Jim Marshall: The Spirit of Rock n' Roll Immortalized

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Jim Marshall: The Spirit of Rock n' Roll Immortalized
By Lynne Eodice
May 1, 2008

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All images © Jim Marshall

Beatles in America

Jim Marshall has photographed such music personalities as John Coltrane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Johnny Cash, as well as some landmark news events throughout his long career. Although he’s best known for his images of rock n’ roll icons, he has also photographed a number of jazz artists. He was an avid photojournalist during the 60s & 70s, and his images have appeared in Life, Look, Newsweek, Saturday Evening Post, and the Rolling Stone, to name just a few publications. His new exhibit in San Francisco this month features platinum prints and dye-transfer images of news events and portraits of jazz musicians from the 1960s, some of which have never been seen previously. In capturing some of the most famous names in the music world, Marshall has truly made one of the most compelling contributions to the history of rock n’ roll and to the world of photography.

“When I was 10 or 11, I had a baby Brownie,” Marshall recalls. “But I won a track meet at school, and the guy taking pictures for the families had a Leica. The picture of me crossing the finish line was razor-sharp, and I thought this guy had a magic box.” So for about a year thereafter in 1948, Marshall started cutting out magazine pictures of all types of cameras and put them in a scrapbook, which he still owns to this day.

He eventually went to work at a camera store in San Francisco and made a $15 down payment, followed by 12 payments of $24 a month on his “first real camera,” a Leica M2. He has also used a Voigtlander Bessa 2¼ folding camera, an Argus C3, and Nikon F-series SLRs. However, Marshall has remained true to Leica throughout the years, and owns Leica R62, M2, M4, M6, M7 and MP rangefinder camera models. “I have about 23 Leica bodies,” he notes. He uses Kodak Tri-X film about 95% of the time, and prints on Ilford paper. He doesn’t shoot digitally at all. Chris McCaw (a former “Photos to Inspire” subject in Double Exposure) does Marshall’s Platinum printing.

The Early Years
When Marshall was in the Air Force, he took pictures of guys in the barracks. “But when I started trying to make a living, I started shooting dragsters and sports cars,” he says. Then he began going to clubs and photographing jazz musicians. One of his first major subjects was John Coltrane, who he met at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. “Backstage, he asked me how to get to

Grace Slick & Janis Joplin

Berkeley. He had to go to Ralph Gleason’s house. (At the time, Gleason was a music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.) I said, ‘no problem,’ and picked him up at his hotel room and took him to Gleason’s place.” There, he shot nine rolls of film of this legendary musician. “Some of these are the best pictures done of him, ever,” exclaims Marshall. He recently gave a photo of Coltrane to his youngest son, Ravi, who said tearfully that it was his favorite picture of his father.

In the early ’60s, Marshall moved to New York, as that was where most of the record companies and magazines were located. He started shooting for Columbia, Atlantic, and ABC Paramount, and when he was more established, he got assignments from Newsweek and did a lot of work for The Saturday Evening Post. In New York, he also photographed jazz and folk musicians. He returned to San Francisco in 1964. “I drove a car cross-country, and moved into a small apartment in North Beach,” he remembers. After returning to California, he shot news events for Look magazine in the mid-60s. “I was getting fairly well known and started shooting all the rock shows,” Marshall recalls. “I started doing some work for a small magazine out of L.A. called Teen Set, and did some of my most important shoots for them.”

Documenting Rock History
His move back to California marked the beginning of the rock n’ roll age, and this type of photography soon became his forte. As he puts it, “It’s what I’m known for.” He shot the first pictures of Cream in the U.S., as well as the Who. His photo of the Rolling Stones’ tour appeared on the cover of Newsweek in 1969, and on the cover of LIFE in 1972. When asked how he first got involved in photographing rock stars, Marshall comments, “It just happened—it’s what the jobs were. But my career has never just been a job, I love what I do.” At 72, he’s not shooting quite as actively, but still gets assignments from time to time. “I photographed Velvet Revolver, and I was asked to shoot the reforming of Stone Temple Pilots, which I may do.” Recently, he’s photographed some of today’s most popular singer/songwriters, like John Mayer, Ben Harper, and Lenny Kravitz. “But now the restrictions are so great,” he observes. “I won’t work unless I have absolute, total access, and no restrictions.” He also retains the copyright to everything he’s ever shot.

