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Rock Star & Barbie Dolls: An Evening with Johnnie Medina |
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by Christopher Keimling
He's traveled all over the world. He's partied with the Sex Pistols. He's survived a nightclub shootout. He drives a black '65 Pontiac GTO and rides a Harley Davidson. He follows his passions -- for music and photography -- and achieves success by doing what he loves.
Johnny Medina is cool.
He is more than cool. He is perhaps the coolest man I've ever encountered in my short, unhip life. I'm not expressing an opinion here, I'm voicing a fact. His job, his experiences, his lifestyle, his modes of transportation -- all these things can be admitted as evidence. Even his name sounds cool -- Johnny Medina. He's so cool, it's downright exasperating to someone who pretends to be a writer but in reality is a photocopying, envelope-stuffing temp boy who still lives with his mom. When I first spoke with Johnny on the phone, he invited me to his living room on 9th and Red River. "Meet me at Club DeVille at 11:30, " he said. That was 11:30 pm; on a Tuesday. I could already tell Johnny was cool.
The bar was very dark. Intimate; not too crowded or noisy. Johnny wore black. All I could see was his head in the red glow of candlelight. The dashing grey in his moustache and short black hair belied his youthful face.
"So, ah, tell me what it is you do exactly," I asked, oozing the professionalism of a seasoned freelance writer, "You're a photographer?"
"I'm an entertainment photographer. Also an erotic photographer."
"Erotic. That falls under entertainment, doesn't it?"
He laughed, agreeing heartily. Johnny had a pleasant toothy grin; I could tell he liked to smile. He introduced me to the waitress and ordered us drinks. Every five minutes or so a lady friend of his would walk in and say hello. They would embrace, exchange a few words, and then he would introduce me. A gregarious Leo, Johnny later introduced me to everyone in the whole room.
I asked him how he got interested in photography.
"I come from a large Mexican family -- nine brothers and sisters. We were always celebrating birthdays. We had functions all the time with dozens and dozens of relatives," he said.
These family events had to be documented on film, he explained, and being the eldest son he was entrusted with the camera. His job was to hold it for his mom.
"All the kids got to play, hit the baseball. I'm standing there holding the camera. My mom would say, 'Don't push the button! Don't push the button!' "
One day when he was six years old, Johnny pushed the button. His cousin was having a birthday party and the kids were taking turns swinging at a pinata. Meanwhile, Johnny was looking through the viewfinder of his mom's camera. "It was like a whole other world," he said.
The piñata broke and candy rained down on the children. Instead of diving for candy, Johnny took snapshots. He shot the entire roll of film.
"I knew something strange had happened at that moment, because I really like chocolate," he said of this pivotal childhood experience.
I took a look at some of his work, using the pocket flashlight he handed me. As I paged through his portfolio, I came across something bizarre and paused. I looked up at him, my eyes pleading for an explanation.
"Part of my 'Barbie Dolls in Bondage' series," he said.
Poor Barbie was sitting on the lap of this menacing pirate-guy sporting an eyepatch and a handlebar moustache. With her hands tied behind her back, electric-tape x's covering her nipples, and her mouth taped shut, it looked like Barbie was in trouble. Ken was nowhere in sight. My guess was that the pirate dude had killed him.
"I've done some mean things to 1963 Barbies," he said. He showed me another Barbie photo. In this one, she appeared to be gazing out of a prison window. "Note the black eye," he said.
Johnny sure had come a long way from his family photo days.
"Why use a 1963 Barbie?" I asked.
"The '63 Barbie has eyelashes," he explained. Her eyes seemed bigger, too. The haunting expression on her face was far removed from the one of brainless glee normally associated with Barbie's image as the American icon of bimbonic vacuousness.
I turned the page, and was greeted by a hilarious, but no less disturbing sight -- Disney's "Hunchback of Notre Dame" carousing with a topless Barbie. She appeared to be giving Quasimodo a lap dance. His hair was disheveled, and Barbie's bra dangled from his outstretched arm. He had a big grin on his cutely misshapen face.
"Aren't you afraid Mattel is going to sue you?" I said, laughing.
