MICHELLE MARGETTS with AMELIA DAVIS
Searching Jim’s archives using “music festivals” as the filter is at once exhilarating and overwhelming. From 1960 to the early 1970s, Jim seemed to never stop shooting.
He must have been a blur of non-flashing Leicas, using 35 mm film and a handful of fixed lenses (a 50 mm lens more often than not for the offstage stuff) to seemingly be everywhere, perfectly positioned, all the time, snapping one great moment after another.
And music festivals across all genres—onstage and off—were the source of some of his best, most exhilarating moments and discoveries, and some of his greatest work.
This body of work exists because of the trust and relationships that Jim built with these artists and their managers, agents, roadies, spouses, families, groupies, record labels—really the whole swirling maelstrom of money and magic that accompanied these artists and underpinned these moments.
If you ever hung out with Jim for more than ten minutes in a club, bar, or restaurant when he was “on,” you saw his networking ability in action. Because he was such a weird combo of renaissance man and street kid, he seemed to be able to connect with just about anybody, nearly instantly. And once that connection was made, trust was right around the corner.
BRIAN JONES and JIMI HENDRIX sharing a moment, walking backstage at the Monterey Pop Festival, Monterey, California, 1967
BUDDY GUY performing at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1969
DUKE ELLINGTON at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Monterey, California, 1964
JERRY GARCIA backstage at the Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, WILLIE NELSON, and WAYLON JENNINGS offstage at the Dripping Springs Festival (the first of Nelson’s Fourth of July picnics), Dripping Springs, Texas, 1972
