It would have been Jim’s 77th birthday this Sunday, February 3, 2013. Notably, one of Jim’s favorite teams, the San Francisco 49ers, is in New Orleans preparing to take it to the Baltimore Ravens in the Superbowl (Go Niners!) this Sunday as well. All this synergy got me to thinking about birthdays past and one of the more super surprises I ever pulled off. Basically, I managed to crash Jim’s big 50th birthday celebration: a formal dinner at his favorite Marina restaurant, Mulhern’s, with dozens of his nearest and dearest friends in attendance.

Looking back on the past two years that I’ve been lucky enough to blog on “all things Jim” for Team Marshall – this is the 66^th blog I’ve posted in fact – I feel a host of emotions: shock at how much time has gone by, excitement at how much is still left to uncover ... and gratitude.  I’m so grateful for the opportunity to explore the vast archive left behind by a photojournalist literally possessed by the need to capture the 20^th century’s most important people and moments.

“I rambled all the time. I was just like that, like a rollin’ stone.” – Muddy Waters

In today’s blog I want to highlight one of the earliest of Jim’s multitude of hero shots and the first print he ever gave to me.  It is a shot he took very, very early in his career and always said was one of his absolute favorites.  A shot he referred to, with the abject simplicity of his that I came to find so endearing, as “Clown”.

All Jim Marshall and Rolling Stones fans lucky enough to be in London sometime over the next three months need to check out the new exhibition – Rip This Joint! The Rolling Stones 1972 – that opened a few days ago (the opening party is tonight) at The O2 in London.  The exhibit coincides nicely with the Stones live shows at the O2 slated for Nov. 25 and 29 that reportedly sold out in 7 minutes(!) in celebration of the band’s 50^th year.

There is much news brewing in the world of Jim Marshall Photography for the rest of 2012 including most notably the upcoming “Rolling Stones 1972” exhibition at The O2’s British Music Experience, Britain’s groovy interactive museum of popular music housed in the O2 Bubble in Greenwich, London.

As the number of Jim Marshall blogs grows ever higher, I realize some of the most pleasing for me to research and write involve what I call “origin stories,” the story behind how someone first met Jim and the impact he made on them, usually lifelong.  These origin stories are often poignant, usually scary or hilarious or both, and they almost always capture a perfect microcosm of mercurial, nutty, indominatable, inspiring Jim, warts and all.

He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction / Takin’ ev’ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home. -- Kris Kristofferson lyric from “The Pilgrim” Sometimes we dive so deep into Jim’s archive to uncover the rare and hardly seen that we miss the redwood amongst the junipers.  Which is to say that I was rather shocked to realize the other day that, after producing nearly two years' worth of JMPLLC blogs, we had yet to run one of Jim’s favorite portraits: a moody, sexy shot of 

AT THE O2 & SNAP GALLERIES IN NOVEMBER & DECEMBER 2012.

Ready for the next entry into our never-ending game of “Sixth Degrees of Jim Marshall?” It’s a game of finding connections and serendipitous linkages between Jim’s life and work and (fill in the blank important person or hugely popular happening or historic event) that we at Team Marshall never get tired of playing.