And now for something completely different … Monterey Pop and Woodstock are tough acts to follow, festival-wise, so we thought we’d change it up a bit and focus over the next few weeks on some early and legendary country, western and bluegrass music gatherings, starting with The Dripping Springs Reunion of 1972.
This seminal country music festival, which Jim’s photos document so wonderfully, happened on a ranch near Dripping Springs in Hays County Texas in March 17-19, 1972 and inspired the (mostly) annual Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic.
Today marks the final edition of our Woodstock ’69 coverage and what better way to round things up than with this shot of Jim and yet another gorgeous mystery blonde (noted only as “Sally” on the print which was uncovered and graciously provided to us by Aaron Zych at Morrison Gallery). This shot was taken by musician and extraordinary music photographer in his own right, Henry Diltz.
Our next Woodstock ’69 festival installment offers up more rare and unseen images from Jim’s voluminous work generated during those three (well, really four considering it all ended on Monday morning) frantic, freakish and fantastic days in August.
Though Monterey Pop generated my favorite of Jim’s festival documentation, the most over-the-top festival for social impact, size of crowd, quality of vibe and quantity of mud, plus nausea-inducing porta-potties was (conga drumroll please): 1969’s Woodstock Music & Art Fair. Held Aug. 15-18 on 600 or so acres leased from Max Yasgur’s dairy farm near Bethel, NY (which is more than 40 miles southwest of Woodstock, NY.
OK, you all asked for more, more, more Monterey Pop photos so in this week’s festival fantasia we break out the heavy guns (so to speak), starting off with Jimi offering up his ultimate sacrifice, burning one of his prized Fender Stratocasters at the climax of his incendiary version of “Wild Thing,” changing his career, and quite possibly the world, in one hot, feedback-drenched stroke.
I learned so much from Jim about the dark and the light sides of life, living in the moment, taking advantage of what the world presents to you. Just being in his orbit, I saw how instinctual choices can make all the difference and how one never knows where the next person you meet in life will take you.
Nowhere is Jim’s approach to work and life more evident, in my opinion, than in the way he chose to document the myriad festivals, across all major musical genres, of the ’60s and early ’70s.
Summer here in the SF Bay Area has finally kicked in full time, meaning we have days that start out foggy and 50 degrees and end up 90 degrees … mercurial, you might say, just like Jim. It’s got us here at Jim Marshall Photography LLC thinking about road trips, cold ones, food trucks and, primarily, kickass music festivals.
Searching Jim’s archives using “music festivals” as the filter is at once exhilarating and overwhelming. From 1960 to the early ’70s Jim seemed to never stop shooting.
I remember a visit to SF in the early 1990s on my way home from covering a conference in Australia. In addition to the writing thing, I had shot a ton of film (slides and Tri-X, remember those?) and Jim graciously offered to zip me around town on his Triumph bike: back and forth to the lab, to lunch, running errands, etc.
It was the mid ’90s, I was married and running my own new media company in downtown NYC when Jim, after winning a sizable copyright abuse settlement for yet another rip off of his “Johnny Cash Flipping the Bird” shot, decided to use that dough to acquire the next car of his dreams: a silver Mercedes C36 AMG 1996 edition.
When I met Jim in March of 1984, he was down on his luck, to say the least. Instead of a Spitfire or Jaguar, Jim was driving “Truck,” a venerable (dare I say beat to hell) ’60s era Ford Ranchero. Jim was very loyal to that car/truck hybrid, especially because he could get commercial plates allowing him to park in yellow loading zones in San Francisco’s notoriously impossible to park in commercial areas during the workday.
