They were the giants who walked the earth—The Rolling Stones, Queen, David Bowie. And if any of these names take up real estate on your CD or record shelf, then you’ve probably seen photographer Denis O’Regan’s work.

The illustrious English photographer has shot all those rock legends, and more. Thin Lizzy, KISS, Duran Duran…the list goes on. O’Regan was the official tour photographer on many a world tour, and he’s known for documenting the punk and New Romantic movement with his—film, and then exclusively digital—cameras.

But the 57-year old didn’t start off in the rock-and-roll watersheds. Although a music fan since young, O’Regan served stints in the financial districts of London as a broker and underwriter.

That gig didn’t stick, of course. Rows and rows of numbers weren't in O’Regan’s lifeblood—it was rows and rows of amplifiers. On 11.

And sure enough, after he left the banks and offices, O’Regan got Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott to take him on tour; and that’s when one of the most renowned rock photographers around decided the camera was his guitar.

TAXI Hi Denis, thanks for coming onboard with TAXI. You’re one of the most respected rock photographers around, with years of experience working with musical legends. Was it the love for the music or for photography that really got you started?

Denis O’Regan The music started everything really. Then came photography and travel. They all combined to shape my career. The first music that struck me profoundly was of course The Beatles.

I became a huge fan, and when I left school I began to go to concerts such as Queen, Paul McCartney’s Wings (The Beatles had broken up), Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, and Alice Cooper.

I smuggled a camera into Queen’s Hammersmith Odeon Christmas show, and sold a picture to a magazine. Queen, Bowie and Led Zeppelin really inspired me to take up photography having seen them live, but that first sale gave me a commercial kick start.

When I left school I worked in the City Of London—the UK’s financial centre. After a year I took a break to travel around Europe with a friend. I definitely got the travel bug and it’s never left me. I took along a cheap Zenith camera, the same one that I’d used to shoot Queen.

My love for travel led me to tour with Thin Lizzy, when I simply asked Phil Lynott, the lead singer, if he could take me on their tour of Scandinavia. At that point everything—music, travel and photography—came together to create ‘The Perfect Storm’!

A couple of years later, punk exploded out of the UK, and I took the opportunity of easy access to bands.

My pictures were heavily featured in music papers such as NME, which were being read by future pop stars such as Duran Duran. That exposure led me to work with them, and they became close friends. By that time I had also toured with The Rolling Stones, Queen and David Bowie, which was my first world tour.

TAXI Did you ever consider picking up the guitar instead of the camera?

Denis O’Regan Not really, no. I’m not a frustrated musician and I don’t play an instrument. I always thought it would be fun to be in a band, but I was never tempted.

Maybe if I’d gone to art college it would have been different, but my life didn’t naturally head in that direction—I had to make my own luck, since I didn’t have the camaraderie or connections that would have formed at college or university.

TAXI When you first starting shooting, the bands you followed were giants who walked the earth—David Bowie, Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd…the list goes on. From a photography point of view, what’s the main difference between those arena-type bands and those that populate the airwaves today?

The real difference is quite often simply down to the scale of the tours. With the legends it’s all stadium tours (arenas are a lot smaller).

The stages and crowds are huge, and travel involves private jets, police escorts, luxury hotels and so on. Most of the legends became famous at a very young age and haven’t known any other life.

As people I don’t think bands change that much when they’re hugely famous, other than they understandably become more demanding when they’re on tour and have a lot of people around them, who are often the real prima donnas.

From a photographic point of view the sheer scale of those venues demands a different style of photography—quite often the crowd or the venue is a big part of what I’m shooting.

Of course on a big tour there’s also backstage, travel, and location to cover—these are the pictures people really want to see. Only a small fraction can be seen on my site as many of my pictures ended up in the bands’ offices and have never seen the light of day.

TAXI Which is your favourite band to photograph?

Denis O’Regan Difficult. I recently shot young bands Twin Atlantic and The Subways. It was great fun because the stage was small and I could get very close to the bands by shooting from the stage itself.

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I’ve just been touring with Swedish rockers Europe. I’ve known the guys a long time and really enjoy being with them. Most of a tour is spent offstage with the bands rather than onstage, so it helps if you enjoy each other’s company—but not too much!

