Everybody knows what a necrophiliac is. I would like to modify the word to include people in social media who have their right hand index finger (if they are right-handed) in preparation to press send the moment (almost instant the ability of these ambulance chasers) they find out that Keith Richards has gone to the other side. The blurb sent will be about that occasion, years ago, when Richards dropped a cigarette on the stage floor and the writer of the blurb picked it up and smoked it.

Then there are the odd people who celebrate and wish happy birthday to people long dead. “Happy birthday Frank Sinatra!” and then add that he would have been 83 today.

There are those who write how they miss their grandmother who might have died 30 years before.

I would call this empty content.

As an example of content there are these two men, Gene Simmons & Iggy Pop who are both much alive. Few will write about them. They are alive.

Gene Simmons

In 1983 when I photographed Gene Simmons I first understood the difference between the actor and the person. Gene Simmons the actor posed for me and scared me to death. He personified evil. Then with a smile in his face he told writer Les Wiseman and me a curious story. While living in New York City this scenario often repeated itself. The door bell would ring. Simmons would open the door to face a couple of geeky teenagers with a question in their face. Simmons would simply say, "Try next door," and would then close the door. Simmons's neighbour for many years was famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. The teenagers never suspected who the affable man without makeup really was.

Iggy Pop

In 1989 I had the good fortune to photograph a drug free and sober Iggy Pop at the Fours Seasons Hotel in Vancouver

I decided to use a dramatic spotlight low on him for my picture and when I looked at him through my viewfinder I recalled a photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1939 in Geneva when he was covering the League of Nations Assembly. His subject was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister. In retrospect that photograph of the man with an annoyed and malign expression proved all too prophetic of horrors to come. I mentioned this to Iggy (it sounds odd to write Mr. Pop or even Pop) who immediately became very excited and told me he had been to the very house in Geneva. He then posed for me and gave me the closest malign expression he could muster. For a gentleman like Iggy Pop this was hard to do but I appreciated his gesture.