In the early 1970s I was a passionate young rock photographer, and when David Bowie, who was then relatively unknown and a friend of mine, asked me to be his official photographer, I jumped at the chance and found myself in the thick of the glam and punk explosions.

I was shooting everyone from Lou Reed and Iggy Pop to Roxy Music and Queen. By the mid-’70s I’d moved to New York, just in time to capture the Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie. Crazy photo sessions and 24-hour parties rolled into one, and, needless to say, chemical and sexual excess were simply a part of it.

But it was too good to last. By the end of the 1980s, I was in my early forties, work was drying up, and I was broke. Above all, I was suffering from a prolonged chemical overload. At the time, my girlfriend, Pati [now his wife], and I, and our daughter, Nathalie, were living in a rented apartment on Staten Island. I was in a state of high anxiety — I chain-smoked, I didn’t eat properly, and I couldn’t sleep. The fact was, I knew I wasn’t well, but I didn’t have health insurance, so I just couldn’t afford to see a doctor.

Things came to a head on the Friday before Thanksgiving in 1996. I was doing a photo session with a fabulous R&B musician, Sir Mack Rice, down by the piers on Manhattan’s West Side. It was a grey, drizzly morning and I was standing there with my Hasselblad on the tripod, shooting away, when suddenly I felt like someone had grabbed hold of my chest. It felt like it was being crushed. I could barely breathe. Shooting pains went up and down my right arm, and my hands were so sweaty I could barely hold the camera. The others mistook the sweat pouring down my face for the rain.

The mad thing was, I felt like collapsing, but I carried on. It was only when we stopped for a break that I went to lie down. Rice and his PR team assumed I’d just had another late night, but when I got home, Pati knew something was wrong. She pleaded with me to call a doctor. I refused — we couldn’t afford it. That weekend I took Valium to calm me down, but on the Sunday the agony returned: the crushing chest pains, gasps for breath, daggers in my arm. Pati begged me to go to hospital. I still refused. The next day, she was in such a state that I finally gave in.

As soon as the doctors saw me, I was admitted. The consultant said, had I left it a few more hours, I’d have been dead. X-rays came back showing I’d had two heart attacks, possibly three. It was a miracle I was still alive. I was told all the valves going into my heart were clogged and I needed a quadruple bypass. All I could think of was how I was going to pay for a hospital bed, let alone an operation. It would run into thousands. But I was too weak to do anything. In the meantime, friends had started to get in touch, including the former Stones’s manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham, who I’d worked with. Through him I got a call from Allen Klein, a record-label executive who’d been business manager to the Stones and the Beatles in the 1960s. He had a reputation for being ruthless, if somewhat mythical, and said: “Mick, I’ve been through what you’re going through. I want to help. I’m getting an ambulance to take you to NYU Medical Center. You’ll be looked after by my cardiologist. Let me do this for you.” I was speechless.

I was transferred to NYU, and in no time I was being wheeled in for the quadruple bypass. Morphined up to the hilt, the nurses later told me I went in singing Bowie’s Rock’n’Roll Suicide. When I came round, flowers and cards arrived from both Bowie and Lou Reed. Everyone was all smiles; I was out of danger. Or so I thought. A couple of days later my heart suddenly took a turn for the worse. In minutes I was surrounded by an army of people, not a smile in sight. The doctors thought they were going to lose me and wheeled me back in for a complete blood transfusion. Six hours later, I emerged. I’d survived.

I only realised later that my death had just not been an option at NYU: the team literally couldn’t afford to have me die. Mr Klein’s hospital donations had amounted to millions over the years and if they wanted his patronage to continue, they had to keep me alive. His final bill for my treatment was nearly £100,000.

Since the day I walked out, I’ve been as clean as a whistle. That awful experience changed everything — I was literally reborn. Not only that but my career has been catapulted to a whole new level, with books and exhibitions all around the world. I’m also photographing a new generation of rock musicians. And I owe it all to one man. A short time later, I got a chance to thank Mr Klein in person for saving my life. With a twinkle in his eye, he said to me: “Mick, you’re my ticket to heaven. You’re my big, golden ticket.”

A collection of Mick Rock’s images, Punk Drunk Love (Panoramica), is out on DVD

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