All Access: The Rock ’n’ Roll Photography of Ken Regan
Adapted from All Access: The Rock ’n’ Roll Photography of Ken Regan, by Ken Regan, to be published this month by Insight Editions; © the author.
I first met Ken Regan in the rather peculiar circumstances of the Rolling Stones Hyde Park concert in July 1969. I was standing onstage as butterflies we had released were fluttering all about, when I noticed I was being photographed by a man in a military jacket who had many cameras hanging around his neck. The pictures he shot of that event were some of the best that were done.
I didn’t see him again until our 1972 S.T.P. Tour. Ken was assigned by Time magazine to cover it. He joined us in Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, and for several shows in Los Angeles. It was the first of many tours Ken would go out on with the Stones. Some of my favorite work that Ken did came from our Montauk rehearsals for our 1975 Tour of the Americas. He captured the rather tense buildup to the opening of what was to become one of my favorite tours.
Ken also covered the tour itself, which was quite a spectacle, centered on an elaborate stage set and filled with outlandish costumes. Those dates were always memorable, as at the end of the show, I covered myself in water, which he always seemed to enjoy documenting. If he got too close, I would throw buckets at him, which, I remember, he took in good sport.
As Ken would accompany us on our tours, it just so happened that I would end up accompanying him on his gigs as well ... there by his side assisting him and shooting some of the historical sporting events he was assigned.
This relationship began in 1975, when we ran into each other at a New York Cosmos game. The New York Cosmos soccer team was an all-star outfit of extremely famous footballers playing out the last years of their careers. I would attend every Sunday home game, and it was there that I saw Ken running up and down the touchline, covered in cameras, while all the other photographers just stayed immobile, sitting squarely on their seats. I recognized him immediately, and he invited me down onto the field to share the dubious honor of running up and down the touchline with him, chasing after some of the game’s biggest names, who were playing on the field. Names such as Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, and Giorgio Chinaglia. Coming from England, where football is such a big part of our culture, I was quite thrilled to be there running on the field among these greats.
In 1976, I went with my father to the Montreal Olympic Games. Naturally, there was Ken at many of the premier events, and naturally he, again, was able to pull strings to get another pass for me to come along with him for the ride. We went to the exciting boxing finals together and saw future champions Sugar Ray Leonard, John Tate, Michael and Leon Spinks, as well as the great Cuban heavyweight Teófilo Stevenson. Seeing these greats do what they did only heightened my interest in boxing, a sport that Ken was so fortunate to cover frequently.
Ken came along with me on my 1988 solo tour of Japan. While we were there, we managed to go to yet another major sporting event together. This time it was to see Mike Tyson fight Tony Tubbs at the opening of the Tokyo Dome stadium, also called the Big Egg. Funnily enough, on a later date, I didn’t bother to go to see Tyson fight Buster Douglas, as he was such a cert to win. As everyone knows, he lost in that same venue.
Touring with us, Ken could see what our world was like, and working with Ken, I was able to see what his world was like. As the Rolling Stones were out, becoming part of history, it was nice to pick up that camera next to Ken and see what history looked like through the lens.
Though Ken and I enjoy both a professional and personal relationship, in all the years we’ve worked together he has never blurred those boundaries.
