Interview Part 2: How Ian captured his favourite album cover image with 80s pop star Natasha

Last week I introduced you to Ian Hooton, a music photographer whose work in the 1980s and ‘90s appeared on many album and single covers, and in countless editions of Record Mirror, the (now vintage) British music magazine that ran from 1954 to 1991.

I had asked Ian to allow me to interview him in three parts, which he kindly agreed to. I guess it’s one of the few dividends of the COVID-19 pandemic that we had the time to catch up after I had initially contacted Ian in 2017 when covering the story behind the cover of the Mama’s Boys album Power and Passion, which he also shot in his London studio.

Ian has worked with artists including The Style Council, The Cure, Tears For Fears, The Pogues, Pet Shop Boys, Mama’s Boys, George Clinton, and Depeche Mode.

We agreed to cover three themes for the interviews.

• Part 1: Ian’s career.
• Part 2: Ian’s favourite photo/record cover.
• Part 3: Ian’s favourite work by other music photographers.

Part 1 is available here.

Welcome to Part 2: Ian’s favourite record cover image …

Slabber.net: Sorry to throw the question on you Ian but at least I did give you a week to decide! So, what have you got?

IH: When you had posed this question to me, I clicked into Google to see what it could throw up and there it was, the Natasha album!

I was thinking, oh wow, I’d forgotten all about that. Then another image came up, the single from the album which I also did.

Is it my favourite cover? Hmm. I don’t really know the answer to that question but I’m pretty close to saying it is. Certainly, the making of the covers for both the Natasha album and the single inspired me to tell the story behind them. It brought out a smile!

The album was simply called Natasha – it was her debut album. The single was The Boom Boom Room. She would have been well-known in the 1980s music scene.

Ian Hooton

With her husband, the late Bob England, they owned their record label (Towerbell Records) and were credited for discovering the band Darts, and Chas & Dave.

I remember getting a call to go to Bob England’s office to discuss shooting for the album cover. Basically, I was told the name of the album and was asked to come up with some ideas.

I can’t recall which came first, the single or the album but obviously the album is called Captured and that’s what I had to go away with and find some inspiration.

I recall I had done a shot of a girl in a captured pose and I thought that would be great too for the Natasha album cover.

So, the cage you see her in on the cover, that’s just chicken wire moulded to look like a cage.

I thought about adding a cat to it and at that point in time, using a stuffed animal in a photo-shoot was not uncommon. So that cat in the shot, it was hired from a nearby shop that sold stuffed animals.

When we put the two together, the cat and Natasha in the cage, we just thought, wow, that’s the shot. Both her and the cat captured. Simple.

I brought that cat home after that shoot that day and left it in the lounge before going to have dinner with my wife and when we went back into the room with our dog and he jumped out of his skin when he saw a snarling cat looking at him!

It was a really cool shoot to do.

N.B. Ironically, (according to Wikipedia) Natasha left the music business for a period after the break-up of her marriage, and worked with horses and on animal rights!

Slabber.net: Tell me more about the single.

IH: I’m glad you asked because at that time I was messing around with lighting shots by candlelight. I must have shown examples of images to Bob and Natasha because I recall they liked the idea and wanted to use it on the cover of the single.

So, while I had done shots with a few candles, on this occasion I wanted to do it with a lot. I think I got at least 200 candles for the set. What we didn’t realise at the time was that by the time half those candles were lit by hand, the heat coming off them was melting the others beside them.

They were also supposed to last around eight hours but some of them melted down and were disappearing within a few minutes because of the heat all of them generated together.

We literally had two goes at getting the shot while shooting with available light.

The door in the shot, that’s not even a door. It’s just the frame of a door supported by something like a light-stand to create the impression she is in a room.

The flamingos, like the cat on the album cover, were also stuffed.

Looking back on it I can have a laugh, but it was certainly a case of self-discovery. It wasn’t quite as easy as the idea might have looked in theory.

Ian Hooton

It was a bit like the Mama’s Boys Power and Passion album cover. We had Irish Wolfhounds in place for that shoot but when it was put into practice, it didn’t work out.

That was all part of the excitement of those days. The attitude was ‘yeah, let’s do that’ and then we would discover whether or not it was a good idea in the first place.

After recalling all of this, I went online to see if I could buy it and I got the coloured vinyl version of the single!

Slabber.net: If you were shooting an image like that today, would you have all those challenges to overcome?

