By David A. F. Sweet
“That’s my life on the walls,” says Paul Natkin, sitting on a chair in the living room of his Chicago apartment.
Only Paul Natkin was able to photograph Prince during a two-hour concert on his 26th birthday.
He’s referring to a handful of framed photos to his right. One is a black-and-white portrait of Keith Richards. Natkin served as his solo tour photographer more than once — the same job he held with the Rolling Stones, where he flew on their private jet and enjoyed big bowls of Godiva chocolates backstage. Another picture features a guitar-playing Prince – Natkin was the only photographer invited to shoot his private birthday party in Minneapolis in 1984, where Prince jammed for two hours. Ensconced less than a yard from the stage, Natkin’s photographs were the last ones taken before the singer went into seclusion while the bombshell movie Purple Rain opened in theaters.
Natkin’s life continues in an adjoining room. A slew of file cabinets begins with the group Abba and ends with ZZ Top. He estimates he’s shot 4,500 bands and celebrities combined, adding up to about a million photos.
“I didn’t have a clue what I’d do,” said Paul Natkin about life before photography.
“If someone says they need pictures of Dave Matthews in 1993, I can find it in a minute,” said Natkin
How did the white-bearded septuagenarian who once evinced zero interest in photography end up with photos of rock stars that graced the covers of Rolling Stone, Newsweek and other national media stalwarts? Sit on his couch, and he’ll tell you the story.
It begins with his father Robert, a photographer for the Army in World War II. He later documented the building of the projects while serving as the staff photographer for the Chicago Housing Authority. But his mother Judy – also a photographer — made Robert quit photography because she thought he was away too much with two young sons at home. He soon became a contractor, and he built the family home in West Rogers Park.
“All the time growing up, there was a darkroom that no one ever used, and a lot of prints were in there,” Natkin recalled. “I had no interest in that whatsoever.”
The Australian band Atlas Genius barely caused a ripple on the music scene, but Natkin considers this his finest shot as it occurred during “the decisive moment.”
During the Vietnam War, Natkin studied at the University of Illinois-Chicago for two years to avoid the draft. When he wasn’t eligible to be drafted anymore, he decided to quit college.
“I didn’t have a clue what I’d do,” he said.
But in 1971, his father started shooting pictures again once his building business faltered. He asked friends if they had any assignments. One was Ben Bentley, the publicity and marketing person for the Chicago Bulls.
“He goes to a game and comes home at 11,” Natkin said. “I’m on the couch watching TV – I had no motivation to do anything. He said four things: Free parking, get in the game for free, free hot meal in the press box, best seats in the house. I immediately said, ‘You have to take me to the next game.’ I had never held a camera in my life.”
Natkin learned photography on the drive to Chicago Stadium — at each stop light, his father would teach him something new.
Before long, the 5-foot-2 Natkin stood among giants, such as the 7-foot-2 Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Paul Natkin didn’t notice until he was told by another that Keith Richards had a message for him in this photo.
“I said, ‘What could be cooler than this?” Natkin recalled. “We weren’t getting paid, but I learned photography. I still have all those negatives of Bulls’ players (recently deceased) Bob Love, Chet Walker and Artis Gilmore. I have photos of (Hall of Famers) Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Walton.”
Through photographers he met at Chicago Stadium, he received passes to shoot tennis tournaments featuring greats such as Rod Laver, Jimmy Connors and Billie Jean King. One evening, he was covering a tennis match at Northwestern University. Afterwards, he packed up his equipment, placed it in his trunk, and turned the car on. The radio dial was set on station WXRT.
“There’s a commercial for a concert that night — it was happening five feet away,” Natkin said. “There’s no way I could make this story up.
“Her name was Bonnie Raitt. Her first album had come out. I thought, ‘Maybe I can get in free for a concert, just like sports.’ There was a backstage door. I made up a lie – that I was working for a new magazine called Rolling Stone. There was a guard who saw all my cameras. Before I told him the lie, he said, ‘You’re with the press. Do whatever you want. Just don’t go on stage.’”
Dancing in the Dark with Bruce Springsteen and Courtney Cox was an MTV hit.
Though he admits most shots of his first concert were terrible, Natkin started sneaking into the now-shuttered Ivanhoe Theater, which was around the corner from where he lived. He shot Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and others in the little club, which started as a restaurant in the 1920s.
