TIME LightBox: Rock ‘n’ Roll Legend: Jim Marshall’s Musician Portraits Read more: Rock ’n’ Roll Legend: Jim Marshall’s Musician Portraits.
He photographed legends and his pictures have become iconic in American cultural history, but the vast majority of music photographer Jim Marshall’s work has never been seen. Since his death in 2010, Marshall’s estate has been combing through millions of unpublished negatives. This month, a new book and two gallery shows will debut many never-before-published images from Marshall’s coverage of the Rolling Stones 1972 tour, as well as singular portraits of musicians including Johnny Cash, BB King and Joni Mitchell.
It was billed as “the Summer of Love,” a blast of glamour, ecstasy, and Utopianism that drew some 75,000 young people to the San Francisco streets in 1967. Who were the true movers behind the Haight-Ashbury happening that turned America on to a whole new age?
By 1972, Jim Marshall (1936-2010) was already a premier photographer of the golden age of rock and roll. But that year, he got the assignment from Life magazine that would change his career forever: head to Los Angeles and shoot the Rolling Stones putting the final polish on their soon-to-be-canonical double album Exile on Main St. (recorded the basement of a château in the south of France, a process also documented in Stephen Kijak's 2010 Stones in Exile).
CNN: In 1972, the Rolling Stones let it loose for photographer Jim Marshall.
Based on Mick Jagger's serious expression and Keith Richards' focused stare, it was clear the pressure was on.
It was the summer of 1972, and the Rolling Stones were on their American concert tour for their acclaimed "Exile on Main Street" album. But when they were not onstage and rocking out with their fans, they were hard at work remixing tracks at the Sunset Sound studio in Hollywood.
After Jim passed away – it’s hard to believe he’s been gone more than two years now – it was left to Amelia Davis and Bonita Passarelli to deal with the sudden grief, the business particulars and challenges and, most importantly, hunker down to protect his legacy. First and foremost, that legacy hinged on his body of work and archive, but the work also included all of Jim’s personal effects, his gear and his treasured belongings and collections, including a rather eclectic collection of nearly 1,000 albums that highlighted many of his personal greatest hits, so to speak.
I’m rounding up our final Carlos Santana-centric blog this month focusing on the skill that got him his first notice, his riveting, instantly recognizable guitar playing and improvising. One of the many things that distinguished Jim’s talent as a photographer, especially in his early years, was his extraordinary knack for recognizing talent very early, gaining the trust of those talented artists and musicians, and forging lifelong connections and collaborations with them.
“It’s time for people to realize that we are all mixed up inside. That is why there is so much diversity on my records. I can relate to so many cultures and I want that to be reflected in my music.” — Carlos Santana
