Rock and Roll Photo Archives - LIFE

The Dawn of Rock: America Finds Its Thrill

Bill Syken — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 14:34:12 +0000

In its April 18, 1955 issue LIFE magazine reported on—with a fair amount of concern—the onset of the defining evolution of popular music in the 20th century. The story was titled “Rock ‘N Roll: A Frenzied Teenage Music Craze Kicks Up a Big Fuss.“

Here’s how LIFE described what the “big fuss” was all about:

The nation’s teenagers are dancing their way into an enlarging controversy over rock ‘n roll. In New Haven, Connecticut the police chief has put a damper on rock ‘n roll parties and other towns are following suit. Radio networks are worried over questionable lyrics in rock ‘n roll. And some American parents, without quite knowing what it is their kids are up to, are worried that it’s something they shouldn’t be.

But like it or not, rock and roll was here to stay. Standing in the heart of the moment, LIFE saw dancing as a big part of the new music’s appeal. The magazine, grasping to connect this revolutionary moment to the recent past, described rock and roll dancing as “a combination of “the Lindy and the Charleston, and almost anything else.” The story, shot by staff photographers Walter Sanders and Loomis Dean, had more pictures of kids dancing than of musicians performing. One of the shoots took place at the dance studio of Arthur Murray, where kids demonstrated their new moves.

LIFE acknowledged the roots of this new music, saying “The heavy-beat and honking-melody tunes of today’s rock ‘n roll have a clearly defined ancestry in U.S. jazz going back to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith of 30 years ago.” The broader market was now turning to a style of music that first became popular in the Black community because record companies had been focussing on “mambos and ballads,” and as a result “the country’s teenagers found themselves without snappy dance tunes to their taste.”

Some adults fretted over lyrics that seemed to be laden with innuendo and double meanings. But even as the LIFE article adopted the tone of a worried parent, the pictures in the magazine told another story. The photos showed exuberance and joy. And by today’s standards, everything looks extremely proper. The main concert photos feature the great Fats Domino, who is wearing a suit and playing a grand piano. The young fans are dressed as if they were going to a formal occasion, without any jeans or T-shirts in sight.

It’s mind-boggling to think that a mere 14 years from when this story ran, rock fans would be mucking around in the mud at Woodstock. But there was no stopping it at this point. The revolution was on, and it was coming fast.

Teenagers demonstrated their rock music dance moves for Arthur Murray and his wife, in background, at Murray’s dance studio.

Walter Sanders/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Arthur Murray and wife (in the background to the left) enjoyed a demonstration by teen-agers of rock`n roll dancing, 1955..

Walter Sanders/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Young dancers from a 1955 story on rock music.

Walter Sanders/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A couple dancing from a story on rock music, 1955.

Walter Sanders/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A young couple danced to rock music, 1955.

Loomis Dean/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Pioneering rock DJ Allen Freed did a show from a studio in Boston, 1955.

Walter Sanders/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A sign for an early rock show presented by pioneering DJ Allan Freed, 1955.

Walter Sanders/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenagers danced to rock music being spun by DJ Al Jarvis in the parking lot of a Los Angeles supermarket, 1955.

Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Audience members enjoying Alan Freed’s Easter show at Brooklyn Paramount Theater, 1955.

Walter Sanders/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Saxophonist Herbert Hardesty (center), a member of Fats Domino’s band, let loose at 54 Ballroom in Los Angeles, 1955.

Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fats Domino’s band performed in Los Angeles, 1955.

Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fats Domino’s band rocked out in Los Angeles, 1955.

Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fats Domino in concert in Los Angeles, 1955.

Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fats Domino and his band performed in Los Angeles, 1955.

Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Young dancers from a 1955 story on rock music.

Walter Sanders/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A show from the early days of rock and roll, 1955.

Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post The Dawn of Rock: America Finds Its Thrill appeared first on LIFE.

Tina Turner: Unpublished Photos of the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll

Mon, 10 Nov 2014 12:42:04 +0000

David Bowie probably came closest to summing up Tina Turner’s fiery, un-sum-up-able persona when he famously said, after joining her onstage in Birmingham, England, during the final concert of her 1985 British tour: “Standing up there next to her was the hottest place in the universe.”