Jimi Hendrix at Monterey Pop Festival

When asked about some of his favorite subjects throughout the years, Marshall replies, “The people I was closest to were Duane Allman and Tom Jans.” His book, Not Fade Away, was dedicated to his ex-wife, Rebecca, and to Allman and Jans, “who were like the two brothers I never had.” He also says that Janis Joplin was a great subject. “She wasn’t the prettiest girl in the world, but she was not afraid of the camera,” he says. “She was really great about photography—one of the best I’ve ever worked with,” a fact that’s evidenced by her animated photos. One of Marshall’s most famous photos of Janis shows her with her signature bottle of Southern Comfort.

He’s been on hand for most of the legendary concerts and festivals throughout the years. “The greatest performance I ever saw was by Otis Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival. There’s not even a close second,” says Marshall. He adds that Brian Jones, who was a guest of the festival, remarked afterward, “We’ve got the greatest band and Mick is the best, but you couldn’t give me a million pounds to follow Otis Redding on the stage.” Marshall also remembers Woodstock as being an amazing experience (he was chief photographer at this event), and recalls the Newport Folk Festival of ’63 and ’64 as being great.

Marshall was also very close to Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, Carl Perkins and Shelby Lynn. “Shelby has a show here in San Francisco the same night as my gallery opening,” Marshall laughs. He’s photographed Johnny Cash and June Carter quite often, and describes them as very dear friends. He met Waylon’s son, Shooter Jennings, through actress Gina Gershon, who is also an avid photographer. “I gave a picture to Shooter of Waylon and his mother, Jessie Colter, that was taken four years before he was born,” Marshall says. “I like doing stuff like that.”

The Allman Brothers

When asked how he likes to work, he says that once in a while he has ideas for concepts he wants to create, such as his famous image on the cover of an Allman Brothers album at Fillmore East. “With Jerry Lee Lewis, we did a picture for a record company, but they didn’t like the idea,” he says. “I always thought that Jerry Lee has cast a long shadow in the music business, so I photographed him at about 2 a.m. in front of Sun Records with a light that cast a shadow across the sidewalk and up the front door.” But most of the time he says he prefers to shoot candidly.

About three years ago, he partnered with Leica on a scholarship program, and hopes to do this again in the future. Contestants submitted their images (which were taken with Leica cameras) to the competition, which was judged by personnel from PDN and American Photo magazines, in addition to Marshall and a representative from Leica. “The winner got $2500 from me and a Leica M7 camera and lens,” he explains.

Photo Books
Several books that feature Marshall’s work are available on the market, and many of these images document pivotal events in rock music history. Not Fade Away is available through WolfgangsVault.com, while Proof and Jazz (Chronicle Books) can be ordered from major bookstores. His images appear in a book about the making of a Johnny Cash concert at Folsom Prison, called Making of a Classic. He also did the photography for a book entitled Tomorrow Never Knows by Eric Lefkowitz, about the Beatles’ final concert in August, 1966. “It turns out that I was the only photographer there. Nobody knew it was going to be their last concert,” he remarks. His images appear in a book about the Monterey Pop Festival by Joel Selvin called 25 Years After, which has since become a collector’s item. “A couple of months ago, we found 30 copies of that book in my closet,” Marshall reveals. “That book was a $14.95 paperback, and we sold them for $80 apiece on the Internet.”

Keith Richards & Mick Jagger

His new book, Trust: The Photographs of Jim Marshall (Omnibus Press), will be available in fall 2008. Next year, he’ll release a book entitled Matching Prints in conjunction with celebrity photographer Timothy White. “We’ve photographed many of the same people about 20 to 30 years apart,” Marshall explains, “and we have a lot of similar pictures.” For example, he’s photographed Loggins & Messina in the back of a car, while White has depicted the two members of the rap band Outcast in an identical pose, also in the back of a car. “I’ve got a shot of Woody Allen from long ago; another one I did for the Post, and White has one of him taken more recently,” he says. Other luminaries that will appear in Matching Prints include Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Elia Kazan, and Oliver Stone.

Going Forward
On May 1st, Marshall has a gallery opening from 6 to 9 p.m. at Gallery 291, located at 291 Geary St. in San Francisco, where he is exhibiting some platinum prints and dye transfers. This exhibit will last for two months, and features portraits of jazz artists, as well as images of landmark events like the day that John F. Kennedy was killed, Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement, and striking coal miners in Hazard, Kentucky—all photographed in 1963 and ‘64. He also had a show entitled 1963, which featured images that were all photographed during that year. “Some of my most famous pictures were made in ’63, like Dylan rolling a tire, Thelonius Monk with his family, Woody Allen, Ogden Nash—all for The Saturday Evening Post.”

To see more of Jim Marshall’s photos, visit www.marshallphoto.com

Click Here to see a Gallery of Jim Marshall's Images