Metal Sludge — Mark Weiss was more than just a photographer during hard rock’s explosion in the 1980s.

He lived it.

From the photo pit to the backstage dressing room to the hotel parties to the tour bus. Weiss has seen it all, and yes the New Jersey native has the photos to prove it.

Weiss, 60, just published the book “The Decade That Rocked,” featuring nearly 400 pages and close to 800 original glossy photos that only he could deliver.

From AC/DC to Zeppelin and every one in between, it is all here. Unfiltered, Uncensored, Unbelievable. 

Rob Halford wrote the forward, and Eddie Trunk contributed the afterward, 

As always, Metal Sludge has the scoop with this new exclusive interview.

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METAL SLUDGE: Do you think Jon Bon Jovi will be surprised when he sees the old, never before seen photo of his first band, The Rest? 

MARK WEISS: I was actually surprised when I discovered the photo. I was looking for Southside Johnny photos and there it was, The Rest, who was one of five bands on the bill at Freehold Raceway Park in New Jersey – I forgot I even shot them. 

A few years back I saw Jon at a gallery show I was having, I showed him on my phone. He wanted it, and I had to say no that I wanted this to be a surprise to all the Bon Jovi fans that got my book. 

SLUDGE: When you were on tour with Motley Crue, how many bad habits did you pick up? 

WEISS: Well after Nikki drew blood, I started drinking Jack Daniels. I’ll explain — when ever someone would ride with the Crue, they would need to go through an initiation. In a nut shell; he bit me till I bled, then I had to reciprocate “draw blood” Let’s just say they let me on the bus, and the drinking began to ease the pain… I don’t consider them bad habits but good habits. You should ask them the same question, ha!

SLUDGE: What is the one photo you are most proud of?  

WEISS: Ozzy in the pink Tutu with boxing gloves that was on the cover of Circus Magazine in 1981. I went into the shoot kinda green. Here I am this 21 year old kid dressing up the Prince of Darkness directing him what to do. Then when I was on the cover and got all this notoriety, it definitely put me in a new light to the publicists and record company people.

SLUDGE: Do you back off when someone says “no pictures, please”?

WEISS: Of course I do – 100% I am respectful to all the artists I photograph. They are the stars – It is an honor to be there doing what I love doing. 


SLUDGE: Please list at least one unknown fact about Tom Keifer? 

WEISS: When I first met Tom, we hit it off immediately. It was the Night Songs album cover shoot in Philadelphia. It was a location shoot. I had generators, smoke machines in the middle of a landmark in Philadelphia. Tom couldn’t understand why we were shooting in daylight and why we had all this equipment. It was a simple answer. My response was, “I shoot day for night”  he didn’t know what the fuck that meant but he trusted me – The rest is history.. 

SLUDGE: Of all the bands you toured with and hung out with, who provided the most good times? 

WEISS: Ozzy for sure. We were like family.  I watched their kids grow up from babies. I shot Kelly’s first album cover, I photographed Jack’s wedding. Ozzy took me to all the important shows and made sure I got all access to The Us Festival, Live Aid during Black Sabbath’s historic reunion and the list goes on. I was known as Ozzy’s photographer and that gave me good street cred with the other bands. 

I returned the favor in 1987 when I introduced them  Zakk Wylde.

SLUDGE: Give three tips to aspiring rock photographers?

WEISS: If you want to be a rock photographer and have success, don’t plan on success, just do it because you love it.  Shoot  new bands that you like when there still accessible – be patient. Start your own website and post your images there with a story even if its just captions. You need to look  professional, then you can get your passes through your site – or just go online and find a site you like the music that has bands you want to shoot and approach them. Tell them you will shoot for free just to get a photo pass. Once you establish yourself, you’re on your way. Find local bands that need promo pics.You need to build up your portfolio. It will come to you. Develop relationships 

SLUDGE: Name a band that has more teeth in their smiles than in their music.  

WEISS: That’s easy — Jani Lane from Warrant. Check out the opening chapter in 1990 a photo from the Cherry Pie video. 

SLUDGE: The book comes out during a pandemic with no touring bands or even club shows. Bad timing?

WEISS: You would think, however I have been 24 /7 the last few years glued to my computer choosing,  retouching and organizing thousands of photographs. I was looking forward  to putting the book to bed and then going to bed, ha! 

