The
InterviewDanny
Clinch
Photographer and filmmaker Danny Clinch on community spaces, shooting Pearl Jam, and what Shannon Hoon taught him about the second half.
Photographs
by Danny Clinch
Danny Clinch is one of the most recognizable names in music photography. He started as an intern for one of the world’s most iconic portrait photographers, Annie Leibovitz, and spent the next thirty years becoming one himself. His camera has been inside rooms most people will never witness, and his work spans four decades of American music history. He has photographed Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Jay-Z, Patti Smith, Dolly Parton, Stevie Nicks, Foo Fighters, Nas, Willie Nelson, Björk, and hundreds of other legendary talents.
He captured Tupac for Rolling Stone at the moment he was becoming an icon and put Springsteen in frames that have come to define how we see the Boss. He has documented Pearl Jam longer and more closely than almost anyone with a camera, a relationship that produced the 2007 concert film Immagine in Cornice, which followed the band through five cities in Italy and is forever cemented in the hearts of their fans worldwide.
In 2021 he co-directed All I Can Say, assembled from footage that Blind Melon singer Shannon Hoon shot on a handheld camera before his death in 1995. That Danny was the one trusted to finish it tells you most of what you need to know about him. He’s not just documenting music. He’s part of it.
Clinch grew up in Toms River, New Jersey, left for New York, and came back to the shore, where he built something nobody asked for but it turns out everybody wanted. A gallery in Asbury Park, a festival on the waterfront, and a life that doesn’t look much like winding down.
Twenty-one years ago I basically assaulted him in a New York City editing suite and told him he had to be my friend. He was finishing a music video late at night and I was trying to convince the owner to help my newly launched music television network. Danny didn’t run and we’ve been close ever since.
We recently talked on Zoom for over an hour. His Hell’s Kitchen loft was behind him and the couch I’ve slept on was in the frame. It felt exactly like it always does when Danny and I talk. More to get through than time to get there, and neither of us was watching the clock.
“Danny, it’s all one big barbecue. You’ve just got to cut loose and come up and play.”— Shannon Hoon
Michael Shimbo: You kept the loft.
Danny Clinch: We were going to sell it but decided to keep it. And honestly this neighborhood is finally coming around. I thought it would happen ten years ago but it didn’t. Now it is. And it’s so nice to have a nice space here. This neighborhood really keeps getting better.
MS: I’ve spent a lot of time on that couch in NYC. But I want to start in New Jersey because you didn’t just move back. You built something very special there. Tell me about Asbury and the gallery and how all of it began.
DC: About ten years ago my wife Maria and I were on the boardwalk and someone walked up to us. They were with the Asbury Hotel and said there was a beautiful empty room on the east side of the building and wondered if we would be interested in doing a pop-up gallery. I’d done pop-ups before. They take a lot of money and a lot of energy. But we went over and looked at it and it was just a stunning space. That was supposed to be a three-month pop-up. We were there for three years. Then they said all right, we’re either going to move on or let’s make a deal. We signed a lease and decided to stay.
MS: And it became something more than a gallery.
DC: It really did. It became like a community living room. People would show up. We’d have some live music. Local musicians would come hang while their friends were playing. And then we started doing ticketed events. Donovan Frankenreiter is playing there this Friday. We’ve had Glen Hansard, Nathaniel Rateliff, Gary Clark Jr. Really awesome people coming through alongside all the local musicians who have played there.
And then there’s this guy who sometimes rolls up on his motorcycle. Helmet on. Big thick goggles. Jumps off the bike and heads straight for one of the guitars we have on the wall. Picks it up and strums it perfectly. Where’d you get this, he says.
MS: The Boss.
DC: He’s come through a bunch of times. Just two days ago he showed up at the Bleachers show. Hanging out backstage with Jack Antonoff and me and the band. He was in a great mood. Telling stories. He came up and did two songs, just flipping out over the young energy in the room. That’s Bruce. He’ll pop in and get a beer at the Wonder Bar. He’ll pop into our gallery. He could live anywhere, but I’ve heard him say, “I tried out LA. I tried out other places. This is where I belong.”
That’s what makes Asbury what it is. And what I think we are doing there, with the gallery and with the Sea.Hear.Now festival, is continuing a great legacy. Per capita, Asbury Park has as many music venues as Austin and Nashville. And if you go back to Springsteen and the early E Street days, they all used to play their gigs around town and then head to this all ages club called the Upstage. The guy who owned it ran a beauty parlor downstairs. At night he threw this jam, built speakers into the walls, and everybody came. Bruce, Southside Johnny, all of them. Meeting there after their gigs, playing until morning.
I feel like without even planning it that’s what we became. Another room on that list. The Stone Pony. The Saint. The Wonder Bar. The Asbury Lanes. The Transparent Gallery. Sea.Hear.Now. We’re part of that legacy now and it still blows my mind.
MS: And the gallery itself. When you look at those walls.
DC: It still blows my mind. It is not a white glove gallery at all. It is a comfortable gathering space. And what’s on those walls is my life. Tupac. Tony Bennett. Willie Nelson. Johnny Cash. Foo Fighters. Pearl Jam. Metallica. Dave Matthews. Phish. Patti Smith. Bruce. Those are my photographs. Those are my experiences. Condé Nast Traveler just came down and did a shoot with me there. They’re going to call it one of the great places on the Jersey Shore. How about that?
