Tony Mott, originally hailing from England, has firmly established himself as an iconic figure in the Australian Rock annuls through his superlative photography. With a career stretching over four decades, his captivating images have graced the pages of esteemed local and international publications, newspapers, and adorned numerous album covers. Renowned for his unparalleled talent, Mott holds the esteemed title of Australia's foremost rock photographer.

Beyond merely capturing moments, Mott's eye has become a portal into the heart of Rock’n’Roll, immortalizing the palpable energy, passion, and raw emotions that define genres. In a landscape where trends come and go, Mott's enduring legacy stands as a testament to his unparalleled skill and unwavering dedication to his art.

Lenny Jackson got on the ol’ dog & bone to journey into the brain capers of the shamanic shutterbug. Gas bagging about everything from doppelganger discounts to the stunning new coffee table book spanning his career to date and the tools of the trade that got it done.

So, what sparked your interest in photography in the first place mate?

Look, in the in the mid-70’s, I left England and travelled. I went to India, which was, really, before there was such a thing as backpackers. You met very few travellers, but I met a girl who did black and white portraits of characters in India, and I was just absolutely gobsmacked by it and just loved it. And when I went back to England, an art student friend of mine taught me basic black and white processing and printing. So yeah, that was the start. And then when I came out to Australia in in the 70’s, I had a massive love of music. The live music scene in Australia was fantastic.

I was a French chef by trade. So, I used to finish work about 9 or 10 o'clock in the evening, and I used to go down to the Piccadilly Hotel in Kings Cross. It was in the days when bands had residencies, so every Tuesday night for six months, the Divinyls played. No one had heard of them. They were new. I was watching them and apart from Chrissy Amphlett being amazing to watch, somewhere during the partaking of beer drinking, I thought, ‘Shit!’, that's going to be really difficult to photograph, because the light's going on and off. She's moving around like a banshee. And, for about four months, I just practised on her. Finally, the management sort of, approached me and said, ‘Oh, can we have a look at the photos?’, and that really was the start of my career.”

How was that for an answer? It went on a bit, sorry. [He laughs.]

What were the cameras that you started with?

I started, because I'm really old, I don't know if you remember Walton's department store? They used to sell the Russian Zenit camera. So, I started with that and it was not a great camera. Then, I treated myself to a Nikkormat which is a Nikon camera. It weighed an absolute tonne. Basically, I've been with Nikon ever since.

The digital cameras you use, they're all Nikon?

They're all Nikon. I've been with Nikon. I mean, I really do like the Nikon camera, but I wasn't with Nikon by choice. I was with Nikon because I bought a Nikkormat, and then you buy a lens and so you're sort of stuck with Nikon. And then when the digital age came, Nikon were a bit behind the ballpark with digital and they certainly treated their customers not that great and Canon took over. At some point, because I've got some sort of notoriety within the industry, Canon offered me, more or less, free cameras and lenses to change over, and I tested them. The weird thing was, their bayonets are clockwise and Nikon are anti-clockwise, so they're completely opposite. And because I spent a lot of time in dark pits, in the dark, I do it automatically. And I found it very difficult to get used to the Canon bayonet, so I stayed with Nikon. It also coincided with Nikon getting off their arses and realising they had to have customer service and Nikon have become a great company in the interim time, so I don't regret it, but I often get asked about cameras and the reality is, I love Nikon and I'm with them. But I'm just with them, you know, because I'm with them.

Once you spend a certain amount of money, the camera is not as relevant as the person taking the photo. So anyone who's got a camera that's over $1000, you're in the same boat.

When Nikon start boasting that they're better than Canon and Canon boasted, it's better than Nikon. It's sort of like, even if someone could prove which is better, it's such a miniscule difference. And the reality is it’s the person holding the camera that will make the difference, not the camera, or the lens for that matter.

Are the lenses transferable from the old analogue to the digital cameras?

No, I'd say that's a con.

They just want you to buy a new lens. Some of them do a little bit, but ultimately, you have to go with new lenses.

I hammer my equipment! When I was on the road with bands, on a regular basis, I hammered my equipment so badly that I needed to buy new lenses once every three or four years anyway. I don't look after my equipment and still don't.

Well, I guess if you're down in the thick of it, you don't have a choice much of the time!?!

No. Well, I'd say most people treat their cameras much better than I do. I'm not precious about them at all.

Well, obviously you get the results, so you're doing something right.

Yeah, well Nikon clean my cameras once every two or three months, and the technicians always come out and go, “Where the fuck have you been? There’s so much shit in your camera?” And they say, “Yours are the worst cameras we’ve ever come across!” So, I am aware that I'm not very precious with my camera.

Do you have a lens or piece of equipment that is your go to or are you constantly swapping?

Definitely in my earlier days, I was always swapping. Always looking for a better camera, a better lens, but in the digital age, the cameras are so sensitive to light.

I never used to use zoom lens, ever. I used to have fixed lenses and my favourite lens was the 135mm F/1.8, which is just great for portraits and also great for live. I also used the big zoom for concert photography, a big lens 200. But, now I basically use a 24 to 70, and a 70 to 200, and they're the only two lenses I use.

I do have other lenses. There was a period in the early 90’s ‘til about 2005, where I was infatuated with the fisheye lens and I probably overused it and people were taking the piss out of me, “Oh, another picture lens photo,” and I have to admit I did overuse it.

I bought it in New York and when I got it, I was just absolutely gobsmacked. I just loved it. And I did go a bit overboard. A bit mad.

So many sessions I did with it, and it coincided with the beginning of Silverchair. While the band loved the fisheye lens and thought it was funny, the management hated it and kept saying can you not do so many. So, I did get infatuated with the fisheye lens for a while. To the point of obsession.

