MARCUS HANEY: NO CAMERAS ALLOWED
Ted Dwane, bassist of Mumford & Sons, tells us about Marcus Haney, their renegade photographer and filmmaker.
The road is a weird and wonderful place and when it comes to who you share it with, well, it almost feels like you don’t get to choose. Our touring party began with a single tour manager, then after a year or so we had a lighting guy and a sound guy. Now we have techs and riggers, screen operatives and caterers, stage managers and..... Marcus. Each new member of this strange nomadic family seems to find us in the most natural way and it feels almost miraculous how kindred this global collection of humans has become.
Marcus was rolled into its fabric some time after Bonnaroo festival 2010. We had played a really memorable show and met a bunch of our heroes, namely, Old Crow Medicine show, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. It really was a special day for us. Reluctantly we were dragged from the site and back to our bus and our journey continued.
Some months later we were hanging out before a gig when one of our guitar techs came in with a DVD he had just been given by ‘some kid’ at the stage door. We watched it and were amazed. Before long, a laptop viewing station had been set up in the catering area and as word spread, the entire crew made its way down to watch this short but engrossing film. It chronicled Marcus’ journey to Bonnaroo, his daring ticketless entry to the site and his photography-led adventures once he was in. The entire gang approved and Marcus was absorbed instantly.
For a short while things were simple and Marcus shot some gigs. It was as though he had been with us from the start. But suddenly Marcus was presented with a life shaking crossroads. We had asked him to join us on a tour unlike any other. We were planning to travel on a train from Oakland CA to New Orleans with Old Crow and Edward Shape and the Magnetic Zeros stopping to play outdoor gigs beside the tracks along the way. Marcus was preparing to finish school and go do his final exams. You could not have presented an itchy-footed young music-loving photographer with a crueler ultimatum, and to be honest, we didn’t realise the position we were putting him in when we encouraged him to come along.
When I climbed aboard that train in Oakland and saw Marcus, he looked like a man who’d just signed his own death warrant. “I have an exam tomorrow,” he said half nervously and half jokingly. “I hope its in San Pedro,” I replied. It wasn’t. Marcus had just made a huge decision. One that his school and his family found seriously hard to feel good about.
The tour was incredible. The music, the dancing, the liquor did not stop for a moment. And did I mention we were on a train? This thing howled down the tracks leaving a wake of feral abandon as it went. There were 150 people on that thing, each with a bed, most with an instrument, none with any interest in going to sleep. The last night in New Orleans saw us taking over a bar in Frenchman Street. Those guys didn’t have a clue what had hit them! Before long the house band were on the street looking a bit angry and the party that for ten days had been confined to a train, had filled a New Orleans bar. We, the new house band, filled the stage and most of the venue too, playing everything from blues and boogaloo to country and rock.
It had been a journey that none of us wanted to end, least of all Marcus who had to go home and pretend to his folks that he had been really well-behaved and had gained something more valuable than a high school education. Salvation arrived in the next copy of the Rolling Stone Magazine which credited his name to a bunch of incredible photographs that nobody else could have taken. Suddenly his former position as an inexperienced and under-qualified stowaway on nobody’s payroll was reframed as a renegade photographer who gains access in the most daring and unusual way.
Marcus can break into anything. We once removed his credentials from him and kicked him onto the street outside a Canadian arena. Within 20 minutes he had not only arrived back in our dressing room after re-entering through the venue’s front door, but had also casually climbed up on the stage before the first band started to raise his camera above his head and take a shot of the first few thousand excited gig goers waiting at the barrier!
Marcus regularly sneaks ramshackle crews of sleep dodgers into hotel swimming pools in the dead of night. Not content with breaking into Bonnaroo once alone, Marcus recently decided to assemble a bunch of his mates and break in as a group! But it’s not Marcus’ ability to break into places that makes him great, it’s his reason for wanting to. The access and perspective he is so hungry for is what makes his images so unique and compelling and the force that propels this behaviour is deep within him and pure. This is a guy who is proactive in his pursuit of a great photograph. He is a man who not only creates beautiful images, but beautiful moments to take photos of.