Turner died Wednesday, May 24, 2023 at age 83 at her home near Zurich, Switzerland. Here LIFE.com presents a handful of rare photos taken in 1970 by Gjon Mili. The exact date of the shoot? Unknown. The location? Probably Las Vegas. The show’s set list? Unknown. The identity of the guy gazing back at Mili’s camera in the last picture in this gallery? A mystery.

But one thing these pictures do manage to impart is confirmation that, when Tina Turner took the stage—no matter where that stage was, and no matter how large or how small the crowd might be—there was no simply no restraining her talent and soulfulness.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com.

Tina Turner, 1970.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Tina Turner and band, 1970.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Tina Turner, 1970.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Tina Turner: Unpublished Photos of the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll appeared first on LIFE.

Return of the King: When Elvis Left the Army

Sat, 08 Feb 2014 17:01:10 +0000

It’s intriguing to imagine contemporary American music stars serving in the military. How would Kanye West fare in the Air Force? Would Adam Levine cut it in the Army? But when a young man who was, at the time, the biggest musical star on the planet was drafted into the United States Army back in 1958, the uniform seemed to fit. Sure, Elvis Aron Presley often affected a sneer that would drive most drill sergeants to near-apoplexy, and his pompadour was hardly the sort of hairstyle one associated with military discipline. But Elvis, born in Tupelo, Mississippi and raised in Tennessee, had humble Southern roots that may have allowed for a more seamless transition from pop-culture icon to buck private.

Whatever the reason, for a couple of years, Elvis Presley looked like he belonged in a uniform and by all accounts, his brothers in arms saw what he was made of, and accepted him as one of them. It was impossible, of course, for anyone to pretend that Elvis was just another soldier; but he worked hard to fit in and to do what was asked of him, and after two years, when Sgt. Presley was honorably discharged, it was evident that the boy from Tupelo had grown up.

It was also evident, that Elvis was hardly heartbroken about leaving the military. His two years serving in Germany had shown the world, and had shown Elvis himself, that he could handle something more than a guitar, and could perform tasks that didn’t involve gyrating in front of screaming bobbysoxers. In 1960, it was time to get back to doing what he did best: it was time to leave Sgt. Presley behind, and be Elvis again.

Here, LIFE.com presents a series of photos—most of which never ran in LIFE magazine—showing Elvis, along with his 15-year-old girlfriend, Priscilla Beaulieu, in Germany on the day he left to return to the States (March 2, 1960), and Elvis again at Fort Dix, New Jersey, where he landed on March 3, sans Priscilla. He was officially discharged from the Army on March 5. These pictures, by LIFE photographers James Whitmore and Al Fenn, capture a moment in Elvis’s life when he was poised to remind everyone who may have doubted it that, despite two years of taking orders, he was ready to again be the King.

A few weeks later, in its March 14, 1960, issue, LIFE put it this way to its millions of readers:

“In a spectacular shift of power that critically exposed the flank of U.S. music lovers, the Army returned US53310761 from Germany last week for mustering out at Fort Dix, N.J. Fans mobilized to fighting strength and tuned up their shrieks . . . Elvis was back.
After his two year hitch, rock and roll idol Elvis Presley wore a sergeant’s chevrons but no sideburns. “If I say the Army made a man of me,” he said, “it would give the impression I was an idiot before I was drafted. I wasn’t exactly that.”
Elvis was, in fact, a smart soldier. His agents back home had been pretty smart, too, selling 20 million RCA Victor records to the jukebox set. These earned “The Pelvis” $1.3 million in addition to his $145.24 a month service pay. Elvis paid the U.D. 91% of the total in taxes, or enough to support about 150 of his fellow soldiers for a year.
Behind him at Ray Barracks near Friedberg, Elvis had left hordes of palpitating Fräuleins and the pretty 16-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, daughter of an Air Force captain stationed at Wiesbaden. Elvis kissed her before he flew to the aid of the girls back home, sorrowful at parting but anxious to get into his bright-colored pants and back to his hip-swinging singing.”