The worst story I can tell about that is, some poor girl who was starting off, did the photo session with Jet and ended up on the cover of the Melbourne Age and because it was a fisheye lens, the people at the Melbourne Age just presumed it was my photo and I got a photo credit and it wasn't even my photo and the poor girl was… I wouldn’t say she was devastated, but she was like, “Bloody hell. That was my photo.” Quite so. So yes. I overused the fisheye lens.

Did you have any teachers or mentors early on or were you completely self-taught?

I'm completely self-taught, as in photography in general, and my early days, my technique was trial and error. I mean, obviously, when you do a book or when people look at your photos, you always present the best photos. People don't see the crap you produce, because you don't want to show it. It was very much, particularly in days of film… In the days of film when you went out and did a gig; on a good night, you got 10 to 20% back of what you took. Whereas, when you do digital, you get 80% back. So, it is a different ball game completely in in the days of film. But everything I did was trial and error.

First of all, I cracked the live photography and worked out how to take live photography, working out lighting, etcetera, and then I moved into portrait and sessions and that was also a complete learning curve. I got lucky in so much as when I was doing sessions in the early days of bands, I would literally go to the local pub, find a band I liked and offer my services for next to nothing. And I was basically experimenting on them, working things out and I got better by getting worse. As in, I’d work out why it didn’t work, or a spot or something didn't work.

Probably the greatest thing that ever happened to me, to make me better, was I remember doing the project with the Triffids. A session. And it was very early days. The Triffids had a bit of inner-city notoriety. They were quite a big band and I was quite thrilled to do them. I arrived to the session presuming that they would direct me, as in they would say, “This is what we want you to do. This is what we’re gonna do.” And as a consequence, because they didn't, they just stood around, and I got these really crap photos of the Triffids just standing around, because they were waiting for me to direct them and I was so intimidated by Rockstars, I thought I could learn. And I learned that trick where the graphic artist who was laying out my things said, “Well, no, it's for you. You're in charge. You're the photographer!” So, even though you're meeting Rockstars, you can't be intimidated. You have to dictate. Not dictate, collaborate. Probably a better word. But it was a really good lesson and strangely, I've printed that Triffids photo the book, with that underneath saying, ‘This is one of my early sessions and it taught me that I've got to direct. I've got to manipulate this guy into a position where the photo will look good.’ So that was that trial-and-error technique.

But I was influenced by… I suppose I'm influenced all the time by photographers. Penny Smith, who's an English photographer, she did a lot of black and white photos for the NME during the punk days, and I loved her work. So she influenced me. People like Wendy McDougall, an Australian photographer. I'd see her photos and just go, “Oh, wow! Look at that great idea,” and stuff. So, I'm constantly being influenced. Only yesterday I went to a meeting at Selina’s Coogee Bay Hotel and the guy who I was talking to showed me this young, and I'm not saying this to be patronising, but a young kid’s photos. I was gobsmacked by them. They were so good! And had he been there; I'd love to give you his name, but I can't. I know it's Matt. I can't remember his name. It was literally 24 hours ago. But I remember, if he'd have been in the room I’d have been at him, “How’d you do that? That looks great!” And his photos were really great.

What surprised me by the guy at Selina’s who was sort of saying, he was thinking of employing me. I just; I don't mean to cut myself off but I said, “Mate, I wouldn't be hiring me. I'd stick with him. He's good. Those photos are great.” He shot The Living End a couple of weeks ago, at Selina’s and did a really, really good job.

So that influences you. You look at that and go look; I've worked out what he did and how he did it and I thought, wow, that's really good. So you're constantly… These are learning curves. That's the beauty of photography, you don't stop. You're constantly learning by other photographers. There's no such thing as the ultimate photographer, and I've never brought into being competitive. I'm very aware that I'm quite good at what I do. But I'm also aware that there's loads of other people that are very good at what they do, and I've got no problem seeing someone else's photo and going, “Bloody hell, look at that. That's fantastic.” Because photography’s like music. I've known Wendy McDougall for 13 years, and I completely understand if someone hired her over me because they want her style. Her photos don't look like my photos. It's a bit like someone saying all bands are the same. I mean, if someone wanted Metallica, it's because they're into heavy, you know, they're into that Hard Rock. You can't compare someone like the Wiggles with Metallica. They're both bands, but they're hardly comparable. Well, photography’s the same. So many different styles, there’s room for loads of different people.

What were your favourite bands growing up?

Well, I'd have to say that there's lots of them. My early days, my favourite all-time band is Mott The Hoople. That's where I got my name from, because I've named myself after Mott The Hoople. Yeah, but you know, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Divinyls, Cold Chisel, Dirty Three, Tex Don & Charly, the list goes on. I love music! I love Slipknot, but I would never play a Slipknot CD at home. It’s very few bands that I would go, “I hate!”

I was on the road with Sonic Youth and absolutely loved them. I was really thrilled when I did that EP cover for them. Within days of doing that I was on the Michael Bolton tour. Michael Bolton is not my cup of tea. I'd never buy tickets to go and see him or anything, but you still get something out of it. Apart from the fact he was a really lovely guy. I actually went to dinner with him at some point and he was aware of my track record. And he said, “Well, this is a bit different to what you’re used to.” You know, you don't want to be rude, but he already picked up on the vibe that you know, that his music’s, not particularly… But strangely, probably working for Michael Bolton was easier than working for Sonic Youth, because Sonic Youth I love and so you sometimes catch yourself in the middle of a gig Rocking, rather than actually taking photos, I mean, only for a second, but you know.

