Rock photographer Jay Blakesberg on capturing the souls of legends

Jay Blakesburg [00:00:02] Once we took LSD, the genie was out of the bottle and we saw that there was a whole world in front of us. And for me, that world was no longer in suburban New Jersey. I needed to get to San Francisco. 

Sophie Bearman [00:00:28] You're listening to Life in Seven Songs from The San Francisco Standard. I'm your host, Sophie Bearman. This week, I'm sitting down with legendary rock photographer Jay Blakesberg, who's been photographing music icons for over 45 years. We're talking Nirvana, B.B. King, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Radiohead. His work has been published in hundreds of magazines and documentaries. He's even published 16 books on his own. But perhaps what he's best known for is creating a seminal photographic archive of one of the world's most beloved bands ever, the institution known as the Grateful Dead. And it was through his genuine love of their music and his own search for community as a misfit that he ended up listening to and photographing the group for, well, most of his life. Jay Blakesberg. Welcome to the show.

Jay Blakesburg [00:01:23] Hi, Sophie. Thanks for having me. 

Sophie Bearman [00:01:25] So, Jay, you've been photographing the Grateful Dead since you were a teenager. Do you remember the first time you saw them live and the first time you photographed them? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:01:34] My first Grateful Dead concert was Labor Day weekend, 1977. I was 15 years old, I believe. We sat in the front row. The guy that brought me, he was two years older. His name is Lozzi. He's the guy that turned me on to all the music that I listen to in my life. He had a camera. We passed it around. There is one little print that exists from that concert somewhere. I don't know where the negatives are. I don't have them, but I do have a little five by seven print that we made in the darkroom in somebody else's basement that he knew. Maybe I took it. Maybe he took it. Nobody really knows. I'm going to say I took it because it's composed properly and like, you know, and it's an okay photo. It's almost in focus. But, you know, a lot of photographers talk about that moment when they see that first photograph come out of the developer and under the red darkroom lights. And it's a life changing moment and it's really fucking true. 

Sophie Bearman [00:02:31] And it's Jerry. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:02:31] And it's Jerry. 

Sophie Bearman [00:02:33] And Jay, like I said in the intro, you've been photographing concerts, musicians for coming on five decades. What's your goal for the photographs that you take? What impact do you hope your images have? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:02:44] A lot of people have my photographs hanging on their walls, and I want them to look at that photo. And I want them to remember not only that moment of that concert, that that photo might be from or that musician of who wrote that song, but who they were with, whether it's their future lover or wife, husband, their best friend. And it brings them back to that moment in their life because, boy, it goes fast for me and a lot of my friends and people that I know that have have been having live music experiences for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Our whole lives are made up of these series of experiences. And so these songs, these lyrics, this music, these records, these photographs can bring you back to that moment and elicit a feeling that is really fucking good and special. 

Sophie Bearman [00:03:38] Yeah. Okay, so let's go back to one of those moments and maybe not a live experience, but tell me about the first song that you remember ever listening to. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:03:48] It's got to be "Hey Jude" by The Beatles. I just have this memory of being in my mother's car, windows down, sun shining and hearing "Hey Jude" on WABC AM, which was the big Top 40 New York City radio station with a very famous DJ named Cousin Brucie. And when I heard that song, there were literally millions of other people hearing that song at the same time and probably having their minds blown. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:04:37] How much more accessible can a song be to a 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 year old kid than a song like that? That affected me in some way, whether I knew it at that moment or not. And I still listen to The Beatles. It's a Paul McCartney song. I'm a John Lennon guy and a George Harrison guy all the way. But I still can love it and appreciate it. 

Sophie Bearman [00:05:01] What does it mean to be a John guy? I mean, what does that say about someone? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:05:04] For me, what John did as a solo artist, post-Beatles with Plastic Ono Band, those records really resonated deeply with me. Of course, everybody loves "Imagine" and every good hippie should love "Imagine." But it went way, way deeper than that. And, you know, and John, you know, wrote an intense song about Paul. "How do you sleep?" You know, criticizing Paul's contribution to the Beatles. And so as a young, impressionable 20 something kid, listening to John slam Paul and being a John guy, I don't know. It's just all stupid weirdness. But I appreciate it all now and love it all. And still, I'm a big fan of all The Beatles. 

