Fused - Archive - Mick Rock

With a name such as his New York based ex pat photographer Mick Rock's destiny was laid out before him. With a career that has charted 40 years of popular music and culture the 'photo laureate of glam' and court photographer of Ziggy Stardust has partied with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop and lived - just - to tell the tale. A series of heart attacks during Christmas 1997 almost killed him, resulting in a quadruple heart bypass and a conversion from chemicals to yoga. The last ten years have seen a renewed hunger for his work with contemporary artists citing him as an influence and designers such as Paul Smith establishing entire product lines based around his imagery.

The point when it first occurred to me that photography might actually be something that I'd spend my life doing was when I got ten quid for doing a couple of pictures of the guy sitting on my right. I thought hello this means I don’t have to get up before noon if I don't want to.

It certainly didn't grow out of ‘oh this'll be a good profession I can see me making a puddle of money from this 50 years down the road’ because there wasn't anything in it in those days. My initial pictures were of friends and girlfriends and when someone offered me a tenner to take pictures of a band I thought; "well, that's good", because in those days, a tenner was worth a lot more of course.

I had a friend who I'd known from my first year at Cambridge, he was from Cambridge, but didn't go to the University. I knew him through mutual friends, he was a guy called Syd Barrett. He got me to shoot some pictures for an album called the Madcap Laughs. But I looked at the pictures of Syd and thought to myself, this is clearly what you are meant to be doing, because the pictures themselves stand up so I was shooting album covers early on. That one I got 50 quid for, and I was “wow!"

What really put the nail in the coffin for my sort of future was meeting David Bowie in 1972 (after he'd just done his mutation into Ziggy Stardust). We found we had things in common. We swapped tales. I had tales of Syd Barrett. He had tales of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed who he had spent time in New York with and had got to know them.

Recently I've shot The Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian and The Killers - the triple K's. To me it's important that it's not just a bunch of old queens, I need a bunch of young queens too. I like the Killers, they're kind of innocent. They are really sweet actually. I've now shot them three times and they haven't been overwhelmed by all the success they've had. I though they were an English band until they strolled in the door.
Everyone wants to talk about David and Iggy and Freddy and dur de dur...and Johnny Rotten and Debbie Harry and I'm quite happy to talk about them but I'm having fun with these new guys.

Johnny Marr he's in my exhibition too... I'm a big fan of Johnny's he's like a rock and roll prince in Manchester isn't he? Everybody I see nods their head at Jonny. I think number one is obviously the talent and two, his demeanour - he's a very open kind of person and I think very bright too - not just about the music but he's very bright about the business and an excellent communicator.

The legacy of the Smiths is kind of like the legacy of the Velvet Underground - that's a compliment that I know Johnny will love. Their legacy is actually bigger than their record sales at the time. They've cast a very long shadow. I was so embroiled in America that they didn't really get too much below the surface at the time but I've come to realise that they were a unique and influential force and that force is probably stronger today than it's ever been. I'm sure that Johnny and Morrissey could probably live off their Smiths residuals for the rest of their lives without even thinking about it but I'm delighted to have gotten to know Johnny in recent years. I'm very fond of him.

I'd love to work with Bob Dylan, but I'd loved to have worked with him at his prime period when I'd not picked up a camera. If I could have shot Dylan at the time of Blond on Blond… I actually know the guy Jerry Shatstag that actually shot that shot - he lost the actual album cover shot. He has the very next frame but he hasn't got the actual frame that was used on that shot. And I would loved to have shot John Lennon but you see I wasn't really in pursuit of anything very obvious. I got embroiled in this whole kind of glammy punky stuff, even though I also did shoot people like Genesis. I guess they came under the theatrical rock thing...and also Ozzy Osbourne and Bob Marley and Tina Turner and Rod Stewart, but these are not the images I'm known for. I'm known for the culty stuff and that even includes Queen. At the time I shot their famous image - not only shot it but also art directed it, conceived it, the whole bit, which Brian very nicely acknowledges in the DVD of their first album of the first volume of their greatest video bits...the Bohemian Rhapsody image was based on my Queen2 cover.

Rock and Roll Icons: The Photography of Mick Rock at Urbis, Manchester
29 September - 8 January 2006.

Mick Rock is the focus of a Channel 4 documentary of his life and work, scheduled for transmission in November 2005.

Paul Smith launches a new Mick Rock furniture range in September 2005 visit www.mosleymeetswilcox.com/rock.