IH: I’m not sure the use of stuffed animals would be acceptable today. The issue we had with the candles, well I guess we could just duplicate all of them in Photoshop now.

I shot that through a starburst filter which gave a starburst effect to the candles but also it softened things slightly.

In terms of shooting with raw files today and getting all the detail out of the shadows and highlights and readjusting the shot, well that’s all standard stuff now. Then it was just ‘film’ and what you ended up with is what you got – there was no luxury of playing with the image.

I don’t want to sound 150 years old but back in those days you could experiment, and people were willing to take risks to get the shot they wanted.

The difference now is every shot simply has to work and then you move on to the next one. Gone are the days when you could book someone in for a shoot and call them back for another shoot if the first one hasn’t worked out as well as you had hoped.

I don’t think I will ever do that like of that shoot with candles again!

I wouldn’t know what became of those photos – but they were bought at the time by Bob and Natasha England, so they would be their property.

Slabber.net: Would those shots be controversial or appropriate today?

IH: I would expect they would. In this case, Natasha had her ideas too and had final say over the images. If we did it today, I’m not sure we would get away with it. Certainly, as an animal lover, I wouldn’t use a stuffed animal again.

The cover for Captured would not be lost in a heavy metal record collection – it’s got that edge. 

It’s a reflection of the time and what would have been acceptable.

Slabber.net: It was as important then as it is today to have a ‘great’ cover on any record, right?

IH: Oh yeah. Sometimes the covers were better than the records! Sometimes it was the cover that sold the record.

The cover is important to the artist. Some want to be cool; some want to sexy, and some just want to be a simple portrait.

I remember working with Cilla Black and she just wanted a nice shot of herself for a cover of a single, and that is what we got.

It’s important to listen to the brief and relate to what the artist wanted.

This reminds me of the K-Tel compilation albums which seem to be issued almost every week. I was doing covers for them and it was arguably the cover that sold many issues of those albums.

Sometimes the cover had nothing to do with the music – it was just down to the image being cool at the time.

Slabber.net: Did you enjoy the challenges presented to you with each album cover shoot?

IH: I really did. No two days in music photography were the same and that was the joy of it.

I’m no different from the artists, my creativity changed over time and that was reflected in my images.

Look at Paul Weller for example – how much as his creativity changed and he remains relevant today!

Slabber.net: The records you selected as your favourite would not instantly recognisable – that doesn’t seem important to you.

IH: To be honest, I have records covers and images that I could shout about. I could have selected the biggest artist I have ever worked with, but that wouldn’t be the whole story, you know…

I could easily have just said, ‘let’s talk about the time I went to Germany for a shoot with Robbie Williams. It’s not about that for me, it’s all about the image and when I think of the Natasha shoot, there’s a warmth to it – and I would probably never get to shoot an image in that way ever again.

I could have simply talked about a shoot with the Pet Shop Boys and some iconic images that came from it but that was maybe just a two-hour session and they were on the crest of a wave at the time with West End Girls. They were massive – and still are.

Slabber.net: Tell me about another record cover you shot.

IH: One that stands out is Kajagoogoo’s White Feathers album (1983). That was done with a design group by a very clever guy called Dave Richardson. His company was called Shoot That Tiger and they created a lot of album covers.

I went to see his offices on one occasion to find out more about them because their name was appearing on loads of records. As it happened, they were working on that Kajagoogoo album. Dave told me the name of it and said they needed a shot for the cover.

The band, at that time, was not available to do a shoot and so, this is where my art college days came back into play.

Feathers, as you know, don’t go anywhere you want them to if you drop them and we needed them in a prime position for the album.

So, I got two white feathers and glued a pin to them, rag-rolled a background with some paint and put a rod behind each feather to have them perfectly placed, and we just shot them, and they used it!

If memory serves me right, that album cover won some sort of award. I never got to meet Limhal or the band!

Footnote: Natasha English did have a Top 10 hit in the UK with the song Iko Iko. It was a cover version of a song written about an ancient parade collision between two tribes of Mardi Gras Indians.

N.B. Tower Records also had the likes of Snowy White, Shirley Bassey and Cilla Black on its label.

www.ianhooton.com
www.instagram.com/ianhootonphotography

https://natashaenglandofficial.yolasite.com/PHOTOS.php

Images used were taken by Ian Hooton