Who? Is that a rock star? No, he is not a rock star. He is not a guitarist, or piano player, or a drummer, or even a singer. In fact, I’ll bet you have never even heard of him. David Michael Kennedy is a photographer. So, why am I writing about a photographer in a story about rock and roll? Well, Kennedy has been very influential in the world of rock over the years. He has photographed many famous artists such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Muddy Waters, Debbie Harry (Blondie), and Charlie Daniels to name a few.
He is also very well known for taking photos for album cover art. His photos have been on the album covers of groups like Cheap Trick, The Charlie Daniels Band, Billy Idol, Georgia Satellites, and The Isley Brothers. Today’s story is about one of the groups that used Kennedy’s photograph for their album cover.
As the story goes:
The year was 1981, and a group of Canadian musicians by the names Mike Reno, Paul Dean, Doug Johnson, Scott Smith, and Matt Fredette were working on their second album. Only a year earlier in August of 1980 they had burst onto the music scene with a debut album, which hit #13 on the Billboard charts, titled “Loverboy”. That album cover featured a person dressed in all black standing in front of a red background, smoking a cigarette. Sound Familiar?
Well, for their second album, Loverboy hired David Michael Kennedy to take the cover photo. They had an idea to do a photo of a person’s back side in leather pants. Of course following the release of the second album, “Get Lucky”, both Dean and Reno wore red leather pants throughout the whole concert tour for the album. But which one wore the pants in the cover photo shoot, Reno or Dean?
There has been a lot of speculation about this over the years. On the one hand, Dean was known to turn his back to the audience in concert (and in videos) in his red leather pants and put his hand behind his back with fingers crossed just like on the album cover. But he was 35 years old and the pants he wore in concert looked more baggy than those in the cover picture. So, on the other hand, due to Dean’s baggy look, many people concluded that it was actually Reno on the cover. The mystery went on for more than twenty years until one day in an interview in 2012, Reno revealed the truth of the matter. You see, Kennedy’s stylist went out in search of red leather pants but was only able to find one pair in all of New York City that day. And, after returning with the pants it soon became clear that nobody in the group, or any of Kennedy’s models, were small enough to fit into them. So, it actually was neither Dean nor Reno in that cover photo.
In 2014, Kennedy told an interviewer that later that afternoon, his 13 year old daughter, Tymara Kennedy, came home from school and saw the pants sitting there in the living room. She asked if she could try them on and sure enough, they fit. They then hired a six foot tall Argentinian male model who nobody even remembers the name of and photographed Tymara wearing the red pants with the crossed fingered hand of the male model posed right behind her. At the time the band decided to keep the identity if the pants wearer secret, so they put a credit on the back of the album that just read “Bottom by: T.K.”
Tragically, 10 years later Tymara was killed in a car accident. The cover of “Get Lucky” was the only time she ever modeled. She was very proud of that picture though, and it is said that it was her favorite picture in her house. Kennedy said that revealing the true identity of the wearer of the red pants was kind of a memorial to his daughter Tymara.
“Get Lucky” reached #7 on the Billboard album charts that year, and featured “Working For The Weekend” and “When It’s Over”. The cover was chosen as one of the 50 best Canadian album covers of all time. And from that point on, those red leather pants became Loverboy’s signature.
I hope you learned something today that you didn’t already know, but if not, that’s cool to. Come back and see me real soon right here at As The Story Goes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsgBpsNPQ50
Did you know that you can have my blogs delivered straight to your inbox? Just visit my home page and sign up. https://as-the-story-goes.com/home/
AS THE STORY GOES 