"The Rolling Stone Years" by Baron Wolman book cover courtesy Randy Alexander / Randex Communications
“You can’t plan for a career like mine,” Baron Wolman says. “Yes, I chose to be a professional photographer but my tour of duty with Rolling Stone was a fortunate accident, a gift from the photo gods.”
A two-time Amazon #1 Best Seller on two separate Arts & Photography lists, the new 176-page volume is holiday gift consideration for music fans. Filled with photos and text, The Rolling Stone Years by Baron Wolman is illustrated throughout with “some of the most memorable unguarded images of the era” (Rolling Stone), ranging from iconic to rare to never-before-seen.
This “gorgeous” (The Morton Report) collection covers some of the most significant artists and events from rock’s most fertile period, visualizing the music through images of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Who, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Santana, and dozens more!
“The reception everywhere of me, of my photographs and now, my book, has been astonishing,” says Wolman of his successful world tour. “Over the years I’ve always been amazed how my much my early rock photography has meant to so many people, but experiencing it first-hand throughout the world has been an eye-opener. I am blessed to have been able to record such a significant moment in history.”
Wolman returns to the U.S. with scheduled appearances in Austin, TX (Texas Book Festival, Oct. 22-23), and his native San Francisco (Dec. 4), where he not only witnessed so much of what is doubtless the most important period of change in popular music and popular culture, but helped shape it through his iconic shots from rock’s most fertile era. Wolman also is scheduled to visit Europe in November to sign books and exhibit his rock photography in London and Rotterdam.
Rolling Stone magazine encapsulated and distilled the most noteworthy events and changes as they were taking place. Each issue would speak to this evolving youth culture in a language that was all its own.
For years Wolman has been asked to talk about the photos, how they came to be, and what happened on assignment at the various shoots. This book answers those questions and more. Grateful that he and his camera were around at a seminal time in the history of the music business and popular culture, The Rolling Stone Years is his “thank you” for the privilege.
“This is more than a photo book,” says Wolman. “I hope people spend some time reading the text. We look at pictures and wonder how they came to be. Or we speculate a bit about the life of a photographer, especially one who has been on the front lines, the front lines of any subject, be it music, war, politics, etc. In my book I tried to provide a small window into that photographer’s life and offer a few words about the origin of the photos.”
details images from an era in rock just before the celebrity machine got cranking and the corporations took over, when fewer barriers between the artist and the photographer allowed Wolman extraordinary access, the likes of which would be impossible to capture today. And he captured them vividly – not only through the camera’s lens, but with a photographic memory that readily recounts the colorful stories surrounding his unforgettable encounters. Among the more than 200 images are a rail-thin, T-shirted Pete Townshend recording parts of Tommy at the piano; Frank Zappa posing on a tractor at an abandoned construction site near his home; and Pink Floyd (with Syd Barrett, who pretended to drop an acid sugar cube) posing on a Sausalito hotel fire escape on their first American visit.
The Rolling Stone Years makes it easy to see why Wolman’s photographs became Rolling Stone’s graphic centerpiece during the three years they were published regularly in the magazine. Over 40 years later, those same photographs, picture memories of the ‘60s, are now widely exhibited and collected. And Baron’s long-time mantra, “Mixing Business with Pleasure Since 1965,” continues to be his guiding light.