COSTELLO AND THE ROCK PHOTO WARS

A rock star who once wailed “I Wanna Be Loved” doesn’t, it seems, care to woo the press. Indeed, Britain’s Elvis Costello is taking liberties to show that the aim of the news media’s cameras is anything but true.

He has barred news photographers from his six-city U.S. concert tour that opened Wednesday at a theater in Beverly Hills.

In the latest escalation in a widening dispute between the news media and rock musicians over the shooting of news photos during concerts, Costello, once known as the angry young man of British rock, has imposed a news photo blackout on his five local public performances and plans to extend the ban throughout his four-week tour, his manager said Thursday.

While such blackouts are still relatively rare, many musicians increasingly impose restrictions on newspaper and magazine photographers that, some journalists believe, are efforts to manipulate news coverage.

In some instances, musicians have refused to issue press passes to news photographers who won’t grant photo approvals or won’t sign waivers limiting commercial use of photographs. In the case of one overweight singer who toured last summer, photographers were refused access unless they agreed to stand more than 120 feet from the stage.

Virtually all rock acts limit photo shoots to specific numbers in their performances, usually the opening or closing songs of a show, say journalists who cover the rock-music world.

“The restrictions concerning photos at rock concerts are completely ridiculous,” said Joel Selvin, pop music columnist for the San Franciso Chronicle. “They smack heavily of news management. These guys (rock groups) are using the camera pass to manage the news.”

“I can give you plenty of outrage on it,” said Jonathan Taylor, entertainment editor at the Los Angeles Daily News. “Elvis (Costello) is notoriously difficult with photographers.”

Other performers mentioned frequently for their restrictive policies toward photo-journalists include: Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Prince, Julian Lennon, Stevie Nicks, David Bowie, Duran Duran and Neil Diamond.

Representatives of such pop and rock musicians argue that restrictions are necessary to protect the public images of performers, to limit the use of photos in unauthorized commercial enterprises and, in the case of Costello, because performers don’t like the press.

“Most newspapers and magazines in this country aren’t worth reading,” said Jake Riviera, Costello’s manager, in a telephone interview from his suite in an exclusive West Hollywood hotel.

Photographers, he said, “ruin the show for the 1,300 people who bought tickets.” The Costello performances, he said, are a “simple, old-fashioned show” and not “media events.”

Costello has hired a photographer and will supply the news media with pictures of the concerts, although few reputable news organizations will publish such so-called “hand-out” pictures. Costello made that concession “just to keep our record company happy. We don’t consider ourselves pinups,” Riviera said.

Costello, who ends his appearances at the Beverly Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard Sunday, is scheduled to appear next week in San Francisco. Other cities on the tour are: Chicago, Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

Shelly Selover, director for West Coast publicity for Costello’s record label, Columbia Records, said the photo ban was a “management decision”--one with which, she intimated, Columbia may not have been in total agreement.

However, she said, such bans do occur “periodically”--naming the CBS recording group Wham! as an example. Generally, Selover said, groups try to ban news photographers because “they just plain don’t like the photos. They feel they are not complimentary.”

Los Angeles public relations veteran Bob Gibson endorsed the idea of performers restricting photo access to their acts while acknowledging that it is “unrealistic” to exert total control over photographers. Most acts and their publicists will settle for the “illusion of control,” Gibson said.

What often results, however, is that reputable photographers accept the restrictions while others ignore them, Gibson said.

“Anyone with a $50 Brownie can take a photo from the eighth row,” Gibson said, noting that at this week’s Costello concerts photos almost certainly were “taken somehow by someone” despite the stringent press restrictions.

“I don’t know anyone who’s outright banned,” photographers, although restrictions are fairly commonplace, said Paul Wasserman, a Los Angeles public relations executive who represents the Rolling Stones and Linda Ronstadt among others.

He said restrictions often are imposed because photographers distract bands and that performers hope to limit the commercial use of their images.

The latter, say publicists and photojournalists, is a much greater problem with free-lance rather than staff photographers of major publications. As a general rule, free-lancers retain rights to all their photos and make their livings by selling pictures over and over.

Craig Herndon, photo assignment editor for the Washington Post, allowed that musicians and other performers have an economic interest in protecting their public images. However, he said, when a performance is open to tens of thousands of young persons the public, too, has an overwhelming interest in knowing and seeing what’s going on in the concert hall.

Herndon, who spent 12 years as a photographer, believes that rock musicians “have an awful lot of influence and impact over an immature and impressionable public.” As a parent as well as a journalist, he said he wants to know what’s going on. “If something (in an act) smacks of Naziism or Satan worship, people have a right to know that,” he said.

Norman Welton, New York photo assignment editor for the Associated Press, said that concerts often have restrictions of one form or another but “the ones we have the most trouble with are rock musicians and rock concerts.”

AP photos of a major New York or Los Angeles rock ‘n’ roll event often may appear in as many as 80% of the association’s 1,400 member newspapers, Welton said, and even relatively routine concert pictures may run in one-fourth to one-third of AP’s papers.