We Sixties rock
& roll shooters are getting old! No surprise there.? But years ago it occurred to me that when we, one by one, all go to that big darkroom in the sky, our photos remain but the stories behind the photos go to Heaven with us. That fact was brought home to me each time I had a gallery exhibit of my pictures. “What was so and so musician like,” I was asked again and again. “How was it to be backstage or on the stage with Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin and all the others?”
Related: Shooting Jimi: Photos by Baron Wolman
I decided to make sure that at least some of my stories were left behind with the photos, and enlisted the help of my friend Dave Brolan of London, the world’s most knowledgeable music photo researcher and a musician himself, to gather a selection of images for a book. In Paris, Dave and I sat around in the cafes with the photos; I told stories, he took notes. Once the notes were transcribed, I brought the rough draft of the book to Bangkok where I edited our wide-ranging conversation into cogent sentences.
In addition to the stories behind the pictures, I decided to tell how it was that I came to be
Rolling Stone’
s first photographer, what it was like be involved with the birth of what has become both a significant and legendary publication. Furthermore, I asked two of my former associates at
Rolling Stone
to write some words putting me and my work and the magazine into context. Tony Lane, one of the magazine’s early art directors, wrote the preface. Jerry Hopkins, a staff writer with whom I collaborated on many early-day stories, wrote the introduction.
The book was published a while ago and met with considerable success. I traveled the world from Russia to London to Australia and all around America, signing copies, promoting it and talking about it on TV and radio, and in print. It has been translated into Italian, French and Portuguese, and will soon finally appear in a Spanish language edition. The book even has its own website,
TheRollingStoneYears.com
.
My tour of duty at
Rolling Stone
both changed and defined my life as a photographer.
Although I’ve photographed subjects as diverse as aerial landscapes, auto racing and the NFL, it is my photographs for
Rolling Stone
with which I’ve long been identified, and for the privilege I thank the musicians I loved and memorialized, and, of course, Jann Wenner, who famously said to me in April 1967, “We’re going to need a photographer. You wanna be our photographer?” And the rest, as they say, is history. . .