Mick Rock
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Mick Rock is a living legend. He is best known as a music photographer who captured iconic images of 70’s musicians, such as David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, when they were hitting their peak. Most recently he’s gotten some press for his famous pictures of JT Leroy and friends. Well maybe not JT himself or herself. Rock had many photo opportunities with Laura Albert [a.k.a. Speedie or Emily Frasier] along with the JT gang of people like Winona Ryder and Rosario Dawson. When it turned out that the author JT Leroy didn’t exist Rock was unaffected. But many of his photos of the “author” have made it into a booklet included with the DVD of Asia Argento’s heart wrenching film adaptation of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.

Buy the DVD of The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

Daniel Robert Epstein: Why did you get involved with the DVD?

Mick Rock: I think it was two-fold. One I had all the pictures of JT or whoever, taken over five sessions and two the head of marketing head at Palm Pictures Sal Scamardo and I had become friendly. We have been talking about other projects over the last few months so they knew that I had the pictures. I don’t know that they would have known if I hadn’t known Sal Scamardo. I don’t know that they would have realized that I had this collection.

DRE: I can’t tell from some of your pictures but it seems that you caught JT at a party with some other people.

MR: It wasn’t quite like that. That really came later. The first pictures I ever did that were JT related were actually the paperback book cover for The Heart Is Deceitful. It was a shot of a young man’s body with a black hand on it against a dark red background. That was actually the first thing I did and then I did some pictures at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. They’re the exotic looking ones with the wild painted background. Looking back I realized that Emily was always at these events. Then I did a shoot in Napa Valley and that’s where I shot Asia. Then I did another shoot in New York in the park. Then I took pictures at a reading at the Public Theater of The Heart with many people there like Tatum O’Neal, Shirley Manson, Debbie Harry, Rosaria Dawson. One of those is in the booklet.

DRE: Did you ever suspect that JT wasn’t real?

MR: Not really. I bought into it all completely like most people did. I don’t know that anybody really questioned it. In fact when there was first talk in New York Magazine last year about it being a hoax, I realized that Emily or whatever her other names are, was actually around for all those sessions. I bought into it completely but then I tend to do that anyway. If I’m going to photograph you, I’ll buy into anything, I’m interested in the pictures. I’m not a critic or an investigative journalist, I’m a celebrator.

DRE: I interviewed Dita Von Teese and she said she felt duped.

MR: I guess some people feel betrayed. But I see it through a different prism. I think Andy Warhol would have loved it especially the blonde wig and the shades. Creative people are often manipulative. It recently surfaced that there has been a painting by Norman Rockwell that was found to be a copy and the original had been hidden away. The owner of the painting was going through a divorce and did not want his wife to have it. All the bloody experts out there bought it. Suddenly one or two are saying, “Well I thought there were one or two things about it” which is a load of old rubbish.

David Bowie’s real name is David Jones. When I first met him he was going around with the Ziggy Stardust persona. Part of the art of JT’s books is that there was this persona running around. Emily’s gone on record saying that she’s never been anywhere near the southern states of America so this is all imagined. People buy into the image and that fascinates me. People talk to me about doing realistic photographs but I never really gave a damn about that. For me, reality is intensity, for me a great work of art is art, it’s not reality, it’s an artificial thing.

DRE: You’ve taken many pictures of Asia Argento, what makes the camera capture her so well?

MR: She’s just got one of those presences. She’s a natural in front of the camera and she enjoys it too. She gets the art of play, she understands play. I really like her as a person. I think she’s a real character and she certainly photographs incredibly well.

DRE: You’ve got the Glam book out now.

MR: Originally it was called Blood and Glitter. It actually was out in an earlier incarnation and it was repackaged in recent times for a new American release. But of course I have a Blondie book, an Iggy book, the Bowie book in both limited edition and commercial, I’ve got a Queen limited edition. I’ve got a Rocky Horror one that’s in Germany at the moment in German and English and we’re just figuring out US and UK and other deals.

DRE: What’s the Rocky Horror one?

MR: I was on the set taking pictures.

DRE: What was the set like?

MR: I haven’t actually been on so many movie sets, so I don’t know how different it was. They all seem a bit different for me. Those guys were a lot of fun and I think Richard O’Brien, who wrote the foreword to my book, said that what he took from the pictures was that they all seemed to be having a lot of fun and he was very glad of that.

DRE: Do you see a lot of swing in musicians towards what musicians were like in 70’s?

MR: Yeah, that’s why I’m shooting a lot again. Clearly in the modern world there is no real latest thing. There’s so much visual information out there all the time; that everything is up for grabs. But certainly all that glammy punky stuff looks modern enough and certainly appeals to a lot of modern rock and rollers who’ve been working with a lot in recent times. I’m having a lot of fun running the past and the present along parallel lines.

DRE: So you feel that today’s bands can compare?

MR: The issue isn’t really about comparison. This is a different time. Is there good music out there? Of course, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Killers, The Raconteurs, Foo Fighters. I think there’s a lot of great music out there. It’s very hard comparing periods. When it comes to fashion, certainly a lot of the fashion designers are very interested in the 70’s. So it’s a good time for me. I get a lot of respect these days. Back then I was just a rock and roll photographer now I get to be an artist. I’m doing the same thing but perspectives have changed. Maybe part of that is also having hung around long enough to get recycled. There are hardly any photographers from the music business back then who are relevant to the current rock and roll landscape but I’ve become relevant again and I’m really happy about that. For a long time I tried to escape from my past, but after I nearly died ten years ago and I was broke, when I started to reconstitute myself suddenly there was all this interest in that period and I was able to go through my past to get back to the present.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Mick+Rock/