In the Summer of 1987 I received a call from Ellen Darst, who I met while photographing U2 on the “Joshua Tree” tour in US and Italy. She had a job for me in LA: to photograph the legendary T Bone Burnett for publicity of his new album. “Try to be quick as he doesn’t like much to take photos” I was told.  I went to see him at his apartment in Santa Monica with a Polaroid b/w slide film that I had just found out. With the help of a small box, you could develop the b/w film in a couple of minutes! A bit like the old polaroid prints. T Bone was very pleasant; maybe he was getting ready to go on tour because he showed me this upright traveling trunk that belonged to Little Richard. I took a couple of shots of him seating on a Thai wicked chair on his balcony and the phone rang. As he was talking on the phone, I developed the film and a great b/w slide appeared. I mounted it and as T Bone came off the phone I gave it to him to see with a viewfinder. Unforgettable moment: he looked at the slide, looked at me, looked back at the photo through the eye piece and said: “That’s the back cover of the album!” He had just finished Talking Animal and the front cover was decided, but not the back cover.

We are done!” he said, reluctant to take more photos. That would have been by far my quickest photo shoot ever, but T Bone’s young daughter appeared wearing his dad’s shoes and hat talking a storm, like a sweet ‘talking animal’. “Can we put her on the cover?” I asked. “Right in front and you in the back?” T Bone loved the idea and I pulled the traveling trunk on the balcony in front of the Thai chair, asked his daughter to dress up and I positioned her like she just sprang out of the trunk.  Voila’ - now I felt that I really did earn my money.

A few years ago I was invited to a party at T Bone’s house for Anthony Minghella’s birthday just around the release of Minghella’s film Cold Mountain. I met his daughter all grown up and T Bone introduced me to her with a ‘Remember the photographer?’. She had just done her University thesis on this photo. God bless her!

I was so in shock that I didn’t ask her the details. Can you please call me love, and tell me all about it?

Front and back cover of 1987 T Bone Burnett album, The Talking Animal