While holding the editorial reins at RIP Magazine between 19, I relied on one of Mick’s most notorious lens-wielding contemporaries, Ross Halfin, for several pages of stunning live and session hard-rock imagery each issue. Melody Maker, Trouser Press, Kerrang!, Q - your work was ubiquitous.” “The British mags were always my favorite back in the day,” I babbled. Droplets of Homer Simpson drool trickled down my jaw as one pop culture institution after another flashed across the smartest phone in the tri-state area. We moved on from immortal LP covers like Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack and Iggy Pop’s Raw Power to rare session shots of Pink Floyd’s crazy diamond, Syd Barrett, Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry and others. Kodachrome footsteps to eternity.įor the life of me I can’t recall the exact anecdote and won’t disrespect by inaccurately paraphrasing, but Mick said that Bowie was annoyed by something and didn’t want to get into the red box for the money shot. “OK, mate, hold onto your water.” Next several shots we see the thin white yellow topped duke standing on the sidewalk, outside the London booth, on approach. Come to think of it, back then, neither did I.” We both laugh. “Played it repeatedly pissed off my mom big-time, and she had no idea what ‘ Wham bam thank you, ma’am’ meant. “Oh, man, the Ziggy Stardust phone booth I remember the day I brought that album home from Moby Disc Records on my bike,” I wiggle. “You’ll like this one,” he grins modestly, acutely aware that his audience of one is about to be stunned. My heart flutters as his fingers do the walking into my distant musical past. Mick swipes the screen and Lou appears, the iconic black-and-gold graphic Transformer album cover. So begins the intimate, four-inch gallery parade. The once coke-sniffing mad-dog-turned-tea-totaling Englishman pulls out his early generation iPhone. I cozy up to the curly haired bespectacled guest of honor. The elegantly appointed, leather and lamp-lined lounge is sparsely populated. Mick is eccentric but really cool.” Talk about a towering understatement.Īfter a quick meet and greet and the nosh with the future Oscar-winning actor and alt-rock frontman, Mick, Susan and Dean and I settle onto a large, soft sofa and order tea.
“We’re going out with Mick Rock and his videographer pal, Dean Holtermann,” confirms west-side Susan. Beam me up, Scotty!Ĭhilly clear night in Gotham, 9/11/11, 10th anniversary of the day the scary monsters blew up Wall Street, a perfect evening for an unscripted odyssey through the glass canyon unfolded.
You and I introduced him to Mick.” Thirty Seconds to Life on Mars. “We went to the Bowery Hotel and ran into Jared Leto. Her memory was sharp as the focus on Mick’s single lens reflex. When the news broke online of Major Rock’s ascension, Susan and I began exchanging messages about her dear old legendary friend and that one enchanted evening a decade ago in lower Manhattan. I took her to Book of Mormon when it opened on Broadway, but it’s been years since we’ve seen each other, except on Instagram. Lou and his wife, Laurie Anderson, resided nearby. “Holly came from Miami F.L.A., hitchhiked her way across the U.S.A., plucked her eyebrows on the way, shaved his legs and then he was a she.” Transgender, transformer, transcendent ticket to the nuanced dark side of rock for a sheltered, Star Trek-addled, vinyl-spinning nerd growing up in the least wild side of la la land. I remember blaring Lou Reed’s Transformer out the window of my gold ’65 Chevy Malibu, slowing down as I approached the back side of Grant High School in Van Nuys so the unenlightened knucklehead jocks on the playground could clearly hear the do do do do do do do do do do’s of “Walk on the Wild Side.” My cassette deck was shitty sounding but extremely loud. While my first pubic hairs were sprouting, shape shifting, axe-slinging aliens were landing across Planet Rock, leaving one musical monolith after another. It varies, depending on the circumstance and subject.” Mick’s openness and ability to relish the moment enabled him to flow within the unfolding groove, snapping off split second frames, capturing a brief and exciting essence of evolving stardom for us all to vicariously devour. “I don’t think I have a style,” he once said, “but I do have an attitude. Like the family photographer at a holiday gathering, he was integral to the 70’s British rock scene, capturing moments that only the honored visual documentarian of the inner sanctum has access to. Michael David “Mick” Rock’s photography is a visual mural of my teens.