It has been an extremely focused project, it needed to be perfect. Many of my friends thought I was kidnapped because I never socialized. My plan was to go on a book tour shadowing many of the bands that had summer tours, go on rock stations to help promote the show in town, as well as my book. I have been in discussions with promoters and bands to also be involved. My idea was to jump from tour to tour setting up galleries as well as donating some of the proceeds to a worthy foundation in the city and do book signings.  

SLUDGE Has anyone ever tried to snatch away your camera? 

WEISS: I like to shoot in the audience 10 feet from the stage. The pit is great but sometimes I just want the audience perspective and just use a telephoto lens. 

On occasion I would be so into the moment I would put one of my cameras on the floor and then leave it as if I was in the photo pit. One time I didn’t have a happy ending when I left one under the seat I was shooting from. Lesson learned. But no one ever grabbed it from me. 

SLUDGE: Do you have some secret photos unsuitable for publication? If so, who? 

WEISS: Yes in deed I do. In 1980 I met a big busted hot red headed named, Cherrybomb her real name was Rusty, she was a beautiful redhead and had the largest breasts I had ever seen in person and she wasn’t shy about it. Cherrybomb was the mascot for the mens magazine, CHERI. We became good buddies. We did shoots together all over the world. CHERI had a music section where she did the interview and I shot the photos. 

A few years later she worked for another men’s magazine called Oui and did a music section with her boyfriend, Mikael Kirke, shooting rock stars and naked women. 

SLUDGE: Which bands had the most cooperative groupies ever? 

WEISS: All of them. I would go on tour with a band for a week or two, then go home for a few days, then back out with another. I did a lot of observing. I was in the photo pit so I was an easy go-between to meet the bands. 

I would get passes form the band before the show and would have a system where they would see someone they liked, then gave me the nod while they were on stage on who to give them to. Then after the show I would introduce them as friends of the family. When I would go to the same venue with another band I would see the same girls hanging out. We were like traveling rock & roll gypsies that came to town to well, you know…

SLUDGE: Is there a particular photo that tells a story worth more than 1,000 words?

WEISS: It’s what happened after this photoshoot with Motley Crue. We were looking for bands that would be up for anything. In LA, we met with Bryn Bridenthal, the head of publicity at Elektra Records. The label had a new band on its roster that she thought might fit the bill. 

Bryn arranged a dinner at a Mexican restaurant in town, and the band we met there was Motley Crüe. I knew right away that this was the kind of band I wanted to hang with. We ate some tacos, drank tequila until we couldn’t see straight, and ended up at the Rainbow. 

To a kid from the East Coast, the Rainbow was an eye-opener. Every single guy there looked like he was in a band. And the girls . . . well, they all looked like they wanted to be with the band. It was a night to remember.

That August, Elektra released Motley’s debut, “Too Fast for Love,” and we went back out to LA and did a session and interview for Oui. It was the band’s first shoot to garner them national attention.

Afterward we ended up at the Rainbow with the models from the shoot. We were in the infamous back corner booth where there was some under-the-table action happening. It was a night to remember. 

SLUDGE: Here is a book excerpt:

“Bring the motorcycles, bring the girls, bring the blood, bring everything! For me it was, ‘How far can we push it?’ There was a nice synergy between the artist and photographer, because Mark seemed to be one of us. At the time—and, actually, still—we had a problem with ‘non-artists.’ If a real conservative cat came in, a professional photographer with his four assistants and that whole thing, it felt like you were shooting a box of soap. And we’re not a box of soap— we’re a fucking caged animal! But with Mark, we felt like, ‘Here’s a kindred spirit.’ In fact, I know that afterwards we went to a Mexican restaurant and got so drunk—the band, all the models, Mark, the whole entourage—that we all got thrown out of the restaurant.”
—Nikki Sixx (bassist, Mötley Crüe)

SLUDGE: Tuff and Stevie Rachelle qualified for the book?

WEISS: If there was a mold for a rock star in that decade, it would be Stevie Rachelle.

SLUDGE: Name a young band you photographed years ago that totally blew you away. 

WEISS: Motley Crue at the US Festival. They went on stage with over 300,000 people in the audience that didn’t know their songs and at the end of the show, everyone did.

SLUDGE: Do you have photos that could work as blackmail material if you really wanted? 

