Baron Wolman is the reason rock photographers around the world do what they do. When Rolling Stone magazine launched in the USA in 1967, Wolman came on board as their first ever chief photographer.
In his three-year tenure with the magazine, Wolman photographed the who’s who of rock music including artists such as Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and George Harrison, to name but a very few. It’s not a bad résumé for “just another guy with a camera doin’ a job”.
A long time coming, Wolman will finally be releasing a book of the photos he took during the Rolling Stone years. Wolman, who has famously been “mixing business with pleasure since 1965” is currently in Australia and will be launching the book in Melbourne this week.
Brett Schewitz caught up with arguably music’s most gentlemanly photographer.
You’re on your way to Australia.
Yeah! Lookin’ forward to my first trip there. Never been before!
Never been? What’s taken you so long to come here?
I guess I should ask my accountant, shouldn’t I? I love the music that comes from Australia so why wouldn’t I have come earlier? I don’t know! Listen, some of my photos that I love the most are of AC/DC. I photographed them when they performed in California. I was looking at some today of Bon Scott; he was still playing with the band at the time and man, it just brings back some good memories.
You’re coming to Australia to launch ‘The Rolling Stone Years’. Why did you wait so long to release this book?
I don’t think there was any perfect time to do it. It probably happened in its own time, maybe just because I was involved in so many other things. I had the good fortune to run into a man, who not only was the photo editor of the book, but is also the man who convinced me I should do a book he also got the contract for me with Omnibus, so he fulfilled quite a few different roles in the creation of this book. I guess the short answer is that I don’t know what it took so long. I don’t have a clue!
You seem to have had a lot of good luck with regards to running into the right people at the right time.
Oh, for sure! I mean, luck has played such a significant role. These are the things you can’t really plan for, you can’t ask for. Well, you can ask for it, but it’s like asking the gods to let you win the lottery. The stuff that’s happened, and the way it happened is so phenomenally fortunate and I really can count my blessings. I keep telling people that I wanna thank somebody but I don’t know who to thank, you know?
Well, in a way, definitely from a photographer’s point of you, you did win the lottery, in terms of your subjects.
Yeah, no kidding. Not only that, but music itself became extraordinarily popular and much more significant in terms of the population itself during the time I was photographing. Not only did I have a great opportunity to take the pictures, but the changes within the music society were so phenomenal that I also benefitted in that way.
The late ‘60s was really a turning point. It was a seminal point in rock music.
I don’t know if there was ever a similar period. Music was always popular; people would go to the clubs and listen to music, but it never became big business until the late ‘60s, early ‘70s when it really became more than the music itself, in a way. Business started ruling the world of music.
Nevertheless, it’s made the music more accessible to people than it had ever been before. It became a lifestyle. Well, it didn’t become a lifestyle, it certainly affected the lifestyle of many people without their even knowing about it, from their clothes, to their music to their social/political attitudes to ideas.
When you were taking the photos at the time of Rolling Stone, did you realise they would become so iconic?
No. No no no no. I was just another guy with a camera doin’ a job. To tell you the truth, I had no historical sense that what we were doing had any particular significance, other than reflecting life as we were living it then. I thought we were doing a very good job of reflecting how life was in the early ‘60s.
Beyond that, that was about it. I loved photography and I tried my best to take really good pictures all the time, if I had the opportunity, and doing a job well, for me, was satisfaction enough.
Did you study photography or was it something that was self-taught?
Self-taught. Totally self-taught. You know how some people can pick up an instrument and start playing immediately? That’s how photography was for me, as a kid, the moment I first picked up a camera. The whole thing made a lot of sense to me. Being able to isolate something in the viewfinder.
I see life as being very chaotic but the moment I pick up my camera, I could lessen the chaos that was around me. It was a very important way for me to get along in, what I felt, was a very hostile world, in many respects.
In your opinion, what makes a good live music photograph?
There’s really two significant things that make for good live music photos. First of all, as I preach all the time, access. If you don’t have access, you know, to move around and to move to the place where the good photos are, you’ve got nothin’. You’re sorely limited and your ability to do your job is limited.
Secondly, the musician that you’re photographing better be a performer in addition to being a brilliant musician because if he or she is not a performer then there’s nothing to photograph. I’ve photographed musicians that just stood there and that’s all they did and I’m like “ok, where’s the picture?” You know?
That was murder. It was really difficult to photograph a musician who stood on the stage, played brilliantly, but didn’t move, didn’t think about his clothes, just went on stage.
You seemed to have access to everyone at the time. How difficult was it to gain access?
It was virtually as easy as calling a friend. Just making a phone call. You’ve gotta remember, that before Rolling Stone there was nobody covering music, honouring and celebrating the musicians the way in which we were. The moment we showed up, every one pretty soon figured they wanted to cooperate with us.
If you got a call from Rolling Stone, it was a very significant moment in your career cause you knew you were gonna get good coverage and good publicity, so they responded to that aspect. It was much different then to it is now. If you can imagine, there were no music publications and then suddenly one comes along and covers music and musicians with respect.
Imagine what that means to somebody for whom music is their life. It changed everything and that’s why we had access. We were now offering something in exchange for the access. Something that made me really unhappy, though, is that we were contributing to the artists’ career. The way I saw it, we were helping them achieve the success that they wanted but as soon as their managers got in the way and convinced them otherwise, they started limiting access to us.
We weren’t taking anything from them, in fact, we were giving to them, but according to the managers, we were troublemakers and we were getting in the way. They saw us as piranha, and that was ridiculous. When that started to happen I said “I’ve had enough. I’m not playing this game.” I didn’t want to fight to do what I did well.