Sophie Bearman [00:05:45] So, Jay you've described Grateful Dead fans, Deadheads as, quote, "music loving circus of freaks and misfits." And so I'm curious what led you to finding and joining this Deadhead circus? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:05:57] So in the 1970s, when I was in high school, I was starting high school in 1975, suburban New Jersey. We did not have the Internet to tell us anything. We had FM radio. We had album liner notes. We had books like "On the Road" and the "Electric Kool-Aid, Acid Tests." We didn't conform to what society believed people should still be doing, as in the 1950s or early 60s, because we didn't want two-point-three children, a two car garage, and to live in the suburbs. And we were trying to find our place in the script of birth, school, work, death. Who are we? How weird are we? How do we hang out with the cool kids? Who are the cool kids? So all of these things kind of categorize us as misfits. I saw my first concert in 1975. It was Halloween night. It was at Madison Square Garden. My older stepbrother, who was one year older than me, I believe, took me to the city. And it was the Doobie Brothers. 

Sophie Bearman [00:07:07] Now, this is no, "Hey, Jude." This is like your band. You're starting to own this music a little bit more. What song stood out? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:07:13] So I think the song that really stood out for me was the song called "Black Water." And I had a neighbor who lived on my block. His name is Michael Wexler. He was my best friend. And we would go over to his house and had a giant basement and we would play that song over and over. And I remember he would turn the bass knob really up when he did that really deep voice, "Oh, blackwater, keep on turning, Mississippi moon." You know, the whole thing. And and it's just something that resonated. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:08:00] So everybody's listening to rock and roll. And here's these acoustic songs and these beautiful harmonies. I think I was 14 years old. I just really loved that song and I loved that record. And about 28 years after my first concert ever, which was the Doobie Brothers, they hired me. They came to my studio and spent the day with me doing band portraits of them. Just really wonderful people and still making great music and and still inspiring me to this day. 

Sophie Bearman [00:08:27] What else are you listening to in high school? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:08:29] Crosby, Stills and Nash, "Wooden ships." You know, it's really a dark song at its heart. You know, when you're listening to that song, I believe it's about nuclear destruction, but it has one of the greatest opening lines of any song. And and that first line immediately hooked me because I try and live my life by this very, very basic, simple lyric, which is if you smile at me, I will understand, because that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:09:20] It's the most basic thing. Like for us in 10th grade, let's call it. To hear a lyric like that is more important than what they're teaching us in social studies. You know, hearing that clip, it reminds me that when we listen to these songs and we went and saw these bands perform them, we felt that urgency, the urgency to change people's minds, the urgency to change the planet, the urgency to get people to realize that the earth was fragile. People are fragile. And and we believed what they sang to us. Right. This music from the 60s and the 70s as a 62-year-old man still resonates with me and I still connect to it and it still moves me. 

Sophie Bearman [00:10:04] And you're seeing some of these bands in concert. Are you photographing them yet or does that come later? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:10:09] Some of them. When I saw Crosby, Stills Nash at Madison Square Garden for the No Nukes concerts, yeah, I photographed it. 

Sophie Bearman [00:10:14] So you're using, what, like a family camera? Or do you have another one? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:10:17] At that point my dad had bought me a camera for my 17th birthday, which would have been in December of 1978. After that, I photographed the Grateful Dead again in Rochester, New York. And that was the first time that I got published in print and paid money for my photographs. And then I was paid $7.50 for each photo, $15 total. I was 17 years old, but I was a paid published photographer. It was one of those, one of those sparks early in your life that hopefully turns into an inferno. And for me, it happened with the Grateful Dead in a big way, starting very young. 

Sophie Bearman [00:10:55] Which is why it makes sense that the next song you chose is a Grateful Dead song. So tell me about that one. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:11:01] So one of the songs that I chose of my seven songs is a song called "Eyes of the World." It's on an album called "Wake of the Flood" that came out in 1973. There was a snow day in the winter of I can't remember. It was late '77 or early '78 and we dropped acid for the first time and we listened to "Wake of the Flood." My mind was blown more than anything I could remember up to that point in my life. My first acid trip, it was plain white blotter paper. We probably each took one hit, which was probably somewhere between 100 and 200 micrograms. And we listened to that record over and over again on that day. 

Sophie Bearman [00:11:43] And "Eyes of the World." How come? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:11:46] There's just so much, so much being said. There's a line in there. "Sometimes we live no particular way but our own." That's the lyric that really, really resonated. Those songs that I started listening to on that cold, snowy winter day on LSD still are part of my life and still mean so much to me. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:12:27] That was metaphysical. That was religious. That was colorful. That was orgasmic. We were not afraid to tune in, turn on and drop out. You know, we felt like that was the right path. And once we had that experience on that snow day and it worked and it worked really well. 

