, that you’re gonna take pictures that will tell something about a moment or about a person?

David Arnoff: Well, I thought, I thought I was gonna take pictures of these bands that I like the look of, and hopefully they would like the, the way they looked in the pictures. I wanted them to like the pictures. 

Steve Cuden: And how frequently did the pictures wind up in their hands? So they could actually see them frequently?

David Arnoff: Yeah, 

Steve Cuden: frequently 

David Arnoff: at some point. Yeah. Yeah. Frequently. And they knew who you were. Yeah. I would just say, look, I’m, I’m freelance, and I said. I just send this stuff out and it’s been in Trouser Press and it’s been in sounds and I would mention some magazines and they’re not paying me and they’re just like, yeah, great.

You know, free photos, you know, 

Steve Cuden: so I, I have to, I’m just very curious. I’ve never been a photographer at a rock concert, so I’m wondering in this case where there are, where it’s punk rock, which has. The reputation of being a little more lively, you could say, where there’s a lot more, uh, people that are maybe throwing things or pushing people or whatever it might be.

Describe what being in that fray or near that fray is Like, what is, is it crazy? 

David Arnoff: Well, it can be. Yeah. There’s times where I, one time, right, gave up. When I, I went to see the Sex Pistols in what turned out to be their last gig. Their final gig. Wow. And they just played too big a place, and it was too crowded.

They played a winterland and, um, I got a reasonable place to stand. But then during the, one of the opening bands, there was that much crap. It wasn’t violent, but it was just really, really overcrowded. I thought my feet haven’t touched the ground the past 10 minutes, you know? And I thought, uh, and, and the pistols aren’t even on yet.

And I thought, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to change film. Focus the camera. You know, it took me, it must take me 20 minute. I decided to give it up. It took me about 20 minutes just to get out of the crowd. Wow. Have you ever been injured? No. Not injured. I know somebody that, a friend of a friend is this girl that went to see the dam.

At Starwood, he came out and the whole stage was black and he was just waving around a road flare. A lit road flare. Oof. There’s a picture of that in the book. Somehow one of the sparks went down, like her cowboy boot went down into her like, and burnt her ankle, and, and she said she’s never gonna go to another gig again.

Wow. I never got hurt. I, I got in like little fights with people whenever I got wet. Some of these drink or something like that, they’re not 

Steve Cuden: well, clearly a lot of the pictures that are in shot in the dark are, as we already said, from live events. How frequently have you taken pictures in a studio setting where it’s more controlled?

David Arnoff: Not often enough for me. I like to be more controlled, but I, um, I’ve never done anything in a studio. I’ve never used, uh, studio lighting. It’s 

Steve Cuden: always 

David Arnoff: natural lighting for you. Yeah. I’d like to do stuff off stage. 

Steve Cuden: When do you think you learned where to be in order for the light to be right? How did that happen for you?

David Arnoff: Well, I could, I could kind of tell if it’s gonna be light enough. You know? It’s innate. Yeah. Yeah. I could see if there’s enough light 

Steve Cuden: and much more difficult to do when you were shooting on film than today when you can actually look in a viewfinder on a digital camera 

David Arnoff: and you, you can’t really play around with it afterwards either.

Do you prefer digital to the old days of film? It’s way easier. I mean, I’m not really doing it now for, um, taking pictures of bands and that Yeah. It’s easier and cheaper. 

Steve Cuden: And without naming names, I’m assuming you have over time worked with any number of difficult or uncooperative subjects even in a live setting.

Did you have any particular techniques for overcoming that challenge? 

David Arnoff: Well, all the people I’ve met with have been Okay. The only, um, I really did get on with everyone in, in the photos. Except Willie Deville from Mc Deville didn’t hit it off that well, but I still got some pictures I liked of him At the Roxy in la.

Mm-hmm. I took some pictures of Billy Idol once. I don’t know why, but I really thought that he’s like the stupidest person I’ve ever met. It was lasting impression and I saw him on TV recently on a chat show and I thought, yeah, he is. He is the same. He’s just this dope guy. But I, I got on with people, you know.

Steve Cuden: Is that part of what you think of as your way to approach things, is to be in a way that gets along with people? Is that how you do it? 

