This story originally appeared on Billboard.com in September 2015.
When photographer Mick Rock was first approached by TASCHEN Books in 2012 about doing a David Bowie book, he dismissed the idea. He felt he and his longtime friend had already done that project with 2002’s Moonage Daydream.
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However, editor Reule Golden continued to pursue the project and three years later, The Rise Of David Bowie, a gorgeous coffee table limited edition collection starting at $700 is about to be released.
The book was celebrated Wednesday night in Los Angeles with a party at the publishing house’s Los Angeles gallery. Before a scene that brought 600 people into the venue and a line down the block, Billboard sat down with Rock and Golden to discuss what made Bowie such a great photography subject and what it means to get Bowie’s blessing on a project.
How long has The Rise Of David Bowie been in progress?
Mick Rock: It was actually Reule here that contacted me and said, “How would you feel about doing a book on Bowie? And I thought, “We’ve done it, David and I did it years ago.” He said, “But we want to do ours.” I was being dismissive, but I had other things on my mind. Suddenly a contract popped up. There was nothing wrong with the contract other than the fact I wasn’t going to do the book without getting David on board. So I approached him, I never presume with David — David’s David, he does what he wants…. Once he said yes, everything was signed on pretty quickly. The big thing for me, and for David, was that the book had to have a load of previously unseen pictures.
What was the response when David said yes?
Rock: I don’t presume, even though I’ve known him all these years. I was certainly not going to say, ‘Well, David will do this.’ They were prepared to do the book with just me.
Reuel Golden: Mick has a very special relationship with David and it meant that right away it put everything on a higher level because it’s great that you do a book about a star as big as David Bowie, but it’s even better that it’s endorsed by him. You know that what we’re doing he respects and that he values it. So it was extremely important and if it wasn’t for Mick I’m not sure we would have got his approval as quickly as we did.
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Rock: David knows I’ve always treated him and the work with the respect. I do, the same with Lou Reed. I don’t show every picture that I have, I think discretion is also important.
Golden: The only thing he really insisted on was new photos.
Rock: That was the thing that I insisted on. So that took a little while for me to dig and edit and we did a load of new scans. The thing about this book that makes it different from the Moonage Daydream book is the origination — the scans were done from dupes and proofs ’cause that was 2002. For these, I went back to all the masters and I personally supervised everything, the colors, bringing up details that were inherent in the image, to get the full flavor you had to take advantage of the digital situation. So these pictures are the finest renditions of these photos. Yeah, it’s a very different book from Moonage.
How did these images change for you looking at them after so long and via their design?
Rock: They were buried, the pictures. What you have to understand is the pictures, even at the time, most of them, 95 percent of them had no application. The music business was radically different. What were you gonna do with the pictures with few music magazines? Obviously you could get one maybe on a record cover, but today there are so many more magazines; two, there’s cable television and three, the culture has been overwhelmed by rock and roll whereas back then it was still an outsider. You could actually shock people back then, I don’t know how you shock them nowadays. It’s more like Disneyland, Miley Cyrus running around with a bunch of balloons, it’s cute, it’s not really gonna upset anybody that much.
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David, Lou and Iggy [Pop] upset a hell of a lot of people just like the punks that came after them did. Nowadays I’m not sure what you do to shock people. In terms of Miley people might get bent, but it doesn’t change the culture. What David, Lou and Iggy in particular did was radically change the state of the culture — not only the music itself, not only the imagery — and they fucking worried people, as they should have, because they were up to serious mischief.
It was based on the art so can you consider it mischief?
Rock: You wouldn’t, but you were not my parents or anybody’s parents. Long hair wasn’t so controversial by ’72, however fucking bright red hair shaped like that was a bit controversial and Iggy with his silver hair and Lou singing about heroin, Iggy, “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” and David Bowie, just look at the way he fucking looked. He wasn’t in drag, some people used to call it drag, although you don’t hear that now. David was shocking just by looking at him because nothing else had ever looked like that before. Then of course this was this androgyny thing, bisexuality, might not have upset you or me, but a lot of people it did upset. This is the early ’70s, it changed everything and it certainly musically changed a lot of things too. I always think of that trio as a force, of which David was like the master of ceremonies right in the middle of it, they changed the culture in so many ways. They were bigger than the music biz and they were outsiders. David had had a little bit of a buzz with “Space Oddity,” originally released in ’69.
Are there artists TASCHEN would want to do this kind of book in 25 years?
Golden: I think Prince is somebody who would be an incredibly interesting iconic book. He’s also got that enigmatic quality.
Rock: The thing about David, as a one-shot with one photographer he looks so different all the time. This is only two years but he looks so different. I had no perspective on it until now. This book is a mother fucker. I wasn’t that interested going in, I’m very glad this gentleman here hustled me and we put it together.