Sophie Bearman [00:12:51] And your sense of self in that moment is that like we're awakening a sort of consciousness, we're maybe even helping the world? Does it go that far? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:12:57] Absolutely. 100%. 100%. I'm not saying that LSD is for everybody. I'm not saying that psychedelics are for everybody. But for the people who tapped into it and were able to have the right experience. The genie was out of the bottle and we never wanted to put it back in. And we saw that there was a whole world in front of us. And for me, that world was no longer in suburban New Jersey. I needed to get to San Francisco. 

Sophie Bearman [00:13:25] But before you could get there, you ended up in prison because you were dealing drugs. Can you talk about that? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:13:33] There was a guy here in San Francisco who was being watched by the San Francisco Police Department, and he overnighted me a couple of thousand hits of LSD. And they had notified the police in New Jersey and they were waiting for me when I walked out of the package facility and they grabbed me and threw me against the car and said, "You're under arrest, motherfucker." Just like in the movies. And I was very, very, very, very fortunate that this happened when it did. Ronald Reagan was already president, but he had not started the war on drugs yet with his wife, Nancy. I know people that were arrested with a with with less LSD than me. A few years later that did 15, 20, 25 years in prison for that. And if that was me, I wouldn't be having this conversation with you right now. I wouldn't be in the in a museum exhibit. I wouldn't have the body of work that I did. Everything in my life would be very, very different. So I feel very, very fortunate is not lost on me how lucky I really am. And that it worked out the way that it did. 

Sophie Bearman [00:14:35] It's time for a quick break. When we come back, Jay finally makes it out of New Jersey. We'll be right back. 

Sophie Bearman [00:14:59] So eventually you do leave New York's armpit behind. Where do you go? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:15:04] In 1982, I moved to the West Coast. I moved to Olympia, Washington. I actually moved there to get residency and apply to college because I was in the middle of my court trial. I was appealing my conviction and I was trying to convince the judge that I was going to go to college and become a productive citizen. But he didn't believe me. So he convicted me and sentenced me to five years in state prison. But I only did eight months. And so when I got out, I went back to Olympia, Washington, and started the fall semester in 1983 at the Evergreen State College. And I had about a dozen friends that lived in Olympia that were all from the same hometown as me. They were very welcoming and they were the ones that turned me on to this sort of whole new arena of music. The Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, King Crimson, bands like that. They were all Deadheads, but they were all way into that music as well. And so I quickly, quickly fell in love with the Talking Heads record, "Remain in Light." And so when I moved to the Bay Area in '85, I started taking psychedelics again and was really enjoying that after really sort of stepping back for a minute because of prison and just kind of keeping my life together and staying in Olympia. I would take the Talking Heads record, remain in light and bring a Sony Walkman cassette player to Grateful Dead concerts when I was tripping on acid. 

Sophie Bearman [00:16:30] So you would take the Talking Heads to Grateful Dead. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:16:32] Yeah, this this record and a cassette player with little headphones and during set break because the Grateful Dead played two sets of music and there's a 45 minute set break. And if I was really high on acid, I would just sit down and put this record on because it's really a wonderful, wonderful record to listen to on LSD. And the people would be like, What are you doing? What are you listening to? And I would put the headphones on and her eyes would like start bugging out of their head like, What is this? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:17:18] There's this, you know, lyric passage. "All I want is to breathe. I'm too thin. Won't you breathe with me? Find a little space." You know, and just like the way that they sang it and the phrasing, you know, "all I want is to breathe." It's just like, you know, again, like breath, life, oxygen. Like, it just resonated with me. 

Sophie Bearman [00:17:37] That's "Born Under Punches" by The Talking Heads. And you even told David Byrne that this record was like the top one for psychedelics. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:17:44] Yeah. So, you know, I got hired by Rolling Stone magazine to do a portrait of the Talking Heads, and David was the first to arrive. And I said to him, I go, David, I have a funny story for you. I don't think I told him I had just gotten out of prison, but it was literally a month or so after I got out of prison. The Talking Heads played up in Seattle and it was the Stop Making Sense tour and we had no money. And so we made counterfeit tickets. We literally did black and white photocopies of the tickets that were like theater tickets and then colored them with watercolors and magic markers and then glued a couple of pieces of paper together to get the right thickness and then perforated with a safety pin. And ten of us walked in for free. And I said, David, I'm really sorry, but I made a counterfeit ticket. And the tickets are $12.50. So here's $20 with interest. And he looked at me and he goes, "No, no, no, it's okay. The statue of limitations is up. You don't have to pay anything. But I also was talking to him at that same time and I said, you know, remaining light is truly one of the most psychedelic records and just so amazing to listen to on LSD. And he sort of looked at me with a quizzical look. And I don't know if he really believed me or not or was just trying to play it cool because I have no idea if David's ever taken LSD or not, but it was just kind of a funny conversation is like really? It is? Like kind of one of those things. 