MS: The Sea.Hear.Now Festival. Walk me through how that started.
DC: This has always been a four-way thing. Tim Donnelly, HM Woolman, Tim Sweetwood, and me. Without all four of us this doesn’t happen.
Timmy and I grew up together and we had this idea. Musicians who surf. Surfers who make music. We one-sheeted it and started pitching it around. Went down the road with one group and they bailed. And I remembered this Sweetwood guy — we had crossed paths once and he’d said we should do a festival together sometime. So we reached out. And unlike everyone else who expressed interest, including people who were New York based, he said I’ll just come up to Asbury Park and have a look.
He stood on the boardwalk and looked around. He has a festival in Atlanta where he has to build the vibe from scratch. He looked around Asbury and said I don’t have to build anything except put up the stages. He was in.
And all things circle back to Bruce Springsteen. The day Sweetwood came down there was an event going on and Bruce showed up and played. Then Bruce played the next time Sweetwood was there too. We were like, “This is serendipity.”
We got Incubus, Jack Johnson, G Love, Ben Harper. Surfers all. And it just grew from there. Timmy was really the one who came up with the format and I thought it was brilliant. Local bands to open. A punk rock band. Reggae. A legacy act. Then the headliners. The idea being a kid could bring their parents and both of them would find something they needed to see. The kid shows the parents Fontaines DC and the parents make the kid sit through Pearl Jam. Great trade.
Year two we had Blondie. Our local surfer Sam Hammer was out in the water and I asked him afterward what it was like. He said, “Dude, I got to surf to Blondie. It was incredible.”
A photograph is a moment. A film is a world.
MS: Speaking of surf. This year marks twenty years of Pearl Jam’s Avocado album. And your film about that album and tour, Immagine in Cornice, turns twenty next year. How does it feel to say that out loud.
DC: It’s crazy. I first met Eddie Vedder in 1992 with Tim Donnelly at Lollapalooza in New Hope, New Jersey. They wouldn’t let us backstage to do the interview. Eddie came out, found us a spot somewhere, and was just completely low key. Deep voice and all. He was so kind and caring. His love of surfing and music and the ocean just coming through. I brought my camera and got a couple of photos. Then we went to see the show. And it was not the same person. He was an animal. Climbed the scaffolding. And I thought, that’s not the guy I just talked to.
I kept throwing my hat in the ring with management after that. They had their photographer and I’ve always respected that. But then I got hired to shoot Neil Young at the Gorge and I was walking around the parking lot and there was Eddie with his wife Jill. I think they were on their first date or one of their first dates. They may have even slept in his truck that night. Anyway, we totally reconnected and I think after that he thought, well, Neil hired the guy. Let’s give him a try.
They first gave me a couple of hours for publicity photos. I scouted, I prepared, I went all out and it went really well, so they hired me again. Then again. And their PR person pulled me aside at some point and said the band has never hired the same photographer twice. You’re on round three. I was like, damn. Here I am. I’m still here.
MS: But a documentary. Italy. Five cities. It’s such a beautiful film.
DC: I’ve made a few films with them. Let’s Play Two around the historic two nights they played at Wrigley Field in Chicago and the Cubs winning the World Series. Eddie is a huge baseball fan and the timing was just magic. Plenty of other short films as well. But Immagine is the one that really captures something about what Pearl Jam in Italy means. That relationship between the band and that audience is its own phenomenon. The Italians just go absolutely insane for them in a way that is specific and profound. Nearly twenty years later I still love that film. And I’m proud of it in a way that’s different from the photographs. A photograph is a moment. A film is a world.
MS: I want to talk about the other side of the lens. Because you didn’t just stay behind the camera. You play and record your own music. When did that shift happen.
DC: It was a slow burn. I met Shannon Hoon and became really close with Blind Melon. And one time Shannon found out I played harmonica. He was like, “You’ve got to come up and jam with us.” I said, “I’ve only ever played at family barbecues.” He looked at me and said, “Danny, it’s all one big barbecue. You’ve just got to cut loose and come up and play.”
So I played with them. And then I ended up playing with them at Woodstock in 1994, which is still one of the craziest things that has ever happened to me.
After that I met the guys who would become the Tangiers Blues Band. I was supposed to be photographing them for their album cover for Danger Man and we just hit it off. We started playing together. And in those early days if they turned to me and said play a solo I would literally turn my back to the audience and hack around on my harmonica. It took a long time to be comfortable. But then I started singing a song or two. And it opened up this whole other creative process. You feel like a kid again. You’re learning so much. Listening to songs I’ve listened to my whole life in a completely different way now because I’ve been involved in a full production. Laying down a track. Doing vocals. Playing in the room together.
My friend Christopher Thorn from Blind Melon has a studio out in the desert. We’ve been making music together. We call ourselves the Hitchhikers. Played some of the songs live. Opened for Jesse Malin at the Stone Pony. And I also played on the Foo Fighters record In Your Honor. I played with the Foos in Chile in front of a hundred thousand people at Lollapalooza down there, and played with Pearl Jam at ACL.
I’m 62 years old. I can get in free to a state park. And here I am getting on a bicycle.