I've caught myself in the pit getting way too carried away with a band. When, you're actually there taking photos. So sometimes it's an advantage for them not to be so your style, you know?

Favourite band is really difficult. I love so many different bands and for completely different reasons.

Have you got a favourite Mott The Hoople album or song?

Oh, that's a good question. My favourite Mott The Hoople track, would probably be ‘The Journey’ off one of their punk albums from their early days. But favourite songs are a bit like, it is not dissimilar to favourite bands. I've got thousands of favourite songs.

In the new book I've got out, I've put about 80 songs that I think are great and I don't know why. I did it to start with because I thought it looked really cool and then it built and built and built and then you know, a month later I go, “Oh, why didn’t I put so and so.” And it's really never stopped from that where even a friend came round and said, “Oh, you didn't put the Animals’ ‘Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood’.” “Oh no, that should so be in there.”

If you're a music lover… and quite often when I'm doing press or whatever, you often get your 10 favourite gigs and I've got no problem saying it, but if someone asks me a week later, the 10 have changed completely. Just purely because I remembered something.

So those sort of things, they're quite difficult to answer. But Mott The Hoople, there's a track called ‘The Journey’ that I've always thought and also the ‘Ballad of Mott’. There’s a track actually called the ‘Ballad of Mott’ and I reproduced the lyrics in the book because I sort of relate to the lyrics.

They're so hard to pin down. Like, what they are!?! It's like a Bob Dylan glam band. It's such a strange band.

Yeah, but when I've met various musicians that are in… I mean Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Massive Mott The Hoople fan. But his is very much ‘The Hoople’ and ‘The Mott’ album. And when I was talking to him I said… He knew Mick Jones, from The Clash, was a massive Mott The Hoople fan, but his album is ‘Brain Capers’. When you listen to ‘Brain Capers’, it's hard to believe it didn't come out during punk. It's like, 5 years before punk and it's a dreadful album in production and everything, but there's just so much passion in it.

I liked Ian Hunter's solo career as well. ‘All American Alien Boy’, I often name as one of my favourite all-time albums ever of anybody and it doesn't fit into his catalogue. It's the one album, for whatever reason, he was into songwriting and it's really laid back and he's got the best musicians in New York playing on it, which is so un-Mott The Hoople.

The greatest review I ever saw was, a journalist once called them, “Gloriously shambolic,” and I always thought that was a pretty good description. Because they were never the greatest musicians, Ian Hunter is not the greatest singer, and yet the combination of them always worked.

Have you ever met Ian Hunter?

Well, I shot Ian Hunter. I went back to England when Mott The Hoople reformed in 2009 and spoke to Ian Hunter’s management and his wife; as in, when I say speak, I mean emailed to an e-mail contact. I was invited backstage at the one of the gigs at Hammersmith Odeon, and it's probably one of the only two times I've felt starstruck. I just didn't want to go backstage and be the gibbering idiot that just goes, “Oh my God, you're the greatest singer ever.” I got a bit weird about it.

I was with a few friends and I ended up not going backstage. Well, I actually was backstage as in the dressing room area and he was around and they were having drinks afterwards and I didn't go and strangely don't regret it. He's on such a big pedestal for me and I'm sure he's a lovely bloke. I mean, I've got no, I've had nothing ever that's ever made me think anything otherwise, but I'm very much in the John Lennon camp of ‘Don't meet your hero’.

Have you ever read that book that he brought out? The Rock'N’Roll tour diary?

Yeah, ‘Diary Of A Rock’n’Roll Star’. Yeah, yeah, I've got that and it's one of the greatest written books. It's very naïve, young, but it's a great account of their first American tour and you relate to it, particularly being a Pom, you know, first time on a plane, first time in America. And it's written from that point of view. It's very, very naively… And I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It's naively written.

I mean he literally described the meals on an aeroplane. Which, you gotta remember when he wrote it in 1973, 90% of his fans, probably 99% of that, had never been on plane. You know, plane travel hadn't started yet for the average person, so just the whole thing is; yeah, it's a really, really good, read.

Q Magazine got him to update it and on that 2013 live tour, he did an extra chapter just talking about them rehearsing in Wales and the whole bit and there’s a special limited edition and got that and that was it was written exactly the same way. It was great.

You can't find it anywhere, it's rare as hens’ teeth.

Really? Oh, I thought they’d reprinted it.

Not to my knowledge.

It got reprinted twice. I've got 2 copies. I got a copy when it came out in America in a different edition, called ‘Reflections Of A Rock'N'Roll Star’, with the ‘All American Alien Boy’ album cover on the cover. I thought someone had reproduced it. I could be wrong, but I thought someone had put it back out. So, you can't get it online?

Not last time I looked, but maybe I'll have to have a look.

I reckon if you go on eBay, you will find it now. I could be wrong. I do know it got reprinted at some point in the last 10 years. It took me ages… I had a copy when it first came out, lost it, and it did take me a long time to get a copy and then I got a copy and then it came out again with ‘Reflections’ and I've got that one as well.

I've got the original Mott The Hoople book by Willard Manus, which is way out of print, but I gather that's available now, and Willis Manus the author, actually, you can get signed copies off him.

So, I don't if you know the story of how they got the name Mott The Hoople?

Guy Stephens, who was their mentor and produced those first four albums and is a completely insane man. He did time for drug dealing and when he was in gaol, he read the book ‘Mott The Hoople’ and just thought it was great. And when he came out, he just said, because Mott The Hoople were called Silence, when they were finding a record deal, and he said, “I'm gonna sign you and you’re gonna change your name and your name is Mott The Hoople.” So that's how they got their name.

Going back to the photos, there's a photo you did of Coldplay, and you said that you weren't a big fan of the band.

