Signed Photo Promo Card by Michael Alago, New York.

One signed promo card for “Rough Gods” book launch in South Norwalk, Connecticut, USA.

Gifted by the artist to me, when he photographed me in New York in 2010 (not given to me at the event, but later, at his home).

Main image has no text, and quite, uh, explicit. Ideal for framing. Text and signature on verso. (see front & back in photos)

Asking USD$55.

Michael Alago

Record label executive, photographer, and author, Michael Alago takes readers through this amazing journey that is his life.

Alago grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a large, spirited, and devoted Puerto Rican family. Through his early passion for music, art, theater, and photography, he soon found himself rubbing elbows with many downtown NYC scene makers, from Stiv Bators to Jean Michel Basquiat, Cherry Vanilla and Wayne County to Deborah Harry and Robert Mapplethorpe. As an underage teenager going to Max’s Kansas City, CBGB, and various art galleries, Alago also began running The Dead Boys fan club.

A few years later, he became the assistant music director for legendary nightclubs the Ritz and the Red Parrot. At age twenty-four, he began a storied career as an A&R executive at Elektra Records that started with signing Metallica in the summer of 1984, changing the entire landscape of rock ‘n’ roll and heavy metal. Alago continued to work in A&R for both Palm Pictures and Geffen Records. He was thrilled to executive-produce albums by Cyndi Lauper, Public Image Ltd, White Zombie, and Nina Simone.

In the late 1980s, he was diagnosed with HIV, which manifested into full-blown AIDS ten years later. He survived to continue his music career, but in 2005, he left music to pursue his other love: photography. Alago went on to publish three bestselling books: Rough Gods, Brutal Truth, and Beautiful Imperfections with German-based publisher Bruno Gmünder. He has since overcome his longtime addiction to drugs and alcohol.

In his clean and sober life, he has reconnected with his family, continues to be a working photographer as well as record producer, and only through the grace of his 12-Step program is he able to live this big, beautiful life. In 2017, a documentary directed by Drew Stone and produced by Michael Alex on Alago’s wildly successful career in music was released in theaters and on Netflix, entitled Who the F**k Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago.

MORE:

Michael Alago in his first book of published photographs of men accomplishes beautifully what few other have been able to do lately; he gives you a collection of images that do not look just like everybody else’s work. He joins two other fine photographers who also have the ability to provide us with unique photographs, Tom Bianchi and Paul Freeman. You could pick Mr. Alago’s men out of a line-up. They are not smooth, pretty boys but rather either younger street-savy hustler types or mature men, sometimes hairy– and more often than not– tattooed. Jockstraps and attitude abound. Often juxtaposed with these color photographs of the most masculine of men are pictures of flowers, the flag, statuary– and in one instance– a closeup of worn boots, as sexy an image in its own way as you will find here. And in the middle of all this lovely flora and delectable fauna another closeup of the tombstone of Marlene Dietrich. We obviously are not to take Mr. Alago for granted.

EVEN MORE:

Many of you know Michael Alago from his “Rough Gods” and “Brutal Truth” books of hunky men. But before he became a noted photographer, Alago was a Zelig-like music executive, who discovered Metallica and was the A&R man for an eclectic group of artists including Cyndi Lauper, White Zombie, Nina Simone, Johnny Lydon, Tracy Chapman and the Misfits. Now his idiosyncratic life is the subject of a new documentary that’s getting great buzz.

“Who the F** Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Algo” tells the astonishing story of a gay Puerto Rican kid growing up in a Hasidic Brooklyn neighborhood, who got on the subway one day and began a musical odyssey that helped shape the musical landscape across New York and around the world. Directed by Drew Stone and produced by Michael Alex the film tells the incredible story of a cherished New York City icon. From rubbing elbows with New York scene makers as an underaged teenager at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB, to being the architect of a rock ‘n’ roll renaissance as the 19 year-old talent booker at the legendary Ritz, to making history as a 24 year-old A&R exec, signing the biggest metal band in a generation in Metallica, Michael Alago was on fire. Working with artists ranging from White Zombie and Johnny Rotten to Cyndi Lauper and jazz legend Nina Simone, Alago was driven by a love for great music…ANY great music…and the artists loved him back. Passion and excess would bring Alago crashing into substance abuse but surviving and reinventing himself as an art photographer…healthy, sober, and as passionate as ever. Told by Alago and the artists whose careers he helped build, illustrated with an exquisite collection of personal photographs, “Who The Fuck Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago” tells the tender, loving, self-destructive, and insane story of a man who loved new music so much he had to bring it to the world, and lived to talk about it. Barely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAcIwxLHWtY

art + objets d'arts + photography