If I get around to doing Bizarre Thailand 2.0, profiling rock shooter and punk strummer Martyn Goodacre in the “Strange Celebrities” section would be a sound idea.
One of the big guns of British music photography, he framed an astounding array of rock and cinema stars, from Shane MacGowan and Liv Tyler to Beck and Michael Hutchence, over the course of a decadent decade (see the clip below from my feature in Untamed Travel magazine which you can download here).
Martyn’s most famous image, a black and white shot of Kurt Cobain, has been hijacked for T-shirts, posters, websites and the cover of NME. In this interview from a few years back, he explains how that shoot came about, plus his musician days in the punk band Fabulous, his early work for Loaded magazine, his drinking spree with Joey Ramone in New York, and why the late INXS frontman was the musician he mourned the most on his contact sheet of the dead.
Rumours continue to run rampant as to Martyn’s current projects, such as being the Phil Spector-like svengali behind a music label, breeding komodo dragons on Koh Samui, and writing the soundtrack for a new version of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Until we can ascertain the truth or fiction of these innuendoes, you can gawp at more of his retina-expanding pics on www.martyngoodacre.com.