BEWARE! TRANSCRIBED FROM RADIO!
Mick Rock immortalized the world of music, capturing the images of rock's most celebrated icons. His work both defined and documented an era and his peerless portraiture of rock's aristocrazy is singular. "I was simply in the right places at the right time," the tall, lean Rock says modestly. "And fortunately, I always had my camera." With his disheveled halo of hair, his woollen cardigan and his erudite manner, Rock could be mistaken for an off-beat University professor. BBC talked with rock's Rock. TRANSCRIBED FROM RADIO
BBC: Mick, as a disciple of all things rock, I have to ask you, what's your poison?
MR: Nothing like breaking the ice, Nicky. My poison is my camera. I had a heart surgery five months ago--- Nicky Horne buts in--- 'and I can see a that nasty scar just below you shirt coller'--- yeah, well, my smoking days were cut short. Pity. So my poisons are limited to tea and cameras. For sessions I use a Hassblad, although my earlier pictures of Syd Barrett, Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop and David Bowie were taken on a Nickermatt.
BBC: You throw those name off with such casual ease, you 'ol buggger! But come one, who was your LEAST favorite subject?
MR: Now you know it's never very nice to single anyone out.
BBC: You've got to give us more than that! Do you have a list of whose naughty and whose nice? Surely you have a list.
MR: I suppose my anwser was rather bland. Elton John springs to mind.
BBC: I can't say thats surprising. But just for our listeners, why?
MR: He wasn't a very pleasant person to work with. He asked me to shoot his portfolio in... '76 I believe, and he was just... well, he wasn't what one would describe as an affable personality. I also worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on a number of occassions and those sessions usually wound up in frustration. John was a difficult man to photograph because he was very conscious of the camera. He was accutely aware of his image as an intellectual. Catching John in a candid moment was nearly impossible because even his "candid" shots were premediated. For a photographer, that can be frustrating.
BBC: Lou Reed praised you as the Rock Laurete. You must have managed the impossible and not gotten on the wrong side of him.
MR: Well, not quite. I missed Lou's wedding due to a flight mishap- the plane couldn't take off due to inclement weather, and he stopped speaking to me for ten years.
BBC: Ten years! You weren't the best man were you? Or the photographer by chance? (Mick laughs) You know, every time the White Stripes have been on the BBC, they've made a public plea for you to photograph them. Come now Mick, there must be some fresh, young things you want to work with?
MR: There really isn't. I mean, you've got some prat like Liam Gallagher wandering around like he's Johnny Ramone when really, he's just a thickhead with no sense of humor. His aggression isn't romantic or iconic, it's violent and immature behaviour. He's not controversial, he just reacts without thinking. And sadly, that seems to be the state of the arts. All surface, no feeling.
BBC: Favorite subjects?
MR: David Bowie was exciting. He loved the camera, which was a lot of fun. I first met David in '72 and we had a lot of things in common, aside from the common goal of his album cover. He said to me, could you make me look like Syd Barrett, which we both knew wasn't feasible. But David is just such an agreeable person. He's very secure in who he is and he's willing to experiment with his looks, without fear of recrimation. Truman Capote was another. I couldn't figure him out, he had a certain heaviness about him. He carried a lot of emotional baggage, and it came through in his photos. Very haunting. Debbie Harry was interesting because she was a centrefold girl with brains, which goes against the very notion of a centrefold girl. But my favorite subject was Syd, who, ironically, was one of the few people I was always seeking out, rather than the other way around. He was a mad, bohomien poet, but he always had the quality of a candle about to be snuffed out at any minute. A truly wonderful man. Syd was the opposite of John Lennon, who was so conscious of his own image. Syd was a baby infront of the camera, natural, at ease. He would happily go about his painting or his pets or whatever, his guard was always down. But when he looked into the camera and you'd snap- the negatives would send shivers down my spine. The depth and width of his eyes are what cameras were made to take pictures of. They just shot out at you, lazer deep.
BBC: You seem to be the only link between Reed and Barrett. Were they at all alike?
MR: Not at all. They were both precocious talents, which is significant. I think in Lou's case, you can trace influences in his work. Muddy Waters, Carl Perkins, Bob Dylan, LaMonte Young, which obviously came from John Cale. Lou was more of a collagist. With Syd, theres no influence. He was completely original, like an explosion out of the ocean. You just couldn't figure out where his brilliance was coming from. Pink Floyd are, to this day, unequailvaocally his band, as both Roger and David have acknowledged, which gives you an idea about what an impact he could make. I've never seen anything like his talent. And his paintings were unbelivable. It was a totally unprecedented thing. He wrote and recorded a classic album at the age of 19. He didn't have the psychological stamina and he wisely removed himself from that scene. He knew that if he hadn't, he would have died. Syd would clearly not be alive today because there was a fragility in his psyche. Which only added to his beauty, in both the physical and the personal sense.
BBC: You've always maintained that his withdrawl was a conscious choice.
MR: Yes. From my conversations with him, he would always drop hints. It was very apparent to me. He said once that he just wanted to write music, play his guitar, sing in the forests, which is a very Syd notion. He didn't like being tied down to record companies, being forced to play the same 9 songs, being treated like he was special, which was funny because he WAS special. Unlike Madonna or Paul McCartney, who have invested a lot of time in creating themsevles, Syd was a real artist, nature made him in the mould of Blake and Cezanne. I guess he was just too real. I'm still crazy about Syd, as is my wife. We think of him often.