I was a photographer. In my late teens I moved to Chicago from
my small town Iowa home because I was a blues and Rock & Roll fan and that is where the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was. So at 19 I was firmly integrated into the music scene in Chicago, going to the hippie ballrooms and little blues joints scattered around the north side of Chicago. I would buy a ticket, take a camera, and shoot some pictures. At that time it was basically a passion. More of a hobby. Traveling around the country from roughly
‘68 to ‘77, I attended rock festivals, Colorado Rockie Highs, visited San Francisco, the Fill- mores, and I would shoot pictures. I was trav- eling the country in a hippie van. I settled back into Chicago in 1977 having
gradually perfected my photographic skills and realized that living in Chicago, the literal home of the blues, was exactly what I needed to be doing. Soon after returning to Chicago in ‘77 I hooked up with a couple photogra- phers that I met - Paul Natkin and Bill Sosin, who had a little photo co-op called Photo Re- serve. That was my first step towards legiti- macy as far as professional concert photography was concerned. Up to that point I had worked in many different photographic ventures from small portrait studios to larger corporate companies and many black and white photo labs- but my heart was in the music. Hooking up with the Photo Reserve guys was what turned the corner for me. Liv- ing in Chicago I was able to constantly photo- graph the clubs, concerts, and festivals.
How did you meet the Allman Brothers Band? During my hippie phase earlier in the ‘70’s I began going out of my way to see the Allman Brothers play throughout the country - even- tually meeting them and gradually getting to know them. My relationship with them was based on the photography. As I grew in my
career photographically I would go out on tour with various artists, from Merle Hag- gard, Johnny Paycheck, and Hank Williams, Jr. to the Allman Brothers, among others. So friendships developed. I did many large tours but very few bands hire a photographer full time so these touring jobs would last any- where from one to four weeks and that would be the end of it. I developed a couple good touring jobs through the ‘80’s. One was the Marlboro Country Music Tour, that account lasted on and off for four years - it was an arena tour with big named acts - Alabama, The Judds, Haggard, George Strait and the like. It was during this time that I did an in- creasing number of album cover shoots and many, many magazine covers and assign- ments. By the early ‘80’s my friendship with the
Allman Brothers had grown to the extent that I went to work on a project - a coffee table book of the Allman Brothers over the years. But I had not photographed Duane or Berry so I set about gathering family photos from folks like Red Dog Campbell, Dickey Betts, Mama A and Butch Trucks. In the course of photo gathering, I obtained other things of historical importance. And the coffee table book kind of expanded and grew into a biog- raphy project. Gathering recordings, video tape, memorabilia of all kinds documenting the Allman Brothers history. All the while still maintaining my music photographic career, dovetailing ABB biography trips onto the tail end of tours that I was photographing. Long about ‘88 Bill Levenson from Polygram Records, who had just compiled and released the Eric Clapton Crossroads CD box set, ap- proached me about getting involved in a simi- lar project documenting the Allman Brothers musical history. That project ended up being the Dreams Box Set. Which was released in 1989 and coincided with the third/fourth in- carnation of the Allman Brothers. Bill Leven-
14
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74