FIB MUSIC: Thanks. Can you give us a little history about yourself?
Don: So, basically, as far as myself, I'm coming up on a big year. I'm going to
be fifty this year, even though I don't look like it. I have always had the music thing. I had parents that came
from technical starts, both being in the aerospace industry. As I was growing, going to high school, I had the really long
rock musician hair, but at the same time I was also kind of a geek. You know, I had the cool look that I went after, but at the
same time, I strived hard to have the cool look. So, I got into music and had no musical ability whatsoever, but went to a lot of
concerts and this was back in the old days of the concerts at the Forum and everyting, when tickets were $6.50. You could do things
like take a camera in. One of the first major concerts I went to was George Harrison and I remember asking my dad if I could
borrow his camera and he said, "sure". He had this heavy metal Minolta camera, the old classic. I remember going to a photo
store and telling them that I was going to shoot a concert and they were like, "oh, well, then
you'll need really, really fast film, here's some 160 speed", of course, everything now is 400 and up, you know. So, I go to
the concert and shot some really, really crappy shots, because I was sitting in my seat and I was taking these pictures
of the stage that are heavily spot lit and the camera just wants to average it and create an image that's just and average of
the scene. So, you have a really overly lit, spot lit person and not a really good shot. I continued to do that as I went to
some other concerts and finally put the engineering side of my brain together saying, "huh, overexposed. I shouldn't depend on
the meter, I should depend on trying to guess what the light is, on the performer". After about three shows and some things like
Alice Cooper's "Welcome to My Nightmare" and Led Zeppelin a couple of times, I finally got it. I also started to get better
seats at the time, because I knew how to work the line waiting for seats at SEARS, for the Ticketmaster thing. I saw a lot of
groups in the beginning, as they were working their way up and there was one show that had kind of an impact and that was.....I had
gone to see Bachman Turner Overdrive at Long Beach Arena. One of the opening groups was
Jo Jo Gunne, who was kind of
a cult group, who had a couple of hits. They were started by Jay Ferguson who had been in Spirit and then there was
another group called Yesterday and Today and I really enjoyed the show.
FIB MUSIC: Which they later became Y&T, right?
Don: Exactly. So, anyway, later on, a few months later, there's a show at
Santa Monica Civic Center with Jo Jo Gunne as the headliner and I'm like, "oh, cool". So, I got some tickets, Jo Jo Gunne's the
headliner and they have these two bands opening up for them, KISS and Yesterday & Today. That was the first time I
was exposed to KISS, who was touring for the "Hotter than Hell" album. I thought Yesterday & Today were great.
You cut to about a year later, I had the chance to see Yesterday & Today again and this time they were going
by Y&T, I saw them at the Starwood. Now, this was the time period, in the late seventies, when it was the absolute
golden age of the clubs here in L.A. You had the clubs like, the Starwood, The Whiskey, Troubadour, the Country Club. You had
all these intersections of great music. You had the headbangers, you had the emerging hair bands, new wave, ska and punk. All these
things were hitting and you had all these small groups, who were playing these great clubs and playing this great music and they were doing
really cool stuff. One example is, I go see Y&T and they have this opening act called Dyan Diamond and she turned out to be
this Kim Fowley protege, who had been in this group called, Venus and the Razorblades, at age fourteen. I saw her and thought she
was very cool. So, a few months later, she came back as the headliner and I went ahead and took my camera equipment again. By this
time, I had gotten really good with photography and had mastered taking really good shots....going to the clubs and taking. I got
a little cocky and thought, hey, I need business cards. So, I went ahead and did the old method of buying the
press on letters and making up business cards that said, Don Adkins, Photographer. I go to the Dyan Diamond show and there I
am shooting and some person comes up and says, "excuse me, who are you?". So, I whip out this card; I was so proud of my new
card and I said, "I'm Don Adkins, Photographer" and they were like, "Oh, Ok, do you have any images?" and I said, "Sure, here's
the last shot I took of Dyan Diamond, I took the last time she was here" and they were like, "wow, these are really good, I'm with
Dyan Diamond, why don't you come backstage with me". So fine, I go backstage. Met Dyan Diamond, met her management and after a lot
of stuff is said and done, I wind up becoming their photographer and that kind of set the stage. When you are shooting one group at
the Starwood, or Roxy, or wherever, then you meet the opening band, then you meet their friends and so on and so on. So, I
got in on the start of all of these great groups, because I started meeting them at all the clubs. Pretty soon, I started getting
my stuff published here locally, in LA Weekly and Music Connection and / or working for the bands.
Nikki Sixx & Lizzie Grey
London 1980
Also, in the beginning of all this, I got to meet a great hard rocking band called
London and
London, as you have
on your site, was basically this group that included,
Nikki Sixx, who later went on to Motley Crue and
Lizzie Grey, who later
went on to a lot of other groups. I got to know those guys and become friends with them. Back in those days, I got in really
good with the clubs, could always get backstage and hang with the guys and Nikki & I became friends. So, I would be
backstage hanging with those guys all the time and pretty soon I was on their A-List and always invited to their shows and then I became
their photographer. This was repeated over and over again, with all these little groups, playing in those days, that all wound up doing
big things. I wound up shooting Blondie in the clubs, Berlin in the clubs and all these groups that ended up being these other
groups like the Bangles. In all of this, London was an interesting relationship, because I got to know Nikki very well and then
when they lost their lead singer, a guy named
Nigel Benjamin, who had a brief
run as lead singer of Mott, which was the Mott the Hoople derivative and that kind of went nowhere. That's when Nikki says, "I found
this guy named
Blackie (Lawless), he's intense looking, he looks
like he would fit our image, he's hard edged." So, I met
Blackie, who had this, how do I say this,
this aura and image about him. You would meet him and he would come up and say, "I'm Blackie", just this real tough
guy look. He seemed real threatening at first, but then you get to know him and he's a real pussycat. Basically, they needed
some photos. We went to this studio in Los Alamitos, where they were rehearsing and I brought my bedspreads, stuff
like that, to set up backdrops. This became the photo session of
London, with
Blackie as the lead singer.