Sgt. Elvis Presley prepared to leave Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sgt. Elvis Presley held a press conference before leaving Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sgt. Elvis Presley prepared to leave Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sgt. Elvis Presley peered out of the window of the house he and his family occupied in Bad Nauheim, Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sgt. Elvis Presley left the house he and his family occupied in Bad Nauheim, Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley’s grandmother and Priscilla Beaulieu left the house that Elvis and his family occupied in Bad Nauheim, Germany, March 1960

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sgt. Elvis Presley left the house he and his family occupied in Bad Nauheim, Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Priscilla Beaulieu rode in the back seat with Elvis as German fans crowded around the car.”

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis and Priscilla left the house he and his family occupied in Bad Nauheim, Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore—Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis and Priscilla left the house he and his family occupied in Bad Nauheim, Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sgt. Elvis Presley prepared to leave Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Priscilla Beaulieu, Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Priscilla Beaulieu waved to Elvis as the plane took off from Germany for the U.S.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sgt. Elvis Presley prepared to leave Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Priscilla Beaulieu, Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Priscilla Beaulieu was escorted from the tarmac after saying goodbye to Elvis, Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fans congregated at the house in which Elvis and his family lived, shortly after he left the house for the last time, Bad Nauheim, Germany, March 1960.

James Whitmore/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fans, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fan, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fans, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley arrived at McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fans, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley arrived at McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fans, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley arrived at McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fan, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fans, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fan, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fans, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley fan, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley at Fort Dix, New Jersey, shortly before his discharge from the U.S. Army, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley at Fort Dix, New Jersey, shortly before his discharge from the U.S. Army, March 1960.

Al Fenn—Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley at Fort Dix, New Jersey, shortly before his discharge from the U.S. Army, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

lvis Presley at Fort Dix, New Jersey, shortly before his discharge from the U.S. Army, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley (and, at right, actress Tina Louise) at Fort Dix, New Jersey, shortly before his discharge from the U.S. Army, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley at Fort Dix, New Jersey, shortly before his discharge from the U.S. Army, March 1960.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Return of the King: When Elvis Left the Army appeared first on LIFE.

LIFE With Rock Stars . . . and Their Parents

Fri, 03 Jan 2014 12:52:22 +0000

They had fame, reams of money and fans willing to do wild, unmentionable things just to breathe the same air but in its September 24, 1971 issue, LIFE magazine illustrated a different side of the lives of rock stars. Like other mere mortals, they often came from humble backgrounds, with moms and dads who bragged about them, fussed over them, called them on their nonsense and worried about them every single day.

Assigned to take portraits of the artists at home with their sweetly square folks, photographer John Olson traveled from the suburbs of London to Brooklyn to the Bay Area, capturing in his work the love that bridged any cultural and generational divides that existed between his subjects.

Here, LIFE.com brings back Olson’s nostalgia-sparking photos—Marvel at the decor! Gaze in wonder at the shag carpets and bell-bottoms!—and shares his memories of hanging out with pop culture icons of the Sixties and Seventies, as well as their mums and their dads.

John Olson on Frank Zappa: “Everyone had told me that Frank Zappa was going to be really difficult, and he couldn’t have been more professional,” Olson told LIFE.com.

Zappa on His Parents: “My father has ambitions to be an actor,” Frank told LIFE. “He secretly wants to be on TV.”

Zappa’s Mom on Zappa: “The thing that makes me mad about Frank is that his hair is curlier than mine and blacker.”

Grace Slick: Grace Slick’s mom Virginia Wing, wrote LIFE, was a “soft-spoken suburban matron” pretty much the opposite of her wild child. “Grace and I have different sets of moral values,” Mrs. Wing told LIFE, “but she’s her own person, and we understand each other.”

Elton John: In 1970, Elton John was just three albums into his prolific career, and still had countless hits— “Rocket Man,” “Daniel,” “Bennie and the Jets” and “Candle in the Wind” among them—in his future. (As well as the 2019 biopic, Rocketman.) “When he was four years old,” his mother said of her prodigiously talented son, “we used to put him to bed in the day and get him up to play at night for parties.”

Ginger Baker: The world knew him as Ginger, on account of his red hair, but his mother christened him Peter, and to her he was always “my Pete.” As she told LIFE magazine: “He would bring people over and they would say, ‘You realize your son is brilliant,’ and I’d say, ‘Is he? I wish he was a bit more brilliant at keeping his room tidy.'” Ginger died in late 2019.

