Interview with Neil Zlozower
SF: Mr Zlozower? This is Vely from SardinasFans
Zloz: Hi, I'm ready for the interview.
SF: First of all I would like to thank you very much on behalf of Eric Sardinas & Big Motor Italian Fanclub for granting us this interview, it is a real honour to us. May we start with some questions?
Zloz: Ok, sure, just go ahead. By the way just to let you know: I love Eric Sardinas! I mean, I've seen everybody from Led Zeppelin to Rolling Stones, Def Leppard, Guns'n'Roses... I love Eric Sardinas, I think he's one of the most amazing guitarist-showman-vocalist around.
SF: We absolutely agree! Let's start now with the first question, which is: how did your adventure with photography start? Was it your choice or it just happened by chance?
Zloz: When I was younger I was a big music fan and I loved the Rolling Stones. Me and my friend used to take a bus to Hollywood boulevard to this record shop that sold imported albums, you know albums from the U.K., Italy and France; we couldn't afford the albums but they also sold the 8x10 glossies of bands like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles so, being a rock'n'roll fan we did go there and the pictures were about a dollar back then and we did go buy this 8x10 photos of... mostly the Rolling Stones, of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and take 'em back and hang 'em on the wall like fans did. So I was basically a music fan, I wasn't a photographer at that point and when, one day, I was working at my father's store, making 50c/hour, working ten hours a day when a guy came in with this camera and said "Hey, anybody wants to buy a camera?" I looked at it and I was sort of overwhelmed, in fact it was a really cool-looking camera even if it was a piece of shit to be honest, I ended up buying it for seventy-five dollars and I think I didn't ever shot one photo with that camera! I ended up going to a pawn shop with my father and buying a real camera and started taking at the concerts. I was going with it all the times and started developing my own film and putting pictures of Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones and whoever else I was shooting at that time on my wall. I basically started as a fan.
SF: So it was like destiny...
Zloz: Well, it sort of was like destiny I would say, 'cause there was also some other events that happened in my life earlier on, like when I was six years old my mother and father came to me I and my sister and said "Do you want a swimming pool or do you want a fallout shelter?" In the 1961 living in America there was something called the "Cuba missile crisis" where America thought that Cuba was going to attack the United States with nuclear warheads so, you know being six years old we didn't know what a fallout shelter was, so me and my sister looked at each other and said "What the fuck is a fallout shelter? Hey mum and dad we want a fucking swimming pool". Well, two weeks later they were playing in the fallout shelter, not the swimming pool! But that was perfect because when I started being about 13 or 14 and started doing my photography the fallout shelter was about 15 feet underground, it was dark 24 hours a day so I made the perfect dark room. So the dark room was built ten years before I even owned a camera! It was almost like destiny that I would become a rock'n'roll photographer.
SF: Did you start to working on the music trade straight away, from the beginning?
Zloz: No, not really because when I first got a camera I liked to to artistic photos like sunsets, when I walked down the streets, etc. We have a street here called Fairfax where Jewish people live, with their long beards and I did go down the streets and sort of candidely shoot pictures of all people. I also used to go in the downtown of Los Angeles of shot pictures of all the bums in Skid Row. When I first picked up the camera I didn't say "I wanna be a rock'n'roll photographer", I just like shooting photos, I did it for fun. I take my camera to the beach, if I went out for a ride in my car I take the camera with me, when I was walking down the street. I pretty much had a camera with my 24 hours a day before I started shooting rock'n'roll photos. Now that I shoot rock'n'roll photos for living, when I go on vacation or I'm driving my car, I never have a camera with me. Never, ever, really. It's unfortunate because it's something I used to love so much in the beginning, before I started making money doing it and I did it more for fun and as an artistic release, and now I pick up the camera when I'm getting paid for.
SF: How much of your sets is prepared and how much of them is improvised?
