Baron Wolman: The first rock photographer

05 October 2011

by Nathan Jolly

"A friend of mine is a photo editor for MOJO and Q, and said ‘You gotta do a book’. I said ‘I don’t wanna do a book’ and he kept insisting. Then he got me a lucrative contract and I said ‘Under these circumstances, I might just do a book...”

Baron Wolman, the first photographer for Rolling Stone, and one of three founders of the seminal rock bible, is standing in a Sydney art gallery, surrounded by his work. He talks TMN through a number of the shots, claiming his iconic Hendrix shot as “The perfect action shot; it just happens to be Jimi Hendrix,” while pointing out a rare ’67 shot in which Jim Morrison is smiling: “It’s quite a demonic smile, though.”

::VIEW A GALLERY OF WOLMAN'S MOST ICONIC SHOTS

The reason for his visit is twofold: the release of his book Every Picture Tells A Story... which covers his ’67- ’70 stint at Rolling Stone, and the exhibition of these shots at Sydney’s Blender Gallery.

“It took a long time to get it together,” he says about the book. “We did come across some shots I didn’t realise I’d taken. For example, my friend came over from the UK and went through the files. He found a shot of Jerry Lee Lewis playing guitar. No-one’s ever seen Jerry Lee Lewis playing guitar, he plays piano. He said ‘Do you realise what you’ve got here?’”

As with a lot of his best photography, a mixture of know-how and lucky positioning has permeated his career. Stationed with the military in the early-to-mid ‘60s, Wolman moved from Germany to Los Angeles, before settling in San Francisco in 1967. Wolman paints a rose-coloured image of the city at this time, the magic of which is easy to become absorbed in.

“There were free concerts in the park all the time; a lot of well-known musicians lived in Haight-Ashbury where we lived. Janis Joplin lived a few blocks away, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane did, the Steve Miller Band. Everyone was around and emerging. Anything was possible; it was great, all the country’s musicians were coming through to play the Fillmore. It was a great time.”

This same year he met Jann Wenner, who was planning to put together a music magazine.

“He and a writer Ralph Gleeson, who was the music writer for the [San Francisco] Chronicle, they were putting together the staff and they needed a photographer. They knew my work and asked if I wanted to do it. I said ‘Sure I’ll do it’ and he said, ‘Do you have money to invest?’ I said ‘No, but I’ll shoot for free if you give me stock in the company.’ There was no company [at that point], so it was easy for him to say yes. I said, ‘One more thing: you can use the pictures any way you like, but I own them.’ In those days that wasn’t a big deal, these days that would be huge.”

This astute business move meant that Wolman owns the rights to some of the most iconic music photography in existence. The reputation for professionalism that Rolling Stone quickly acquired meant Wolman’s resume quickly swelled with images of artists such as Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and countless others. If Wolman had started out in the current climate, he mightn’t have been so fortunate.

“It’s horrible. I think photographers are being taken advantage of. They’re nothing more than slaves to the big photo agencies. Look at Getty, they will hire you, pay you $500 a day or whatever, and they own all the rights, you don’t get any residuals. Trouble is, it’s easy to be a photographer now with all the digital cameras - you need to learn Photoshop and all that stuff. But buy a good camera, pay $5000 and you can start taking good pictures straight away.

“That wasn’t the case with us,” Wolman continues. “We had no auto focus, we had to know about photography, we had to develop our own film. It’s a different world and it’s diminishing the value of an image. Everyone has a camera, whether it’s high end, low-end, a cell phone, whatever. Everyone takes pictures, we are awash in pictures and the best ones probably aren’t seen. I think the digital revolution is very good, it has democratised photography. But individual pictures aren’t valued. If I was wanting to get into music photography [nowadays], I would get a day job,” he laughs.

Starting his music photography career in the culture hotbed that was San Francisco in 1967, it is easy for Wolman to be cynical about the future of the artform. But he insists that the same passion he had during this time should be the main motivating factor for current photographers. Besides, Rolling Stone didn’t make any money, at first.

“We struggled in the beginning,” Wolman recalls. “But a lot of people put their faith in the publication because they saw we were serious. We weren’t a hippy publication, we were trying to be professional, we were national, and we covered music in a new way and an important way. We’d make some money, we’d lose some money and we’d have to borrow some money. Eventually it became successful. I didn’t make any money from it for years. Steve Miller Band signed a contract for $50,000, which in 1967 was unheard, so I took a shot of Steve with a feather in front of his face. Capitol Records wanted to put it on the cover of a record and said ‘We want to pay you $500.’ I thought ‘Whoa, there’s money in this?’ Up until then, I’d been shooting for fun.”

Shooting for fun seems to be the driving force behind most of Wolman’s career. He suggests that current rock photographers use this as their main impetus: “If you enjoy it, who knows what else might happen.” Still, it’s a surprise Wolman didn’t walk away from the entire industry after his first ever Rolling Stone shoot with The Grateful Dead.

“They were busted for pot, and they did a press conference. I took a shot of them posting bail so they didn’t have to go to jail. The feeling was, ‘This is ridiculous, why are you busting them, everyone is smoking pot in San Francisco why aren’t you busting everybody?’ And then I had to get them on the front steps of their house and they were so wired they wouldn’t pose. They were pointing guns at me and flipping the bird and all that stuff. But I finally got a few good ones that have become classics. So that was my first shoot for Rolling Stone,” he shrugs.

Looking back at his legacy - all neatly packaged in a coffee-table book - Wolman seems less proud of his photography than of Rolling Stone as an entity.

“I think it was innovative. There were a lot of talented music writers who didn’t have an outlet, and then suddenly we gave them one. There were a lot of people who viewed music as very important. It wasn’t just something you listened to; it was something you became very involved in. It was an opportunity for respectable, responsible, professional music writers to get published.”

“There were other music magazines - Creem and Crawdaddy - they had some great writing. But they didn’t look as good as Rolling Stone, they didn’t have the distribution of Rolling Stone and the people behind them didn’t have the business sense. We were the voice. Not putting those magazines down, but it was Rolling Stone and all the rest.” It took a stage-door mishap for him to fully realise the impact the magazine had made.

“After about a year [of launching], I went to a concert, and went up to the stage door and went ‘I’m Baron Wolman’ and the guy said, ‘Oh, you’re already here.’ Someone had impersonated me,” he laughs. “I knew at that point, we had it made.”

Every Picture Tells A Story... is out now through Omnibus Press. Exhibition at Blender Gallery, Sydney until October 22