Sometimes when people talk about you as a photographer, they say there is a certain amount of luck there. How would you respond to that?

People gotta realize, certainly I am lucky, because when I started I was living at home. It's not like I was being a bum, it's not like I was spoiled. I was a fucking 13 or 14 year old kid, it's not like I'm gonna have my own apartment on the lower east side. My point is this: I got to start, and I got to do these things, you know? I had the eye, so I was able to start getting published at a young age. And I got to travel around and do all these types of things, inbetween school vacation. Skate companies would fly me around. Or, when I'd visit my mother or my father on one coast or the other, I had these opportunities to shoot these bands. I didn't have many expenses, my parents didn't charge me rent. So, while most people have to develop what they're doing in their 20's or late teens when they are getting out of college or high school, I had already been past that stage.

Beastie Boys

The reality is, I did some wack jobs, photography-wise. I took some jobs in the beginning just to figure out what the fuck I was doing, and I certainly did need the money when I moved out of my house at 19 years old. I didn't need a lot, but I needed to see what I could do. So, a record company would see my pictures of a punk band somewhere and say "Let's hire this guy and see what he can do for us." So, I shot pictures once of some country guy, you know what I mean, for, like, Elektra records. Not knowing anything of Elektra, over on La Sieniga, other than that's where Iggy recorded his first Stooges album. I figured that's what I needed to do to get in.

I had only been shooting skateboarding photos and getting paid for it. My first album cover was for The Adolescents in 1981. I had shot music photos before that that were printed in Skateboarder and Action Now, but for The Adolescents cover I got like $50 or $55, and that was a very difficult job. It took me alot of days because they would never want to be together. I went to several shows and they knew that's why I was there to do, and those guys wouldn't pose together or they'd be too fucked up. So, I ended up having to use individual shots of them all.

I took pictures of the Go-Go's once even, for IRS records. The Go-Go's were at one time considered a punk band, believe it or not, cause the genre was so wide open in '79 or even '80. In '81 it started closing down more and they were more New Wave or Pop, but IRS had seen the work I had done with The Circle Jerks and Dead Kennedys. So, I figured, they're gonna pay me really good to do this. They liked my live stuff, maybe this is what I'm suppose to do as a photographer. Maybe I'm suppose to take these kinds of jobs. I don't even remember what I got paid — one hundred or a thousand dollars, I don't know. It must have been something pretty good, and I know the photos were wack, the whole thing was wack.

Bad Brains

It's funny, I was just thinking, where are those negatives today? It didn't all happen automatically, you know. And I have done jobs, album covers for bands that I didn't think were great, but probably thought were good. Or probably like a friend of mine was in the band or something. So I shot that stuff, also I got to admit, maybe it's been a lot of luck, you know? Honestly, after this new book comes out I don't know what I'm going to be doing. I don't know. I've been living off my photography all this time and I probably will continue to, but there's no set plan really.

I've been very, very frugal with all the money that I make. I'm very careful and I just don't waste so that gives me the freedom to do the jobs I wanna do. Just because I get ten thousand dollars for a one day shoot, or even more sometimes, that might only happen only in like two years. Or it might happen five times in one year, it just depends on how things are going and where my interests are. But just because I did make a lot of money that day, or that year, it doesn't mean I'm gonna go out and buy a fucking car. It doesn't mean I'm gonna go out and do anything. Maybe I'll buy myself a new jacket or a nice dinner with a friend and that's all I'll do to celebrate, occasionally I'll get some new camera equipment, but that's so rare. I just don't spend the money. So if you make the money and you save it and you're just careful with what you do, then that gives you the opportunity to have your freedom later. I don't spend money on drugs, I don't spend money on alcohol — which, when I was young, all my peers were wasting their money on that. In the early pro skateboarding days whenever anyone got any money they would just have big parties.