Tempe Nakiska: The first thing that hit me was the holographic cover. Was that your idea?
Mick Rock: No no, no no. It was actually Benedikt Taschen’s idea, credit where credit is due. They came to me about that and I thought fucking sounds cool to me, let’s do it.

TN: I was watching an interview about how you got in to photography and you were kind of mucking around with Syd Barrett when you guys were mates and that was kind of the beginning of your music photography, how did that all kind of come about?
MR: Something to do with going to Cambridge, you know, people get a bit dotty up there. But it was the late 60s and there was LSD and that was really the cornerstone because I was a Modern Languages scholar, so my education was not at all visual, it was entirely literary, and uh [pause] then I took a tab of acid and grabbed a mate’s camera on a trip and that started the whole thing, I certainly wasn’t looking to be a photographer, I didn’t have any photographer heroes, and I don’t think it was a very promising thing to do because there weren’t that many photographers around and there weren’t that many outlets, but if it hadn’t been for rock ‘n’ roll I definitely would not have been a photographer, no way.

TN: Yeah, yeah
MR: People went on to ask me, “Do you wanna be a fashion photographer?” and I’d say, “No, I don’t wanna be a fucking fashion photographer I don’t give a shit about that, I just do not wanna have to get up before noon every day!”

“I took a tab of acid and grabbed a mate’s camera on a trip and that started the whole thing.”

TN: There you go you found your calling [laughs].
MR: It found me I think. I think it found me. And it’s something to do with this silly Mick Rock name too, people would go, “Ooh it sounds like it’s what you’re supposed to do Mick,” you know? Some dodgy shit going up in the heavens that’s for sure.

TN: It’s call of fate [pause] so you were mates with Syd Barrett and then um and then in the early 70s you got into David Bowie?
MR: Yeah ’cause someone gave me a copy, a pressed copy of Hunky Dory [pause] that got me very buzzed and I had written a couple of little… I mean, I did the very last interview that Syd Barrett ever did in ’71. It was actually a half page in Rolling Stone magazine, but that was his very last interview and I think he was the beginning of my photography. But he was also the beginning of a period when I would also do interviews for a few magazines – it was a good idea for them because they got to pay one person for the pictures and for the copy, and they got it cheaper that way. Me, I made a bit more money than just doing one thing or the other. So that was that, and I had done a couple of album covers before I’d met David. I mean I had been around for a couple of years so I had [pause] I mean you didn’t need to make a lot of money back in those days you could live in the middle of London quite cheaply, and in New York I found.

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