The nice Bopo speaks... As promised, we present our interview with Lance Mercer, one of the two amazing photographers for Place/Date, the Pearl Jam photobook. We hope you enjoy his insights and the photo-book. Happy Holidays!

Kat: Lance, we were wondering what your background is like?
Lance: As far as photography goes, I started taking photos with a little 110 camera when I was 12 and then in high school I got really into it. I felt like it was something I wanted to do. When I was 17, I started a class at Seattle Central Community College and did the commercial photography program there and that was my credit in the book. I graduated in '84. While I was in school I was already a huge fan of music. From when I was a young age, I started going to shows when I was 12, mainly punk rock shows and it was pretty obvious to me that music was what I wanted to do and since I wasn't a talented enough musician and couldn't be in a band on stage, I decided to take photos of bands on stage. [laughs]

K: This was all in Seattle?
Lance: Yes, it was all in Seattle. So I combined the two. It started to work out because I was friends, I mean off stage specifically, with Pearl Jam. I was friends with Stone just because he was part of the scene, and Jeff as well. They were doing the Green River thing and I was doing other bands. The scene was small enough; we all knew each other. Never shot Green River but once Mother Love Bone started... I had done lots of photos of Malfunkshun with Andy and I was really close with Andy. Jeff approached me and I started doing photos for Mother Love Bone, their first publicity stuff. There was a lot of bands prior to that that I'd shot. I had shot Soundgarden and Skinyard and all these bands, Skinyard had Jack Endino in it and Soundgarden hadn't been signed yet, so then when things started to happen, I just evolved with the process of what they were going through. The Love Bone thing got me in the door with some record companies and I did the album cover for that and for Apple. And the publicity photos that were happening. And at the same time, Charles was doing Nirvana and all these Sub-Pop bands so he was doing this whole other side of the music scene and so I was actually a pretty big fan of his work because he started doing it a little bit before me.

K: So you knew each other?
Lance: Oh yeah, we knew each other really well. I was small enough that there was never any competitiveness between the two of us. It was always that we were doing what we loved to do basically. And he's so easy going, he's not like that at all so it was pretty easy. He was doing the live thing really well and I mainly started doing live stuff. I mean I was definitely doing studio stuff but the live thing was something I loved just because of the energy.

K: You prefer it?
Lance: Yeah, I totally prefer it just because it's not contrived at all and it didn't require me to be responsible for how they were set up and put them in positions. I did do that stuff but live was...the band seemed to prefer it and I liked it a lot more and there wasn't any...there's only a few live shooters. It's not something that people aspire to be.

K: It sounds like it would be pretty incredible.
Lance: It's pretty exciting to be at the front of the line basically. Of course with Andy, he was such a "star" on stage and with that whole "landrew" persona that he took on, it was amazing to watch the transformation. He was another person, basically. That was great and I could shoot him in any situation and he was amazing to shoot. So that kind of led to that and Jeff and I really worked well together on the Apple thing and other ideas that he had and we seemed to click right away. Then from that came...then Andy passed away and the Temple of the Dog thing happened and I worked with Jeff on that a little bit. I was always in contact with these guys. We were all friends.

K: You mentioned that you knew Stone first. Do you remember who introduced you?
Lance: I knew him through various other people. I think Regan. Regan Hagar might have, but I mean he was...ya know...he was out in the scene. I did know those guys in Green River and I'd go see them. Didn't like them but...[laughs]

K: An early incarnation of things to come...
Lance: Yeah, I was being a stupid punk rocker. I was hanging out with this gang called the Bopo Boys. I was considered "the nice bopo." Jeff always made jokes about that because those guys didn't like the Bopo Boys but I was the nice Bopo.

K: What was that?
Lance: It was like a skateboard gang. We just ran around and drank lots of beer and got really stupid. Yeah, I was the nice Bopo. That's what people thought of me with my big red Afro. Jeff almost made me put something like that in the book, actually, but I didn't want to so... So the nice Bopo got to know everybody and I got a lot of work that way. I mean I was just out on the scene. "hey, i'm a photographer, let's do some stuff." The Love Bone stuff...I finally saw some money from doing photos, which was a pretty incredible feeling, you know? Especially at that stage in my career because I didn't think I was good enough at all to get paid for something. It's the evolution of being an artist, I guess. And to this day, I think it's really important to keep that line open of going to see bands and being excited about the music and taking photos, getting work because you're out there in the scene and socializing. That's the way a lot of this stuff works. It's who you know but at the same time, there was a passion for the music. I mean, if I do photos for a band I don't like, it shows. I have to be into what I'm doing, otherwise it just doesn't pan out. I'm not happy with the work.

K: I can tell how you feel about Pearl Jam.
Lance: Yeah, I mean the energy was...the first publicity shoot, right when they started down in this rehearsal room, right when Eddie came aboard...and there's a couple photos in the book that got used quite a bit, the first publicity stuff. They're all standing against the wall. It was a long time ago. I think it was in '91 or something.

