Assignments from music publications like Sounds and New Musical Express came pouring in, and by the mid-'70s Simon had amassed a lengthy portfolio. She could capture a live show in all its caterwauling glory, but she also had a knack for befriending the right people, well before anyone else was paying attention to them. She hung around a store called SEX, which was owned by Malcolm McLaren, and she had a bird's-eye view of the birth of the Sex Pistols when McLaren and guitarist Steve Jones began to assemble the band.
She also was chummy with an unheralded guitarist named Joe Strummer, who, during a rehearsal one day in 1976, asked her to swing by and take some publicity shots for his new group. She obliged, and later that day the Clash had the image that would grace the front of its first album, an iconic shot of the three band members scowling in what looks like an alley.
"He was a deeply serious person," Simon says of Bob Marley, whom she photographed at the Lyceum in London in 1975, left. "The guy inspired me to be as serious about my work as he was about his." Her new book, "Rebel Music: Bob Marley and Roots Reggae," features about 400 shots of Marley and other Jamaican legends.
(Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)
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"She just sort of came out of nowhere that day," Paul Simonin, the band's bass player, says on the phone from England. "We hadn't had much experience being photographed and here was this glamorous American girl, snapping away."
A pattern developed with the Clash that would figure later in Simon's work with Marley, as well other performers over the years. She genuinely liked her subjects, and she hung around them long enough to figure out how to commit their unique energy to film.
"She got to know us as friends," says Simonin. "If you'd never seen a Clash concert, you didn't really know who to look at -- someone once described us as three Eddie Cochrans, which is flattering -- and you can imagine it's difficult for someone to photograph. By the time she saw us onstage, she knew who was going to jump where and she could react in a split second."
"It was like working with a friend," says Patti Smith, who collaborated with Simon on a book of lyrics and photos called "Patti Smith Complete." "I remember I went to visit William Burroughs on my 30th birthday and we just hung out and I had my motorcycle jacket on and he gave me a hug and she took some pictures and they endure. She gets the shots of life."
Eyes Wide Shut
In 1976, Simon was sent to Jamaica by Chris Blackwell, the owner of Island Records, to shoot photos for an album by Bunny Wailer, a former band mate of Marley's. One day at the Kingston Sheraton, Blackwell challenged Simon to a breast stroke race in the 50-meter pool.
She lost, to her surprise -- "I was a Junior Olympic swimmer!" -- but after she toweled off she spotted Marley, grabbed her camera and started shooting, still in her bathing suit. In one of those pictures, Marley is looking over her shoulder, smiling and relaxed in a brown jumpsuit. The shot was later immortalized as the cover of "Kaya," and subsequently chosen by a renowned French photo agency as one of the standout images of the 20th century.
It was just her first adventure in Jamaica. Simon once asked Peter Tosh, another former Wailer and a star on his own for many years, to take her to a neighborhood in Kingston where she could take some street-life photos.
"So he takes me to this place called Orange Street and he's, like, 'This is a good place for you. Okay, bye.' And he got back in the cab and he left. And I took a photograph of this woman selling vegetables, and people started chasing me. I mean, the whole street started chasing me. It was really scary. And I just thought, 'Thanks, Peter!' "
That run for her life aside, Simon found that photographing Tosh, Marley and Bunny Wailer was sheer joy.
"This will probably sound unspiritual," she says, apologetically, "but Marley had one of the greatest faces you could ever photograph. He had killer cheekbones. He had this light in his eyes. Does that sound corny? There was just something sexy and charismatic about him."
Onstage, Marley would sometimes run directly toward her, just for laughs, and mug a little for her camera. The only trouble was that the guy's eyes were always closed when he sang, deep in a rasta reverie. So she asked him for a favor: at least once a show, open your eyes and open your mouth at the same time.
"And he did when he sang 'Open your eyes' from the song 'Exodus.' From then on he'd sing that line with his eyes open, so I knew that I had one chance per night."
