Best Dressed Mainman At The Twilight Zone Ball

Some say that the only reason Mick Rock got that job as Mainman’s official photographer/sometime designer was because Angie Bowie fancied his wife. That’s a solid maybe — you know how these kids like to dish the dirt around — but Rock was nonetheless given his chance to shine for one fleeting moment, being at the right place at the right time, his lens gleaming, for the summit-meeting of the O-minds. You must have seen that photo: for irony and sheer cuteness it stands in a class of its own, cutting such previous worldbeaters as the snap of ultra-cool Bobby Dylan and his self-conscious fledglings, the Byrds, backstage at Ciro’s in ‘65, or Mick Jagger’s toothy juvenile grin as he posed next to James Brown on an early Stones tour.

That woosome twosome of the time, David Bowie and Lou Reed, act as the bookends for this historic photo. Lou’s looking a trifle shaky, his puffy features pursed together as if to exotically mouth the magic word “Valium,” while precocious David strikes a bemused, thoroughly English pose. This is, after all, his show, and it’s bad enough having to stand next to Iggy Pop, who’s only there to steal sandwiches and catch a bit of the spotlight, exquisitely attired in a T. Rex sweatshirt and grihning maniacally like a kid who’d just cut a particularly pungent fart. And, there, lurking in the shadows, is Tony DeFries: like Hitchcock, an extra in his own movie.