Michael Grecco
December 2, 2023
By Caroline D’Arcy
Interview by Leah Wasilewski and Caroline D’Arcy
Renowned photographer Michael Grecco takes us through his journey capturing the behind-the-scenes moments of our favorite bands. From David Byrne to Aimee Man to The Clash, he has photographed icons of music history throughout the ages. Grecco’s vivid portraiture depicts the breadth of the punk, post-punk and new wave movements. The photos never feel invasive or intruding; they capture a single moment in time and bring us right there with him. While attending college at Boston University, Grecco began to shoot for the Associated Press and radio station WBCN. Quickly, Grecco became a staple of the punk scene by way of his gritty and timeless photography, derived from his tenacity to become embedded in the scene and his love for the music. Although many of the photographs are musicians we have seen before, Grecco manages to depict them in a newfangled and innovative way. His signature black and white behind-the-scenes photographs lend us a view into a world to which we are not otherwise not privy.
Caroline: Tell us about how you grew up and how everything started for you.
Michael: I was born in New York City and I grew up in Hartsdale, in a middle class family; back in high school I had been taking the Central Line into Grand Central Station all the time. At that time in the 70s, I thought music sucked ass. What was on the radio was just hair bands and Alice Cooper and Black Oak Arkansas and just terribly produced music. I was into some good rock. I consider good rock to be Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Roxy Music,Bowie, and Blondie, I loved Blondie. But for the most part, I thought that what was on the radio was just terrible — I was a New Yorker and a music snob. I got into art through a high school art teacher. I went to the Museum of Modern Art all the time, and the International Center of Photography when it was up on East 96th Street.
I couldn’t afford to move too far away for college, where there would be a lot of travel expenses home, so I ended up going to Boston University. When I got to Boston, and I started shooting, I started interning for the Associated Press in ‘78. Just down the street from me was a club called The Rat (The Rathskeller) which was our CBGB’s. I walked in one night and there was authentic music — it was wild — there was a band called La Peste singing a song, “Better Off Dead” which you’d never hear today because of the content of the song. I saw a group of people who were accepting and wild, and music that was authentic and I just slowly became a part of it.
During the day, I was shooting for the Associated Press and doing a little freelance work for magazines. By 1980, I was a member of an agency called Picture Group. But by night I was a club kid. I was in the scene. My friends were the DJs and the musicians. We had a thriving scene. I think in some ways, Boston had a bigger scene than New York or London because we had so many clubs and so many kids. It was a college town. We had the very first punk radio show in the world: Oedipus’s Nocturnal Emissions in ‘75 on WTBS (which became WMDR when Ted Turner bought the call letters). The station went from 50 watts to 50,000 watts because they invested their money in the broadcasting power. We had a regular morning punk and new wave show — the Late Risers Club. Every morning, 9am to 12pm. It’s still on today. And that excited all those college students. There had to have been 20 clubs. I’d go back and forth to New York because my parents were still living there and there was a scene but it wasn’t really the punk scene we had in Boston— it was huge in Boston.
Leah: You got immersed in the punk scene beyond simply photographing it. You have an understanding of that culture that so many young folks today identify with and are influenced by. How has your past experiences influenced your photography today and the evolution of it?
Michael: For better or for worse, being trained as a photojournalist by the Associated Press colored the way I approached everything. There were good parts to it — I’m a storyteller. I like capturing the moment. But when you run a picture on the wire, you’re putting it into what was then a fax machine and transmitting it to all these newspapers you know will crop in tight. There wasn’t much room for using the frame and subtleties because I was trained as a wire service photographer. I was trained for high impact. I moved out to LA at the behest of People Magazine and eventually went from photojournalism to celebrity portraiture magazine covers. But I think that the focus on the action and not giving a lot of room for using the frame was the negative part of that training. The storytelling part and ‘making sure the moment and expression’ was the positive part of my training.
Caroline: Some of your photo subjects are superstars. How did you get to know these musicians before taking their photo, and how much of your process relies on socializing prior to capturing that moment?