John Olson on Ginger Baker: “I had worked with lots of these musicians before and on the first go-round some of them had been really difficult. But when they were with their parents, they were totally different people. Baker, who had been terribly obnoxious before, acted like a grown-up. I don’t think it had anything to do with respect for me, so it must have been the parents.”

Joe Cocker: Facial contortions, flailing arms, gallons of sweat: the blues singer poured all that and more into his passionate performances. But off stage, LIFE observed, “he is cool and withdrawn a temperamental mixture of Harold Cocker, his civil servant father who preferred gardening to posing with his famous son, and his outgoing, chatty mother.”

David Crosby: With his parents divorced, the “Crosby” of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young posed with his father Floyd, an Oscar-winning cinematographer, in the Ojai, Calif., home Floyd shared with his second wife in 1970. “In the last few years we’ve become good friends,” David told LIFE magazine. “What I like best about him is that he seems to feel no need for me to be like him, so we’re not offended by each other’s differences. Like he knows I get high. He doesn’t do it and he doesn’t approve of it, but he doesn’t inflict his values on me.”

Jackson 5: Unlike the other stars featured in LIFE’s story, the Jackson brothers Michael, Marlon, Tito, Jermaine and Jackie experienced fame as kids, and still lived with their parents (father/manager Joe and mother Katherine). At the time of LIFE’s shoot, they were the hottest act in pop, skyrocketing in 1970 with “ABC” and “I’ll Be There,” and had just moved into an expansive new house.

“It was very controlled,” Olson says of the photo shoot that resulted in the September, 24, 1971 LIFE cover. “As I remember, they followed my requests to a T, and were incredibly polite. The dad was pretty stern.” Indeed, Joe who had been a crane operator in Gary, Indiana, just three years before hinted at the relentless drive toward fame about which Michael would later voice such ambivalence. “It wasn’t hard to know they could go on to be professionals,” Joe told LIFE of his young sons. “They won practically all the talent shows and I wasn’t surprised when they did make it.”

Donovan: His parents’ love of Scottish and English folk music inspired Donovan, the singer/songwriter behind such hits as “Season of the Witch” and “Mellow Yellow.” But by the time of his photo session with Olson, Donovan’s fruitful partnership with record producer Mickie Most had soured, and his career was in decline. Perhaps as a result, Donovan was the only musician Olson photographed who was left out of the story that LIFE eventually published.

David Crosby with his father Floyd, together in the father’s house, 1970.

John Olson/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Zappa in his Los Angeles home with his dad, Francis, his mom, Rosemarie, and his cat in 1970.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Frank Zappa with his dad, Francis, and his mom, Rosemarie, in 1970.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick posed with her mother, Virginia Wing, in the living room of the home where she grew up in Palo Alto, California. “We raced out there because she was nine months pregnant,” remembered Olson, the photographer. “And the rest of the story took so long to complete, her daughter was a year old when it finally ran.”

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In a second shoot with Grace Slink, the new mom dangled her daughter China by the feet in 1971

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Grace Slick stepped outside with her mom and little China in 1971.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Eric Clapton with grandmother Rose Clapp in 1970 in Surrey, England.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The former Reggie Dwight, later known as Elton John, laughed with his mom Sheila Fairebrother and Sheila’s husband Fred (whom Elton affectionately called “Derf,” Fred spelled backwards) in their suburban London apartment in 1970.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

David Crosby with his father, 1970.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Richie Havens with his parents in Brooklyn, 1970. The musician who opened the show at Woodstock grew up with his folks, Richard and Mildred, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, but he bought them this home in nearby East Flatbush when his music career took off. The Havenses had nine kids and, as Mrs. Havens told LIFE, “Richie is the only one who’s really moved away. I can’t get rid of most of them.”

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ginger Baker, the Cream and Blind Faith drummer, flashed a smile with his mother Ruby Streatfield inside her rowhouse in Bexley, outside London, in 1970.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ginger Baker and his mum, 1970.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Jackson 5 posing with their parents in Encino, Calif., in 1970.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE photographer John Olson set up to shoot the Jackson 5 in their backyard in 1970.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

With their parents standing by, 13-year-old dynamo Michael (front left) and his brothers Jackie, Marlon, Tito and Jermaine straddled their motorbikes by the pool, 1970.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Donovan and his parents, Donald and Winifred Leitch, England in 1970.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Cocker with his mother, 1970, from a series John Olson shot on rock stars and their parents.