"Disney, too" he said. He showed me another photo which was made as an advertisement for Forbidden Fruit. He cites it as the first photo that established his reputation and piqued his interest in erotic themes. It's a shot of woman from the waist down, squatting in high-heels and fish-net stockings.
My gaze wandered from the woman's prominently zippered black-leather crotch to Johnny's black leather jacket to the big padlock on the woman's ankle.
"What kind of stuff are you into?" I asked.
"I'd rather not say," he said, smiling. I flipped back to the beginning of Johnny's photo book, to the rock bands that represented his entertainment photography.
In these photos, Johnny had captured the delicious darkness, primal energy and authenicity of real rock n' roll. On one, a performer's mouth was wide open like a screaming banshee. His face was obscured in shadow, hidden by stringy hair. Brandishing a guitar, he stood poised like a warrior issuing his battle cry to the world. Johnny had framed the image in a jagged, zig-zag border; scratching the negative itself to obtain the effect.
"Sometimes I get carried away with the scratching, to the point where the negative is no longer useful" he said. Johnny also employs a moving image technique in order to create a "moving picture" in which everything looks like it's trembling with energy. In a photo of a Japanese punk-rock band, reflections and lights left bright trails in their wake; everything was alive with motion.
Johnny spends a lot of time on the road, and has had several careers in the music business. Starting out as a roadie, he worked as a sound engineer for twenty years for bands like Nirvana, the Cowboy Junkies, and Living Color. He also used to make music videos for local bands, and his video for metal band Pariah received airplay on MTV's Headbanger's Ball. Right now Medina is working as the road manager, photographer and sound engineer for Marcia Ball, a piano-playing blues artist he describes as "a female Jerry Lee Lewis."
With Ball he will soon travel to Australia, Greece and Sweden. Just recently he returned from a Blues Cruise in the Caribbean which he described as "8 days of non-stop decadence." Marcia Ball has also given private performances, including ones for Bill Clinton and Bill Gates. Johnny told me he had the opportunity to meet both of them in person.
Johnny takes pride in his rock 'n roll lifestyle. After ordering us yet another pair of Vodka Currants, he began waxing philosophical. "Every day is Christmas, every night is Halloween," he said, describing his life on the road. Soon his friend Anthony "Stony" Mrugacz joined us, placing his motorcycle helmet on the table as Johnny proceeded to tell us the story of how he got shot in a San Antonio nightclub in November, 1977.
"It was one of those cocaine bars where the Mexican mafia used to hang out. During the 70s, I worked as a college DJ" he said.
"Show him the scar," said Stony. Johnny rolled up his pant leg, showing me where the bullet had entered and exited his knee. Cool.
"Did he tell you about the time he partied with Sid Vicious?" Stony asked.
I was getting a little overwhelmed. Sid Vicious and Bill Clinton?
"He's got the photos to prove it," said Stony, seeing my look of bemused skepticism. Later, he said, "Have you seen Johnny's car? Let's go outside and take a look!"
No story about Johnny Medina would be complete without mentioning his car. Her name is Big Angie, and as we stepped outside to the parking lot, men started to gather around and sing praises to her glory. Austin poet Wammo was with us, rattling off her racing modifications.
"A 1965 Pontiac GTO. Black. 389 engine, positraction, 4 speed hurst, 750 Holly double pumper carb with electronic emission..." he said, rambling on with an expression in his eyes that wavered between admiration and lust.
"It kinda looks like the Batmobile," I said.
"The Batmobile was a modified GTO," Johnny said.
"Look inside," said Wammo, pointing out the specially installed race-car seatbelts and the gear shift with a giant six-sided playing die to serve as a grip. Now I was getting hot and bothered.
Stony told me a cop once pulled Johnny over just to look at his car. A female friend of Johnny's told me he doesn't drive over 30 mph. "He drives like an old man," she said.
We all went back inside, and Johnny made the rounds, introducing me to his guests at the Club Deville. I guessed the interview was over, because I kept dropping my pen and knocking over chairs. It sure was dark in there. That, or I was drunk off my ass.
Either way, I had a whole lot of fun -- and that's what an evening with Johnny Medina is all about.
On Sunday, March 15th, you can check out Johnny Medina's photographs for yourself when he presents:
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