In the process of developing this publication, I discovered that details such as dates and locations were not always standard fare in the magazines of the 1960s and ‘70s—even Life and Rolling Stone did not regularly identify dates and locations in captioning their photographs. Hence, for many years I believed that Jim’s image of Mick Jagger used on the cover of Life (p. 153) was from one of the Madison Square Garden concerts in 1972—it was only when I ordered said issue as part of my research that I discovered otherwise, the magazine being on the newsstand weeks before the Garden concerts actually took place. We now believe this image was made at the Los Angeles Forum.
Though Jim kept great records of his contact sheets by artist and year, allowing us to quickly pull all those related to the Stones in 1972, the chronology of sheet numbers did not match the passage of time—he had nearly fifty rolls of black-and-white film from the six to seven days he spent with the Stones in June of 1972, and the sequential numbers apply only to the order in which the film was developed.
As a result, we do not always know with certainty which photographs were made at a particular location. Joel Selvin, with the assistance of Robert Greenfield, carefully pored over the images and provided caption information, including locations only where he felt fairly confident of accuracy. Please feel free to be in touch through Chronicle’s blog if you can provide additional information regarding location for any of the images.
This is the first book produced since Jim Marshall left us for rock-and-roll heaven on March 24, 2010. His voice has been in my head and his eye has penetrated my vision as I worked with his assistant and the beneficiary of his estate, Amelia Davis, to review over one thousand frames that would result in the edit of just over one hundred photographs for The Rolling Stones 1972. Reconciling this body of work with the short period of time in which it was made is just one more testament to the mastery of Jim Marshall. Prior to this volume, only about twenty of Jim’s photographs of the Stones had been nationally published—ten of those were in the 1972 Life magazine article. Jim was an incredible editor of his own work—if you haven’t seen Proof (Chronicle Books, 2004), take a look, as that book is one of the finest examples of his judicious eye. We have made every effort to maintain his strict, high bar of quality for the images included here.
In his lifetime, Jim often spoke of the importance of access and of trust in creating his photographs. I am deeply aware of the trust he invested in me and the access now extended to me by his estate. It remains a great joy to edit and sequence his work, and I wish he were still here to argue with me about it.
If you are interested in learning more about the force that is the Rolling Stones, I suggest the following, which served as resources in the creation of this book:
Cocksucker Blues, documentary by Robert Frank, 1972. Bootleg portions available on YouTube.
George-Warren, Holly, ed. Rolling Stone: The Complete Covers 1967-1997. New York: Abrams, 1998.
Gimme Shelter, documentary by Albert and David Maysles, originally released 1970.
Greenfield, Robert. S.T.P.: A Journey Through America with the Rolling Stones. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 2002.
Loewenstein, Dora and Philip Dodd, eds. According to the Rolling Stones. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003.
Richards, Keith. Life. New York: Little, Brown, 2010.
Stones in Exile, documentary by Stephen Kijak, U.S. release May 2010.
Wyman, Bill. Rolling with the Stones. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2002.