David Arnoff: Yeah. Well, I’m not trying to, I mean, I’m not being, uh, hypocritical about it or anything. I, I, I’m hoping I, I would like these people when I meet ’em, and sometimes if I don’t take to ’em and I don’t care, you know?

I met, uh, David Burn briefly, and I thought, well, I don’t think we’ve got much in common, you know, so, 

Steve Cuden: but, but he’s definitely not stupid. 

David Arnoff: No, no, he’s not stupid. 

Steve Cuden: No, no. He’s quite, quite the genius actually. Uh, do you think of your work as art or commerce? 

David Arnoff: No. Uh, some people say that, but uh, it’s, it’s, it’s visual.

I mean, it’s not, I don’t know what it is. It’s not food 

Steve Cuden: you, but you sold it to places and so therefore it is, has some kind of commercial value. But do you think of it strictly as a commercial enterprise or are you trying to be an artist at the same time? 

David Arnoff: Oh, I’m trying to be. Without sounding big headed, be more artistic about it.

I’m, I’m, I’m precious about this. I, I do turn down things, as I said, if I don’t like the band, you know, somebody said, oh, do you wanna do Def Leppard at the Tropic Hannah, do you wanna do pictures tomorrow? And I said, no, I don’t. I don’t like them. No, thanks. 

Steve Cuden: So you were able to pick and choose what you wanted to do because really you weren’t working for anyone.

David Arnoff: Wasn’t paying the rent with it, you know, it was just that I 

Steve Cuden: was doing it because I wanted to. What, what would you say fulfills you the most about shooting pictures in, in your day? 

David Arnoff: Well, it is a combination of stuff. ’cause initially it’s, the music is really great, just having to go into a gig and having a really great time and just seeing a wonderful band like X or The Damned or whoever.

And then it gets better after that when you talk to him and hang out with him a bit. And then when you see one of the pictures in print, eventually, some of this stuff doesn’t happen for a long time. I took, one of the first pictures I ever took of a band was, um, Cockney Rebel, Steve Harley in 1973 at the Whiskey.

And I thought those pictures were kind of okay, but I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have dreamt of sending them to anyone. But in recent years, just a few years ago. When he was touring, he used two or three of those pictures in a, a program, a tour program. So it was like, whatever that is. You know, 50 years later he used these pictures.

Did you give them to him for free? No, no. Somebody got a hold of me. I haven’t been giving things away for free for a long time. Well, certainly the work that you do has real world value. Yeah. No, it’s got value. I mean, I, I guess the, anyway, what I was saying is that it starts at the gig or with the record that I’m listening to.

Mm-hmm. And then the culmination is when I see it on, you know, the next album cover or I see a, you know, a picture in a magazine or you know, that I’m happy with. So 

Steve Cuden: do, do, when you were shooting back in the day, did you feel pressure to get certain shots or did you feel, uh, any kind of pressure? And if you did, how, how would you handle it?

David Arnoff: Nobody’s, I’m just doing it ’cause I want to, so there’s no pressure on me. No pressure. I would feel disappointed if, uh, you know, I looked at the proof sheets the next day and I, you know, if it weren’t that good or something. I felt pressure, like I said, with the Craps album cover ’cause that was color and I did not know what I was doing.

So that was pressure. I was really nervous. And I mean this, it is kind of a funny story ’cause I went through all the slides and all the negatives trying to find something that might be okay for the cover. And like I said, I thought maybe I can just hand color something instead. And Lux and Ivy came over to, to the apartment and they’re looking at stuff.

And I said, you know, here’s the best ones. And they’re, you know, looking at stuff. And then at one point Luxe said, what’s that pile of slides over there? And they said, those are just, they’re rejects, they’re bad. Don’t, don’t look at ’em. But he wanted to look at ’em. And he picked one of those out of the reject pile.

And that, that’s the album cover. He was, I rejected. It was, I thought he had kind of a silly look on his face, you know, I thought he looked a big comical, but he really liked it. So you 

Steve Cuden: never know. It taste is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? 

David Arnoff: I was glad, you know, they, they liked it and, and, uh, but that’s what they were, like, they would pick the weird, you know, they, they would find the out of focus ones and.

They were great characters. 