Zloz: About 80 percent of what I shoot now is in my photo studio, where I'm sitting in right now. Back in the old days, like in the seventies, I latched up with a writer who was pretty prominent back then and he was going to do an interview with BB King, and then after the interview I was done I go there and "Excuse me BB, can I place you over here against that white wall" or "Can I take you in this alley" or... well whoever I was shooting back then, Rory Gallagher "Let's go round this corner and let's shoot some photos 'cause the lighting is good", or "Olivia Newton-John, let me take you against this window, everything is really nice and I like the colors of the walls"... so back in the old days everything was more improvised. You know, I would go with the writer and while he was doing the interview I would do the photos for the interview, we would go out to see if there was a nice car parked on the street or nice wall, good lighting and so. Back then I improvised more, now in my studio, before someone comes in like yesterday I was doing with my other favorite band, The Donnas, they're a girl band that I really really really love a lot and I sort of put some ideas in my mind, and then the band comes in and I say "Look: we can do this, or we can do that, what sounds good for you?"
SF: We're curious, how is the first contact estabilished? Is the record company to hire you through official channels or is it a choice made by the artist or the band?
Zloz: Well, most of the work that I do now is more or less with equipment manufacturers like Fender and Jackson guitars, Pearl drums, Sabian cymbals, Vater drumsticks. I do a lot of work with companies like that and I do a lot of work with a lot of magazines. I feel right now that record companies are totally disintegrated, they're just a shell, there may be people working there but they don't know what they're doing, they're unprofessional, they're scared that any day they can lose their job, so I really tried to make a point of not working with the record companies. You know it's just the publicistic retarded idiot, they're inefficient, they don't know what they're doing, so I prefer to work with the managers of the band, you know at this point I've been doing this for 39 years, I started in 1969 so actually this year in November I'll make 40 I've been photos in the music industry, so if I need to do something with Slash I can call up Slash and send him an email directly; if I need to do something with Zakk Wilde I can call up Zakk and say "I need to talk to you". If I need Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Nikki Six or whoever it is I know these people. Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley I can get on the telephone and call'em directly. I don't need to deal with the retarded idiots of the record companies.
SF: You already answered the next question, it was: currently you are only active in music or is your field of action wider today. You told me that you're working just for rockstars.
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Zloz: I don't know if you've seen it, but I did my very first book a couple of years ago "Van Halen: a visual history" and my next book I did was the "Fuck You" book. I have another book coming out which is gonna be a Mötley Crüe book that's gonna be out on August, but after that is the book that I'm really looking for which is gonna be a guitar gods book, it's gonna be "Six Strings Heroes" and that's gonna have all the great guitarist from Rory Gallagher, Pete Townsend, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Brian May, Slash, Zakk, Satriani, Vai, of course Eric Sardinas... I mean I love Eric, I'm trying to get in touch with him 'cause I need a few quotes from him for the book. You see most of the photographers that do books, they just put photos in. For Van Halen I went to all my friends like Alice Cooper, David Coverdale, Ronnie James Dio, Slash, Zakk, Chad Smith, everybody, and I got quotes from them about how Van Halen's music changed their life and how it affected their music, any stories of hanging with the band and partying with them. The same thing happened with Mötley, I went to Mötley's manager, security guards, clothing designers, tags? photographers and I asked them how it was working with Mötley and with the guitar book I hired my friend Steven Rosen who has interviewed all these people and we're taking excerpts from different interviews he has done throught the years where everybody from Robin Trower, Steve Lukather, hopefully Eric Sardinas get some quotes, you know he's done Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Brian May, Rory Gallagher, we'd like the book to have different quotes about the guitar and the instruments, and how guitar playing is affected, and so on. I think this guitar book is gonna be really super-special for people that, you know, like the guitars.
SF: It's gonna be surely a fabulous anthology. Now, Van Halen chapter, I think you're gonna expect this... Your role was essential, many even called you "The Fifth Van Halen". When did you start working with them?
Zloz: I started working with Van Halen in about 1978, everybody sort of knows the story: I was in an office and I heard Running With The Devil and it was like "Oh my God! That is insane!" and then it broke up into Eruption and his guitar... Back then America and the whole world was coming up with disco like Village People, Donna Summer, Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta and then there was Grease, there was all disco back then, there wasn't any good rock'n'roll at all so it sort of faded and you know, Van Halen hit the scene and to me there was nothing like that. I said to myself "I Wanna work with this band, they're gonna be huge" and I called up their publicist and hooked up with them and the next thing, you know, we where hanging and playing, having fun together.