I loved touring with Thin Lizzy. Those were my first ever arena tours, and Phil Lynott became a good friend. The Rolling Stones was my first stadium tour and I saw how huge rock stars really travel. They had been megastars when I was young so I couldn’t believe I was on tour with them.

David Bowie followed that. I’d been a huge fan and he was a legend, so that was a dream come true; but of course the reality of spending nearly a year together brings everything down to earth. Large parts of a touring year are pretty mundane!

TAXI When taking photos for live performances, how much of your shots are researched—where to stand, who’s the more photogenic musician, etc—and how much of them come on-the-fly or from your instincts?

Denis O’Regan Virtually everything I do is on-the-fly. At festivals I shoot a number of bands that I’ve never heard or heard of.

Quite often my best live pictures on tour are those that I take at the first couple of shows, because I’m caught up in ‘the moment’ and have to fight for my shots because I haven’t seen the show before.

After that I know the set—and probably the band—a little better, so I can move in to capture specific moments that I know should be photogenic, like Gene Simmons of KISS, on my most recent major tour in 2008.

He blows out a plume of flames, which lasts for well under a second. The image looked very 2D when shot from the front, so I stood underneath him and caught the flames going over my head—that worked very well and created depth (it also splattered me with kerosene).

Quite often I stand to the side of the stage at the front edge, and let band members come to me—that way they are prepared and often pose when it suits them. I always try to include the crowd in those shots to capture the atmosphere. I have a lot of techniques that I’ve developed over the years.

TAXI You’re known for keeping up-to-date with the latest advances in photographic technology. Are there still some occasions where you’ll whip out a film camera?

Denis O’Regan Not any more. I bought a Nikon F6 after I’d started shooting digitally, but found myself not using it because I had so much fun and spontaneity with digital images, which I could retouch, convert to black-and-white, and so on.

Some young purists may smile at that, but they probably didn’t have 25 years of shooting film prior to engaging in the digital process! I hope to have at least 25 years of each. Of course there are many thousands of film images in my archive, so I’ve had the best of both worlds.

My first cameras were manual focus, no light meter, no motor drive, and you couldn’t see the images you’d taken until they were processed; there was no quick review of the screen to see how the shots turned out!

Also I had to choose either black-and-white or color for the next 36 shots (a roll of film), and had to use the same ISO throughout. After that, the ease of digital and new technologies in cameras is a wonderful new canvas! I currently use the Nikon D3S which can shoot at high ISO without grain/artifacts.

TAXI I’m sure you’ve had many great rock-n-roll moments in your career. What’s the most memorable one?

Denis O’Regan There are too many.

Walking onstage with The Stones in front of 60,000 people for the first time; traveling on a small wooden boat in Thailand with David Bowie; flying into Knebworth in a helicopter alongside Queen’s helicopter so that I could photograph it over the crowd; Duran Duran’s version of Beatlemania in America in 1984; so many beautiful girls; the crowd’s reaction to Europe’s The Final Countdown; joining the ‘Mile High Club’ in a double bed (I love private jets); after KISS’s 35 year career, Gene and Paul telling me after the first show that I’d shot the best live KISS pictures ever.

There are many other great moments but I’m rushing off to the beach…

TAXI If you could sit any musician or band down, living or dead, who would it be, and how would you shoot it?

Denis O’Regan John Lennon. I never met or photographed him. By the time I took up photography he’d moved to the US.

I would photograph him somewhere sparse, maybe a plain white house like the one he owned in the UK, or on a desert island or in a desert. For some reason I’ve chosen isolated places. I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s because I’d like to have been alone with him and spend time with one of the all time greats—plus why would I want anything to distract the eye from him? He had a difficult life which ended tragically, and it would have been good to talk.

TAXI Any advice for aspiring gig photographers?

Denis O’Regan Technically? Be different. Get close. Choose a high ISO, wide aperture and high shutter speed. Keep shooting—it’s free! Don’t spend half the show looking at your screen! Don’t give all your pictures away, you ruin it for yourself and everyone else.

TAXI What is the word you think will reside in and reverberate through the creative industries over the next 10 years?

Denis O’Regan Mobile.