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s, I think that that is a, uh, a sign of both the times and also the style of music that you were taking pictures mostly about, and that there was a kind of a roughness to it. It didn’t, it wasn’t absolutely pristine. None of it was not the playing of the instruments, not the writing of the songs, not, it was all a little, had a little bit of an edge to it.

David Arnoff: Right. No, that’s it exactly. After we did this. Cover or I thought we’d done the cover and I went to meet with them at the, the record label, and they had these pictures that this other photographer had done and somebody showing ’em to the band or to the label saying, this is kind of what you want, isn’t it something like this?

And they were really slick and they looked like a new wave band. They reminded me of pictures of, um, like the pretenders, who I, I do like, but they looked really clean. Like these pictures could have been a. Or something, you know, but I looked at ’em, I thought, yeah, those are really professional. They’re, they’re gonna take those.

But they didn’t, they just said no, no. 

Steve Cuden: So you mentioned your publisher earlier. Um, what was the experience like for you to work with the publisher? Was it nice and easy or did you have any kind of, uh, issues that you had to get through? Uh, 

David Arnoff: he was pretty good about it. He left it up to, to me and the designer.

So there aren’t a lot of words in the book. So you didn’t really need a word editor did you? That he didn’t think should be in there? There was another band that he wanted in there that I didn’t really like that much. Mm-hmm. Had to give a, a trade off, you know, but that was it mainly, I mean, we were just saying stuff like between the three of us, I had all these, you know, pretty good pictures of the Dead Kennedys and we all decided that none of us really liked the Dick Kennedys all that much.

So they’re in the English version. 

Steve Cuden: But you’re saying that there were compromises that you made along the way? 

David Arnoff: Very little. Not really a compromise, but he was really happy with things and it was a really slow, expensive process. Well, how so? Well, just that it took us, it was printed in China, you know, to wait for things to come over from China on these cargo ships took a lot of time and communication.

Sometimes they, they would send sample pages. To the designer and then he would have to try to communicate with them why the contrast isn’t right and stuff. 

Steve Cuden: How long overall did it take to actually get the book totally put together and out? 

David Arnoff: Just around a year and a half, you know, but maybe a bit longer.

But that was mainly ’cause of me and Mark being so picky about things. Sometimes he’d wake up in the middle of the night and go, oh no, no, this should be like this. And you’d wanna change like one picture. But that meant changing the whole book a accordingly. Because if you change one picture, then something else has to go in its place and that has to be the right thing.

And it’s only a domino effect. 

Steve Cuden: Well, if, if you were going to be asked to do another book, if you could, if there’s enough material, um, would you do anything differently now than when you put it together that for shot in the dark? 

David Arnoff: Well, I would say I haven’t got enough for another book. I’ve got the three versions are slightly different from each other, so they kind of get better as they go.

What do you mean they get better as they go? What does that mean? Because I’m picky about stuff. So I would look at things and think, this is, I, I’d find a picture that, that I’d forgotten about and I really wanna put that in and I’d take something else out. I took out a talking Ed’s picture and put in a Judas Priest picture of all things.

Steve Cuden: And was there a, was there then a limit? You were told you could only put x number of pages in the book, so that’s why you One would come out, another would go in. 

David Arnoff: We know how many pages there were each time. I, I worked on the, the second book took almost as long, almost a year. And that was because the publisher was just really flaky and slow to move on.

When, when me and the designer were ready to move on. If you were 

Steve Cuden: about to start being in the photographic business today, what would you do that would give you a satisfying result today? Anything different? 

David Arnoff: No, I, I was just kind of lucky the way things worked out. Timing? Yeah, timing. And, I mean, all three publishers kind turned up out of the blue.

It was their idea that they wanted to do this, and the Spanish one took a long time because it, it was, communications were not that great. The language barrier. Barrier and they really wanted to crop my pictures different and I have explained quite a few times that no, I want, you know, half of somebody’s face in this picture because, you know, and I don’t want this other crap in the background because I had to explain a lot more, but they’re all right in the end.

Steve Cuden: So, so I’m, I’m trying to understand. There are three different versions of the book. One in the uk, one in Spain, and one in the us 

David Arnoff: Yeah. They’ve all got the same photo on the front, but. They’re slightly different. 

Steve Cuden: So a true David Arnov collector would need to get all three. It would’ve to be a fanatic. It would’ve to be a little bit nuts.

