Leee Black Childers

KULTUR // PhotographyPage 01

Max's back room · the Anarchy Tour · a fortnight on our sofa

He stayed with us for two weeks and paid the rent in stories. Rest in peace, Leee.

Words · KULTUR · Photographs · Leee Black Childers

In Memoriam

Track A — The story

He arrived with a camera bag and a laugh you could hear through a wall, and for a fortnight the kitchen was Max's Kansas City. The back room, he'd say, was less a venue than a waiting list. He got puked on by Billy Idol in it. He babysat Iggy. He said both jobs required roughly the same equipment: patience, a towel, and somewhere to put the ashtray.

London came later, and it came sideways. He turned up here managing the Heartbreakers, went down the Roxy on the off-chance, and walked straight into his old friend Gail Higgins. The two of them went off to mind the band on the Anarchy Tour — a tour that by then existed mostly as a list of cancellations and a rumour about a television programme.

They arrived in a plume of tackle smoke the day after the Grundy affair, into a country that had just decided, overnight, that it was frightened. Half the dates were gone. The other half looked at them like weather.

He thought the London punks looked like baby bums — and he adored the Teds.

The Heartbreakers photographed by Leee Black Childers — Evidence 01a — The Heartbreakers, photograph by Leee Black Childers

The Pictures

Track B — The pictures

What delighted him most wasn't the thing everybody photographed. Gilm took him to see Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets — heterosexual rock'n'roll badge and all — then Crazy Cavan, then Levi and the Rockats. Drape coats, brothel creepers, quiffs built like architecture. He said the Teds had a discipline the punks hadn't earned yet: nothing safety-pinned, everything tailored.

And he fell, hopelessly and publicly, for Smutty Smiff.

Punk crowd photographed by Leee Black Childers — Evidence 01b — Roxy faces, the night nobody went home

Band in a rubble-strewn basement, photographed by Leee Black Childers — Evidence 01c — Basement, rubble, leather trousers

Group among racks of clothes, photographed by Leee Black Childers — Evidence 01d — Behind the racks, the back room as dressing room

Four figures leaning over a rooftop parapet above a London street, photographed by Leee Black Childers — Evidence 01e — Over the parapet, W1, four heads and a long drop

Viva le rock and roll. Rest in peace, Leee.

KULTUR · No. 2 · Leee Black Childers01