I’m a celeb photographer and this 80s coronary heart throb scared me | UK | News | EUROtoday

For a part of the Eighties, the Limelight in London’s West End was essentially the most modern nightclub within the nation. A daily late-night hang-out for glittering pop stars of the day – George Michael from Wham!, Boy George from Culture Club, Mick Hucknall from Simply Red, Billy Idol, Kim Wilde, Nile Rodgers from Chic, Johnny Rotten from Sex Pistols and the Beastie Boys – it should have felt just like the centre of the universe.

Capturing pictures of all these celebrities, usually whereas they have been tipsy and their guard was down, was the nightclub’s home photographer David Koppel, then in his mid-20s.

“I was very nervous. I didn’t like nightclubs, I didn’t drink and I wasn’t interested in celebrities,” Koppel remembers, admitting he was greater than somewhat wide-eyed and harmless when he began out.

Until then he had been a junior assistant in a photographic studio, so snapping candid photos of celebs positioned him effectively outdoors of his consolation zone.

“It was something very new for me,” he tells the Daily Express. “I was always a bit nervous around famous people and worried about ­upsetting them.” He quickly received into his stride, although. Initially, Koppel, now 63, had been anxious about switching from severe pictures to movie star photographs, so he agreed to only a single night time’s work in 1986.

But he was immediately hooked. That one night time lasted a yr and later paved the best way for a job as a profitable paparazzo, with profitable work in newspapers and magazines. Nowadays, he lives in North London and works as a photographer and painter.

This month, Koppel will publish all his greatest photographs from the Limelight in a brand new guide, with an accompanying exhibition in October. Housed in an deserted Welsh Presbyterian church on Shaftesbury Avenue, courting again to the Victorian period, the Limelight first opened in 1985 and rapidly established itself because the beating coronary heart of London’s in style tradition. Musicians, actors and fashions all rubbed shoulders with the capital’s coolest clubbers, to the backdrop of ­medieval-style arches, Romanesque columns and church home windows.

“It was Thatcher’s Britain, a time of bankers and big hair,” the guide’s writer explains. “New Romantics and US rap legends shared the dancefloor with British TV stars, comedians, punk rockers, film stars and fashionistas.”

The membership was operated by Peter Gatien, who had already opened venues below the identical branding in New York City, Florida, Atlanta and Chicago. His London offshoot turned so well-known that even the long run King Charles spent a night there within the late Nineteen Nineties. It finally closed in 2003, switching to being an Australian sports activities bar. The Grade II-listed constructing is now up for public sale with a information worth of £14.75million.

Koppel turned effectively acquainted with most of the Limelight regulars. He was on pleasant phrases with TV presenter Jonathan Ross, Lemmy from Motorhead, Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot from Curiosity Killed The Cat, and Jon Moss and Boy George from Culture Club.

In truth, Boy George took fairly an curiosity in him, as soon as chatting him up moderately vigorously. “He was really cheeky, very flirty, and great fun,” Koppel remembers of the ­flamboyant singer.

One common who disliked being photographed was George Michael. “He was particularly difficult,” Koppel remembers. “I was nervous of him reacting to me.”

As Koppel was formally employed by the nightclub’s PR, he was imagined to ask permission earlier than he took any of his photographs.

“I had to toe the line, play the game and not upset anybody,” he remembers, though he would often sneak in surreptitious photographs earlier than his topics have been conscious he was there.

His pay was £25 an evening plus bills, and he may earn excess of that if his photographs have been revealed within the nationwide press.

Hired to work three nights every week on the membership, he remembers how darkish it at all times was inside. There was an enormous dance flooring and a stage on the bottom flooring, missed by a balcony. Bands and DJs would recurrently play units, and style exhibits would happen. In the basement was a lounge space and a kitchen the place they usually ready sushi – a method of meals Koppel remembers being very novel on the time.

But it was upstairs, within the VIP room, that he took his most fascinating photographs. Here, with the one gentle coming from flickering candles, he would move subtly amongst the celebrities as they chatted, drank, smoked and flirted on the banquettes.

He captured moments of pleasure, drunkenness and intimacy, his photographs a revealing window again into the Eighties, in all its hedonistic glory.

Among the various pictures in his guide, you possibly can see Billy Idol dancing along with his girlfriend; George Michael showing to signal a banknote; artist Leigh Bowery in sometimes outrageous costumes; Lemmy from Motorhead exhibiting off his nipple; comic Mel Smith snogging his spouse; designer Jasper Conran kissing actress Patsy Kensit; singer Martin Fry with a girlfriend apparently nibbling his ear; Iggy Pop cosying as much as Blondie drummer Clem Burke; Robbie Coltrane with Johnny Rotten; Julian Lennon in a Native American-style fringe jacket; Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde embracing Pogues singer Shane MacGowan; and a good bit of bare flesh besides.

Koppel’s job was not often straightforward. “It was so dark, so dimly lit, that I couldn’t see to focus my camera,” he remembers. “So I used to get people to light a cigarette or a match and hold it up to their face so I could see them. And the extraordinary thing was that, in those days, everybody smoked. So there were matches everywhere.”

There was one space of the nightclub which was strictly off-limits to Koppel, and that was within the supervisor’s workplace, above the VIP room. “They used to have a bouncer on the stairs going up to the office and you didn’t get past there unless you were invited. I never was, so whatever happened in there, I never knew anything about,” he provides intriguingly.

Koppel says he would by no means achieve capturing such intimate pictures in right now’s nightclubs, as celebrities are actually always on their guard for paparazzi. “Everybody’s got a mobile phone nowadays, and everybody’s filming everything,” he factors out. “Everybody’s a photographer and everybody’s a model. Back then so few people had cameras.

“There’s something quite naive about my photos. There was a certain respect between the subject and the photographer which I think has gone now. In those days there was a level of privacy that is not available today.”

While Koppel is happy about his upcoming guide and exhibition, he’s unhappy that most of the celebrities he photographed are actually lifeless and gone.

“Looking through this archive of works from so many years ago, I’ve been struck by how many of the famous faces are no longer with us,” he laments. “Robbie Coltrane, Lemmy, Shane MacGowan, Malcolm McLaren, Derek Jarman, Jeff Beck, David Soul and, most shocking of all, George Michael.

“This small collection of works is a celebration of the nightlife of a time gone by.”

● Limelight by David Koppel is revealed this month, £50. An accompanying exhibition runs at Zebra One Gallery, London, from October 9-21; davidkoppel.co.uk