An Interview with Martyn Goddard

“I’ve done huge things with Queen live, that’s what sort of kicked me into the big league,” starts the conversation with Martyn Goddard, a photographer most famous for being involved with the new wave era of the 1970’s and 80’s. It’s not every day that a person is able to say they’ve worked with the likes of Debbie Harry and Freddie Mercury, but for Martyn, it’s just another day on the job. 

His passion for photography sprouted at the mere age of 13. “I was at secondary school, and my physics master ran an after school programme with a photography module,” he starts. Physics and photography seem like an odd combination, but he continues. “That got me into the technical side. When you’re 13, the darkroom stuff is all quite interesting.” The arts were also in Martyn’s family, whose cousin was a technical, press type photographer. “He got me into the creative side of photography, and those two things sparked my interest. That’s when I bought a £30 Zenit camera and joined a local camera club.” His early success was a clear indication of his future to come; prizes and trophies mere reminders of his natural talent. “People were all very nice and helpful, until I stared winning!” He says, sounding astonished.

 “I was 16, and at the time that was the age where you started apprenticeships and things.” Most of his friends, he said, had already started. He went to his careers advisor, knowing he wanted to pursue photography further. “I figured, you have to work for at least 40-50 years, might as well make it something you enjoy! But I was dyslexic and quite a late bloomer,” Martyn says, “and my careers master didn’t know anything about photography.” He did, however, know of a man in London who would be able to assist him. He and his parents set off for London to meet with the careers advisor he’d been in contact with. “You have two options, he said. Either get an apprenticeship with a photographer and get nothing in the end, or start on a photography course.” Which is exactly what he did, and ended up graduating from Harrow College of Technology and Art with a photography degree.

Though his training is in fashion, Martyn says that he has “gone through just about every type of photography besides food,” and “hates fashion photography.” He got out of the fashion realm fairly quickly, which is when he became involved in the rock and roll scene. When asked if it was nerve racking to be around such influential people at such a young age, Martyn responds: “It’s a strange mind set, but when you’re professional, it’s just your job. You go and do the job because that’s why you’re there.” He adds, “That’s the difference between professional and amateur photography.” 

His rock and roll photography career falls primarily between the years of 1973 and 1990, though “the last few years are a blur, because [he] was working more for magazines.” His first large assignment, at the tender age of 22, was to shoot Queen at the Hammersmith Odeon. “I was working for Fab 208 Magazine at the time…” a magazine he explains correlated with a pirate radio station out of Luxembourg, which would stream pop music to Britain in the 60’s and 70’s. “They assigned me to the gig, which was everything gigs were not at the time.” As opposed to most live shows at the time, Queen’s set was well lit, their performance fantastic. “Because of the lighting, I was able to use a prismatic lens, which would take one centre image and layer five outside images around it...really quite artsy stuff for the time.” He continues, “I got some fantastic images that show.” They were so great; magazines were buying them and putting them on the cover. Disc, “the magazine that broke Queen,” asked for permission to use the photos in their feature, “which is what launched me from being a photographer that went along with magazines to a photographer that was being requested by artists.” 

The perfect example was Debbie Harry of Blondie, in 1978. “I was working for the Telegraph a bit at the time,” Martyn starts, “and I told them there was a wonderful looking girl in New York with a band. He reasoned with the Telegraph. “If I pay for my airfare (which, at the time was about £99), you can pay for the hotel and I will photograph her.”  And off he went, on an aeroplane to New York to spend a week with Debbie Harry and his camera. “We spent a week in the Gramercy Park Hotel. It was her [Harry], Stein, and the band, and that’s where we shot the Parallel Lines album artwork.” It was Fashion Week in New York, and “I knew a hair dresser, which is why she was all done up with plaits and everything. She had never had her hair and makeup done before.” Some of the most iconic photographs of Harry and the band were taken in Martyn’s week in New York, they opened in exhibition in London upon his return. 

Blondie and Queen were the first of many to come, followed by iconic photos of The Jam and weeks spent touring with the likes of Wham and U2. “For the first two years of The Jam, I did everything.” Martyn boasts, though he has every right to. “Every single cover in those two years was shot by me.” The pictures taken for the “In the City” album cover, one of the most iconic covers to date, belonged to Martyn as well. “It was shot in my studio in Kensington,” Martyn says, “we had built the tile wall in the morning using three flats of wood and some white kitchen tiles.” Artistic director Bill Smith used a solarisation technique to make them black and white, which is why they were placed on white tiles in black suits. “Bill, who was completely off his head at the time, decided he wanted the band name painted on the wall. He took an aerosol can and, in his regular hand writing, painted The Jam.” The members of the band were brought in, sat down, and photographed. 

By the 1990’s, “a conscious decision had been made to leave the rock and roll photography scene. I didn’t want to become an old rock photographer.” Which is fair enough, and gave way to photographing other subjects. “I had such a great time doing it,” he says. “But by that time I’d moved into the Telegraph supplements.” He moved on to shoot other artistic mediums: painters, writers, actors. The transition was “no problem,” he says, and lasted quite a while before moving into travel writing and photography in the 2000’s.“

Martyn is enjoying what he’s doing now, working freelance as a writer and classic car photographer, a clear stray from his youthful, rock and roll loving days. “I was just asked to go on tour with a band around England,” he begins. “And it was terrible! Before, everything was in separate buses. Now, you’re eating pizza and drinking tequila at 3 AM in the back of the same van you’ll fall asleep in two hours later, it’s hideous.” Though it’s unclear to say whether he’s left his rock and roll days long behind, one thing is for sure: Martyn’s obvious talent is prevalent in all aspects of his work.