Rick James, San Francisco, 1979
Photography and commentary by Michael Zagaris

“My man… Rick James. You know, it’s funny. When I was moving, I was going through my files and putting everything in boxes and I came across ‘Rick James.’ And I thought, ‘Rick James? How did this guy—I never shot Rick James.’ And then I opened the envelope and, ‘Oh yeah, I guess I have shot Rick James.’

“Rolling Stone called me to shoot him, and he had that big hit of an album, and he was at the Record Plant in Sausalito working on his next album. So I show up, and said, ‘Michael Zagaris, Rolling Stone here to shoot. They know I’m coming…’ So like 45 minutes later, I said, ‘Hey, what the fuck?’ So then they finally let me in, and I’d gotten there about 11:00—now it’s about 12:15. So, he’s basically listening and mixing, and he’s got like six or seven people around, and I walk in there and Rick is sitting facing me, except there’s a girl just astride him, and there’s not just a kiss, it’s like deep throat. I’m thinking, ‘Maybe it’s more than a kiss…’ And then there’s a big, giant pizza tray behind him, and he goes, ‘Hey man, you the mothafucka from Rolling Stone?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ And the girl, it turns out, when she surfaces, is Linda Blair. This is just two years after The Exorcist (’73). And so he said, ‘Hey man, have some fucking breakfast.’ And I see two or three scraggly pepperoni pizzas. So now he shoves the tray over. Well, his body was obscuring the ounce of blow that was on it. Oh—breakfast, yeah. Okay.

“So I had a fucking huge line, and we’re shooting, and we shoot a little more. There was a telephone call that came in for him, and he’s going [in muffled voice] ‘What’s that bitch want, callin’ here?’ So I’m shooting all this stuff, and we have another line, and now my heart’s just like [beats palm rapidly on chest]. And I said, ‘Listen, what I want to do is take you to the Golden Gate Bridge, which is, like 10 minutes from here, and I want to shoot you under the Golden Gate Bridge, kinda looking up.’ And he said, ‘Naw man, no, we ain’t leavin’ this shit.’ And I said, ‘Well we can take a little with us. Hey, it’s not going anywhere. You got your friends here.’ To which he responded, ‘That’s what I mean, we ain’t leavin’ this shit.’ And I said, ‘Well I gotta have something—the studio stuff’s good, but I got to have something with the water and everything.’ And he said, ‘You want water? Let’s go across the street.’ And I’m thinking ‘Aww, fuck.’ But sometimes you’ve got to do this—you’ve got to improvise.

“So we go across the street, and all of a sudden he jumped on this rock. He goes, ‘Hey brotha, get this one!’ And it looks like he’s snorting a giant rock. And then he whips out a joint and fucking fires it up. So I’ve got other shots where he’s handing me a big bomber. It was a great little session. There was a little sailboat in the background. It’s so Rick James.

“I was on Haight Street right before Christmas, and Dave Chappelle came out of a store next to me. And I said, ‘Dave, what the fuck are you doing in my neighborhood?’ He said, ‘Man, who are you?’ I said, ‘Michael Zagaris.’ He said, ‘Man, you did that picture of Rick James! Man, I really want that picture.’”

See more photography by Michael Zagaris