It also has pix that are rather startling, that somehow missed appearing in there, like my portrait of Lene Lovich.
You can see some of the covers, and take a look at a few sample pages that recall its controversies. These include the infamous "Blondie Nudes" and the KISS pig's head.
RONALD L. Smith.com For latecomers, I should mention that the very first issue of ROCKET made quite a splash thanks to those two items. A pig's head and some nudes...give the public what they want.
In starting up a rock magazine, you need...PHOTOS. We took out a want ad in The New York Times, asking people to bring us their portfolios. We mentioned that we were looking for freelancers who could be assigned to cover rock concerts and other fun events.
In order to prioritize calls, I called myself REID BROOKER in the ad. That way when the receptionist said, "Call for Reid Brooker," I'd know it was in reference to the ad. We could then track how effective it was.
VERY effective. A guy came in with a set of weird backstage pictures of KISS. For some reason lost to the ages, a cooked pig's head was backstage, and the kid managed to get Paul Stanley to pose for some photos with it. THIS would be our cover.
KISS was notorious for controlling every facet of their publicity. On the plus side, it meant that rock mags could get beautiful free images. They regularly posed for photo shoots with their selected photographers, and would grant "exclusive" rights for a month or two so the images you picked wouldn't appear elsewhere.
The downside: we were a new magazine and although part of a well known publishing house, fairly unknown. I had some reputation with publicists for my work on other rock magazines, but a lot of people wanted to see the first issue before they'd commit.
The KISS pig's head picture was an exclusive all right. It also slightly pissed them off: "In the future, please allow US to PROVIDE THE PICTURES." Sure. Now that we're off the ground, we'll fly with you.
Another attention-grabber in the issue: two pages of BLONDIE nudes. A photographer came in with a portfolio of his work, and it was mostly still life stuff, sidewalk photography, and...two nude pictures of a familiar-looking lady. Yes, a pre-fame Debbie Harry, who was just becoming known as the lead singer for BLONDIE.
I asked him he'd pop those two pictures out of his portfolio and take a check. He agreed. He had proof sheets with a lot more pictures, but ROCKET was a "family" magazine, so I settled for a coy sideview shot. In the original, the full waist-up frontal had Debbie posing with black power patches for pasties. The art department ended up substituting art work of a space station, which was more in keeping with promoting ROCKET.
As Debbie became more and more famous, the ROCKET pictures were stolen and used in a variety of men's magazines. Today there's the vague line that piracy websites used: "thanks to the original uploader." No, in the real world, these weasels weren't about to actually ADMIT where they stole the photos from. It probably would've been "fair use" or not worth even a Small Claims case to ask for some compensation, but there was never "originally in ROCKET MAGAZINE" on either of them.
I found quite a few talented photographers from being "Reid Brooker," and assigned them to some pretty cool concerts. One adorable girl named Becky was VERY good at wandering up to the front row, flirting with the guards, and being able to snap pix for several minutes. We also had a gay photographer with very good connections, who was able to get exclusive color shots of Freddie Mercury in performance.
I did a phone interview with Andy Gibb, and when he came to town, I assigned this guy to do a good, professional photo session in Andy's hotel room. Being a GAY photographer, the concept for the photo shoot was: "Andy, would you mind taking off your shirt? You have a sexy hairy chest, and our female readers will LOVE IT." Kindly Andy did indeed take off his shirt. The photographer smeared a little Vaseline on the lens (if not anything else) and managed to blur the edges so that it looked like Andy might've also taken off his pants!
It was quite an amusing "mini poster" (as we called our full color pages) and yeah, it's up on the RonaldLSmith dotcom, on the ROCKET page. Along with the KISS pig's head, the Blondie nudes, and misc. pages from the mag.
Here's a full length shot of Renaissance bassist Jon Camp and his then-girlfriend. In the mag, the picture was squared, so you didn't see those fantastic boots.
I rarely took concert pictures back then, leaving it to the more seasoned experts in getting action shots under adverse lighting conditions. I did tend to take photos at the interviews, as it was too awkward to have an extra person in the room taking shots during the conversation, or waiting around to set up lights and stuff for shots afterward. It was "interview and photos by Ronald L. Smith" for Billy Joel, Hall and Oates, Tim Curry, Genya Ravan and the rest. No pictures during my interviews with the four guys from KISS. Back then there were NO pictures of them being published without make-up.
We took advantage of this by running a publicity stunt in the second issue: "Do you want to see pictures of KISS without make-up???" As if we had any. Fortunately, the cards and letters came in favoring "NO!" So, we didn't ruin the fun...or ruin what became a very productive relationship with the band...including cover stories I did interviewing those guys. Or as George Plimpton said when he sat next to me in the press section at a KISS show at Madison Square Garden: "This is a lot of fun, isn't it!"
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