WEISS: Yes.. but I wouldn’t unless I had to ha !

SLUDGE: Ever been kicked out of somewhere? 

WEISS: I was excited that Aerosmith were making a comeback. When Joe and Brad rejoined the band in the summer of ’84 for the “Back in the Saddle” tour, I tried to set up shoots, but the best I got was a pass to take photos for a few songs during the show, with no backstage access. Tim Collins was now managing the band; I had met him at the Oui shoot in 1982 when he had been managing the Joe Perry Project. But now he wasn’t being responsive to my requests. 

He was trying to get them all clean, and I found out later that his main goal was to get rid of all of the people who had been in their lives back in the drug days. Now it was a year later and they were no longer a headliner. Aerosmith was on tour opening up for the Scorpions. In September, they had a show in Arizona, and the Scorpions hired me to shoot it.

I figured it was a perfect opportunity to talk to Steven and find out why I was being shut out. I went over to Tim at soundcheck and asked if I could shoot Aerosmith’s show as well as some backstage photos of the band. He told me he would have to think about it.

Minutes before the show, I had no response from him. He seemed to be avoiding me. I saw Steven backstage and gave him a hug. He asked me where I’d been for the last couple years. I was about to tell him, and then Tim walked in. I asked him in front of Steven if it was okay to shoot the show. He said sure. I asked him if I could get a pass. He told me he didn’t have any but not to worry about it. I insisted, and then Steven just took his laminate and put it around my neck. 

Tim did not seem pleased by this. 

I was starting to figure out that Tim had been the roadblock to my access the previous year. Steven called in the other guys for some quick shots. It would be my last photo shoot with Aerosmith for more than a decade. 

After shooting the first few songs of the show, I was pulled out by a security guard. I was enraged. I confronted Tim, who told me I shouldn’t have asked to shoot the show in front of Steven, and that it would be the last time I would shoot the band. He told me I was in “memory lane.”

I was banned from the Aerosmith camp until Tim was fired in 1996.


SLUDGE: What band had the loudest crowds?

WEISS: It’s all about the chant OZZY OZZY OZZY! It gets louder as they chant.

SLUDGE: Give three reasons why you lasted so long while other photogs came and went.

WEISS:
1, My love and passion for the music
2, Persistence
3, I didn’t want to mow lawns for a living.

SLUDGE: Which band will you never work with again?

WEISS: Danzig. When the guys came to my studio, they weren’t exactly the friendliest bunch. There was no talking, no kidding around, no small talk. It was apparent they either really didn’t like having their picture taken . . . or they just didn’t like me. 

Either way, I had a job to do. I needed to produce a great band shot to be used as a gatefold photo in their album.  If they wanted to be tough guys, I decided I’d just make them look like the toughest guys out there.

First, I arranged the members so that Glenn was the main person in the frame. A band photo is like a puzzle, all different shapes and sizes making one complete image.

Once you have the pieces in place, your job as the photographer is to get their vibe across in a way that connects with the fan. Glenn was a bit shorter, so I brought him closer to the camera and shot him at a lower angle, making him appear taller and more dominant than the others. 

Without talking to him about any of this, I got it—I got him.

As the shoot progressed, I wanted to get a bit more out of the band, but things soon took a turn into more uncomfortable territory. I asked Glenn to pull his head forward and toward me. It was like talking to a brick wall; he wouldn’t budge. The other guys followed his lead and began to be uncooperative as well. I proceeded to do what I would usually do — go up to the band members and physically move them, adjusting a shoulder here, a head there.

But when I got to Glenn, he just said, “Don’t touch me. Just take the photos.” 

I finished up the roll of film and said, “Okay, we’re done.”

To my surprise, Glenn decided he wanted to do one more setup. I never expected what happened next — the whole band came out with their shirts off. 

The next day, I followed up with the art director.

He asked me, “What did you do to piss off Glenn? He loves your photos, but he never wants to shoot with you again.”

I explained that I had moved the guys around a bit and that Glenn had snapped at me. He told me, “You never should have touched him.” 

I was dumbfounded.

SLUDGE: And finally, what makes your book the best?   

WEISS: My photographs.

Mark Weiss @ WebSite – Facebook – Twitter – Instagram – YouTube – Book

Gerry Gittelson can be reached at gerryg123@hotmail.com