The stories behind Mick Rock’s five greatest shots

Music photographer Mick Rock, who was dubbed The Man Who Shot the Seventies, has died aged 72. Born in London in 1949, Rock studied modern languages at Cambridge and stared taking photos in 1969. He described his process as intuitive rather than pre-designed. “I am in the business of evoking the aura of the people. I’m not necessarily looking for a literal reality, I’m looking for something that’s got a bit of magic to it,” he said. So what are his most magical shots?

Lou Reed, London, 1972

Lou Reed’s second solo album, Transformer, is instantly recognisable due to its Mick Rock cover photo. The monochrome, androgynous image of Reed came about by accident when a photo that Rock had taken of Reed at a concert at the Scala in London’s King’s Cross in the summer of 1972 became over-exposed and fell out of focus when he was printing it in his darkroom. But the former Velvet Underground frontman “loved the result”, Rock said. Reed manages to look both vacant and intense in the shot. It took Rock 12 attempts to reproduce the accident for the final larger print used for the album cover. The picture is not dissimilar to the ones Rock took of actor Tim Curry on the set The Rocky Horror Picture Show two years later.

Iggy Pop, London, 1972

David Bowie introduced Rock to both Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. This picture of Pop bathed in golden light and wearing his trademark silver trousers was taken, again, at the Scala in King’s Cross in the summer of 1972. It became the cover of the 1973 album Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges after Rock was contacted by the band’s label CBS, who bought all the shots he had taken of Pop and co for a couple of hundred dollars. All the sleeve designer had to do was add some mock-horror typeface to say who the album was by. Pop initially “hated” the picture. However he eventually came around. “The photograph is beautiful,” Pop said at the time of Raw Power’s rerelease in 1997. “Nobody would’ve had the guts – I wouldn’t have had the guts, I was too serious about myself, too earnest – to put that cover out like that.”

David Bowie, London, 1973

This picture taken at London’s Earls Court in 1973, the year after David Bowie released his album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Rock was Bowie’s official photographer at the time, and this picture captured Bowie’s Ziggy alter-ego in all its other-worldly glory. It was this period in which Bowie was propelled to global superstardom. It’s the details that this picture what it is. Speaking earlier this year, Rock talked about the importance of hair. “Hair is part of the things that define a generation and I do think I’m very much a child of my generation. It’s odd but you can’t quite picture Bowie or Iggy without hair and still being ‘Bowie’ or ‘Iggy,’” he said.

Queen, London, 1974

This classic image of the four members of Queen in a diamond formation is probably best known from the music video for Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975. But that scene was a recreation of the cover of the Queen II album from the previous year, shot by Rock. The band, who were not particularly famous at the time, had wanted an image that grabbed people’s attention. “They realised that if you could catch people’s eyes then you could get them interested in the music,” Rock said. Queen’s Brian May said today that he was “sad and shocked” to learn of Rock’s death. Of the photo, May said: “The Marlene Dietrich-style lighting applied to the four of us (only ONE light source above for the whole group, gave us an enduring image.” The diamond set-up was also recreated in Queen’s video for One Vision in 1985.

Debbie Harry, New York, 1978

Rock moved to New York in 1977. He took this picture of Debbie Harry for a magazine called Viva around the time that her band Blondie released their Parallel Lines album. Talking about the shoot in 2014, Rock described Harry as a “timeless beauty who remains to this day the most photogenic subject the rock music scene has ever produced.” Things didn’t quite turn out as planned. Viva, which was published by Bob Guccione, the owner of erotic magazine Penthouse, folded before publication of the Harry issue. But a year after the shoot, Rock was contacted by Penthouse and asked if the shot could be used on the cover of that magazine instead. He and Harry agreed. “She found it hilarious that she was on the front of a high profile men’s magazine, clothed in black up to her neck!” Rock said.