I went to see the Mick Rock documentary yesterday. Worth a look, although it is a bit superficial. For someone who hung out with Bowie, Lou Reed, Queen, and Mick Jagger, Rock doesn't have very much to say about the artists or their eras. We also don't find out very much about Rock himself, apart from some brief biographical info. The documentary is stronger when talking about the art of photography and, indeed, it looks beautiful.
The Queen bits:
- Queen approached him to do the photos that ended up on Queen II. Rock by that time, was a well-known and successful photographer of people like Bowie, Syd Barrett, and Lou Reed.
- As Queen's first album wasn't a commercial success, they wanted to embrace glam as that had become very popular.
- Rock said he dealt mostly with Fred as he was the creative one.
- The band weren't that comfortable in the photographic studio. Rock claims this was only the 2nd time they had been officially photographed, and they were frequently back and forth to the mirror.
- The iconic image of Fred came about after Rock showed him a pic of Marlene Dietrich and Fred immediately was drawn to it.
- The band had some discussion whether or not to use the white band picture on the cover instead of the black (Rock said the white makes the look like Santas at Xmas)
- Other stuff: in Rock's archive there is a box marked 'Queen'; he has a large wall hanging of the Queen II cover 'which never went into production' so presumably that's pretty rare and maybe the only one in existence; there were 2 pics of Fred and Mick Rock, and of Mary Austin which don't look like they are from the Queen II photo session.
This documentary was made in 2016 and some of this info is already out there because of his book an various exhibitions, but hopefully there is some new info here for anyone interested.
"For someone who hung out with Bowie, Lou Reed, Queen, and Mick Jagger, Rock doesn't have very much to say about the artists or their eras"...
Oh no ! I was hoping this would be a really an in -depth documentary or something, not only on Queen, but also on Bowie &Co. ...your summary does not sound promising though :( Argh !
( there's some pretty good interviews with him on the internet, so one may have thought this doc. / movie would go even more into details about Queen etc).
Let's move on then to Neil Preston's memories...link