SF: You did hundreds of photo sessions with Van Halen, many of which took place in the backstage or where taken from a privileged point of view, was it hard to conquer such a privilege?
Zloz: Well, you know, to me they were my friends, I like to think that I've been more than a photographer, you know like I said I have phone numbers of everybody I can call people because they trust me and they like the way I work, they know that I'm honest and that if something looks good I'll say it looks good. For instance, when Dave was doing some video shoots he had all these "yes people" on the set "Oh Dave your hair's great" "Oh Dave your clothes are great" "Oh Dave your make-up's great" and then with this people telling Dave how great he looks, Dave would look at me and he go "Zloz, how do I look?". He didn't want to hear from those people, 'cause those people are kissing his ass and they don't know the real Dave. I'm sort of like a detail person so I look at different things and go "Your hair is not right today" or "These shoot are going to look right with these pants, change it". So, to me it wasn't really a privilege what I did, that's what I do I mean, I'm a rock'n'roll photographer. To me when I shoot kiss, when I shoot Steve Vai, when I shoot, you know, whoever I shoot, Eric Sardinas or The Donnas it may be that some people they go: "Oh, Neil, you got to work with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley". Yes, big deal but, so what? I know what the fuck is a big deal, to me that's just what I do for a living. I'm a rock'n'roll photographer, I don't look at it like I'm special, I don't look at it like glamorous because really what I do is not glamorous, I mean it's a lot of work and I have to deal with a lot of bullshit from a lot of people but, you know, after being 40 years doing this business I'm pretty tough cocky and I can deal with the hardest managers, I can deal with the biggest here again asshole people in the world and I know how to deal with them. To me it wasn't any privilege, it was just what I did for a living. I was a rock'n'roll photographer, there is a lot of other photographers I know that are stuck up here again, since their greatest thing. I know one photographer that actually thinks he's better than the people he shoots, he always got ten assistants, you know, he always got to stay in the finest hotels... Yo know what? Just give me a bed, a remote control and a shower, I don't need to stay in a four seasons hotel, I don't need to be picked up in a limousine to go to my photo shoots, just get me there, let me do my job and in the end of the day it's over and I move on to the next job.
SF: It's great hearing that you established such a human relationship with the people you work with, which is something that we can see also from the pictures, I can say. I was wondering, have you ever had similar all-absorbing experiences like the one you had with Van Halen?
Zloz: Oh, yeah, Mötley Crüe for instance, I mean when Mötley Crüe first broke in the early eighties I was good friend with Robin Crosby from REA and Robin lived below Nikki Six, so next thing you know me and Robin and Nikky we were like best friend and we were hanging, I think that anybody knows anything about Mötley knows that in 1984 me, Robin and Nikki took a vacation to Martinica and, quite mad, this was probably the first real vacation of Nikki and Robin ever had! You know Ratt was doing pretty well, Mötley Crüe was doing obviously great in 1984, so all three of us took a vacation to Martinica. You know, bands like Mötley Crüe and even Poison... I worked really really close to Poison for about five years, in the height their fame, you know the first album came out and I opened it up and I said "I did the album cover for them" and the next album. The same was with Guns'n'Roses, I did quite a bit of work with Guns'n'Roses, even Ted Nugent, in the in the ??? old days, Aerosmith back in their days I did a lot of work with them... Joe Satriani and even Steve Vai I still did a lot of work with Steve Vai when he needed stuff. Zakk Wylde, I was sleeping in bed last night when the phone rings at twelve o'clock at midnight and it's Zakk Wylde for like, you know, thirty minutes and in the thirty minutes I probably said ten words, and he probably said twenty thousand words, I mean he was on fire last night, I couldn't even get a word in. You know, Zakk's like my little baby brother. It's a matter of fact when him and his wife - now Zakk has a couple of multi-million dollar houses - for him and his wife and kids - but Zakk actually slept in my condominium, I don't even have a house, I live in a condominium. Zakk slept on my couch for eight days straight, I mean, he's the guy, one of the greatest guitar players in the world, he's got two multi-million dollar houses and he's sleeping on Zlozower's couch!
