Jim Marshall

Jim Marshall

1936–2010

Jimi Hendrix incinerating his guitar at the Monterey Pop Festival. Janis Joplin relaxing with a bottle of Southern Comfort. A scowling Johnny Cash flipping the bird at the camera during a concert in San Quentin prison. Those iconic images of rock’s greatest performers, and many more, were taken by Jim Marshall, who died last week at 74 in New York City, where he had gone to promote Match Prints, a new collection of photographs by him and fellow photographer Timothy White.

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Born in Chicago, Marshall grew up in San Francisco, where his mother raised him after his father deserted them. He fell in love with photography after a bystander snapped him crossing the finish line in a race. “Marshall was captivated by the idea of that moment being frozen in time,” said the London Times. He started photographing musicians by chance when saxophonist John Coltrane ducked into the insurance office where Marshall worked to ask for directions. Marshall offered to give Coltrane a lift if he’d let Marshall take his picture.

Marshall continued to shoot jazz and folk artists, but is best known for his pictures of rockers such as the Beatles, who gave him exclusive backstage access at their final concert, in San Francisco, and the Rolling Stones, whose sybaritic 1972 U.S. tour he chronicled. Working in the days before stars were surrounded by handlers, Marshall enjoyed extraordinary intimacy with his subjects, who regarded the blunt, profane Marshall as a kindred spirit, said the Los Angeles Times. “All of these artists have given me their trust,” he said in a 2009 interview, “and I never violated that trust.”