Is that the reason you left Rolling Stone?
Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I left but not the fundamental reason. The fundamental reason I left Rolling Stone was that there were other things going on in the world besides for music and I wanted to explore that with my camera. Simple as that.
I was fascinated with so many things that were happening in the ‘60s. The changes were so widespread and so photogenic. You could see a lot of the changes going on; in the street, in the dress, in the hair; all kinds of stuff and I wanted to be there with the camera and not only limited to music.
On the other hand, I must say that when I was at Rolling Stone, I would come up with story ideas that had nothing to do with music, so it wasn’t 100% music I was photographing.
Nevertheless, I wanted to go and do something else, you know? I love Rolling Stone and I absolutely cherish the days I was there. Like I said, I don’t know who to thank for the opportunities I was given.
Who was the most difficult artist to photograph?
One that was strangely difficult, but maybe in retrospect wasn’t all the strange, was Phil Spector. He was a very bizarre guy and he made it very difficult for us. We wanted to do a story on him. He was a very eccentric guy. He wouldn’t meet us in his office and he wouldn’t let us come up to his house and interview him there on our own. We had to wait for his bodyguard to escourt us up there.
The bodyguard showed us that he was carrying a gun and warned us that we had better not do anything weird to Mr Spector. The whole thing was very strange. I remember that as particularly puzzling. Not difficult, but kinda out of the ordinary.
You must have seen some crazy things in your time. What’s the craziest rock ‘n roll story that comes to mind?
Oh man! Crazy? I’ll tell you what was crazy, well, for me it was crazy. When I photographed Pink Floyd, I noticed the way the band treated Syd Barrett. Syd Barrett was struggling with drugs and was very much in love with acid and they were making fun of the fact. I just felt uncomfortable there. I felt like they were playing a game that was not very respectful to him. I might be wrong.
I might be reading something else into it that isn’t true. But I remember feeling uncomfortable about how they were making fun of him. I liked the picture where he’s got the sugar cubes in his mouth; I think that’s funny in a way, but unless you know the story and know what his struggle was, it might not be as funny.
This question is often asked and I struggle to find an answer because I didn’t see stuff that I would say was crazy. I saw people doing the usual stuff. I didn’t see people breaking up hotel rooms. I didn’t go on tour with the guys. I was working for Rolling Stone, which meant that I was available all the time so I wasn’t going around with them and watching them get crazy with women and all that. That wasn’t my experience.
My experience was much more benign and for me, much more fulfilling because it allowed me to take pictures that I think were intimate without being intrusive. I’ve seen pictures from some of the photographers that went on tour with the guys and that’s not what a side that I want to know about them. That’s not how I feel about the musicians.
The fact of the matter is that they’re out there every night, playing music, struggling to get up in the morning to play it again. Come on! Cut ‘em some slack, let ‘em have fun. Don’t be so judgemental, although some of them, of course, were very self-destructive, needless to say. Very self-destructive and it’s very sad to see someone like Janis Joplin become her own worst enemy.
She didn’t realise how much she was loved and how people cared about her and I think that led her down a very dangerous and ultimately, very deadly path.
Are there any artists you regret not photographing or are there any artists you’d still like to photograph?
Oh yeah. I only shot one Beatle. When I was doing the book I realised that I should have spent more time in the UK because there was so much going on in the UK. Why Rolling Stone never assigned me to photograph The Beatles, I don’t know. It wasn’t that I couldn’t have. There was always something else going on, I guess.
That’d probably the reason that I wasn’t there when The Beatles were at a certain place in the US. It would have been nice to photograph more than just George, really. I guess I still could, but it would be different, wouldn’t it? If you know how I can get to them and you want to help me, please tell their people to call me.
If I knew how to get to them I’d be there right now!
You know, people ask me who I’d like to photograph now and, only because I admire what she’s doing, would I like to photograph Lady Gaga. I think she’s one of the most creative performers in the music world right now. She writes very good music, she plays good music, she’s incredibly photogenic, in fact every time she comes out, she’s dressed differently. So she meets all of the criteria for me. Meeting those criteria used to be my test to make a good photograph. So she would be fun.
Only problem is that everybody’s got a goddamn camera now so there’s nothing new to be seen. When I was taking pictures, it was always new. Everything was new! I became addicted to shooting new. I wanted to be the first on the scene and that’s changed so dramatically due to the fact that everybody’s got a camera. Remember when the Pope died and everyone walked past him at the funeral with their cellphone cameras in the air to take a picture? I mean, that’s what’s happened.
Have you embraced digital photography or do you still prefer shooting on film?
I still think that film is phenomenal for certain kinds of images but I don’t have any problem with digital. I think digital has democratised photography and given people an opportunity to express themselves in ways that they never thought they could. So I’m a fan of digital on the one hand, on the other hand I’m also a fan of the beauty that you get with film.
Even though you can click a button in photoshop and make a colour photo black and white, it’s still not the same. It doesn’t have the tones, it doesn’t have the depth that an image taken on film does.
A selection of Baron Wolman’s photographs will be exhibited at The Raw Gallery in South Melbourne and The Blender Gallery in Sydney from September 23 to October 23 2011. Baron Wolman will be signing copies of his new book ‘Every Picture Tells A Story: The Rolling Stone Years’ at The Raw Gallery on September 24 2011 from 11am to 1pm. For more information, visit http://www.therollingstoneyears.com/.