Michael: Well, I was part of the scene. So, during the day I was working for the Associated Press. At night, I was working for WBCN, the Kroq station in Boston, and Boston Rock Magazine. So these superstars knew they were being photographed and they knew it was me. I’d be backstage and all my buddy DJs were backstage.There was an acknowledgment that I was one of them immediately because I listened to the music; I knew the songs. It was a different time. No one’s going to stick their dick out and put it in a hot dog bun anymore. I don’t know if you’ve seen the book, but Lux Interior, from the Cramps, his pants fell off while singing and that was just the way he performed. Backstage, he did his portrait with his dick in a hot dog bun. Justin Bieber is not going to do that. Everything is manicured right now. Back then it was all about being revolutionary and making a scene. Everyone watched The Ramones in the US write a song like “Beat on the brat / beat on the brat / beat on the brat with a baseball bat oh yeah.” And then The Sex Pistols took it up one more notch: “God Save the Queen / she ain’t a human being.” Everyone was trying to make a mark. Because what was on commercial radio sucked — realize that’s how we got our music, on the radio. Or you went into an indie record store and asked for a recommendation — but realize what was on commercial radio was manicured, overly produced music. The record companies in the 60s realized they were making more money than movies, sporting events, and theater, all put together. So they started producing the bands. They found musicians that were really proficient. They wrote songs for them. They did surveys with listeners to see what the hit was. It was all produced. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t authentic. It wasn’t like someone listened to a band and went, ‘They’re great, someone put them out.’ So we were just all so hungry for something interesting and energetic and something that was authentic. I was naturally a part of the music in the scene and that helped with my access to everything else.
Leah: You said the word “manicured,” and I found that really interesting. What’s your take on technology and specifically social media? Young photographers have such accessibility to manicure and polish their work to make it something perfect. Do you feel the rise of technology has taken away from the essence of photography in general, especially when considering the raw underside of punk rock culture?
Michael: I saw what’s happening now coming twenty years ago. As Photoshop enabled people to fix bad pictures and as digital cameras came along, people no longer needed to know how to focus a camera or expose film. Then the phone came, and phones are great, but everyone’s a photographer now. If you ever studied economics, it’s classic oversupply and a lack of demand. Over the years I shot for annual reports, music packaging, magazines, print advertising. All of that’s gone. All of it is really gone. It doesn’t really exist in the way where photographers can make money. So yes, people can promote their work easily on social media, but there’s so much of it and it’s so hard to cut through the bandwidth. And even if people follow you and people hire you, there’s so little well-paying work. There’s a general lack of respect for quality photography now, I think, because everyone thinks that everyone can do it because everyone has a phone. I think it’s great if someone has 300,000 Instagram followers and everyone loves their work — but is someone paying them $10,000 a day to produce a great ad campaign? Not often enough. They probably offered them nothing and the photographer is willing to do it because it’s going to bring them great exposure.
Leah: Do you feel like younger artists are getting influenced by what they see on social media instead of real life, and they’re trying to duplicate that instead of creating original work?
Michael: I mean, everyone’s on their phone too much and influenced by everything. Sure, there’s a lot of people copying a lot of other people out there but I’m not saying the photography world isn’t producing good work, I think it’s still producing some great work. There’s some beautiful, amazing photography. It’s just that, as a business, it’s just a tough business. I think there’s a lot of creative people. Phillip Toledano, a photographer with the Institute Agency, he just did some beautiful work using AI that’s been published. Technology has enabled people to do amazing things. All I’m saying is he’s created these AI pictures, fabulous. You can’t copyright them though because they are machine generated. He doesn’t own them because it’s AI. So, I can take it and say it’s my work if I wanted to or use it for whatever I wanted to. It’s a really interesting time and I don’t think AI is going to make it better. I think it’s going to make it worse.
Leah: In regard to punk rock culture, do you feel this saturation contradicts the essence of the underground side to punk?
Michael: Yeah, I mean punk existed because we were different. We were in a group of people who were accepting of all of us being different. It was an accepting culture of wild frivolity. It was my first close exposure to gay culture through friends. The late 70s and the 80s were all about cocaine, partying, sex, drugs and hanging out. So no, it doesn’t work with over saturation. It doesn’t work with mass culture. We wanted to be outsiders, and we were outsiders and however you dressed and whatever you did, was accepted.
Caroline: So looking at these photographs, I can imagine that there were times you weren’t allowed to take photos but you found a way to do it anyway. Do you have any stories about circumventing rules at live shows? What was the wildest story you’ve had photographing a live show?
Michael: There was a sense of decorum. I went to a million shows. I was at U2’s first show in the United States at the Paradise — tiny little club. I went to The Smiths’ first show. I didn’t always photograph. Now that I did the book and the project and I went back into my archive, I wish I had. I wish I had worked harder and shot more bands. But I think every photographer wishes that. But it wasn’t hard to get access. There were no restrictions. You did it yourself, just to be like ‘Okay now I’m backstage with the Clash.’ I photographed everyone and Topher and I are doing lines in the corner.’ Am I going to photograph that? No, I’m not going to photograph that, just the band. I shot my portrait of Billy, and Billy Idol became a friend. We’re up all night in his hotel room at the Howard Johnson with his guitarist Steve and a couple of women. Am I going to photograph that? No. You can self-edit. I was backstage, every time Billy Idol came to town, his road manager would call me and say, ‘Billy’s in town. He wants to hang out and see you. There’s two tickets and two backstage passes waiting for you.’ We’d always go out and hang out. So this time I drove up to New Hampshire. It was like an hour drive. He was playing at some club, The Carousel or whatever, on the water, and we’re backstage hanging out before the show, maybe it was after the show, I don’t remember. I had an all-access pass with him all the time. So he comes backstage screaming at me and I’m just squatting down in the corner just hanging out. I don’t have my cameras with me, because you sort of knew when it was a personal hangout so he’s screaming at me, ‘You’re my mate and you can’t take pictures all the time!’ He takes a metal crate and flings it at my head. It breaks the drywall and sticks in the drywall next to me. I ducked.
