Richard Young tells of photographing ‘lovely’ Amy Winehouse

Celebrity photographer Richard Young has told Desert Island Discs how he was invited to photograph Amy Winehouse when she won her first Grammy awards and “loved her dearly”.

Young, who made his name photographing stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Mick Jagger and Diana, Princess of Wales in the 1970s and 1980s, told the BBC programme how he was asked to take photos of Winehouse, who was unable to attend the awards in the US in person.

Young said: “I loved her dearly. I was on my way to a hotel in St Martin’s Lane and my phone went off, and it was Universal Music’s PR saying to me ‘we’ve got this thing going on in Hammersmith at Riverside Studios, and Amy’s here. There’s a possibility she might get one or two awards. We would love you to come down and photograph it’.”

Young told Desert Island Discs presenter Lauren Laverne that Winehouse’s mother Janis was also present and called out to him.

“She said ‘Richard, you look very hungry. Have another bagel’.

“And Amy shouts out ‘he’s fat enough as it is, he can’t have another bagel’.

“I was a little bit overweight. But anyway, so the evening progressed like that, and at the end, she won five Grammys, and she was absolutely amazed by the whole thing.

“And she was on such great form. It was so lovely to be working with her. And she cuddled up to her mum on stage and I got this most incredible photograph where her mother is crying and she’s in the arms of Amy Winehouse, her daughter.

“And it was just so beautiful.”

Choosing Winehouse’s song Rehab as one of his desert island discs, he added that it “tells the story of the night”.

Young, who became friends with many of his subjects including Freddie Mercury and George Harrison, also told the programme that he had a good relationship with Diana.

He went on: “My relationship with Princess Diana was actually very, very nice.

“My favourite picture I’ve done of her, I thought was one of the very first pictures in a black Elizabeth Emanuel dress.”

Young, who was expelled from school at the age of 14 with his best friend Mark Feld, who later became known as Marc Bolan of the band T. Rex, was also acquainted with Leonard Cohen, and said he loved musicians as he wanted to be one himself.

Among his other song choices was Cosmic Dancer by T. Rex and Positively 4th Street by Bob Dylan.

He told Laverne: “Most of these artists I’ve chosen today to play, I’ve had some kind of personal relationship and personal contact with, and they accepted me into their homes, into their work environment and everything else.

“So it’s been a very interesting journey.”

He added: “The most important thing about a photograph is, if it doesn’t tell a story, then it’s not really worth having.

“You know, I mean, some of the things I’ve done over the last 52 years, some I regret, some I don’t regret.

“A lot of people know that they can trust me and they like me, so I’ve been very, very fortunate.”