I dunno. Well, you were in a world. You were in a world for a long time, David. I would submit that was a little bit nuts. Do you miss it 

David Arnoff: at all? No. Sometimes I look back though, and I think Really? Did that really happen? You know, I mean, at one time, I don’t know if you, do you know how Jeffrey Lee Pierce is?

I don’t know that name. From the gun club. Okay. Now deceased singer in the gun club. And um, I used to have this little car a, a Volvo P 1800 in 1965, which is a little sports car you have to squeeze into. And I had a little tiny backseat like for a child or something. And at one point I had Jeffrey, who was short and rotund, and in the backseat.

Nick Cave who’s seven feet tall and just all, you know, elbows and knees kind of folded up in the front and we had to drive downtown and drive back there. It was just comical. I’m just thinking to have these people in the car, it’s sounds like a circus act. It makes sense at the time and they, here’s the weird thing.

These are people that seem really awkward. Jeffrey could be really awkward. Nick Cave, if you saw him on stage and stuff, you’d think he’d be a real bastard. But he, he wasn’t. He is like a comedian. He’s really funny. 

Steve Cuden: He has that, uh, very sort of serious demeanor about him. 

David Arnoff: Yeah. But at the time, he didn’t take himself that seriously.

I think he does now. 

Steve Cuden: I admire his work. He’s very unusual and, uh, very potent. His work is potent to me. Is that what you were looking for most of the time when you went out to watch bands is something that really touched you somehow? 

David Arnoff: Some, some emotional things. Something that wasn’t just kind of show biz.

It wasn’t this slickness. 

Steve Cuden: Well, I have been having an absolutely fascinating conversation for just shy of an hour with, uh, David Arnov, who’s taken pictures for a very long time of some of the most iconic rock bands ever. And we’re gonna wind the show down a little bit right now. And I’m just wondering, David, in all of these incredible experiences that you had, are you able to share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat strange, or just plain funny more than what you’ve already told us?

David Arnoff: I’ve used up my best bits. One thing I wanna say that, that, that’s not quirky or funny or strange, but I wanna dedicate this to the designer I was talking about, um, Cox, who, who died just before the second edition came out. ’cause that book, what was, what was their name again? Mark Cox. COX. That book wouldn’t have, I couldn’t have done it without him.

Literally, it wouldn’t have 

Steve Cuden: happened. Well, kudos to Mark and so sorry that he’s no longer with us. So then last question for you today, David, you’ve shared with us a just a pretty significant amount of advice throughout this whole show, but I’m wondering if there’s a single solid piece of advice that you like to give to those who are starting out in the business of being a photographer, uh, or maybe someone who’s doing it a little bit and trying to get to a ne another level.

David Arnoff: I’m probably not the one to speak to about this, but. Because I’ve never done it that way, but I think you should really be honest with yourself and don’t take pictures that you’re told to take. Don’t take pictures of weddings or birthday parties if you don’t feel like it. You know, you have to take pictures of things that inspire you.

That way it’ll, it’ll look like something special instead of just a nice picture. 

Steve Cuden: I think that’s extremely wise advice. 

David Arnoff: Okay. And don’t get your hopes up too. Why? Okay. It, it’s a tough racket, isn’t it? Yeah, I, I do have another book pretty much assembled, but it is about, it’s not a music book, it’s about a pet fox that lived in the house with us for its whole life.

Uh, five and a half years. Uh, barely went out in the garden, but just stayed in the house. And I’ve got a book pretty much laid out. Haven’t written the text yet. And, um, any publishers that are interested out there on this project, I think it would sell a lot better than my books, my other books. 

Steve Cuden: Well pay attention folks, and if, uh, if you are a fan of very, very fine and interesting, uh, photography, especially of, uh, the, the punk rock era, uh, you should check out Shot in the Dark, whether the Spanish, the uk, or the US version that, uh, David, uh, Arnov has put together.

David, thank you so much for spending time with me today. 

David Arnoff: Yeah, thank you Steve. Thanks for, uh, persevering. 

Steve Cuden: and so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you are listening to.

Your support helps us bring more great story beat episodes to you. StoryBeat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, tune in and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden and may all your stories be unforgettable.