It was his first assignment for Rolling Stone and Baron Wolman had a rifle aimed at his head. He figured he wouldn't be shot, as the Grateful Dead were a pretty peaceful bunch, but, for a pacifist, then lead-singer Pigpen sure did like to wave a gun around.
The year was 1967 and Wolman, Rolling Stone's first chief photographer, was working on an assignment for the now-iconic magazine's debut issue. The Grateful Dead had just posted bail after the police found drugs during a raid at their Height/Ashbury home and they were hosting a living room press conference, where a bowl of whipped cream was on the table. "The first one of you to ask a stupid question gets this in the face," a member of the Dead promised. After all the questions were asked and the other journalists left, Wolman approached the band and asked if he could photograph them on the front porch.
"Who are you and what the hell is Rolling Stone?" they asked, but eventually agreed to step outside and be photographed. As he looked through his lens, he could see Pigpen was alternating a gun between the camera and the sky. For some photographers this could have been a disaster; for Baron Wolman it produced "Dead on the Porch," which appeared in RS 1. A print of the photo is now hanging at Owen's Community College's ROCK ON: Photographs by Baron Wolman, where the 75-year-old legend will lecture on Thursday, March 21 at 7pm.
Wolman lives in Sante Fe, but was born and raised a couple hundred miles south in Columbus. In his teens, his love for gadgets attracted him to messing around with his cousin's SLR camera, and in that trial phase, it came into focus: a camera allowed something he wanted above all — unlimited access.
"I found that he could go anywhere," Wolman says. "If there was police tape, he could get by it. He wasn't official, he just had an official looking camera. He could cross any yellow tape and be anywhere he wanted to be. I said, 'That's cool. I want to be anywhere I want to be.'"
A decade and a half later, at 30 years old, he was posted up in San Francisco as freelance photographer, covering mainly music, and when he pitched a story about a rock n roll conference at a Bay Area college, a magazine paired him with a 21-year-old writer named Jann Wenner, the future publisher and creator of Rolling Stone.
Not too long after Wenner asked Wolman to be the first photo chief of RS, and also inquired whether the 30-year-old Wolman had $10 thousand to invest in the publication. Wolman didn't, so the deal was he wouldn't be paid, but he would receive stock in the company and retain rights to all of his photographs.
In the three years — 1967 to 1970 — that Wolman shot for Rolling Stone he captured everyone from Johnny Cash to Jimi Hendrix to Janis Joplin to The Who. If you look at several of his photos, you'll notice a theme: all the musicians look naturally relaxed and like they are having a good time. Something Wolman attributes to him communicating the respect he had for their music.
"They realized I wasn't there to take anything from them," he says. "In fact, I was there to make them look as good as I could possibly make them."
Between leaving RS and now, Wolman started a fashion magazine called Rags, spent a year following the 1974 Oakland Raiders (resulting in the book Oakland Raiders: The Good Guys), bought a plane to take aerial shots over coastal California and started a publishing company.
Fast forward to the evening of Tuesday, March 26, 2013, the night before TCP spoke with him. Wolman is backstage at a Sante Fe performance by former Grateful Dead guitarist/singer Bob Weir. He is there with a friend, who recently bought a photo Wolman took of Weir in the studio sometime in the late 60s, that he wants to get signed. But, after thinking it over, he instead hands it to Wolman, who hadn't seen Weir in 43 years, as a gift, and as he approaches a member of the psychedelic rock band that gave him his first major break, the Grateful Dead's youngest member gives him that where-do-I-know-you-from look. Wolman hands him the picture and the wheels start to turn.
"He just starred at the picture and I watched him go back in time," Wolman recalls. "It was a powerful moment."
Baron Wolman will speak at Owens Community College's Walter E. Terhune Gallery on Thursday, March 21 at 7pm. Free. The exhibit runs through March 28. 30335 Oregon Rd., Perrysburg. 567-662-2721. www.owens.edu/arts/gallery.
