It was hard to imagine that we'd ever be able to smuggle a photograph of the late, great singer/songwriter Nick Drake into the pages of TDN, but thanks to the multi-talented Julian Lloyd, we have been presented with the perfect excuse to do just that.
Lloyd, longtime manager of Staffordstown Stud in Ireland for Kirsten Rausing, retired at the end of last year, and his career in bloodstock was honoured with a Special Recognition Award at the recent ITBA Awards. Perhaps unbeknown to many in the horse world, however, is the fact that this was merely the third or even fourth chapter in the career of Lloyd, who started out working as a local newspaper photographer before moving to London to assist a fashion photographer in the ultra-hip days of the Kings Road in the 1960s. During that time he mixed with musicians and actors before turning his hand to racehorses and training. Those two worlds collided when he trained several winners for rock legend Eric Clapton, but Lloyd retained a love of photography and is about to unveil an exhibition of his work in London in May.
“I'm not a photographer, I'm a farmer with a camera, and this is just what I've accumulated,” says Lloyd modestly of a collection which includes portraits of various members of The Rolling Stones as well as the actor John Hurt. The accompanying portrait of the widely lauded Nick Drake, who died in 1974 at the age of just 26, has achieved iconic status, having been used on the cover of Drake's posthumous album Way To Blue. It was added to the collection of the National Portrait Gallery last year, and Lloyd's work has also featured on an album cover for Clapton's Derek and the Dominos.
“I bought my first camera when I was 15,” Lloyd reflects. “When I left school I worked for a newspaper in Berwick-upon-Tweed, then I went to London and worked as an assistant to a fashion photographer in Chelsea, Bill King, doing a lot of work for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and that sort of stuff. During that time was when I was friends with Nick Drake. When I met my wife we moved to the country and I got interested in horses.”
He continues, “I stopped working at the end of last year and this has always been in the back of the mind. I have gradually been scanning and filing. There are other Nick Drake images that I've had all those years that have never been seen or printed.
“I have a friend who has a shop off the Portobello Road. It's all rather spur-of-the-moment stuff and we're just going to do a pop-up show. But it's not centred on celebrities or musicians, it's really just autobiographical and quite light-hearted. The photos of Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull and co. are really just incidental. The exhibition is a photographic diary in a way.”
Casting his mind back to the ITBA Awards in February, Lloyd, whose equine passion grew after a time living in a horse-drawn caravan, admits that he was honoured to be recognised by his peers in what has been his 'day job' for almost 50 years, with more than three decades spent at Staffordstown.
“It was very touching. It came out of the blue and you could have knocked me over,” says Lloyd, who has recently moved to Shropshire.
“My time in Ireland means an enormous amount to me. I'm back in Britain now to be near the children but I was quite broken-hearted about leaving Ireland and I miss it very much. We went there initially for six months for me to do a season with Tim Rogers at Airlie [Stud] and it was 47 years before we left.”
In Swedish-born Kirsten Rausing, an avowed music fan, Lloyd had a kindred spirit in more ways than one.
He says, “She always claims to have learnt English through Tattersalls catalogues and Bob Dylan lyrics.”
The exhibition Julian Lloyd Photographs 1963-2021 is at 2 Blenheim Crescent, London W11 1NN, and runs from May 11 to 21.
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