Sophie Bearman [00:18:57]  You just mentioned getting hired by Rolling Stone to shoot the Talking Heads. Tell me about your first big break. The first time you get hooked up with Rolling Stone magazine to do a shoot. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:19:06] So it's a San Francisco story, I live in a house in Oakland with 5 or 6 roommates, $125 a month rent. And I had a friend who was a Deadhead, a woman named Robin Mallis, who went to high school with a woman named Jodi Peckman. And Jodi Peckman became the new photo editor at Rolling Stone magazine. And Robin introduced us and I started submitting my photographs. And she liked them, but she didn't use them. And then on 11/11/87, U2 did a free concert in downtown San Francisco in Justin Herman Plaza. We had heard a rumor that this was going to happen because they actually use the Grateful Dead sound system at that concert. And so the Grateful Dead grapevine was alive and kicking and people were saying, U2 is planning this thing any day now, Free concert. And we had a communal phone in the front hallway of this house that we all shared, one phone, and I just happened to be downstairs getting ready to leave. And the woman said, "Hey, Jay, it's Jodi Peckman from Rolling Stone magazine. I have your big break. I need you to go shoot the free U2 concert in downtown San Francisco." And I went and photographed U2 at Justin Herman plaza. Bono spray painted on the Vaillancourt Fountain, "Stop the traffic, rock and roll." That was before the Embarcadero Freeway had collapsed in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 89. So there was the big freeway behind it. It was jam packed traffic because people were seeing what was going on in just a ruined plaza with 10,000 people there. They ran my photograph in the January issue. 

Sophie Bearman [00:20:31] What's the photo? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:20:32] It's a picture of Bono spray painting the Vaillancourt Fountain. But yeah, it was a big deal. And then after that, I went out to do right around 300 assignments for Rolling Stone magazine, almost all of them for Jodi over the next 30 years. She stayed at Rolling Stone for that long. And I just kept working with her and shot. Every band you can imagine for her. 

Sophie Bearman [00:20:53] I mean, what's on that list? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:20:55] Flaming Lips. Nirvana, The Grateful Dead. Tom Waits. Joni Mitchell. Radiohead. Bands that don't even matter anymore, and bands that matter a lot. 

Sophie Bearman [00:21:06] What's your favorite Rolling Stone photograph? Either because the memory that goes with it or just the art of the photo. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:21:13] The U2 one is pretty pivotal for me because it was a life changing, career changing moment. But, you know, one of my other favorite ones is I did a portrait of Radiohead. And the photograph that they ran in in the magazine was a Polaroid transfer. And I'll try and do this really quickly, but techno geeky. I took a Polaroid. I only developed it for 30 seconds instead of 90. Peeled it apart and put the emulsion side of the Polaroid onto a piece of wet watercolor paper and burnished it with a roll or peeled it apart. And you end up with a one of a kind piece of artwork. And I submitted that to Jodi at Rolling Stone. They ran that as a full page in Rolling Stone. That was pretty special for me that they looked at something that I did that was so original and unique and ran it as a full page. I shot Alanis Morissette's first magazine cover. I shot Sheryl Crow's first magazine cover, and I shot Tori Amos' first magazine cover. Those were all in the mid-nineties.

Sophie Bearman [00:22:06] You're describing this incredible career. Is there a song that sort of sums up that journey for you? I mean, now that you're kind of looking back at that body of work. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:22:17] "Tangled Up in Blue" by Bob Dylan, you know, you always say, like, what song would you like to hear for the first time again? That would be one of them. But it's such a it's a song that says so much, so much about all of our lives because it's just this adventure. It's a song about a person and his life and his love. And there's so much information in that song, but there's so few answers, right? So you're trying to answer these questions about what this person is doing and how they got from this place to that place and how they met this lover and that lover and how that lover could become something that they just barely even remembered so many years later. You get to a line like this in in "Tangled Up in Blue." "All the people we used to know, they're an illusion to me." Now you know, something like that. It gives me chills. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:23:20] When we were on Grateful Dead tour at 18 or 19 years old. And you're with this whole community of people and we're all sort of misfits and we're all looking for that same adventure, the adventure of the road, the adventure of experience, the adventure of music, the adventure of community. And then people slowly peel off and they start to become mathematicians, carpenters, wives, cooks. Business people, right? It's it's this full circle moment. And so you look at a song like this and it really makes you think about your life. Yeah, that's what it meant to me. You know, a lot of people say that music is a very personal experience. But in the Grateful Dead, it's a community experience. And I think that's one of the things that's really, really different about the psychedelic jam band community. So there's the Grateful Dead, and of course now there's Phish and all these bands, you know, first generation, second, third, fourth. It just keeps coming down that are part of this thing that the Grateful Dead started that are like minded people doing like minded things to have like minded experiences in a community setting. 