I've been quite unkind to Coldplay over years. That's me being a grumpy old man.

I grew up in an era where music was so huge. I mean, so many bands. Australia's live music scene, I regard as the best in the world in the 80’s and 90’s. I just think Coldplay, and I could almost put the Foo Fighters in that category, is they're both really good bands, but in any other era, they certainly wouldn’t be the top band. They'd be underneath somewhere. They're not crap. They're really good at what they do, but they're not… But I mean Coldplay are arguably one of the biggest bands, if not the biggest band in the world, and they're just not that good.

I grew up before Stadium Rock and Stadium Rock came out and Stadium Rock bought an interesting concept into my business. Some bands convert to it, you know? A band like Pink Floyd were made for Stadium Rock. The Rolling Stones have done it really well. But I remember seeing Kings Of Leon on an early Big Day Out. Really great band. They just didn't convert to a big stage. Just four guys playing the music, nothing wrong with that, but they could… It's a bit like Paul Kelly. Paul Kelly, absolutely fabulous artist but you wouldn't want to see him in a big venue because there's no charisma. There's nothing there. He's just a brilliant songwriter. Whilst, not that I’m a Bob Dylan fan in the first place, but Bob Dylan in a big venue, he's just, he just gets lost in it. He's not a performer.

So last time I shot Coldplay. I realised, and I'd love to have a conversation with the band because I think they’d admit it straight away, at some point Coldplay, someone sat down with them and said, “You can't get away with stadiums, you're just not that good enough.” So they've surrounded themselves with bells and whistles. There's a massive show and the bands are almost irrelevant. They're just part of this massive show.

Another person that would be like that is Kylie Minogue. I've got nothing against Kylie Minogue but she's not that great a singer. Not that great a dancer. She couldn't just go on stage and play with the band. She's got to be surrounded by dancers, tricks, the whole bit. And so, when I've said that about Coldplay, it's a little bit of gripe because there's nothing wrong with them.

I just don't regard them as one of the great bands. By a long shot, I don't regard them as that, but there's nothing wrong with ‘em. In the age that I was growing up, I was totally into Mott The Hoople, Led Zeppelin, Queen. They were the great big bands and bands like Genesis. Nothing wrong with them, but they weren't great. They weren't in that league. They weren't in the premier division, they're second division, Coldplay. And Foo Fighters, as much as I love Dave Grohl and I love the Foo Fighters, I see them in the same category. I just don't think they're… Nirvana were a great band, one of the greatest bands, Red Hot Chilli Peppers I class as a great band. Foo Fighters, I'm not so sure that they’re that great, but that's because they've got no competition anymore. I mean, when was the last time we produced a great band? Oasis, Coldplay and U2, they all had albums out last century.

You're so spot on about the smoke and mirrors of the shows. A friend at work was excited to go over to WA to see Coldplay, and she was more excited that they were handing out bracelets that glow in the dark along with the song. She was more impressed by that rather than seeing the band!

Yeah, and good on ‘em, because if it was just four gits and a light show, I don't think it would hold your attention for an hour and a half. So they've just got all these tricks.

At the same time, I want to emphasise, people have picked up on it before and said you really hate them. I don't hate them at all. They're a really good band. They're just not… When they played on the side stage at the Big Day Out, I thought they were a great indie band with great songs. Then they put them on the main stage and I thought, “Oh God, they got lost!” I was really surprised about five years later when they had hit singles and they go on to a stadium tour. I thought, “Bloody hell! I'm really surprised,” And when I went to see them, I had to admit, they were really good, but the good bit was all the extras. The bells and whistles.

So, what do you enjoy more? Do you enjoy shooting the bigger arena shows or do you prefer the smaller, theatre gigs?

Probably… I shot the Cruel Sea at the Enmore, that was just fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. Really good, yeah? Personally, stadiums are alright. I mean, I've toured with The Rolling Stones three times and I loved them in the stadium. So, I’d say the answer to that is, when it's good, it's good. Irrelevant to where you are. There's nothing worse than stadium gig that’s crap. I noticed Pink on this tour, I didn't shoot her, she made everyone shoot her from the sound desk, a long way away and I'm not really into that. That's really like, there's no point.

So that would be a disappointing night, but you know, I've also, in the days of film, I've gone to gigs where there's no bloody lights and it's in dark and you can't shoot anything. Of course, that's disappointing. But when a gig’s good and the lights are good and obviously, from a photographer’s point of view, it's different to a gig; you can have a great gig but it’s bad for photography.

I got hired by The Cure a long, long time ago to do their photos, and they had something like 500 cans of light behind the band and none in front of them. So, they basically played silhouetted all night. That was their trick. That was what they wanted, which is great. It looked fantastic and was very effective, but crap for photography. The Cure are one of my favourite all-time bands. I think they’re fantastic but from a photography point of view it wasn't that great, but at the same time Robert Smith would be another one that, I think they're a great band, but they're not charismatic and they always travel with the most amazing lightshow. I think they're one of the biggest conundrums. I would have lost a lot of money on betting whether The Cure were ever going to do stadiums. I can't believe how massive they are in America and how big they are. For me, I just never would have picked it.

Do you still find yourself going to the local pub to take photos of bands?

Oh yeah! I shot a local girl called, Deb Denham, who is a small country artist, in the pub. Then, I go to The Factory, but I'm a full time dad for 15 year old twins, so that takes up most of my time, but I still go to gigs. I've been hired to do ‘Scissors’ in April. I get hired still and I'm still doing stuff.

Do you ever do it just off your own back?

