Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro in conversation at Brooks

Andy Warhol "superstar," underground movie actor, album cover model (that's apparently his crotch on the front cover of the Rolling Stones' "Sticky Fingers") and all-around counterculture icon, Joe Dallesandro makes his first Memphis appearance Wednesday at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

The event is billed as "A Conversation with Joe Dallesandro," and its only real motivation is that Andria Lisle, Brooks' associate curator of film and public engagement, thought it would be interesting to give the city of Elvis its first in-person exposure to a very different type of man who also was celebrated for his beauty and cool.

"I don't do a show or anything," said Dallesandro, 68, in a phone interview from his Los Angeles home. "I have no routine. I just get there up and take questions and try to be as truthful as I can, and it's usually pretty funny. I see life as a good thing, you know. It's been a long time since I've done those films, the early ones in the Warhol days, but here I am. I'm still here."

This casual attitude may surprise those familiar with the epochal Warhol-produced, Paul Morrissey-directed movies of the late 1960s and early 1970s in which Dallesandro appeared: These were films that made censors and audiences nervous with depictions of intravenous drug use, comedic violence and various types of sexual activity. Featuring such Warhol "superstars" as Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling in addition to Dallesandro, the early films, including "Flesh" (1968), "Trash" (1970) and "Heat" (1972), were sparsely distributed, but the 1973-74 movies known in the U.S. as "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein" and "Andy Warhol's Dracula" — released not just with X ratings but also in 3-D — were international hits, with the chiseled Dallesandro presented as an object of lust for male and female moviegoers alike, making him an icon for gay audiences in particular. (In 2009, Dallesandro received a Teddy Award from the Berlin International Film Festival for "contributions to the further acceptance of LGBTQ lifestyles, culture and artistic vision.")

Unfortunately, the Warhol/Dallesandro/Morrissey films now are hard to see in the U.S., thanks to various ownership issues and to Morrissey's desire to reissue the films himself. (Released almost 20 years ago, The Criterion Collection DVDs of the "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" movies now fetch high prices on the collectors' market.)

"He's gotten old and grouchy," Dallesandro said of Morrissey. "He wants more credit than he received before, and he thinks he was cheated out of the credit he should've gotten. But I always plugged him as the leader of the band.

"I was smart enough that I made Paul Morrissey my mentor, and I listened to him. He had a really good eye for finding people and putting them in his films. I listened to him about not believing in the good things people said about me because then I'd have to take to heart the bad things they said about me, too."

Whatever the fate of the movies, Dallesandro probably is better known to the general public for his associations with rock and roll than for his film work. According to most sources and the actor/model himself, it is Dallesandro's blue-jeaned crotch that appears on the famous cover of the Rolling Stones' 1971 album "Sticky Fingers," a masterpiece of design (credited to Warhol) that originally featured a working zipper. For years, the identity of the model in the photo was a mystery because "there was nothing identifiable about me in that picture," Dallesandro said, somewhat modestly — but he eventually took credit for the crotch.

A photograph of Dallesandro also was used by The Smiths for the cover of the band's self-titled debut album in 1984. And Dallesandro is referenced, by nickname, in the lyrics of Lou Reed's biggest hit, 1972's "Walk on the Wild Side," in which Reed sings: "Little Joe never once gave it away/ Everybody had to pay and pay." The allusion is to the movie "Flesh," in which Dallesandro played a street hustler.

Dallesandro had a challenging childhood. His mother was in prison for auto theft when his father, an electrical engineer, moved Joe and his brother from Pensacola, Florida, to New York, before giving the boys up to foster care. Dallesandro became a "juvenile delinquent" (his term); before he was old enough to drive, he'd punched a school principal, stolen cars and been shot in the leg by police.

Dallesandro's early rowdiness actually caused him to "calm down" before some of his peers. By the time he was 18, he was married and had a son. When he was introduced to Warhol, he had no intention of being a performer, but the Pop artist and Morrissey both were so taken with Dallesandro's striking looks they immediately cast him in their experimental 1967 film "Four Stars," a document of life at The Factory (Warhol's studio) that ran for a marathon 25 hours (hence, it was projected for audiences only once).

"I didn't know Andy or his work or anything else," Dallesandro remembers. "They said, 'Joe, it's the Campbell's soup guy' when we were going over there. I thought we were going to have soup.

"Andy was behind a camera, reading a newspaper, and he'd turn the camera on or off. He wasn't even looking through the camera; he was just sitting here behind it, reading newspapers."

Dallesandro's association with Warhol lasted less than a decade. "I didn't start out in life wanting a film career; that was Paul deciding that's what I should do," Dallesandro said of those movies. "Remember, I was a kid. I was lucky to be in them, and I did what I was asked."

After the Warhol years, Dallesandro appeared intermittently in other movies, including Louis Malle's "Black Moon" (1975), the Italian crime film "Savage Three" (1975), Francis Ford Coppola's "The Cotton Club" (1984), John Waters' "Cry-Baby" (1990) and Steven Soderbergh's "The Limey" (1999); he also guest-starred in episodes of such TV programs as "Wiseguy" and "Miami Vice." But his idea that his early roles might make him "another Clint Eastwood" never panned out.

Currently, Dallesandro lives with his third wife, Kim, in an apartment building he's managed in Hollywood for 16 years, like some sort of gay-icon/counterculture-hero Pat Harrington. "I look pretty much the same," he tells Memphians who may be planning to meet him. "I've had people come up to me I knew back in my childhood, and they don't in any way look like the person they were when they were younger. They have no hair, or they're 70 pounds heavier; they've turned into another person. But I'm pretty much the same."

What's his secret? Dallesandro doesn't have one. He no longer drinks alcohol, but "I drink Pepsi. I smoke cigarettes. I pretty much live a real unhealthy life. But I stay connected. Me and my wife, we do a lot of things with the homeless. We give out tents, socks and blankets so they can survive out there."

As for his visit to Memphis, "I'm gonna look for Elvis, but I don't think that he's there."

'A Conversation with Joe Dallesandro'

7 p.m. Wednesday, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Music with DJ Buck Wilder and cash bar begin at 6 p.m.

Admission: $15, or $10 for Brooks members. Visit brooksmuseum.org.