Thursday, December 2, 2010

When they were young: One photographer's intimate album of rockers before they got wrinkly

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:31 AM on 2nd December 2010

Photographer Mick Rock is known as the man who shot the Seventies because of his close links with that decade’s music gods.

His wide-ranging lens captured The Rolling Stones and David Bowie — for whom he was the official photographer during much of the singer’s Ziggy Stardust days.

Still active in the music scene now, Rock’s recent subjects include Lady Gaga, Bono and Kate Moss. To mark Rock’s success, his images are now in a retrospective exhibition in London. Here, the Mail looks at some of his most enduring pictures...

David Bowie and Mick Ronson, both then 26, eat lunch in a British Rail dining car between London and Aberdeen. It was 1973 and Bowie was on tour with Ronson, during which time Rock travelled across the UK with them. It is one of his most popular images.

A 22-year-old Madonna, then an unknown, pokes her tongue out. 'She was never the retiring type,' says Rock. This photo was taken in 1980, two years before the singer released a record

A mellow Ozzy Osbourne, aged 27, in 1975. That day, he arrived two hours late for the shoot. 'He said he was a very deep sleeper, so difficult to wake up.'

Phil Collins at the age of 23 - and before he lost his hair. This was taken at a Genesis group session for a magazine in 1974

A 32-year-old Mick Jagger during the Rolling Stones' world tour in 1975. 'The lips and the flying hair give him that 'rooster look',' says Rock of his favourite photograph

'She was the Marilyn Monroe of Rock on that day,' says Mick Rock of Debbie Harry. Taken in New York in 1978, she was 33. It was the year Debbie's band Blondie took off with the release of their album Parallel Lines

Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols in 1976. 'Their obnoxious attitude was already news in the UK,' says Rock. 'And word was creeping into Europe'