K: And the one of Eddie in front of the Pete Townshend backdrop?
Lance: That was right around the same time. That's the recording of Ten, on a break from the recording sessions. There is another photo of them standing and Eddie's in the front making a little smirk and he's wearing a leather vest.

K: The one in the back of the book with Dave Krusen in it?
Lance: Yeah, that was the very first publicity session. We did that session in ten minutes. That got me in, too, with Eddie and with those guys at the end because there had been a little bit of a break after Andy dying and I did it really quick and we had a lot of fun just keeping it real simple. They liked the way I worked and I liked what they were doing and they wanted to keep it in the family kind of thing...keep it simple, keep it local. And then the big one was going to Europe in '92 where a majority of the photos...that's where it really started to pay off and I really got a sense of their success when I was out there. Being in Seattle, I had no idea. There was always a feeling that these photos were going to be used for something like this. A lot of photos basically got saved and archived until something came up. There's a couple that got used but the majority of them have never been seen before. That was the gist of me going out just documenting it. I mean there's still tons more that haven't been seen. We had to do a serious edit.

K: Maybe it's possible we'll see a chapter two some day?
Lance: That's up to the band.

K: It would be great.
Lance: Oh yea, I would absolutely love it. I mean this is definitely the band and me and Charles all working together. It wasn't just me and Charles doing it. I mean that's the beauty of how they work. They're very involved. I mean look at all their packaging.

K: Are any of them camera-shy?
Lance: Well, some aren't at all. Let's put it that way. [laughs] That's a weird thing. I don't think any of them are camera-shy. I think I tended to be camera-shy sometimes. There are times when you feel free to take photos and then there are times when it's not ok to take photos. That's the whole thing about being out and wanting to get close to what's going on is that you have to be able to read the situation.

K: The photo on the cover...
Lance: They didn't know I took that. That's the thing is to be able to take the photos. The difference between knowing when someone takes your photo and taking a photo without them knowing it...there's a huge difference. You either get someone mocking to the camera or doing what they do normally and I'd rather see what they do normally and they had no idea. That's the thing about shooting live too. They're so wrapped up in the moment that they don't notice when I'm taking photos or if they're recording or if they're doing what they were doing there, which is rehearsing for some shows. After ten minutes, they don't know what I'm doing. They know I'm shooting photos but they don't know when I took one. So that was a perfect example of them in a moment and they were working some stuff out and they had no idea that I took the photo.

K: How does your photographic style differ from Charles?
Lance: Oh good question. Ah I don't know, you tell me. He is really, he's really good at shooting live stuff. We both are but I think he's really, he shoots very simply. Does that make sense? He's very clean. His style now is... That's a very tough question. That's something that...I've always believed that you could line up ten different photographers and shoot an apple or whatever and everyone's going to get something different, that's the beauty of it. To compare us or to try and figure out what's different, I don't know. We're similar in a lot of ways. I admire his work a lot and I can't say exactly why, I think he almost gets in there a lot more than I do.

K: There's a lot of drama to the photographs. The one I'm looking at now is the silo for the Vs shoot. How did all that come about?
Lance: Very spontaneously. I just had a light inside the silo and we were messing around. I mean that was a beautiful trip. We went out to the Olympic Peninsula and just stayed at some cabins for the weekend and took photographs.

K: So that wasn't during the Vs recording sessions?
Lance: We actually made a separate trip on a weekend. It was Jeff's idea to go to the peninsula and I dragged a bunch of equipment with me. And I had this light in the silo at night. It was this burned out abandoned silo thing that we found on the side of the road. It was real creepy and we did a bunch of photos of them inside with the light and we had just turned it around and they started doing these shadow figures. They were goofing off. They were goofing off in between photos and I just turned around and saw it, and adjusted the light a little bit.

K: Then it was totally unplanned.
Lance: Yes, I think that's, no, you see Charles doesn't set stuff up either. He's very...I can get back to that question. Even though his photos are very spontaneous he's still very stylized in what he does and I'm a very...hmm. I don't know how to explain it... I don't want to say this without... I'm not trying to say that he isn't, but I feel like I'm more of a journalistic photographer, maybe? Even though he captures the moment, he's a photo-journalist but his photos are still kind of stylized. His framing is really good. He has almost a graphic kind of sense to the way he photographs. He'll take his time and line things up so that the composition is a lot different than mine, whereas I just shoot. I like to have real spontaneity to my photos. I'm not trying to say it's a better thing or worse thing, it's just a different thing.

K: Then there's the photo of Mike, guitar god, asleep on his guitar...
Lance: Yeah, he's not asleep on his guitar, he's pretending to be. He was playing and it was in the middle of the show. We didn't set that up. It was just a moment, a decisive moment.

K: Why was it decisive?
Lance: I'm ripping off a famous photographer, nevermind. [laughs]

Lance, part two