In April 1993, celebrating our 8th anniversary, like we’d forgotten to do it the month before (entirely possible) because the launch was March 1985, we ran a cover of upcoming actress Adrienne Shelly kissing Evan Dando of the Lemonheads. I mean, really kissing. No-one, we were delighted to discover, had ever shown two people with their tongues in each other’s mouths on the cover of a mainstream magazine before.
This was for our story the A-Z of Alternative Culture, and S was for sex. Which, honestly, is not exactly alternative, in that it is one of the most common things people do (or at least should be).
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I, ahem, came up with the concept of a sexy kiss between two sexy people — again, this is not precisely the most innovative concept in the history of publishing, but, even in 1993, it was provocative, and that’s what we wanted. Pretty much always.
I asked Loren Haynes, a brilliant fashion and art photographer, and for a while our Staff Photographer, to do the shoot. This is one of the outtakes. By this point, they weren’t even listening to Loren.
How did you approach the shoot?
I felt the best way to get the shot to work was to find an actress trained and experienced in creating that reality for the camera or stage; in this case, it was both, with no narrative to follow other than we need to believe they embody enough passion and sexual chemistry to sell and capture that kiss. It took hours, but we got it.
I don’t remember who selected Adrienne. It wasn’t me. Whoever it was, it was a great choice.
How did you make them comfortable?
Preparation, preparation, preparation. I requested to be put up at the same hotel as Evan so we could spend time together the night before. I needed to get him comfortable with what we were looking to achieve. He was nervous about the kiss, being shirtless. We hung out in his room and spoke about his songwriting, he played a couple unfinished songs on his guitar.
Adrienne had had starring roles in two independent films, The Unbelievable Truth in 1989 and Truth in 1990. I asked her to be the assertive one, and seduce Evan and that I felt that Evan would fall right in. It didn’t take long for the two to click. It had to not be forced. That was the challenge and you can see in this shot, it clearly worked.
Adrienne brought to the shoot exactly what was needed and we got an image that would live as a moment in time, for years to come. It’s been written about often and it’s included in the HBO documentary Adrienne.
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