After seeing our photos of the "Rendez-vous Lyon" concert, Jean Michel Jarre invited George O Jackson and me to shoot his next concert, "Destination Docklands". Unfortunately, George O Jackson could not make it and I went alone.
This pair of paying concerts took place on the Royal Victoria Docks, in London's Docklands, on Saturday October 8 and Sunday October 9, 1988, coinciding with the release of Jarre's album Revolutions. The concerts were attended by 200'000 people with ticket, plus many people who watched the concert from the nearby streets and households.
As for Lyon, I arrived three days earlier, to shoot photos of Jarre and his musicians on stage during the rehearsals. On the day of the final rehearsal, the weather became horrendous, it was cold, pouring rain, with strong gusty winds. Everybody was freezing cold, equipment was failing relentlessly, my lenses kept becoming wet. But then, every once in a while, Jarre had a nice word for his crew, such as "Hé, les gars, on a de la chance, il aurait pu faire mauvais!" (Hey, lads, we're lucky, the weather could have been bad!). And smiles came back on everybody's face, and hearts cheered up, and equipment re-worked, and I dried my lenses...
A guest musician, guitarist Hank Marvin of The Shadows, joined Jarre on the tracks "London Kid" and "Fourth Rendez-Vous". I had been asked by SIPA Press to interview him, but had never done an interview before. When he realized how inexperienced a journalist I was, he laughed and started telling his own stories, which I guessed made an excellent interview!
The first concert, on October 8, was attended by Diana, Princess of Wales, alias Lady Di. She arrived at dusk, surrounded by heavy security. A huge crowd of nasty paparazzi were waiting for her, parked in a designated spot with their long telephoto lenses. I shot a few photos of Lady Di sitting in the small VIP tribune next to Jarre's friend Jean-Louis Remilleux.
The weather was also really bad that first night - not quite as bad as for the final rehearsal, but bad enough! The stage was located on a floating barge. It was to traverse up and down the Docks, providing a view of the stage to the audience on both sides of the docks. However, strong winds and prevailing rain prevented this from occurring and the stage stayed anchored for the first concert at reasonable distance from the paying audience. Wind almost caused one of the hung scaffolding backdrops to be torn from its mountings (it had to be repaired before the second night's performance).
After the concert, I was invited to a reception on site. A few hundreds of guests were present - except Lady Di! We danced and drank like crazy to recover from the bitter cold. That's where I shot the photos of Jean-Michel with his wife Charlotte Rampling and with his daughter Emilie.
As I remember, the weather was better next day - still cold, but less windy and rainy. I guess that most of my best concert photos were shot during the second night.
Recently, I dug-up, found and digitized some of my photos of Jean-Michel Jarre's "Destination Docklands" concert. These are clearly the worse photos I've ever shot at a Jarre concert - probably because of the poor weather. Here they are for you to judge!
Click on a photo to enlarge it.