Yeah, yeah. I did Amyl & The Sniffers about five years ago. Jane Gazzo, who’s a really good music journalist, said, “You've gotta check these guys out. They're fantastic,” and I went to a pub and saw them and just said, “Wow, these are great,” and shot them in a small pub. So, yeah, I do go out, but not like I used to.

In the heyday when I was doing this, like in the heyday of the 80’s and 90’s, I was out 6, 7 nights a week. You know, if it moved, I shot it.

Kids soon put a stop to that.

Yeah, kids put a stop to it, but also the business put a stop to it, you know? It just completely changed. The live scene is not what it was. So yeah, things change. And also, the digital age changed and the outlets for selling your photos changed. In the year 2000, I had 84 music magazines around the world on my books and of those 84, only six of them still exist. So that's changed. So yeah, the world’s changed.

A sad indictment.

Yeah. Well, it's not great for anything. As record companies have stopped developing. That's the biggest change from that point of view. When I started in the 80’s, there was about 12 major labels. They'd all have about 12 artists on their books. Two of them you’d heard of and they were trying to make stars out of the other 10. So there was a lot of work for doing sessions and stuff. That's gone. That just disappeared. There's no point in me whinging about it, it's just a different world. We live in a different world.

Did you have an agent back in the day that would get you these gigs or were you doing it all by yourself?

I was doing it all by myself, but I knew all the bands. I've always socialised with the bands. I know the management. I had lots of contacts. I had lots of contacts in the record companies and I had an agent for selling my photos. I had an agent in Japan and an agent in London that were selling my photos internationally. All those agencies have gone. Again, they don't exist. Yeah, that's gone.

Let's not finish on a negative. Let's go positive.

We’re just going to be cheeky. You're famous for looking like Ronnie Wood and we’re massive Ronnie Wood fans. Have you ever met him?

I have. I've met him several times. I did a Mick Jagger solo tour and he, Mick Jagger, wouldn't call me anything but Woody. Then, when we met, Ronnie Wood was managed by Jo Wood, his then wife, and they'd obviously been told he looks like you. Jo Wood went, “Nah!” and Ronnie Wood went, “Nah! He doesn’t look anything like me,” but there's no two ways about it.

I spent, particularly in the 90’s, I was mistaken for Ronnie Wood a lot. Even to the point that on that Rolling Stones tour, Ronnie was walking down Bondi with his family and somebody shouted out, “Hey Ronnie. How you going?” and he went, “Ah, fucken hell.” He told me that story.

I spent some time in New York in the late 80’s, early 90’s, and I remember going out to this restaurant. And it was full. We couldn't get in, and I was out with a really, attractive girl in New York. We got to the counter and it was full and I just thought “Oh well. Let’s go somewhere else.” And the maître d' came up to us and said “I'm sorry. There’s, no problem at all. Let's get you a cubicle,” and we get it. I always presumed, at the time, it was the girl. She was a model and I'd been doing some photos for her the day before, and she was taking me out for dinner as a thank you. We had a couple of drinks. Whatever. And I presumed, because she was stunning looking. Not famous, but stunning looking, I thought, “Oh. They've let her in because they want a beautiful person in.” But a week later, when I went in there, same thing happened and I wasn't with her and I realised, they thought I was Ronnie Wood.

Ronnie Wood was spending a lot of time in New York at the time and also, there's no two ways, I've got a resemblance to Ronnie Wood, but Americans can't tell the difference in the accent. They can hear my Pommy accent, but he’s a Southerner and I'm a Northerner and no Englishman would ever mistake the two. They just presumed. I think I went to that restaurant four times and we got free wine every time. And there's no two ways about it. They presumed I was Ronnie Wood and I thought, “Fuck! I really do resemble Ronnie Wood.”

I once dressed slightly Rock'N'Roll and the third time when… The third time is the only time I went there deliberately. The first few times innocently, thinking, “I have no idea why they’d let me in.” But the third time I knew, so I went, you know, I spiked my hair and just tried to look right and it bloody worked.

I'm thinking the Ronnie Wood thing’s change a little bit, because it's not quite the same. We’ve aged differently, but yeah. I can think of worse things than looking like Ronnie Wood. I've got no problem with it at all.

You've probably done less crack cocaine than Ronnie.

I'd say my body is probably in way better condition than Ronnie’s. Way better condition. And the consumption of vodka would be definitely different, even though I didn't mind a vodka every now and then. I'm definitely not in his category now.

I still haven't; not him; but I've never forgiven Rod Stewart for leaving The Faces. The Faces are one of my all-time greatest bands. I thought they were easily one of the… for small theatres. You know, the Hordern Pavilion type size, The Faces were the best that I've ever seen in that size. They were fantastic.

So, you saw them live?

Yeah, I saw them quite a few times. I saw them at Sheffield Uni and I saw them about three times in my hometown. They were pretty infamous for coming on late. They always came on late. They used to come on pissed and they would turn the venue into a party and I remember going drinking with The Faces afterwards.

They told the entire audience where they were going drinking. It’s none of this, “My name’s on the door.” Into this poor pub that was just around the corner from the venue, because everyone turned up and everyone got in. The reality was The Faces weren't interested in spotty nosed, little students like me, they were looking for nice looking girls, but I still managed to get into the same pub and have a drink with a friend. But they were just an awesome band. Awesome band.

I've actually told Rod Stewart this, I said “Coming to America is the fucking worst thing that ever happened to ya.” His solo albums, as much as they're successful, they’re nothing on The Faces albums.

Was this the Ronnie Lane era of The Faces then?

Yeah, yeah, the Ronnie Lane era.

So, you met Ronnie Lane?

