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Mick Rock and Syd Barrett

Syd Barrett by Mick Rock @Mr_Dave_Haslam

29 Wetherby Mansions, Mick and Syd 

Tributes were rolling for Mick Rock on the day of an almost total eclipse, Friday 19th November 2021, as The Man Who Shot the Seventies – was also sadly eclipsed. His famous photographs of Syd Barrett at 29 Wetherby Mansions, Earls Court Square SW5 9BH appeared on the cover of The Madcap Laughs. Both Rock and Barrett also shared a flat at 101 Cromwell Road.  (A numbered copy of Rock’s tribute to Barrett, Psychedelic Renegades, signed by both men, is around $6500). For all that Bowie made Mick Rock famous, it all began for Rock in one of the most prestigious colleges in Cambridge, for the man with the long lens and long scarves. Partly, perhaps, because David Bowie loved Syd Barrett. Below, is The Madcap Laughs cover by Mick Rock from the session also with Evelyn Rose and Barrett (black and white, below) at 29 Wetherby Mansions. Gallery and book sources, below.

“David Loved Syd”

Barney Hoskyns spoke to Mick Rock (his real name) about both Bowie and Barrett.

Caius College, Cambridge and Syd Barrett

From the solid Youth Culture in Modern Britain by David Fowler.

This is from Julian Palacios’s Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe.

In The Beginning Was Syd
Syd Barrett asked Mick  to photograph the cover of his solo album, recounted here on YouTube. “In the beginning was Syd. Psychedelic Syd,” Rock remembers.

Cambridge, London, New York

Evelyn Rose aka Iggy The Eskimo
At the time Rock was photographing him for the album, Barrett painted the floor of his bedroom in Wetherby Mansions, Earls Court, orange and purple, with Evelyn Rose, better known by the misnomers Iggy The Eskimo and Iggy The Inuit. (Below, Mick Rock).

Mick Rock: “When I arrived for The Madcap Laughs photo session, Syd was still in his underpants. His lady friend of two weeks, ‘Iggy the Eskimo’, was naked in the kitchen.”

In Psychedelic Renegades, Mick Rock told their remarkable story for the first time. And the last time, it turns out.

Signed Edition of Psychedelic Renegades here.

Photographs by Mick Rock at Mutual Art

Barrett by Rock at The Wall of Sound Gallery

Mick Rock at Artsy (Main Image)

 

 

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