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Taken from Chattanoogan.com (June 21, 2007)
On Stage With Ziggy Marley And Ben Harper At Bonnaroo
by Fil Manley
Michael Franti and Fil Manley |
Through a bizarre set of circumstances, I wound up meeting reggae great Michael Franti, and being on stage taking photos during Ziggy Marley’s and Ben Harper's shows. There were only a couple of other people shooting from the stage and one of them worked for Rolling Stone.
A big part of the reason I wound up taking pictures at Bonnaroo this year is because at the 2006 Bonnaroo, I met a photographer named Julie. In 2006, the big show was Radiohead. It was huge. I had my camera with me but wasn’t there on assignment. Once I realized I could get my camera in, taking photos of Radiohead became a mission. The crowd by the front of the stage was massive and almost impenetrable.
Last year, I spent an hour making my way from the left side of the stage to front and center stage, through a pack of people as long as a football field. When I arrived there, I was dirty, hot and sweaty. At that point, my batteries died in my camera and I had no replacements. Going back out wasn’t an option. I had stepped on too many toes to get to the middle. I was sad that I wasn’t going to be able to photograph Radiohead after all that work.
That’s when Julie walked up to me. She was on the other side of the barrier, shooting for a magazine, and we started talking. She and the Rolling Stone photographer were standing side by side, and I was standing in the mob, inches, but miles away from them.
When I told her my batteries had died, she gave me a brand new set. So, because of Julie, my efforts to photograph Radiohead weren’t wasted, and I wound up with some of the best photos I’ve ever taken of any band.
Flash forward to this year... I’m at Bonnaroo, on assignment for the Chattanoogan, my first professional photo assignment. Julie and I have kept in touch throughout the year and made plans to meet at Bonnaroo this year. She’s trailing Michael Franti, and is doing a taped interview with him and Ziggy Marley after Ziggy's show at Bonnaroo. They’re working on some kind of non-profit venture.
I met with all of the other photographers at the appointed time to take photos of Ziggy Marley. We walked around to the photo pit and waited for the show to start. That’s when I ran into Julie for the first time at this Bonnaroo. Ziggy's show started, and it was wonderful. His set list was pure reggae. His father’s voice was there in his own and it felt wonderful to hear him sing “love is my religion” from feet away.
As we were leaving, Julie asked if I wanted to go up on the audience area above the stage. She had an extra pass and loaned it to me. I promised to give it back and had to spend 10 minutes trying to find the entrance to the other side of the stage, because the side we were on was full.
I took the pass in my sweaty hand and tried to find my way around to the entrance of the right side of the stage. I found it, walked up the steps, flashed the pass, and was handed a playing card. I walked up onto the riser overlooking the stage. I was a little giddy. I hadn’t expected this to happen, but I felt blessed. I tried not to look out of place and enjoyed a couple of songs before heading back to return Julie's pass.
I walked down the stage side steps and ran directly into her. We started walking back toward the press area, and Michael Franti came walking up to us. Michael Franti, the Reggae icon, who formed the band Spearhead in 1994. The 40-year-old former punk artist, rapper and now, a light for social justice, was standing right in front of me. I was surprised at how tall he is, 6’6, at least. He was shirtless and barefooted. I found out later that he walks barefoot to highlight the division between consumer countries such as the U.S. and third world countries who make shoes but can’t afford to buy them.
Julie and Michael are good friends. They spoke for a moment and he turned and started walking toward the back of the stage and she motioned for me to follow. Michael walked past the security guy. Julie said, “I’m with him”, I said “I’m with her” and suddenly, I was on the same stage Ziggy Marley was playing on. I was more than nervous. I didn’t want to do anything to offend anyone or to draw attention to myself, so I kept my mouth shut and tried to be invisible.
We stood behind a -hannel mixing board (one of four) and watched Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers put on their show to tens of thousands of people. We were standing right behind a giant bank of speakers on the right hand side of the stage, and I was glad for my earplugs at that point. Through the gap between the speakers, I saw a sea of people staring back.
To my right, I saw Stewart Copeland’s drums (The Police) behind a curtain, already in place for the show the following night. A roadie in front of me was setting up gear for The Police show.
A few minutes later, a man walked up and started talking to Michael. They were obviously friends. He was tattooed, average looking, but with the flair that only some musicians seem to be able to pull off. Michael and Julie walked to the other side of the stage behind the curtain and I was scared to move, so I stayed where I was.
I introduced myself to the person Michael had been talking to and it turns out he’s Oliver Charles, the drummer for the Innocent Criminals, Ben Harper's band. We talked for a while, about music, about drumming.
I offered to photograph him. Drummers are almost always the last person to get photographed on any stage, because they’re usually sitting in the darkest part of the stage, and they’re farther back. He said that would be cool, and I promised to do my best.