I didn't meet any of them. I didn't meet any of them. When I say I went into a pub, I was in the same building as them, but I would have been like a 17 year old student and gate crashed the party and I certainly didn't have the guts... I remember seeing Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart at the bar. I didn't remember seeing anybody else, but I was literally 20 yards away. I spotted them, but I never met them. I've met Ronnie Wood since and I've met Rod Stewart several times, but that's in later, much later days. No other time.

You left England in 1976?

Yeah. Yeah, I finished my catering college, so I was qualified as a French chef, and I only stayed in England for a year and then I met an Aussie in Guildford, in the South of England, and she sort of just said, “Oh, you've got to come to Australia.” In those days Australia is the world's best kept secret. It's in an era before backpackers. You would emigrate to Australia, no one came to Australia to visit. So I was right at that beginning and really I was very ignorant. I had no idea about Australia. I knew they were really good at cricket and nearly all the dairy produce came from Australia, and they had kangaroos. That was almost the full extent of my knowledge of Australia and when I got here, the first job I got, I was getting paid twice as much money for half the hours I'd been doing in England.

I was living on Mona Vale Beach. Living in Mona Vale in the North of Sydney and I was only 17 or 18. I was quite young. I’d never seen so many breasts. Everyone was topless on Mona Vale Beach. I remember writing to my mum and dad saying, “The place is fucken brilliant!” Within about a year of that, I discovered the live music scene. You’ve got to remember when I got here in the 70’s, I’d never heard of any Australian bands. I was probably an obnoxious Pom who just went, you know, “They're inferior.” And the Mona Vale pub, I went over and saw a band and just went, “This is great!” And then I realise every summer they had these pubs playing live music and it was just fantastic. I've always loved music. When I was at Uni or college, I used to go see bands five days a week, they played, usually, Rock'N'Roll music and then all of a sudden, I discovered this city called Sydney that had so many venues, it was fantastic.

I just got obsessed with it. That was basically it. By complete coincidence, I owned a restaurant in Armidale in 1977 with a friend and Cold Chisel were living in Armidale. No one had heard them. I saw them several times. They used to do the RSL Club and the Uni bit. Don [Walker] was doing a degree there and the band lived there, but unknown, before they had a deal or anything. It was years and years later when they became big I went, “God, there used to be a band called Cold Chisel in Armidale,” and then I realised, “Shit. It’s the same band.”

So, you would have missed the punk explosion in the UK in ‘76?

I did. It was just starting. I went back, because I only came to Australia in ‘76 for a year. I had a years’ working holiday visa, so I stayed for a year and then I went back. I was in London in ’77, so I did see it. I didn't see the beginnings of it, but I was definitely around. I saw The Clash, at a club called the Limit in Sheffield and I saw, what was it called? Crass. Who most English people regard as a true punk band. They refused to sign to a label. They were sort of like, they were full on punk. But now Punk, I did miss punk to the point that I wasn't working there. I was working on cruise ships. I was going in and out, but I was aware of it.

I didn't really get into punk at the time, but I definitely got into New Wave, which followed on. Punk opened the door for New Wave. People like, Elvis Costello, Squeeze, all those bands came as a consequence of punk.

Unfortunately, the only time I've seen the Sex Pistols is when they reformed and I almost found it like a contradiction in terms. These old guys doing Punk Rock. Punk's one of those forms of music, you can't age with it. Like, Blues players can go on forever because it suits the style, but I just think with Punk, you've got to be young and fucken angry. So, I don't know that Punk transfers with time.

Still plenty to be angry about though I guess.

There's always something to be angry about! That's what pisses me off about modern music is, there's no political bands or even social comment bands. That’s sort of disappeared, you know, like, I mean, you don't have to like Midnight Oil, but, you know, they were making comments about what was going on in society and then The Clash was doing the same. Elvis Costello was very much into that sort of thing. And that seems to have disappeared. I mean, there's plenty to be fucken angry about. I can't believe, I mean, as much as I hated Thatcher, I also have to thank her for producing Punk. That's a direct result of Thatcherism, is what the Punk movement was. Just kids getting pissed off. It comes out in the music. All those Manchester bands, Joy Division, New Order, all that, that's Thatcher.

The Godfathers, the poor Godfathers, who are one of my favourite all-time bands, they did an album of anti-Thatcher songs. They looked like they were going to become a big band, then Thatcher lost power and they had nowhere to go. They had no subject matter. I've met the Godfathers and talked about it, they said, “Yeah, just really bad timing,” but yeah, the modern music is not, and again, it sounds like I'm a grumpy old man, but I do think there should be more. That's why I think Amyl & The Sniffers are great, you know? I think they've got a bit of attitude from another era, and I do miss that sort of thing.

One of the biggest changes I ever saw was, when I was a student, there used to be a college circuit, a universal circuit, and there were certain bands that played the university circuit and then the other ones would play the mainstream circuit, right? So, the City Hall in Sheffield would have certain bands, but the Uni would have other bands and they were very different. The Uni bands were always political. Bands like Billy Bragg would have been massive in the universities.

Tom O'Sullivan, who used to manage the Divinyls, started booking bands at Sydney Uni and he said the most popular band on the circuit for them was The Cockroaches, and I remember just going, “What is wrong with students? What is wrong with students? How come The Co…?” I mean, again, I want to emphasise, I've got nothing against The Cockroaches; but why are students into The Cockroaches? That’s mad! Midnight Oil should have been in the Uni not… Everyone grows up left wing when you're at Uni. You’re supposed to be angry at society, not dancing to The Cockroaches!

There's a famous quote from Jerry Seinfeld, he said he no longer does the US colleges any longer because they just can't take joke!

Yeah. Well, that's even more extreme and that's probably very true.

