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For his new exhibition, photographer Michael Brennan has brought together his greatest loves – boxing and music – and his images of everyone from John Lennon to Muhammad Ali WORDS: CHRIS ANDERSON
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t is a warm September evening in Chelsea, southwest London. I am sat with photographer Michael Brennan outside Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant, right next door to the Iconic Images Gallery, where he is holding an exhibition. I ask him about his upcoming flight to Costa Rica next morning, and it immediately sparks an anecdote. “I flew on a private jet with Led Zeppelin once, from Newark to Detroit,” he says. “Well, it was their private Boeing 720, known as The Starship, which had been customised to suit their needs. I remember being taken to the stateroom, which is where the band would hold court. It even had a working fireplace! “I was with a journalist, heading to the sell-out show at Detroit Olympia Stadium. Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page were friendly, but cautious, as the band weren’t fond of the press, and John Bonham, the drummer, only joined us for a few pics. But the concert itself was 52
amazing, and I was given free access to go anywhere. At one point I was stood with Jimmy Page while a fan in the audience tried to hand him a drink!” Incredible images from the flight and the concert, part of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 tour across North America, hang on the walls of the gallery just a few metres away. In one, there appears to be barely any distance between the audience and the stage, as Jimmy Page leans back under the spotlight, guitar in hand. Next to it are Brennan’s images of other music icons, including John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, Mick Jagger and Debbie Harry. Then, further on, we jump into the world of boxing, featuring Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. One particular shot of Ali, looking up during training, his face covered in sweat, hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. Pointing this out leads to another anecdote. “I took that in 1977 up at Deer Lake in Pennsylvania, where Ali had his training camp,” Brennan reveals. “It was 12 days
before he was due to fight Earnie Shavers at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Three sparring partners had been selected for their similarity in size, strength and fighting style to Ali’s opponent. The gym was uncomfortably hot, and Ali’s strenuous workout left him exhausted. He ripped off his headguard and leaned with his head cradled in his arms. “At that moment, an ABC TV cameraman flooded the scene with a bright, piercing light from over my left shoulder. Ali looked up, and at that point I raised my Nikon F2, with the focus racked as close as possible, and the bright strobe and some daylight creeping in. That’s what made the shot. “Some years later, I showed the image to Ali. It was just before his final fight against Trevor Berbick in 1981, the so-called Drama in Bahama. He wasn’t the same fighter then, and should have stopped years ago, which I think he knew. And there he was, looking at this image, tracing his right index finger over the sweat beads and mumbling, ‘All them years, all them years of hard work.’” It comes as no surprise that Brennan
