Collection
Meet the Legends Explore the gallery and open each artwork to read its story. Formats, prices and availability will be added progressively.
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© Torleif Svensson
A-ha – Golden Rose, Casino de Montreux, 1986 Casino de Montreux had a different feeling from the big festivals. It was closer, more concentrated, almost elegant. A-ha were young, precise, and already on their way to becoming bigger than the room they were playing in.
© Torleif Svensson
INXS – Golden Rose, Casino de Montreux INXS had a physical energy that went straight through the camera. There was something both confident and dangerous in their expression, especially in Michael Hutchence. He moved as if the stage already belonged to him.
© Torleif Svensson
Genesis – Golden Rose, Casino de Montreux, 1987 This was the first and only time I saw Phil Collins with Genesis. He was fairly calm on stage, and not a great deal happened in front of the camera.
© Torleif Svensson
Sting – Golden Rose, Casino de Montreux, 1988 Sting is one of the artists I have photographed many times over the years. This time at Casino de Montreux, he had long hair. One may have opinions about that.
© Torleif Svensson
The Cross – Golden Rose, Casino de Montreux, 1988 When I photographed Roger Taylor with The Cross in Montreux, there was already a long Queen story behind the image. The first time I photographed Queen was in London in 1984, when Roger was sitting behind the drums and I did not even know his name.
© Torleif Svensson
Eurythmics – Golden Rose, Casino de Montreux, 1986 Ahead of the Revenge world tour, Eurythmics played a concert during the Golden Rose Rock Festival in Montreux. They were a band I photographed several times, but Annie Lennox was always the one who drew the camera towards her.
© Torleif Svensson
Bruce Springsteen – Stockholm Olympic Stadion, Stockholm, Sweden, 28 May 1993 Bruce Springsteen is hard to resist when the whole band is pushing heavily behind him. This was during the 1992–1993 World Tour. The guitars, the organ, the drums and not least the saxophone build a wall of sound that almost becomes physical.
© Torleif Svensson
Cher – Stockholm Globe Arena, Stockholm, Sweden, 18 May 1992 I would have liked to photograph Cher more times. She is one of those artists where age almost does not show. Beautiful when she was young, and no less striking to photograph later.
© Torleif Svensson
Depeche Mode – Stockholm Globe Arena, Stockholm, Sweden, 6 October 1990 The first time I photographed Depeche Mode was during a week in London in 1984. The same trip on which I also photographed Queen. The camera bag with the rolls of film was stolen, and the images disappeared before I had even seen them.
© Torleif Svensson
James Brown – Stockholm Globe Arena, Stockholm, Sweden, 4 December 1993 James Brown was a little outside the rock music I most often photographed. More funk and soul, with a band that worked as much with rhythm as with power.
© Torleif Svensson
Lenny Kravitz – Roskilde Festival, Denmark, 30 June 1990 Roskilde was something else compared with the large indoor arenas. A festival means raw music, long days, rain and mud – although that particular year it was more dust than mud.
© Torleif Svensson
Metallica – Stockholm Globe Arena, Stockholm, Sweden, 18 December 1992 Now it was no longer rock in the usual sense. Metallica came from heavy metal, with roots in thrash metal, harder and more relentless than much of what I was used to photographing.
© Torleif Svensson
Michael Jackson – Stockholm Olympic Stadion, Stockholm, Sweden, 17 July 1992 In 1988, through the Pepsi connection around Michael Jackson, I had been promised the chance to photograph him at Madison Square Garden in New York. I bought a cheap flight pass with several stops. My first time in the USA.
© Torleif Svensson
Miles Davis – Gröna Lund, Stockholm, Sweden, 28 June 1989 Gröna Lund is an amusement park in Stockholm, but that evening the place carried something else. Miles Davis did not give much away from the stage. No unnecessary talk, no big smiles. Just that trumpet.
© Torleif Svensson
Paul McCartney – Stockholm Globe Arena, Stockholm, Sweden, 1 October 1993 Another Beatle. I only began photographing artists in the eighties. By then The Beatles had long since broken up, and John Lennon had been shot.
© Torleif Svensson
Prince – Johanneshov Isstadion, Stockholm, Sweden, 22 August 1986 Prince was something else. Not just rock, not just funk, not just soul. He moved between all of that, and made it his own.
© Torleif Svensson
Ray Charles – Gothenburg, Sweden, 3 July 1992 Another artist outside the rock world I most often photographed. But most people recognise Ray Charles immediately: the sunglasses, the piano, the voice.
© Torleif Svensson
Ringo Starr – Gothenburg, Sweden, 2 July 1992 At last I got to photograph a Beatle. Not the same feeling as standing in front of Paul McCartney the following year, but still: Ringo Starr. The drummer from The Beatles, right in front of the camera.
© Torleif Svensson
Rod Stewart – Stockholm Globe Arena, Stockholm, Sweden, 20 April 1991 Rod Stewart had already lived several artist lives when I photographed him on the Vagabond Heart Tour. Faces, the solo career, the hair, the suits, the football feeling.
© Torleif Svensson
Roxette – Stockholm Globe Arena, Stockholm, Sweden, 20 September 1991 Roxette were already big in Sweden, but now the world had caught up. The story of how they broke through in the USA is almost unbelievable. An American exchange student took Look Sharp! home from Sweden and got a local radio station in Minneapolis to play The Look. Then things started to move.
© Torleif Svensson
Tina Turner – Stockholm Globe Arena, Stockholm, Sweden, 17 May 1990 Tina Turner filled Globen three nights in a row, 17–19 May 1990. Foreign Affair: The Farewell Tour was her seventh concert tour, but the farewell was not really a farewell. She would go on to make four more major tours.
© Torleif Svensson
U2 – Stockholm Globe Arena, Stockholm, Sweden, 11 June 1992 What I remember most strongly from U2 in Globen is not only the band, but the image of the two Trabant cars suspended above the stage. Zoo TV Tour was more than a concert. It was screens, signals, irony, East and West, rock music and media noise all at once.
