I was hired to do a shoot by Esquire Magazine for a new group called N.W.A. they were exciting,
they were dangerous, they were saying things that hadn't been said before and were saying it in different way.
So I had them meet me at the Santa Monica pier.
These two cars showed up and one little SL Mercedes two-seater with Dr. Dre in it and the other guys were in another car
You know I don't think they really were quite aware of their potential fame and power and all of that yet.
Yet they were still powerful, that was obvious. I said "Follow me."
And I had this spot down at Malibu beach, it was actually like a drainage ditch there and like a fence
that's kind of interesting, sort like L.A. sewer system or something draining into the ocean.
But it was a spot that I knew and thought it was cool and I could take some pictures.
So we drove. I jumped in the car with Dr. Dre and I'll never forget cause he showed me...
reached in under his seat and show me a pistol that he had under the seat. I don't know what we said
I forget it was kind of a long time ago, but I'll never forget this moment of him sort of trying to...
I got the sense that he was trying to intimidate me a bit, but the truth is I was just some kid from New Jersey
with long hair and was like really excited about his photo career
and thought this was a cool opportunity to take some great pictures and really you know
into any scene or anything that would have intimidated me, plus I'm a Jersey kid
it's hard to intimidate me anyway. We did some pictures by the water and
I shot over all these girls who were in their bikinis like laying on the beach sunbathing
I kind of shot through them so they were out of focus in the foreground and shot past them to the guys were standing on the beach
That was kind of fun. I think Rolling Stone used that picture after the fact.
I had them, you know kind of cluster together in an area and I started
taking some pictures of them and then Dre's phone rang.
And he had this big like sort of World War 2 sort of boxy cell phone of the moment... this was 1989
and it rang and he picked it up and started talking while we were also posed, you know and ready.
It was sort of interrupting the shot so I just paused and all of sudden out of the corner of my eye
I see this white surfer kind of walking past in the background with a surfboard
out of the water and I was this is a great moment and great part of the composition and
I just clicked the shutter and it was such a great picture with Dre on his phone and
the other guys just looking at me still posing not even aware really that Dre was not paying
attention and then this surfer sort of walking through the picture. But it was all really cool.
And of course looking back at it, you know everything fell into place and it was
this great moment. Really the beginning of their career. The beginnings and sort of a
highlight of my career. It was also this moment when Straight Outta Compton came out
where that picture really, or those pictures from that day really became popular and everybody
wanted them and again I think it was because the guys sort of got really big right after that
and there was a lot of stuff going on in their life and they weren't really posing
or as accommodating to photographers... maybe certainly not commercial photographers or magazines
...sort of not giving them the opportunity and that was sort of their posture that they had.
But at that moment in time I did have their attention and I did have them... giving me their all.
And it really worked.