Movie: ‘Harry in Your Pocket’ (1973)

Actress: Trish Van Devere

known punk manager and photographer very linked to David Bowie through MainMan, the workshop responsible for taking his image, Lee Black Childers was the manager, among others, of the Heartbreakers and Iggy Pop.

the photographer Leee Black Childers published a book entitled Drag Queens, Rent Boys, Pick Pockets, Junkies, Rockstars and Punks, a collection of pictures he had taken over the years in San Francisco, Los Angeles, London and, most of all, New York.

But Childers didn't just chronicle the happenings around Andy Warhol and his entourage at The Factory, in the backroom at Max's Kansas City or on stage at CBGB's, he also played a part in the careers of David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, and managed Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, the turbulent band that emerged from the ashes of the New York Dolls and took up residency in London in December 1976.

Leee Black Childers, photographer, writer and band manager:

born Jefferson County, Kentucky 24 July 1945

died Los Angeles 6 April 2014.. at the age 68

The Warhol Museum commemorates the life and work of our friend, photographer Leee Black Childers. He was hospitalized after collapsing during the opening celebration of his exhibition in Los Angeles on March 22.

A short clip of Leee can be seen here, describing the notorious artists’ bar Max’s Kansas City, excerpted from the museum’s “Talk on the Wild Side” event in 2011. That discussion focused on the 1971 productions of Warhol’s play “Pork” and its influence on Glam rock, with cast-and-crew Cherry Vanilla (in support of her memoir), Tony Zanetta, and Leee (and moderated—such as it was—by me.)

Native Kentuckian Leee Black Childers was stage manager and official photographer for “Pork,” and an essential character of New York’s underground of the late-1960s and ’70s. He stage-managed Jackie Curtis’s play “Femme Fatale” at La MaMa ETC in 1970, “World Birth of a Nation” by Wayne County, and “Pork” at both La MaMa in New York and the Roundhouse in London, all directed by Anthony Ingrassia.

Leee became David Bowie’s official tour photographer for “Ziggy Stardust,” and spent a season in the Hollywood Hills house-sitting Iggy Pop and the Stooges. In addition to the Factory and Max’s, Leee was a regular at CBGB. He managed punks Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers and rockabilly revivalists Levi and the Rockats.

Leee’s documentary photos of “Pork” were shown at the Warhol Museum in the exhibition “Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Warhol’s Work” in 2009. His photographs of the punk scene have been shown worldwide. A book on his work, “Drag Queens, Rent Boys, Pick Pockets, Junkies, Rockstars & Punks,” was published in 2012.

Childers began working for the Heartbreakers just before Malcolm McLaren, who had briefly managed the Dolls, asked them to support his new charges, the Sex Pistols, on what would turn out to be the ill-fated Anarchy tour of the UK. Following the furore over the Pistols' appearance on the Today show with Bill Grundy, most of the dates were cancelled, leaving the Heartbreakers in the lurch. Childers convinced them to remain in London and play as many gigs as they could. "We were a sensation but the Heartbreakers were junkies. That was what they were most famous for," he admitted.

Against all odds, Childers got them a record deal with Track Records, run by the former Who manager Chris Stamp. By March 1977 the Heartbreakers were in the studio with Speedy Keen producing. "The recordings were brilliant – one of the 10 best rock'n'roll records ever made," said Childers. Their version of "Chinese Rocks", written by Dee Dee Ramone and former Heartbreaker Richard Hell, and issued as a single, sold 20,000 copies, but the eventual album and sole studio release, L.A.M.F., didn't pack the punch of their live shows, and only charted briefly.

Born in Jefferson County, Kentucky, in 1945, he was given a camera by his older brother and found it enabled him to overcome his natural shyness when he moved to San Francisco during the Summer of Love. By 1968, he was sharing a Lower East Side one-bedroom apartment in New York with Wayne County and Holly Woodlawn, the Warhol superstar immortalised in Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side". "Andy Warhol told me to find your spot, grab a chair and let them come to you," he recalled.

He was assistant director on several Warhol-related plays, including Pork, which created a stir when it was staged for six weeks at the London Roundhouse in 1971, with Cherry Vanilla in the title role. Childers went on to work for MainMan, the company set up by Tony Defries to manage Bowie's affairs. Given the grand title of "vice president" of the US operation, he served as advance promo man on the Ziggy Stardust US dates. "We were encouraged to drink champagne and eat huge dinners and sign everything," he said of the lifestyle that lasted until Bowie left Defries in 1975.

Childers also served as minder to Pop and the Stooges while they holed up in Hollywood after issuing Raw Power, until MainMan lost interest. He returned to Warhol's circle in the early '80s and continued documenting the New York scene but fell on hard times in the mid-1990s.

After being evicted from his apartment and moving into a homeless hostel, he presumed his precious photographs had been lost until a friend discovered several bags containing most of his negatives.

This allowed Childers to make new prints, license them for use in Chris Sullivan's Punk book in 2001 and paved the way for his own chronicle and several exhibitions of his work.

Childers bleached his hair white and always wore black. He would get teary-eyed when recollecting Thunders and Sid Vicious at book launches and say: "I love all those crazy, self-destructive people. You can't change them. You have to make the decision to accept them for who they are."

Max's Kansas City was a nightclub and restaurant at 213 Park Avenue South in New York City, which became a gathering spot for musicians, poets, artists, and politicians in the 1960s and 1970s. It was opened by Mickey Ruskin (1933–1983) in December 1965 and closed in 1981.

Picking Pockets tables from AD&D Forgotten Realms City System, by Jeff Grubb with Ed Greenwood, TSR, 1988.

Mexico is not as dangerous as we sometimes see in the media, at least in tourist areas, as in any other destination with a large avalanche of tourists, there are pickpockets. Especially in places like Mexico City

Nearly all of them had their ears bored, and one or two silver rings in each, which they said were esteemed ornaments in their country.  The men were black, their hair curled; the women remarkably black, all their faces scarred, deployez, their hair black, their only clothes a large old shaggy garment, flossoye, tied over the shoulders with a cloth or cord, sash, lien, and under it a poor petticoat, roquet.  In short, they were the poorest miserable creatures that had ever been seen in France; and notwithstanding their poverty, there were among them women, who by looking into people’s hands told their fortunes.  And what was worse, they picked people’s pockets of their money; and got it into their own, through telling these things by art, magic, &c.   [19]

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Vietnamese Men Busted in Bangkok for Pick-Pocketing German Tourist

BANGKOK – Pol Maj Gen Surachate Hakparn the new Immigration Bureau chief, told a press briefing today that two Vietnamese men have been arrested on charges of stealing a wallet containing €2,300 (87,000 baht) from a German tourist at a Bangkok shopping mall.

Thanh Phuoc Le, 38, and Van Ty Nguyen, 36, were apprehended at Terminal 21 shopping mall on Friday, said Pol Maj Gen Surachate Hakparn, acting chief of the Immigration Bureau, at a media briefing on Saturday.

The arrests came after a German tourist filed a complaint with Lumpini police that a pickpocket gang had stolen his wallet and €2,300 at Terminal 21. The wallet was also said to have been worth about 13,000 baht.

Police examined closed-circuit television footage from the mall, in which the two suspects could be seen picking the victim’s pocket.