I only watched the David Bailey one, I don’t know the others. I haven’t had any contact with Bailey for years either, but he has always been an inspiration to me. Obviously he will have changed a lot over the years, we all do, but he seems to me from the interview to be the same man that he always was.
He’s been a celebrity for many years, but even in his early days he didn’t suffer fools gladly (or at all) and he never hesitated to tell them to f*** off, even when their money was important to him.
He was always a bit of a geezer and he knew all of the villains of the day, not just the Krays, but he was sort of on the edge of their world, he shouldn’t be criticised for making use of his contacts because, in London at that time, it was impossible to manage without doing so.. Patrick Lichfield (who I didn’t know) made some very critical comments about his criminal associations, but he was a cousin of the Queen and lived in a very different world . . .
Bailey always had an extremely active “social” life and women used to pretty much queue up. Back in the early days, nearly all of the top fashion photographers were gay, Bailey definitely wasn’t and this brought a breath of fresh air to his approach simply because even when a photographer of the opposite gender is behaving professionally, models react very differently and produce a much better look if they know that there’s a very good chance of more than just photography.
He was part of a group of other talented photographers, they socialised together and often worked together and each was exceptional in his own way. One of them was Duffy, a strange guy but very talented, a few years older than Bailey, and another was Tel Donovan, a giant of a man who acted as minder as well as being a great photographer in his own right. After a while, his name morphed from Tel to Terry and it was after his death that he became known as Terence, which didn’t really suit him.
One reason that Bailey never ever talks about technicalities is that he is a master of all things technical and just applies his vast knowledge to every shot, without ever seeming to give the technicalities any thought – we can all learn from this, because mastery of the technicalities allows us to concentrate on the artistry.
Bailey in private conversation is/was very different to Bailey when being interviewed, with very colourful language and very direct comments, but he always used a code when speaking in public, for example he would never say anything bad about anyone but everyone who knew him understood that “He’s a great guy, very nice” translates to “He’s a total c***” and he used those words to describe his interviewer, right at the end, which he didn’t seem to cotton on to