I stayed on the stage for all of Ziggy's show and, when they started tearing down the show for the next one, I left, thinking it would be better to take my leave than get evicted by security.
Being on stage was a strange experience. The crowd, from that vantage point, is enormous. I shot pictures, mainly of the crowd. In Stewart Copeland’s press conference, he talked about how it feels to be at the focal point of all that energy, all of those people looking right in your direction and I felt a little of what that feels like just being there.
When you’re in the crowd, even from the front, the stage seems so far away. I was very aware of that feeling last year when I took pictures from inside the crowd, being inside the press of tens of thousands of sweating people is an indescribable feeling, not necessarily bad, but not exactly good either.
I left the stage before someone deciphered that I was just a poseur, and went back to the press tent to cool off in the air conditioning. I realized five minutes after getting back to the tent that I’d made a mistake. It was going to be almost impossible to photograph Oliver from the photo pit. The drummers are too far back and the stage is too high. At best, I could get a shot of most of his head and lots of drums. I kicked myself, realizing that I probably should have tried to stay on the stage, but it was too late.
A few minutes later, it was time for Ben Harper. The photographers all formed a group and we made our way toward the photo pit at the front of the stage. While I was walking, I drifted toward the back of the line, and it occurred to me that I might be able to talk my way back up on the stage.
I found a security supervisor and told him that I needed to get on stage to photograph Ben Harper's drummer. I told him that Oliver the drummer (who I had just met) had asked me to shoot for him. This was technically true, although I was the wannabe who offered to do it.
He sent me up the food chain and I wound up talking to a stage supervisor. The stage supervisor didn’t know what to say, so he sent me to Ben Harper's head of security, a guy named Scotty. Scotty was really nice. I told him the story and he told me to stay where I was. I did what he said.
Time went by, three, four, five minutes. I was getting nervous, standing there in the sun behind the stage, with all of these people walking past me, holding a giant camera in my hand. Then a white van pulled up right beside me and Ben Harper got out. He has a huge smile. He hugged a friend, some children standing there, and walked up toward the stage. Oliver got out of the van next and Scotty asked him if it was OK for me to shoot some photos. He looked at me and said yes, “it’s OK for him to take a few shots…” I was in.
Scotty handed me a gold sticker which gave me stage access. The problem was that I didn’t have a pass hanging around my neck to put it on. I was to be allowed to shoot for one song. I ran around to the back of the stage. I put the gold sticker on my photo bracelet because I had nowhere else to put it, and ran up the steps to the back of the stage. A security guard stopped me and I explained why I was there, and what I was doing, and after a minute or two, he let me on the stage. I went up to where I had been before, pulled out the Canon and started shooting, just as Ben Harper started his set.
A security guard came up to me and stopped me telling me that no one could shoot from the stage. I explained to him who I was, why I was there, and that I was only being allowed to shoot for one song. He relented, and then I was shooting again.
It was a real pleasure to say the least. I’m a huge fan of Ziggy's and Ben Harper's music. Ben’s social awareness, his "realness" for lack of a better term sets him apart from the vast majority of musicians who seem to work only for fame and money.
Ziggy is a cultural icon who learned music at the feet of his father, one of the world's most recognized faces, and the man who wrote the songs that elevated a generation of oppressed people.
I lived in Hawaii for years, and their music reminds me of Hawaii. Hawaii is a place where Reggae rules. Before living there, I had never listened to Reggae, and really had no idea what it represented. When I lived in the islands, I met people who shared their love of the music with me and I grew to understand it. Those people instilled in me an appreciation for island music which has endured.
I was born and grew up in Georgia, where people of color are a minority and where racism, while not terribly obvious in my early years, was still evident and still working, even in my own family.
In Hawaii, I became the minority, and it was a strange feeling indeed. My first Reggae party was on a deserted beach in a jungle on the western shore of the Big Island of Hawaii and it changed me forever. Reggae is soul music. It’s the cry of oppression which grew from slavery and which still allows people who would otherwise be voiceless to express their feelings in a way which matters, and I think God must have been laughing a little when I was allowed to walk on that stage with my camera.
That’s how I wound up taking pictures on the stage at Bonnaroo when two of my all-time favorite musicians were playing. It was a strange, elegant and bizarre blessing which I still don’t quite understand. There were people there from every major music publication in the country, and I wasn’t one of them.
Here is Ben Harper's setlist, I tried to find Ziggy's, but was unable to. I remember him singing his father's songs… but really it’s all just a blur.
‘One’ Love,
fil manley
Special Thanks to; Henry, Dr. Art Kort, Dr. David Wendt, Michael Franti & Julie
Watch all pictures here
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