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Saturday, May 9, 2020


Brian Idol was a prolific model, and I have several half dressed photos of him,
but I do not know who took this one.  Anybody know?

8 comments:

  1. I have two photos in what was presumably a non-published series given the nudity. I don't recall them ever having been acredited, but they are apparently from Brian Idol's first photo shoot at the age of 18.

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  2. Hello, do you know something about Brian Idol's real life? I have been looking in internet and I found that his real name is (or is supposed to be) Brian Arthur Hengel, born in 1949. I want to do a research about the life of this vintage male beauties, who seems to be must of them completely forgotten. Brian Idol in particular obsseses me (he was really cute, with a nice cut cock, I love the scar in his penis, his body with natural hair...). Is he still alive? I don't know why but I suppose he must have had a sad life. Many thanks!!

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    1. I would gladly share any information about Brian Idol if I had any. Generally speaking, little is known about the later lives of most models of his era. Many of these young men used false names, lived on the fringes of society, or were heterosexual. More than a few fell into all three of those categories, any of which might make them not want to be traced. If you do find out any details, please contact me, and I would love to give you a guest feature here on the blog.

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  3. Many thanks for your answer. I have been looking in the internet and I have founded some information about his life, from which we can infer some details. Brian real name was Brian Arthur Hengel, he was born in Minnesota on August 31, 1949. At his twenties, he had lived in Minnesota, Idaho and Oklahoma, where he worked in farms, as lumberjack, doing mill work and in an electronic company (based on this details we can guess that he came from very poor backgrounds).

    He was discovered by the model scout Darby Summers in a bus station in Los Angeles, a place that was apparently used as a gay meeting or cruising place (was Brian looking for some fun? Was he gay? I think it is highly probable, as it is also probably that he was there looking for drugs, prostituting himself or maybe just bored waiting for a bus…). Even if we don’t know exactly when did it happened, we do know that Brian was being photographed completely naked by Bob Mizer in 1966, when he was 17, so it is obvious that he was only a teenager when was discovered by Darby Summers.

    Darby take Brian Hengel to the studio of a photographer called Bob Carr, who today is almost forgotten, and takes Brian’s first physique pictures.

    When asked about his reaction about the first physique posing he did, he said it was “disgusting”. Either way, from his first posing when he could have had 16 or 17 years old to the time he was 18, when he was living in Idaho and working as a lumberjack (work that gave him his build) he had already posed completely nude for many, many, many different photographers.

    It was the photographer Bob Carr who gives Brian Hengel his stage name, “Brian Idol”, by which he was very well known in the times he was only 18 and is remembered today.

    From 1966 and 1968 his popularity was very high in the physique world. Bob Mizer and Darby Summers did not understand the huge success of Brian Idol. According to Bob notes, he did not understand the popularity of Brian’s pictures, and Darby Summers declared that he can’t understand why Idol’s made “such a fuss” (envy? May be).

    In the other hand, during the same period, and according to his AMG symbols chart, Brian Idol started to make nice fees as a hustler and also get himself in strong problems with drugs. This way, Brian started to messed his life up.

    By 1968, trying to break free from his downfall living, he turned back to Minnesota where, according to physique magazines reported, he worked in electronics and becomes an “electronic engineer”. Also, Bob Mizer reported that he had managed to leave behind his drug problems and was willing to return to L.A. Which is more probably is that Brian was working just as a common operator than as an electronic engineer, and that he did not reached to get off drugs.

    By 1972, Mizer was complaining that his so handsome before Brian was just the shadow of the athlete he had been.

    Then, Brian Idol disappeared without a trace. We don’t know for certainly if Brian Arthur Hengel was able to overcome his drug addiction and reintegrated into society, then formed a family and lived happily ever after, or if his problems exceed himself. I don’t know if he died young or if he is still alive. May be someone knows. Maybe someone remembers him from and can give us an answer. Maybe all this information, as was published in physique magazines, is not true. I suppose Brian might have come from a very poor and marginalised family, and that he lived almost all his life in the fringes of society. The only think we know for sure is that, if he is not dead, he is still alive.

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    1. Wow, that's some amazing research! Thanks for sharing it. My other hobby is genealogy, so I did some searches using birth, marriage, and death records. There was a Brian Donald Hengel born in Hennepin, Minnesota in 1951 who would be the right age to be Brian Idol, but is not necessarily the same man. That Brian Hengel was married in Montana in 1973, just after your research showed his modeling career had ended. That is also lumber country and adjacent to Idaho, so it fits with some of your career details. I also found Brian Hengel living in the lumber town or Roseburg, Oregon as recently as 1995, but I lose the trail at that point. He does not appear on any of the national death registries, so he is probably alive somewhere in the USA. Again, it is by no means certain that this is the same guy, but some of it fits.

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  4. Brian Idol fits all the criteria for a runaway/throwaway kid. Because most of his work is undated, it's hard to determine whether or not any of these photos falls into the category of child porn. (Remember Traci Lords?)If the birthdate of 1951 is true, that would make him 15 when he first started nude modeling in 1966. Most photographers and others he worked with agree that he started that year. It seems more likely he was born a few years earlier and it was common for a lot of these guys to be HS dropouts. Theyre Usually kicked out for gay behavior. What does an underage dropout do for money in LA? What every throwaway kid does today as well as back then; they sell their bodies for (porn and prostitution) money. Most of the surviving stories about him confirm most of these behaviors. Which almost guarantees eventual drug/alcohol problems. These problems weren't unique to Brian, but because of his remarkable looks, he becomes the focus of a lot of our concerns about his welfare.

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    1. Brian could easily by heterosexual, which would explain his reported "disgusted" reaction to his first nude modeling session and is probable 1973 marriage. (And yes, we all know that marriage doesn't necessarily make one heterosexual, just as being a male prostitute doesn't make on homosexual.) The "throwaway kid" thing rings true, regardless.

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