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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Peace, Love, Music and Mud: LIFE at Woodstock

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 13:27:55 +0000

The original plan was for an outdoor rock festival, “three days of peace and music” in the Catskill village of Woodstock. What the young promoters got was the third largest city in New York state, population 400,000 (give or take 100,000), location Max Yasgur’s dairy farm near the town of White Lake.

So began LIFE magazine’s description, in its August 29, 1969 issue, of what has come to be seen as one of the defining events of the 1960s. Here LIFE.com presents a gallery of pictures many of which never ran in the magazine from those heady, rain-soaked days and nights.

Lured by music [the story in LIFE continued] and some strange kind of magic (“Woodstock? Doesn’t Bob Dylan live in Woodstock?”), young people from all over the U.S. descended on the rented 600-acre farm.

It was a real city, with life and death and babies—two were born during the gathering—and all the urban problems of water supply, food, sanitation and health. Drugs, too, certainly, because so many of its inhabitants belong to the drug culture. Counting on only 50,000 customers a day, the organizer had set up a fragile, unauthoritarian system to deal with them. Overrun, strained to its limits, the system somehow, amazingly, didn’t break. For three days nearly half a million people lived elbow to elbow in the most exposed, crowded, rain-drenched, uncomfortable kind of community and there wasn’t so much as a fist fight.

For those who passed through it, Woodstock was less a music festival than a total experience, a phenomenon, a happening, high adventure, a near disaster and, in a small way, a struggle for survival. Casting an apprehensive eye over the huge throng on opening day, Friday afternoon, a festival official announced, “There are a hell of a lot of us here. If we are going to make it, you had better remember that the guy next to you is your brother.” Everybody remembered. Woodstock made it.

One of the LIFE photographers on scene during the festival, John Dominis, summed up his own recollections of Woodstock this way:

“I really had a great time.,” Dominis told LIFE.com, decades after the fact. “I was much older than those kids, but I felt like I was their age. They smiled at me, offered me pot. . . . You didn’t expect to see a bunch of kids so nice; you’d think they’d be uninviting to an older person. But no they were just great!

“I worked at LIFE for 25 years,” Dominis said, “and worked everywhere and saw everything, and I’ve told people every year since Woodstock happened that it was one of the greatest events I ever covered.”

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Woodstock, August 1969.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“I’m quite fond of this picture,” photographer John Dominis said. “You can’t plan this sort of thing; one moment during those three days when there’s no giggling, no laughing. They’re just uncomfortable and that somehow makes it work.”

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“I like this shot of a handsome young hippie couple,” photographer John Dominis said. “They seem so comfortable with each other. A very endearing image, I think.”

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Robin Hallock attended the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969." caption="Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969." src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2014/10/woodstock-photos-1969-10-679x1024.jpg" alt="Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969." />

Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Overcome by the driving rhythm, a flutist abandoned herself to dance during an impromptu amateur performance in the woods at Woodstock, 1969.

Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woodstock, August 1969.

Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Max and Miriam Yasgur on their land after the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Peace, Love, Music and Mud: LIFE at Woodstock appeared first on LIFE.

LIFE With the ‘Lizard King’: Jim Morrison and the Doors, 1968

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 05:55:33 +0000

Reflecting the uncertain, tumultuous era in which it was made, much of the popular music of 1968 was moody, trippy, obtuse and, perhaps not surprisingly, utterly confounding to many in the mainstream.

Among the counterculture protagonists that LIFE sought to bring to its millions of readers was Jim Morrison, the highly influential lyricist and front man of the Doors. For a LIFE feature, “Wicked Go the Doors: An Adult’s Education by the Kings of Acid Rock,” the writer Fred Powledge studied Morrison through his lyrics and his notorious onstage antics.

Here, LIFE.com presents color portraits of the then-24-year-old rocker/poet, plus shots that never ran in the magazine of the Doors playing New York’s famed Fillmore East.

At the time of his 1968 portrait session with photographer Yale Joel in New York, Morrison and his bandmates had released two albums (featuring hits such as “Light My Fire,” “People Are Strange” and “Love Me Two Times”), and were about to record a third, Waiting for the Sun. As their popularity grew, the 33-year-old Powledge, taking a break from his typical beat (civil rights and race relations), aimed to “dig,” in an almost scientific fashion, the weird but compelling music his 9-year-old daughter was into.

