Craig Legg

- Henry Miller once said, "As a writer, I never get up in the morning and admire what I've done.

It's never good enough."

But as a painter, I can get up at three o'clock and look at what I've done.

It's great.

You know, I always wanted to be a writer.

I wanted to be Dostojevski, Kerouac, Melville.

That's why I joined the Navy.

So for 20 or 30 years, I was trying to be a writer and I became a poet and I was in the spoken word scene.

But 10 years ago I sat down and said, "I'm gonna teach myself to paint."

And I've been painting ever since.

I did collage and assemblage before I started painting, 'cause I knew I could stick things together and do that.

But painting is a little bit more of a learned talent, skill thing.

And so that takes a lot of practice.

I grew up in Homewood.

I was an athlete, not an artist.

Graduated Shades Valley '68.

I grew up going to the armory shows and the "Shower of Stars."

We did not have the infrastructure back then.

In fact, we didn't even have, nobody had really much of a live music scene until the seventies, music scene as we know it.

And when all these teenage bands started, the only place they could play, the places they mostly played were fraternity and sorority lead outs and dances, and then high school sock hops and dances.

Mainly, I get ideas from books.

In the art world, you know, people are big on themes.

Since I have no training in the art world I'm a little bit different.

And so, I look for themes, but I'm really into history in addition to all of the above.

So about eight years ago, I conceived my first, what I call, "trading cards series."

And they're small paintings that have the essence of the classic trading card, where you get the player on the field or at bat or something and then you get a little bit of text: name, team and all that.

And I've done "History of Birmingham Artist," I've done "History of Birmingham Jazz," and you know, this, I think this "Rock and Roll" is about my eighth series.

But trading cards are all, they're quirky and you get, instead of the players, The players are the most important, but it takes other things.

It takes the infrastructure.

So in the series, you know, it's 80% or so players but the infrastructure is real important.

By which I mean radio DJs, radio stations, record stores, record store people, venues are very important.

Sound engineers, sound studios, promoters, concert promoters, all that stuff is vital.

My job was made much easier by a book that has been written on the history of Birmingham Rock and Roll by UAB Prof, Andre Mallard, who's in the history department.

He also writes books on the history of recorded music and devices.

Now, there are no photos or images.

So my research, the hard part, was I had to go online and Google everybody, and try to find a pic of them, from which to do a painting.

But I learned that to just, I don't need to follow the photograph exactly.

I just need to know if, like, the bass player is tall and looks a certain way, or the singer's blonde and looks a certain way, I can kind of wing it after that.

And at one point in the seventies, I just started casting people up against iconic record cover albums.

I really am into local history and this actually helps me study it.

You can read one book or so, and it might or might not stick with you, but if you constantly, over a year's time, deal with it you'll really see how it fits.

I've had a lot of good comments on this from people, like I say, who've not read the book and it's just a different element.

They're seeing it and all through reading the book I was wondering what some of these people looked like.

So it helps to see, you know, what they look like.