Soon, he received a pass to go to all the shows he wanted to see there. Eventually, he met the head of Jam Productions, the biggest music promoter in town who owned many venues. Before long, he sold a photo of Rick Derringer (yes, the guy who sang “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo”) to Creem magazine, which ran it as a full-page color shot in the national magazine.
“I said, ‘I’m rich,” Natkin noted. “Then I got a check from Creem for $35.”
Other magazines followed. Publicists in New York and Los Angeles noticed Natkin’s pictures. They started calling him and asked him to photograph bands coming through Chicago.
“All of a sudden I’m shooting hundreds of bands,” he said. “Columbia Records said, ‘Can you shoot this new band, Dire Straits?’”
As the years passed, Natkin formed relationships publicists at all the record companies. A woman from Warner Brothers called on June 2, 1984.
“You’re close to Minneapolis, right?” she asked.
Natkin packed a bunch of film, a change of underwear and got a $98 roundtrip ticket on Midwest Airlines out of Midway. When he arrived at the club hosting Prince’s birthday party, he was told he needed to be on the guest list.
“The guard went through 40 pages, and he gets to last page,” Natkin recalled. “I’m the only name on the list that’s a photographer.”
Soon, he was asked to shoot the start of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” tour. He first visited an empty arena, where the rocker was creating a music video — Dancing in the Dark.
It all started for Natkin at Chicago Stadium, where he shot Hall of Famers like Wilt Chamberlain
“I shot for four hours, and I heard Dancing in the Dark 40 times,” said Natkin, who snapped a picture the next night of Courtney Cox dancing with Springsteen to the song on stage, which helped make that video one of the most famous of the 1980s.
In 1986, Natkin got a call from the AM Chicago TV program.
“They said, ‘We’re doing a show Friday morning of those who’ve had a brush with Bruce. Do you want to be on the show?’ I’ll do anything for laughs, and I wasn’t working at 9 in the morning.
“I didn’t say a word the whole hour. I unhook the microphone. This woman walks up and gives me her card. She said ‘Our show is going national next month. We need a photographer.’ I didn’t even look at the card. At home I see it’s for The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Natkin became Winfrey’s personal photographer. He flew on a private jet with her; she watched football games at his house. Then, in 1988, his neighbor and Chicago Sun-Times music critic Don Cleese asked Natkin to accompany him to see Keith Richards. The photographer slept on his hotel couch in New York, and he shot an iconic black-and-white photo of Richards subtly giving him the finger – which Natkin didn’t notice at the time. Soon, he was asked to take photos of Richards’ tour with the rocker’s X-Pensive Winos band. The following year, Richards’ manager asked him to shoot the Stones’ Steel Wheels tour. Natkin said he could work for a month, but he needed to be with Oprah for the sweeps period, which started in November.
As October wound down, the Stones’ publicists begged Natkin to stay on for November, but he turned them down (“I had to honor my commitment to Oprah,” he explained). Staying in the Ritz-Carlton with the Stones in New York, he put his stuff on a bellman’s cart and pushed it two blocks way to the Plaza, where Oprah was staying.
Natkin shot two more Stones tours in the 1990s along with another Richards solo tour. But his appetite for rock photography had waned.
“In the ‘80s, the rules started changing,” he said. “Before then, I’d go to a show, and I’d shoot from start to finish. Then everyone thought about their image and how they’d look on MTV. So the rule was, ‘You can shoot the first three songs of show.’ Didn’t want to see them sweat. And they wanted us to shoot in the back of the venue, because they didn’t want to show their wrinkles.”
His six-night-a-week concert schedule evaporated. Today, he makes most of his money off obituary photos.
“I did really well with Tom Petty, Prince, Tina Turner. After she died, Getty Images licensed a thousand of my photos,” he said. “Otherwise, my life is boring. I watch TV.”
The best photo he’s ever shot? Natkin said it’s of an unknown band, Atlas Genius. That’s on a living-room wall too.
Paul’s father Robert was an excellent photographer as well. Robert’s photo shows a 100-year-old man surrounded by children.
“Henri Cartier-Bresson talked about ‘the decisive moment,’” noted Natkin of the 20th-century French photographer. “At any given event, there’s one moment that’s the most important to capture. I captured it with that band. Keith giving the finger was also the decisive moment. That’s my best-selling print.”
Unsung Gems columnist David A. F. Sweet can be reached at dafsweet@aol.com.
