Ex-KISS Photographer: YNGWIE MALMSTEEN Is 'The Biggest A**hole I Ever Met'

September 3, 2006

Sweden's Poster-Story web site has posted an interview with photographer Barry Levine, where he talks about his work with KISS and how he destroyed a hotel room and tried to set it on fire with guitarist Ace Frehley in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1976. An excerpt from the chat follows:

Q: Which photo session of yours is your all time favourite?

Barry: I would say my all time favourite photo session was with KISS on the Empire State Building in New York City. That's the one that's in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame and the one that's in the Best Of Rolling Stone magazine.

Q: What's the story behind that?

Barry: I said, "Hey, let's go shooting on top of the Empire State Building." We were doing some photo shooting all around town in New York and we had cleared it with Empire State Building, but we didn't reckon on going a level above. We just thought we were going to shoot it on that level that everyone attends. Then the managers of the building said "you know that there is one more level above that's a private level". We went up there and it had a very little ledge. It was a thin ledge, but if you fall over you fall like maybe five feet to another ledge, a wide ledge. But because of the perspective I was shooting, it didn't look like that. It looked like we where right on the very edge and because it was an overcast day I wanted a colour shot that was very monotone, cause they had black and white and that's what I got. It's colour but it looks monotone. I had two of their bodyguards hoist me up on their shoulders so I could shoot from that perspective. We had very little room to shoot. That was my favorite photo of all time.

Q: Which is the worst one?

Barry: The one we did in NYC with the colored mylar from behind them look great but [the session with] these little boxes they were standing on which were supposed to be lit but they weren't. That was the worst KISS photo session ever.

Q: But the worst of all?

Barry: Yngwie Malmsteen, what an asshole. The biggest asshole I ever met. I threw him out of my studio. He wanted me to shoot him on a throne with all these nude women and I said that's the dumbest idea I ever heard.

Read the entire interview at this location.

(Thanks: KissNews.de)

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