Caroline: Holy shit.
Michael: And I’m like, ‘What the fuck.’ He goes, ‘Your girlfriend keeps asking me to take pictures and you’re my friend, you can’t take—’ I said, ‘Billy I don’t have a girlfriend.’ And he just looks at me and goes, ‘Oh shit.’ (Laughs) And then Bill Aucoin, the very famous music manager, comes out with a gallon bag of cocaine and he goes, ‘Billy really appreciates your friendship. He’s really sorry for that. You want a line?’ And I’m like, ‘Bill my heart is racing already. I’m good. Let me just calm down.’ Like what the fuck. (Laughs) So it was wild parties and wild times, and I had access to a lot of things but you self-edit your images at times. Otherwise, nobody’s gonna want you around, if the only reason you’re there is to take pictures of them because they’re famous punkers.
Leah: Who is your favorite artist you photographed and who is someone you really got to know in the scene in general?
Michael: I got to know Billy, although we lost touch. There were no cell phones or emails back then so I was close with Billy, we hung out all the time. I really love Siouxsie and the Banshees, I think their music is brilliant; Joy Division, but of course Joy Division never played here and I didn’t get to meet them. I photographed New Order but it was not the same — not a very good visual band. As far as visuals and bands I like, I love the Dead Kennedys and I love the Cramps — they were like the best shows I ever shot, just wild. Jello Biafra was throwing himself all over the stage and Lux was losing his clothes.
Probably the most pain-in-the-ass asshole was John Lydon but I know that that’s all an act. I really liked his band PiL, Public Image Limited. Listen to the song “Religion,” a great song. Jah Wobble and that bass that was driving. Remember I came from an ‘interested-in-music’ jazz side — I loved the Velvet Underground because John Cale would do this droning violin and I liked interesting music. I liked Roxy Music because of Brian Eno’s wild electronics. Check out the song “Mother of Pearl” and the intro. So, anything that was interesting attracted me. It wasn’t always the greatest relationship or the best shooting, but musically it was what was interesting and cool. There were some awesome heavy producers back then like Steve Lillywhite, Martin Hannett, who produced Joy Division.
Leah: Do you feel artists today try to duplicate the past and keep punk’s origins alive in authentic or inauthentic ways?
Michael: No, I think there are people that have been influenced by the music that keep it living. There are definitely people I’m really into these days; such as The Linda Lindas and the British band Wet Leg. They’re just cool. Wet Leg is kind of ironic and funny and the Linda Lindas are 15-year-old girls continuing the punk world, so you know it has influenced people and some people use it and some people don’t.
Leah: What is your take on punk rock culture today and its ties to its origin in general? Not just music, but everything like fashion and street style?
Michael: Well punk rock culture had a place in society before. It was a rebellion and you understood that it was a rebellion. At this point, it’s lost its context. In the US, punk-rock music was a rebellion against the music system where you couldn’t get played; you couldn’t get a record; you had to be independent; you wanted to pick up a guitar and write a song; you had to be a monster musician and the record company had to want to cultivate you. So it was a rebellion against the music system. And in the UK, it was a rebellion against the crushing unemployment at the time with Margaret Thatcher and the economic conditions. On both sides of the Atlantic, it was a rebellion. That rebellion is gone, so you’re into punk at this point because you’re either into the music or you like the fashion and the style and that sort of thing. It doesn’t have the reference that it used to have. It’s been done before, so it’s not going to shock anyone. It was made to shock; you’ve got Johnny Rotten making a ruckus. You’ve got Jello Biafra singing, “Kill, kill, kill the poor / kill, kill, kill the poor;” ironically singing “Holiday in Cambodia.” It’s been done, so it’s not going to shock anymore.
Leah: Totally. What does “underground” mean to you?
Michael: An after-hours club in NYC that opens at 4 where you get out at 11am, and you’re like, ‘Holy shit it’s daylight out,’ and you’ve seen two or three great bands and no one else knew about this place. That is underground to me. All the little holes in the wall. All the places like that.