Sophie Bearman [00:24:26] The Grateful Dead is the band that you grew close with, and I'm curious, how would you describe your relationship with Jerry Garcia? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:24:32] Jerry was a very sharp, clever, self-deprecating, funny guy. Very, very smart. I mean, we know Jerry from the songs that he sang to us. I didn't have a personal relationship with them, you know. But I'm fortunate that I did have one-on-one experiences with him and actually was able to meet him and photograph him one-on-one. 

Sophie Bearman [00:24:53] He didn't like to be photographed, right? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:24:56] You're correct. Jerry did not like to be photographed. In '93, I did a portrait of him for the cover of Acoustic Guitar magazine, and I knew that Jerry hated to be photographed and hated to be in front of the camera for long periods of time. So I gave him a guitar and just let him play. And he sat there for almost 30 or 40 minutes for me. 

Sophie Bearman [00:25:13] Give the man a guitar. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:25:14] Just give the man a guitar and let him play. 

Sophie Bearman [00:25:18] You've been listening to the Grateful Dead for 48 years, and it seems like you grew up with that band, and that band influenced your life and guided you in so many ways. So I'm not surprised that you chose another Grateful Dead song as your seventh and final song. Tell me about this one. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:25:36] There's a song that is called "Addicts of My Life." It's a song about the end of your life. It's a song about the end. You know, you want to look back and you want to say, I lived a good life. I lived a fulfilling life not only for me, but I did good things for other people. And maybe it's because I smile at them when they were walking down the street, you know, Or maybe they looked at one of my photographs and they really loved it and it meant something to them. I just hope that we can all look back at our lives. And all be able to say, I lived a good life, I lived a useful life, and it was useful to more people than just me. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:26:32] I mean, what a beautiful lyric, you know, full of taste that no one can know. Like, it's not just about tasting food or water or drink. It's tasting life, right? And everybody's experience in that is so different. No, none of us have that same experience. We, as with the Grateful Dead, we can commune together and have a similar experience. But what you're feeling at that moment is purely you and what you're tasting is purely you. Right. And so here's the song that that skims the surface of a whole life and all the experiences you might have, but goes so much deeper and so many ways that when you really listen to it, it's pretty mind boggling. Again, Robert Hunter, you know, one of the great lyricists of all time. 

Sophie Bearman [00:27:17] And I just really got to watch you, I think, go somewhere you close your eyes and seemed in those 30 seconds somewhat transported. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:27:27] That's what you want. That's what you want these songs to do. 

Sophie Bearman [00:27:29] Where did you go? 

Jay Blakesburg [00:27:31] I went into that moment of feeling that and and realizing that I'm 62 years old and and, you know, I'm on the other side where the the the clock is ticking faster and, you know, hoping that I get to have way more experiences because I'm still having a lot of fun and I'm not ready to go anywhere. So even though it's a song about mortality, I'm hoping that I don't have to deal with that for many, many years. 

Sophie Bearman [00:27:57] Steve Blakesberg, thank you so much for joining us. 

Jay Blakesburg [00:27:59] You're welcome. Thank you, Sophie. I appreciate your time and I hope you enjoyed our little chat. 

Sophie Bearman [00:28:29] Life in Seven songs is a production from The San Francisco Standard. This episode was produced by me, Sophie Bearman and our senior producer, Jasmyn Morris. Our executive producers are Griffin Gaffney and Jon Steinberg. This episode was mixed by Michelle Lanz. Our theme music is by Kate Davis and Zubin Hensler and Clark Miller created our show art. Our music consultant is Sarah Tembeckjian and our studio engineer is Sean McKenna at Pure Mind Studios. You can find Jay Blakesberg's full playlist at sf.news/spotify. And just a quick note, we'll be taking a short break for the holidays. We'll be back with a new episode in three weeks on January 7th. Thanks for listening. Happy holidays and see you in the New Year.