It’s the cancel culture.

Yeah, that’s right. I mean, poor comedians are just getting chastised all the time. That's right, yeah.

With the death of the print media you seem to have pivoted into movies; film stills and the like…

Yeah. So, what happened was, Paul Goldman is my best friend, and he was one of the pioneers of video clips. He's done Elvis Costello, Bob Marley. He's done a lot of famous people. His Elvis Costello clip, shot at Flinders Street Station, wins awards to this day. So, I knew him quite well and he always wanted to do a feature film and he did a feature film called, Suburban Mayhem, shot in Newcastle, and he asked me to do the stills. I met my future wife, who was the production manager, who tried to sack me. And so, I did stills on movies. I don't know, I drifted into it. I certainly never made a conscious decision to do it, but the conditions were good, the money was great and it's relatively easy. It's not as difficult. I mean, Rock'n'Roll's way better. The problem with movie stills is it's laboriously long hours, with lots of boredom.

Lot of downtime in between?

Yeah. So much downtime. I’ve taken to reading books on set, I read a lot of books on set. The boredom factor… the stills photographer is a second class citizen on a film set. The making of the movie is important and you're not important. You get little moments, you know, while you're shooting. I enjoy it, but it's not as nice as music.

I only do two or three productions a year. Each production is about, somewhere between 6 and 7 weeks. The most I would do a year is 13 weeks. I've got no complaints, because it’s hardly what you’d call working hard. I enjoy it. It's good, but it's very different to Rock'n'Roll.

Is it a very competitive job?

It's quite competitive, but it's not an easy job to do. There's a certain etiquette you've gotta get around. It's competitive in so much as, there's just not that many productions. Like, in Sydney particularly, today there'll be 1, or maybe 2 productions going on. So there's two stills guys.

I'd say Sydney's got five really good stills people. Like, really top notch. Then there's five just underneath that. So that's ten you can choose from and there's two or three productions. So, it's competitive in so much as by what I've just said. That means there’s about six or seven out of work.

I would imagine, well, I know for a fact, there’s a guy called John Platt, he’s very close to being number one, if not number one. He seems to work perpetually and he's probably, you know, what production wants. Lisa Tomasetti's been doing it for years, so she's around. So yes, it is competitive and there's not enough work around to keep everybody that wants to do it full-time. I'm in a very fortunate position in so much as, I don't want to be full-time.

I just did a massive production for Netflix late last year and I did three months on set, in the Northern Territory on a casual basis and in Adelaide. Got paid really well there. Then I've just finished ‘Collin From Accounts’. Literally, just finished last week, which is a Foxtel thing. I did that and now I've got no work whatsoever and it doesn't bother me one iota. In fact, just the opposite. I'm quite happy. I'm busy. I've got a few things coming up. I've got the book to promote, so I'm quite happy.

But around April I'll ring around production companies to see what's going on, and I'll probably get something in August or September. I'll get it confirmed and so I'll be waiting for that. Now that means, and I'm lucky, but somebody who's wanting to pay their rent can’t afford to wait four months for a gig. Consequently, people come and go, because they'll find other jobs in other business’ and they're going to, I mean, the obvious place to go is advertising. Which is way better money but unbelievably soul destroying.

I've only done two or three adverts but, when they give you a quote around it that they want to pay, well, yeah, I could probably do that. I could probably sell myself for that. But yeah, I can't say that I'm keen on doing adverts, but they're there.

So yes, it is competitive, but at the same time, you've only got to be in it for a while and you realise, you're not going to be working all the time. You probably need to go and find… nearly everyone, but Lisa Tomasetti does lots of work for the Royal Ballet. She's off doing that quite a lot. There's another guy. I forgot what he does!?! I think he does loads of things for a real estate agent in his spare time, but people are doing other things. I’m off doing music all the time. So, the TV and film stills, it's very difficult to do it full time in Sydney. The other thing is, if you’re prepared to travel, you'll get work interstate as well. Like, I did that thing in Northern Territory and South Australia for Netflix, so you get interstate work, but yeah, it is competitive.

Tell us about your new book and where we can get it?

Ah, the new book. Well, the new book can be got from www.tonymott.com or tonymott@optusnet.com.au and I sign them and post them out, but it's also available in bookshops.

It was basically made during COVID, probably to relieve my boredom.

I was homeschooling kids and going a bit crazy, so I started archiving. It's sort of a best of. As in, it's my fourth book and I just wanted to try to touch on what I considered the best ever photos and strangely… The really weird thing we do in books is, we do a book and it's not unsimilar to making an album. You do a book and obviously you do the best you can. And then it's printed and about a month later you go, “Oh! I should have done this. I should have done that. Should have remembered this…” And every book I've done, I've been happy with it, then when I put it out and then I look at it and go, “Oh, I should have done this…” And also feedback, you know, people see it and say, “Oh, why didn't you do that?” and, “Why didn't you do this?”

Well, this book got lucky, in so much as it was in COVID. So, I did it and then I'd wait three months and go back to it and go, “Oh, that's not… I could do that better. I could do that better.” So, it got lots of chopping and changing. I was going to release it independently. I did do most of it myself, as I've done with four books in the past, when a publisher came along by complete coincidence, took me out to lunch and said, “We want to do a book with you.” And I said, “Well, I've got a PDF file finished. Literally finished,” and they looked at it and they loved it and said they're going to go with it. They offered me some money, an advance, but they wanted changes. I knew they would because every publisher wants different. And so, they put me on to a graphic artist. And strangely, they only made about 8 changes, and I didn't like the changes but at the same time I didn't object to it either. They didn't like the cover. I had no photos on the cover and they kept going on about, “All our rep's say, if you put it in a bookshop and there's no photos on the cover, it will get lost.” So I agreed to the changes with that and then a really weird thing happened. When they sent me the final proof. All the changes we made, apart from the cover had disappeared, and to this day I've never said anything. I just thought, “That’s weird,” and I thought, “I don't think they've realised what they've done.” That they've made all those changes… when I say all those changes, 8 pages out of 244, but they're all gone. The cover had changed, but the inside was the one I did originally. I had approved it. I ticked it off and it went to the printer and to this day, no one’s ever mentioned it. So I'm not quite sure whether they just made a booboo and sent me the wrong one. I've just left it.