SF: Let's talk a bit about Eric Sardinas. We know that some shoots from the Devil's Train album were your own work...
Zloz: No, I don't thing anything in Devil's Train, I think the only shots that I ever had on any Eric Sardinas album are from Black Pearls.
SF: Oh, from Black Pearls, I'm gonna say this to Dimitri "You're wrong!"
Zloz: That's ok!
SF: Had you already met mr Sardinas when you were commissioned those pictures?
Zloz: I'll tell you the story how I met Eric 'cause the story's interesting. I had a couple of friends of mine, they were in a band called Hair of the dog, one is Ryan Cook and the other one is... hold on a second... John Sepetys. John Sepetys is Ruta Sepetys' brother, ok? Ruta Sepetys is Steve Vai's manager, and Ruta also manages Eric Sardinas [NDR: ora non più, vedi: http://www.sardinasfans.com/node/477], so I did the album cover for the first album of Hair of The Dog and I met Ryan Cook and John Sepetys and we hit it off great, you just like I do with everybody. So, you know, Ryan and John were always coming up with "Hey Neil, we gonna go to see Eric Sardinas, do you wanna go?" "No" and one month later "Hey Neil, Eric Sardinas, wanna go?" "No" because, you know, I've seen all the greatest guitar players in the world, so finally I said to these guys "Hey is this guy any good?". You know Eric Sardinas and they looked at me and said "Neil, we think the guy's fucking fantastic, we think that he's better than Steve Vai!" "Really? This guy's better than Steve Vai? No fucking way, ok?". So anyway I still didn't go to see him. One day, in 1999, Steve Vai was playing in The House Of Blues in Los Angeles and Eric Sardinas was opening. So i figured it out, "Well I'm gonna go shooting Steve Vai, let me go see this Eric Sardinas character, let me see how good he is". So, I'm in the photo pit, and Eric comes on and he's got all this beat up, sweaty, rusty steel string guitars, and he plays within the first, like, minutes of playing his first song I'm like "Oh my God! This guy's fucking fantastic!" I mean, he looks great, his voice is amazing, he can fucking play his guitar... when people ask me what Eric Sardinas sounds like I tell'em: "If you take Johnny Winter back in 1969, 1970, 1971 but you multiply Johnny Winter times one thousand, that's what you get with Eric Sardinas". So I was watching Eric Sardinas' show, and I was just totally blown away. At the end of the show you know he took his guitar and set it on fire and I'm like "Oh my God, this guy... what a fucking singer, what a fucking guitar player, what a showman this guy is". Next thing, you know, I'm calling up Ruta the next day and obviously Steve Vai went on after, you know Eric did a 30 minutes but Steve Vai did a two-hours set, ok? But, when Steve's an amazing guitar player, but there was something in Eric that night that was magical, so I called up Ruta and "Ruta, I wanna work with this guy, he's fucking insane, he's amazing, I love this guy". Hold on one second, my cell phone's ringing... [pausa] Anyway, I called up Ruta and I said "I wanna work with this guy" and to this day you know, The Rolling Stones are coming to Los Angeles "hey Neil, you gonna go see The Stones?" "Nah, I don't want to see The Stones, I've seen 'em in '69, '72, '73, '75, '80..." or "Hey Neil, you gonna go to this show?" "No" "Neil gonna go see this band?" "No" "Neil, you gonna go and see him?" "No". I you said to me "Neil, who's your favourite axe right know?" I would go and say Eric Sardinas is one of my favourite axe and I love The Donnas also. You know I don't need to see Led Zeppelin reforming with Jason Bonham, i actually like the guys but, you know, I love watching Eric Sardinas and the biggest compliment that Neil Zlozower can ever pay anybody is if I go to see someone and I don't bring my camera. If I bring my camera, that means I'm there to make money, ok? If I don't bring my camera, that means I'm there to enjoy myself and have a good time, and when Eric plays here he usually plays in a small little club called Cozy's. That's a little tiny place, and the lighting stinks, it's awful, and I never ever ever bring my camera when I go see Eric play live, I just go to see Eric play. He usually does two sets, one at about 9:30, and he plays so lovin' dirty, and then he takes about half an hour break and gets back on at 12 and plays to 1:30 in the morning, and I sat through every song of both sets, 'cause I love Eric Sardinas, he's one of the most talented guitars I've ever seen in my life.
