The latest instalment of photographer Brian Griffin’s brilliant photographic autobiography is just out. So when Brian asked me to write down my memories of an advertising shoot in Mexico in the 1980’s, I was thrilled to contribute. The first thing I did was get the year wrong. Apart from that, my account (p172 of ‘Black Country Dada 1969-1990’) is mostly true. I think. Here’s what I remembered …
Memory is like an old home movie. Some of the images are clear, but in places the emulsion’s gone. And some bits are missing altogether.
Saatchi and Saatchi 1985. Art director Roger Pearce and I have created a print advertising campaign for The Republic National Bank of New York. In 1985 we didn’t do library images. This was going to be shot by a top photographer in a road trip across the USA and Mexico. I beg and grovel to go too. Although I’m a copywriter, Paul Arden relents. Well, it’s 1985. I join them on the second half of the shoot. I’m ecstatic. I’ve never been outside Europe before.
Brian and the rest are already in the States – at a Kentucky stud. A week or two later I travel with the modelmaker Les Gay to Los Angeles. We land late one lovely afternoon. They say LA is 72 suburbs in search of a city. But we barely see one. For us it’s the Hertz lot. To pick up a van. Then on to a warehouse, where we load a model of a satellite phone mast complete with call-box into the back of the truck, and start driving. Out of LA and on to Las Vegas. It’s a 5-hour drive. The modelmaker’s at the wheel. Jet-lagged, he wants to stay awake, so the aircon is on full freezer-blast the whole way. It’s a warm California evening, but 3 hours in my teeth are chattering in sync with the cicadas.
Las Vegas, Nevada, with hypothermia. We emerge from the black desert into a retina-busting assault of neon. The modelmaker turns the pick-up into the floodlit entrance to Caesar’s Palace. Disapproving parking attendants park the truck. A vision appears. It’s Brian. Standing on the steps, arms flung wide in welcome. He’s wearing a blue-green Mao jacket. Bathed in light from the kitsch central fountain, he gleams like an Abalone seashell.
Caesar’s Palace. A casino full of old ladies encased in wheelchairs with their legs mummified in surgical stockings play the one-armed bandits all night long. Cocktail barman: ‘You guys from England? What part of England, London? What part of London, Birmingham?’.
There are five of us. Art director Roger, stylist Catherine Laroche, me, Brian, and his assistant, Steuart.
The first shot is in the Mojave Desert, where kids race quad bikes at weekends. But in the world of the ad, we’re in the Middle East. Or at least the middle of nowhere. A (business)man is on the phone – the call box with mast - below a dune. He’s calling his broker. Or buying a ship. It’s 120 Fahrenheit in the shade and I get sunstroke. On the pulsing horizon a missile test launch at Edwards Airforce base. World War Three? Brian takes a great shot.
Next stop Mexico. A black chauffeuse takes us in a white stretch limo to Vegas airport for our flight. Well, it’s 1985. She asks if we’re a rock band. It’s dark at take off. As we bank, Vegas is a tiny square of light pollution in an expanse of virgin blackness.
The outskirts of Mexico City are a constant sprawl of shanty buildings. Every corrugated iron roof has a TV aerial. Once in our hotel, I’m realising that Brian may have been involved with the stylist before I arrived. But now my art director Roger seems to be spending a lot of time with her. Meanwhile, Brian’s concerns accelerate into something more serious. Bad news from England. His father has died. Naturally he feels he should go home. The shoot will have to be aborted. Brian wrestles with what to do. Eventually he decides to stay. It must be a tough decision for him.
In Mexico, we have a driver. He takes us over the Sierra Madre and down towards Puebla. A rainstorm hits us. It’s so violent, we have to stop the car. ‘These mountains used to be full of bandits’, the driver tells us. What happened to the bandits? ‘They became presidents.’ His grin has a gold tooth in it.
The next shot features a rich ranchero on a horse, in a cactus forest, on a mobile phone the size of a breeze block. We look for cactus forests to shoot in. Returning to the hotel through Mexican villages at night, packs of snarling wild dogs chase the car. We don’t stop for a pee.
A location found. Just off a road, a great prairie full of cactus. The horse box arrives, two thoroughbreds inside. It drives carefully down the sloping tracks. But hits a big rut, or a hole. Truck keels to one side. Horses panic. One of them has an injury. Thankfully it’s OK. The handler calms the horses. Insurance is mentioned. Someone calms the owner. Brian takes the shot.
Back in Mexico City, our stylist’s hotel room has been burgled. Her passport, and a $10,000 cash float, are gone. She reports the matter to the local police. Insurance will cover the cash. The police chief, after sufficient money has changed hands, gives her a temporary exit visa, and we’re good to go to the airport.
At emigration we’re all waved through. But not our stylist. The officials don’t like her paperwork. She can’t leave the country. We’re being called through to departures. We can’t leave her behind. We protest. Things get heated. Mexican customs officials are armed. Things get more heated. A pistol is pointed at us … the airport manager arrives. Voices are still raised. But the weapon is lowered. Finally the stylist gets waved through, regardless of her documents. Well, it’s 1985.
Two days later we’re back in London. We have a campaign. Brian was a joy to be with, and he took a great bunch of shots. And I have great memories. Some of them may not even be true. But that’s memories for you.
Simon left Saatchi & Saatchi in 1985 for Lowe Howard-Spink, where he became Head Of Copy. Apart from a year as a creative director at Leo Burnett, he’s been freelance since 1995. In 2015 he created the ELFy health app, which he co-runs. In 2017 he published a children’s novel, ‘The Morphant’, under the name Cornelius Fuel, and in 2020 released an album with his band The Wood Demons. A debut album by Simon’s solo music project Vegetarians & Carnivores, is due 2021.