Miley Cyrus, Hollywood CA, 2021. I met Miley about seven or eight years ago. She bought one of my photographs–a shot of her godmother Dolly Parton. We clicked. She’s a lot of fun, you know, and I just love everything about her. Since then, we’ve done a bunch of things together. When I organized a concert for a gallery, Robbie Krieger from The Doors performed, and Miley did too.I was working on a project with Sunset Sound Studios, and found out that Janis Joplin had recorded the Pearl album at their historic recording studio on Sunset Boulevard. I heard a wild story about her walking in after lunch with the lyrics to Mercedes Benz written on a napkin, and recording it right there. The studio still looks the same—same wood paneling, same funky vibe—they even have the original mic she used.That’s when it hit me. What if Miley recorded a cover of that song at Sunset Sound? Same mic. Same room. I called her up, and she was in. We set it up and filmed it, stills and video of her recording Mercedes Benz just like Janis did.It was kind of freaky. She said she’d actually been channeling Janis—she even had the same tattoo on her wrist as Janis’. It all just clicked. After we filmed the song, I got a shot of her in the famous reverb room at Sunset Sound—it’s this room with the perfect acoustics for reverb and echo—where some of the most iconic music was recorded before you could do all that in digital post.It was such a powerful moment. Here was Miley, at the top of her game, channeling Janis in the same place, with the same mic, creating something timeless. It was special. Truly.