SF: I absolutely agree! Again about Eric, is he really the hurricane we are used to see on stage or, during the photo sessions is he a bit meeker?
Zloz: No, he's actually pretty soft spoken, I wont say he's shy, he knows me pretty good... I actually he's pretty shy with people he doesn't know, ok? I've known Eric for a while now and, you know, we're both oysters fanatic, we like oysters, you know, and so he's actually hung in my house before and like went downtown and bought a bottle and oysters, we sit in my place getting drunk so, we're friends, I mean just like most of the people I work with. And you if some band comes in the day that's never worked with me they probably will leave my studio at the end of the day and they're gonna be my friend, 'cause you know I'm a pretty down-to-home? person, I don't play any "I'm mr Rockstar rock photographer superstar" like I said. I'm just a rock'n'roll photographer, that's what I do for a living. Maybe I'm famous but in my mind I'm just, you know, not better than you, not better than Eric Sardinas, I'm not better than the bum in the street that doesn't have a place to live in. We're all created equal. So, Eric with me is fine, he can be a bit of a Primadonna when it comes to photo shoots, you know he's a good-looking guy. When we used to do photo shoots in my studio sometimes we had to do this and then later he coming along, looking at the photos saying "I don't like this, I don't like that" and he got to the point where he only liked one pose he had 'cause he looks best in this pose, but the funny thing is that last time he played at Cozy's I went there with one of my girlfriends and I called up Eric, he got a new cellphone and he wasn't returning my call. I called him up five times "Eric would you put me in the list? Call me back" "Call me back" and he didn't call me back, so we get to Cozy's that night and the girl was driving. I'm like "pull in the alley, Eric's always hanging in the alley, so we pulled in the alley, and I see this guy that looks like Eric but he's got this big long beard and I'm like "This guy looks like Eric but Eric has no beard", next thing I know I get round the corner and I go "What did you do? What the fuck you didn't fucking call me back!" "You don't have my number" I go "Bullshit, here's your fucking number! You didn't call me back, and I'm looking at it". It looks like Eric is going to do a little new face of, sort of, his new look and personality, he's got this big long woolly beard, now. I couldn't figure out but it's probably four months ago, he was just incredible, he just played amazing. I love going to see Eric Sardinas. You know, anybody who goes and sees Eric is gonna get their money worth, it's just a fucking great show, the guy's just an amazing entertainer.
SF: Absolutely. The last question, then I'll let you go. What's the difference of working with today's bands in comparison to the seventies and eighties ones, if there is one?
Zloz: Well, in the seventies I wasn't doing as much studio work, so I go on the location with the writer and do what I could do, now pretty much 85% of what I do I have control and I call the shots but, I find the bands in these day sort of short-lived, their longevity, I mean, look at bands like Limp Bizkit or Korn and I think I got them shot about '98 or '99 opening for Metallica, and then in 2001 and 2002 they were already superstars and then in 2009 sort of to me they have been banned, they seemed to come and go through. The music industry is such a piece of shit right now. I'm fifty-four years old, so when I go home I'm listening to Deep Purple with Ian Gillan, AC/DC with Bon Scott, Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin... I mean to me the bands in this day and age are musically untalentwise as good as they are, maybe there's a generation gap I have to say. I like to think I still appreciate good music but, you know... I'm making more money now as far as the band I shoot does stuff like that but musically, you know... it doesn't get my dick hard like they used to.
SF: Mr Zlozower, thank you very much for the time you granted us.
Zloz: Ok, I'd love to see a copy of this interview when it gets out.
SF: Yes, sure we will inform you as soon as the article is released, ok? Thank you very much!
Zloz: Ok, it was fun talk in the end. Bye bye