The most satanic thing [Powledge wrote] about the Doors is Jim Morrison, the lead vocalist and author of most of the group’s songs. Morrison is 24 years old, out of UCLA, and he appears in public and on his records to be moody, temperamental, enchanted in the mind and extremely stoned on something . . . [Morrison’s lyrics] are not what you’d call simple and straightforward. You can’t listen to the record once or twice and then put it away in the rack. And this is one of the exciting characteristics of the new music in general: you really have to listen to it, repeatedly, preferably at high volume in a room that is otherwise quiet and perhaps darkened. You must throw away all those old music-listening habits that you learned courtesy of the Lucky Strike Hit Parade and Mantovani.

“Once you see him perform,” Powledge continued, “you realize that he also seems dangerous, which, for a poet, may be a contradiction in terms.”

LIFE’s physical description of Morrison, meanwhile, name-checked a famous burlesque dancer and pinup girl: “He wears skin-tight black leather pants, on stage and away from it; and when he sings, he writhes and grinds and is sort of the male equivalent of the late Miss Lilly Christine, the Cat Girl. But with Lilly Christine you had a good idea that the performance was going to stop short of its promised ending-point. You don’t know that with Morrison.”

The anything-goes attitude Powledge sensed in Morrison was not unfounded: While working on his story in 1967, the writer was in the audience for a Doors concert in New Haven, Conn., and watched as Morrison who had been ranting to the audience about local police was arrested onstage on indecency charges (later dropped).

You are reminded that the music is a plastic reflection of our plastic world. The sounds are transistorized, sharper than sharp, just as the plastic lettering over a hot dog stand is redder than red. Out of this context the music even the conventional sounds of the church organ or the street noises is unreal; it is marvelously effective in reflecting what’s going on in our society. It dances close to disharmony, to insanity; sometimes it does sound insane and disharmonious, but then you listen closer and find a harmony hidden deep within it.

“Morrison is a very good actor and a very good poet, one who speaks in short, beautiful bursts, like the Roman Catullus,” Powledge wrote. “His lyrics often seem obscure, but their obscurity, instead of making you hurry off to play a Pete Seeger record that you can understand, challenges you to try to interpret. You sense that Morrison is writing about weird scenes he’s been privy to, about which he would rather not be too explicit.”

LIFE’s April 1968 take on Jim Morrison and his band wasn’t the only time the magazine visited the topic. Just two months later, in a story titled “The New Rock” (featuring not only the Doors but also Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Jefferson Airplane, the Mothers of Invention, Cream, the Who and Country Joe and the Fish), Morrison explained his philosophies and his cathartic stage shows.

“Rather than start from the inside, I start on the outside and reach the mental through the physical,” he told LIFE. “Today is the age of the heroes, who live for us and through whom we experience the heights and depths of emotion. The spectator is a dying animal and the purgation of emotion is left up to the actor, not the audience.”

That sort of quasi-mystical hocus-pocus is, of course, exactly the reason countless rock and roll fans have always been drawn to the Doors, and why so many others find them so gratingly pretentious. Hardly anyone who is at all familiar with their music is lukewarm toward the band a fact that would no doubt bring a smile, or a sneer, to Morrison’s face if only he were still alive.

Not long after Yale Joel made the photos in this gallery, the sinuous Morrison seen here had changed: he became hairier and heavier as he descended deeper into drinking and drugging. He was just 27 when he died.

Still, he was prolific in the three short years between the Joel photo session and his death, fronting memorable concerts, recording three more Doors albums and writing two volumes of poetry all of it building upon the material that elevated him from rock ‘n’ roll front man to pop-culture icon.

Jim Morrison, photographed in New York City by LIFE’s Yale Joel in 1968.

Yale Joel / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jim Morrison, 1968

Yale Joel / The LIFE Picture Collection

The Doors performed at New York City’s Fillmore East in 1968.

Yale Joel / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jim Morrison, 1968

Yale Joel / The LIFE Picture Collection

The post LIFE With the ‘Lizard King’: Jim Morrison and the Doors, 1968 appeared first on LIFE.