Anyway, it's also 12 inches, so, it's the same as an old vinyl album. It's 12 inches square. It's 244 pages. It starts with a six-page bio, not dissimilar to the conversation we just had about how I started, where I'm from. And then it's got what I consider my top ten all-time photographs.

Only yesterday, someone was asking me about the top 10, how I picked them. And it's a combination of what I think are great photos, but also notoriously famous photos. The Johnny Rotten one with the halo. Johnny Rotten himself bought it, one of the prints. The Bjork one is one of my most published photos. It got published in 40 magazines around the world. Then there's a Midnight Oil one. A Chrissy Amphlett one. I can’t remember what the top ten are!?! There's a Rolling Stones… So that's the top ten!

The next 25 are my favourite all-time bands and artists that I've been lucky enough to photograph, but I love their music. There's Lucinda Williams, Mott The Hoople, Leo Sayer, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Divinyls, Cold Chisel, can’t remember who the others are. They're my top 25. Oh, Waterboys, Gilbert O'Sullivan, because he was the first album I ever bought as a 12 year old, so that’s in there. Then it goes from A-Z, 200 odd pages. At the back are all of my album covers, front covers of magazines and there's a page with my favourite songs and a page with all the artists that I never got to photograph, that I'd love to have photographed and that's the book!

Unlike the three previous books I put out, this book's been out four months now, five months, and I only went through it you the day I thought, if they're going to expect a print run. Which, they almost certainly are going to expect a print run. I'd get the opportunity to make changes. Which is always great. All those mistakes that I'd said before, with the other books, you get to correct. And when I went through it, there's nothing there I want to change. I'm really happy with it. There's always a couple of people that should have possibly got in there, but there’s no room for it. But no, I'm very happy with it.

I did a book called ‘Alphabet’, 7 years ago and I look at it now and I actually think it looks messy. I don't like it.

My big book, that sold the most, was a book called ‘Rock'n'Roll Photography Is The New Trainspotting’. When they did the second program, I changed 30-pages, which shows how much I thought was wrong with it. So, this book, I'm really happy with it. Mainly because it is basically the best. I'm basically going through my first 40-years of Rock'n'Roll photography and picked out what I consider the best. There's nothing missing. So yeah, I'm very happy. I'm unbelievably happy with it.

The Greatest hits album!

It is. It is. At one point, I was going to call it ‘The Greatest Pits’. I did think about that. Strangely, that’s the only other thing that I didn't pick. I didn't call it ‘Gallery’. The publisher, that's his. The cover is not mine, even though all the artwork on the cover is mine. As in the writing and the photography, but I think they stuck in five or six photos in there and they wanted to call it ‘Gallery’. I don't mind it being called ‘Gallery’. It's not that I don't like it, but that wasn't my idea. They didn't like… I can’t remember what I called it!? I may have called it ‘Greatest Pits’ and I don't think they like that. So it got changed to ‘Gallery’ and it's subtitled, ‘A Journey from Sheffield to Sydney, 1983-2023’. It's 40 years of Rock'n'Roll photography.

Again, I'm unbelievably happy with it. What's made me really happy is, like I said, it’s three months since it’s come out, a second print run and the opportunity to change. I'll be saying, “No, don't change it!” I'm more than happy. The only thing I might do is if, in the next six months, I take a photo that I think is worthy of going in, I could put a new photo in. If something comes up. I shot The Cruel Sea, but I went through that and thought, nah, I still prefer The Cruel Sea shot that’s already in there.

The reason I called the previous book, what I consider my best book, ‘Rock'n'Roll Photography Is The New Trainspotting’, is I used to be a trainspotter, but it used to be about collecting numbers. Once you collect the number of an engine, you’d tick it off and I felt that my Rock'n'Roll photography was the same. Once I got a great shot of Madonna, I wasn't particularly interested in shooting Madonna again because I've got it. I’ve ticked her off. Whereas, if Tom Waits came into town and they said, “Tom Waits or Madonna?” I’d go with Tom Waits because I’ve never shot him. I thought it was collecting Rock’n’Roll stars. So that's what the title was, ‘Rock'n'Roll Photography Is The New Trainspotting’.

When they put that out in America, the Americans, it just completely baffled them. They just could make no sense of the title. They just related it to the movie. They thought it was drugs related. It was quite funny talking to the publisher, who was obviously an intelligent man, I just couldn't get him to understand Trainspotting. Because trainspotting’s a very English thing. But I did put my foot down and said, “I don't want to change the title. I like the title. I think the fact that you think it's weird, is good.” People just go, “What the fuck does that mean?” I don't consider that to be a bad thing.

We thought it was a great title.

The Americans particularly found it, really, fairly, complicated. I’ve certainly emailed them, and they’ve said, “Can we change the title? No-one understands the meaning of the title.”

Anyway, it stayed.

I think that's answered all our questions, mate. Thanks for your time, Tony!

Not a problem. Thanks very much. Cheers.

Email Tony for a copy of the book: tonymott@optusnet.com.au