Jim Marshall RIP

A late obit. I'm sure he won't mind.

Jim Marshall obituary
Photographer whose candid images helped define rock's halcyon era of the 60s and 70s

Sean O'Hagan
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 March 2010 18.33

The photographer Jim Marshall, who has died aged 74, was as colourful and unpredictable as many of the rock stars he shot. "I've been busted a few times for drugs, guns, assault with a deadly weapon," he admitted in a recent documentary about his life and work. "I shot a guy once. It got out of control ... It's just part of who I am."

Before a serious cocaine habit derailed his career for a time in the mid-70s, Marshall had established himself as one of the photographers who helped define rock's halcyon years. He captured the Beatles' final live concert, at Candlestick park in San Francisco in 1966, and spent five weeks chronicling the Rolling Stones for Life magazine as they toured America in 1972. He later dubbed it "the pharmaceutical tour".

Marshall's shots of Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar alight at the Monterey pop festival in 1967 and Johnny Cash "flipping the the bird" during a performance at San Quentin prison in 1969 have become iconic images of the era. Annie Leibovitz once called Marshall "the rock'n'roll photographer".

Alongside Elliott Landy, Marshall chronicled the performers and the audience at the three-day Woodstock festival in 1969, where he was "dosed" with LSD by the Grateful Dead. Marshall hung out and partied with many of the performers, but he later described Woodstock as "organised chaos" and dismissed what he called "all that age-of-Aquarius crap". He was tough and irascible, insisting on the kind of access that not even the most celebrated contemporary celebrity photographers can command. Rock stars liked him for his street credibility and his no-nonsense approach, but he had little time for the demands of the feted and pampered, and once abandoned a photoshoot with Barbra Streisand when she made one too many demands on his patience.

Marshall was born in Chicago, but his family moved to San Francisco when he was two. He said that his love for photography began in high school when he saw a snapshot of himself crossing the finishing line of a race. While still at school, he bought a Leica M2 and he continued to pursue photography when he worked for a time as a clerk for an insurance company. Once, while he was photographing backstage at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in 1960, a musician asked him for directions to Berkeley. It was John Coltrane. "He asked me for directions to a club," Marshall said later. "I told him I'd pick him up and take him there if he'd let me take his picture."
Marshall photographed the great saxophonist several times, notably for the sleeve of Ballads by the John Coltrane Quartet on the Impulse label. He also shot other jazz greats such as Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. His close-up image of McCoy Tyner, which graces the sleeve of the pianist's Live at Newport album, also on Impulse, brilliantly blends intimate portraiture and live photography.

In 1962, Marshall relocated to New York for two years. He lived in Greenwich Village, haunting the jazz and folk clubs with his Leica. His most evocative shot from this time freeze-frames a young, scruffy and apparently carefree Bob Dylan rolling a car tyre down a New York street. A mixture of intimacy and action makes the shot memorable.

Having returned to San Francisco, Marshall used his many local music business connections to become the only photographer allowed to walk across Candlestick park to the stage with the Beatles on the evening of 29 August 1966 for what was to be their last concert. "You couldn't hear shit," he said later of the half-hour performance. "It was right out of A Hard Day's Night."

Marshall, though, will always be synonymous with the American hard- rock scene of the late 60s. In San Francisco, he photographed – and partied hard – with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin, with whom he forged a fleeting friendship. His portraits of her backstage at the Winterland venue in 1968, cradling a bottle of Southern Comfort, capture all her sadness and vulnerability. By the end of 1971, he had a portfolio of brilliant portraits that included Joplin, Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Duane Allman and Otis Redding, all of whom had died young in the previous few years. He was particularly affected by Allman's death at 24 in a motorcycle accident. "I went out for a walk and walked for eight or nine hours," he said later, adding: "He was the best and I loved him very much."

Marshall had travelled from San Francisco to New York last week to attend an exhibition to coincide with the release of his new book, Match Prints. He was found dead in his bed at the W Hotel on Lexington Avenue. No immediate family members survive. "I have no kids," he once said. "My photographs are my children."

• James Joseph Marshall, photographer, born 3 February 1936; died 24 March 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/29/jim-marshall-obituary

Incidentally, if the 'rock's halcyon era' cliché didn't get you, surely the idea that he defined it did? No? If not, check out The Guardian's obituary for photographer Brian Duffy (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jun/06/brian-duffy-obituary). His 'stylish images helped define the spirit of the swinging 60s'. Oh well. The quality of the photography speaks for itself - in both cases.