If you called up central casting and asked for the archetypal hedonistic drug-guzzling 1970s music photographer, the chances are you would get someone who looked a lot like Mick Rock. All attenuated, gangly limbs, anarchic hair and perma-grafted sunglasses, this is the man who, through his celebrated shots of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Syd Barrett, Queen and Debbie Harry – the list seems endless – just about single-handedly shaped the visual history of the music of the 70s and 80s. But what’s astonishing is not so much the sheer volume of Rock’s work and his Zelig-like ability to pop up on the periphery of every happening scene in the 70s; it’s how much he remembers, despite a narcotics consumption that turned his body into a chemical disaster area to rival Bhopal.
The strengths of this immensely entertaining debut documentary feature by Barney Clay are twofold. First, through stylised visuals – a huge lightbox is a striking central motif – the film pays tribute to the heightened drama of Rock’s photography. Second, apart from a few taped backstage conversations with Bowie and Reed, Rock’s is the only voice we hear. This approach, employed so effectively in Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s De Palma, cuts through the platitudinous waffle of talking heads and straight to the meat of story. It’s a technique that only works when the central voice is fluid and distinctive but, fortunately, Rock is a terrific subject.
While De Palma approached his anecdotes like a maniac with a hammer, Rock’s laconic drawl drifts like smoke. He combines poetry, the profane and the prosaic to delicious effect. One moment he’s name-dropping Rimbaud and delivering lines such as: “Photography wandered idly into my life.” The next, he’s deploying quaint Britishisms such as “whoopsadaisy!” (his response to combining LSD with kundalini yoga) and describing Iggy Pop as a “fucking iguana”. Rock’s wildest years – both the man and the music – swirl together into a psychedelic maelstrom of pills, pictures and brilliantly creative swearing.
