About Baron Wolman

Fueled by the music and the times, a 21-year-old journalist named Jann Wenner gathered some friends and began a revolution in ink. Named Rolling Stone, this newsprint rag captured the era, defined it in print and pictures, and helped form a generation. Among the friends that Wenner interested in his project was Wolman, then a 30-year-old freelance photojournalist. Already an established photographer for such glossy mags as Life and Look, Wolman accompanied Wenner in '67 to cover the story when Mills College--a bastion of academic musical study--canonized rock music by hosting a conference on its importance.

Wenner invited Wolman to shoot for the burgeoning Rolling Stone, Wolman agreed to work for free, and when the first issue hit the streets five months later, rock history began to be recorded.

During his fast-paced tenure, Wolman's lens captured the royalty of the '60s pop and rock explosion: Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Iggy Pop, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Phil Spector, Jim Morrison, Ike & Tina Turner, Tim Leary, and a motley cast of hangers-on.

When he left the magazine three years later, rock itself had changed.

And according to Wolman and former Rolling Stone managing editor John Burks, now a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, nothing will ever be the same again. "Once in a while, I'll look back at my old copies of Rolling Stone, if a student has a question or something," says Burks, "and I'm really struck by the collected works of Baron and [fellow photographer] Jim Marshall. Rolling Stone created the language, visual and written, of that era and it seemed accidental. You can't do that anymore."

Why is this no longer possible? Wolman and Burks both agree on one word: access.

"The only way for Baron to do the work he did, so close to the performers, so lyrical and intimate, was through access," confirms Burks, noting that today's rock stars are so packaged, so protected, and so image-conscious that the kind of off-hand directness featured in those early issues of Rolling Stone shots no longer exists.

"There was the excitement to the concerts that I tried very hard to get," says Wolman. "It's very hard with a still photograph to capture the action of a concert," he says. "You try to see something in the face, the body language, the lighting. Of course, it was much tougher in those days; there were no automatic cameras, so it was a real technical challenge to get a decent photograph. "But the really great thing was that I could get onstage with people, no problem. For [photographing] Tina Turner at the Hungry i, I was probably 12 feet away--I could smell her."

Access may have been half of the charm, but talent crafted the rest. "What happens when I take pictures at concerts is that I really get involved in the music. I let the music get into my system so that I can anticipate what the musician is going to do," Wolman explains.

"Because if I can anticipate, I can get a good shot. Once I see the good shot in the viewfinder, it's gone. The music gets inside me, it's in my brain, I'm close enough to the stage so that the vibration from the speakers is making my skin tingle, and I'm filling the viewfinder with the musician. It's almost, not quite, as if I'm the person that's up there. I just always feel high. I disconnect with the real world," Wolman says, "and I'm involved in the process.

"When I took these pictures, I didn't feel as if I were taking a picture. I felt as though I were some conduit for this experience, and I happened to have the camera in my hand and would snap the shutter, but it wasn't somehow my choice. I don't know how else to explain it: I mean, I want to own responsibility for the good ones, and even the bad ones, but there was something else. When I would go out on assignment, I would go into this other state.

"Because I see myself as a kind of voyeur," he grins. "I'm happiest when I'm invisible and watching. I just love to watch. I'm a chameleon and can adapt myself to the situation, and that, to me, is one of the gifts that I was given naturally, and that's how you get honest pictures."

"But," Wolman says, still smiling, "those days are gone, and when those days left, I really began to lose interest in it.

"When the business of music became bigger than the music itself," he says, "then we became part of a wheel, and the artistry of the photography was then incorporated in the person's vision of himself or herself for their own career, rather than the disinterested journalistic kind of approach, which I really like.

"For me personally," he says, "it went from an intimate experience to being a major corporate experience. Well, maybe not corporate, but beyond the intimacy."

After leaving Wenner and company, Wolman started his own fashion magazine, Rags, housed in Rolling Stone's first San Francisco offices. When that venture, devoted to street couture and culture, folded after 13 issues, Wolman learned to fly, did aviation photography; started Square Books, his own publishing house; and has since continued to do projects for everyone from the Oakland Raiders to the adult-rock cable music channel VH1.

"I look at life like this huge buffet table," says the unflappable Wolman. "And I'm not going to stop at the appetizers. I want to eat from the whole table. If you do that, you pay the price in some way, but you get to taste every flavor."

He leans forward in his chair with a conspiratorial smile. "I," he says with satisfaction, "have had such a cool life."

From the Nov. 20-26, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent. Copyright © Metro Publishing Inc. Maintained by Boulevards New Media.

Mark Weiss Biography

Capturing the photographs worth a thousand lyrics (and some stories)
Press of Atlantic County June 23, 2009
By SCOTT CRONICK - Staff Writer

It's never easy becoming a big-time photographer, and Weiss certainly had to hustle to get his breaks. The Newark native and Atlantic Highlands resident actually got his start illegally, paying off security people to get into concerts, sneaking lenses into shows inside his boots and sweatshirt and then selling the images.

"I would go in, and when the lights went out, I would jump the barricade to get close to the show and then unlock all of the seats so the ushers couldn't get to me," Weiss said. "Then the lights would go on and Zeppelin would come on and I would shoot the whole show from 10 rows back, which is better than being in the pit and shooting up. I would stay up all night and develop pictures, and then a band such as Zep would play five or six nights, so I would go back and sell them in the parking lot for a buck a piece - bootlegs. I had to run from the cops and everything." Things didn't always go smoothly for Weiss.

"I got arrested at a KISS concert in '77 - I was like 17 or 18 years old," Weiss said. "I'm in jail, and I said to one of the cops, 'Can I just leave?' And he said, 'Well you have to go through protocol to get released, and then if you want your pictures back, you have to come back and appear before a judge. I was like, 'