I took these pictures right before they caught up with me! Now, I live in New York City -- working on a book. Like to hear from people who love rock and respect eccentric behavior.
Myspace Layouts at Pimp-My-Profile.com / Red&Black
Myspace Layouts at Pimp-My-Profile.com / Red&Black
Photography, secret societies (Masons, Scientology), all secrets really.
For the name code to who they all are, see Blog #2.
The new set of crazy, aimless, useless, doomed people like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Pete Doherty. I love time wasters! There also numerous dead people I would like to meet, but unless considerable advances are made in science (as opposed to TV) I am doomed to frustration, which fortunately I am very comfortable with.
Taylor Mead, Ultra Violet and Danny Fields in from of LaMaMa Etc.
Barbara Cartland, the romantic novelist and step-gradmama of Princess Diana.
Here's the Late (but immortal) Margo Howard-Howard!
Sylvia Miles and Tommy Volume.
This street scene in front of Rodney Bimgenheimer's English Disco on the Sunset Strip is from the long lost heyday of the L.A. groupies. Among the dancers: Lori Maddox, Sable Starr, and me!
Passing the torch - Sylvain Sylvain & Johnny Ruin.
Here is an eccentric moment. The night Esai Morales allowed me to bleach him gloriously blonde! He spent the evening singing "White Wedding"!
Music has shaped my whole life and career - so, I like everything. At home I listen to suicide music - torch singers, Patsy Cline, Edith Piaf, Timi Yuro, Gene Pitney, you get the picture. In public I like the trouble makers --
The day I took this picture of Iggy (1969) in a small club uptown I got the idea just how scary-fabulous rock and roll really is! From there I photographed and toured with The Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Mott the Hoople, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers,
The Roxy in London was the limit!! Also at this time I shot Blondie, Generation X, The Ramones, Sid Vicious
This is me with Linda Clark, Nancy Spungen, Sid Vicious, and Dee Dee Ramone (photo by Danny Fields)
I loved bands that toyed with gender. Obviously Jayne County, The New York Dolls, and Levi & the Rockats.
Here are the Rockats from the cover of the LA Weekly. (photo by Norman Seeff)
And I loved Aleka's Attic! It was a great tragedy that that had to end. But now, all is not lost the flame of rock and roll rebellion burns on with The Star Spangles, The Horrors, The Vivians, Monument, and even The Stalkers. Have no fear, in the Lower East Side of New York and dank cellars around the world new shifty, devious, little minds are tapping their feet and beating their drums and they're coming for you!
Caged, All About Eve, The Women
Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Norma Shearer, and Joan Fontaine prepare for battle!,, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, My Own Private Idaho, Duel in the Sun, Flesh, Trash, Heat, Bad, Women in Revolt, Midnight, L.I.E., So Proudly We Serve, Imitation of Life, Wings, Sunset Boulevard, KeyLargo, La Dolce Vita, Titanic (Clifton Webb/Barbara Stanwyck version), Psycho Beach Party, The Leather Boys, Zulu Dawn, The Girl Can't Help It, The Misfits, Kitty, Destry Rides Again, Don't Bother to Knock, A Place in the Sun, I'll Cry Tomorrow, Dinner at Eight, Stage Door, Ziegfed Girl, The Postman Always Rings Twice (Lana Turner version, of course), Shanghai Express, Shanghai Gesture, Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert version), Suddenly Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone ("How old are you? Fifty?"),Waterloo Bridge, Starship Troopers, The Victors, I'll Cry Tomorrow, Strictly Ballroom
, Finding Nemo, The Thin Man, Lifeboat, Abandon Ship, The Outsiders, Apartment Zero, The Everlasting Secret Family, The Man With the Golden Arm, Billy Liar, Billy Budd, Darling, Lady from Shanghai, Dark Victory, Humoresque, and Gone With the Wind. The list is endless, of course. Here is an intersting phenomenon. When you put leather pants on movie stars, they can't stand up.
It's kind of like putting salt on a bird's tail. So, if you ever want to catch one, now you know how! (left to right: Horst Buccholz, Maxwell Caulfield, Dirk Bogarde). And there are always the STARS!
Like the glorious Frances Farmer. I love the movies.
Coronation Street (the pub is not called The Rover's Return by accident, since we always keep coming back), Eastenders, Desperate Housewives -- and, Dirty Sexy Money and Gossip Girl (I may even learn to use my text phone feature now.). Gone but in Reruns: What's My Line?, Sex and the City, Frazier, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Oz, Burns and Allen, and Brideshead Revisited. Plus I will never forget the Saturday Morning Breakfast Show where they killed that guy on the bungee jump.
All the biographies of those guys who taught use how to crash and burn spectacularly (Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Frances Farmer, Montgomery Clift, Oscar Levant, Truman Capote, Veonica Lake, Diane Arbus) -- therefore the work of Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Jean Genet, John Rechy, Alexander Woolcott, Edith Wharton. And, of course, Jane Austen. And never leave out Oscar Wilde!!!!! Also, have you been turned on to The Lonely Doll? All I can say is to read the biography of the author, Dare Wright, and you will never look at children's books quite the same again!
Dorothy Parker, River Phoenix, Henry Willson, Billy Kay, Tab Hunter, Sal Mineo, James Dean, Natalie Kalmus, Joan Crawford, Clara Bow, Talullah Bankhead, Robert Benchley, Clarence Darrow, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Anita Loos, Rosalind Russell,
Myrna Loy (one of these days I'll tell you an amusing story about this brave and outspoken lady), Betty Grable, Bobby Beausoliel, Candy Darling, Scarlet O'Hara, Andy Warhol, Brad Davis, Carmen Miranda, Lillian Hellman, Lillian Gish, Lupe Velez, Lady Elsie Mendl, Jed & Jay Johnson, Billy Haines, Barbara Hutton & Lance Reventlow, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
The great Mick Ronson!! And, can you imagine my thrill to have photos that I took become a giant billboard in Times Square?!? Speaking of Times Square, the area itself is a hero of mine. Of course, I remember the forbidden lusty lustful days which were so great. Here are the Marbles in 1976 in the middle of 42nsd Street when it was the real stuff!
Photo by me! It was from the denizens of Times Square, Pershing Square, Piccadilly Circus, and the Tenderloin that I formulated my philosophy as so perfectly outlined by John Rechy in City Of Night when his great heroine, Miss Destiny, takes the floor -- "Oh, God! ... Sometimes when Im very high and sitting maybe at the 1-2-3, I imagine that an angel suddenly appears and stands on t he balcony where the band is going -- or maybe Im on Main Street or in Pershing Square -- and the angel says, 'All right, boys and girls, this is it, the world is ending, and Heaven or Hell will be to spend eternity just as you are now, in the same place among the same people -- Forever! And hearing this, I'm terrified and I know suddenly what that means -- and I start to run but I cant run fast enough for the evil angel, he sees me and stops me and Im Caught..." -------"The City Of Night", John Rechy
And, of course, my own Miss Destiny, Jackie Curtis!
While we're in the neighborhood, we should mention that while all things change they stay the same. My new romantic heroes, the "Dilly Boys", nearly all skinheads, and one and all fascinating!
Disney and his do-gooders can scrub and scour, but life will go on!!!
And to my astonishment, a photographer I have found:
Anthony Goicolea. Look him up! Hundreds of brilliant photo/art self-portraits! Gasp.
And the inspiration to many of us -- Walter Santesso, the original Paparazzo! (La Dolce Vita)
If there was ever papparazi material, here they are --
Cherry Vanilla, Donna Destri, Cyrinda Foxe, and Holly Woodlawn at Limelight!!
And a final round of applause for Dorian Corey, the queen and star of "Paris Is Burning"
She had the great final speech of the film -- and then, (in real life) after she died, they found a mummified rent boy/drug dealer who had been in a garment bag in her closet for thirty years!!!!!!!!!!!!!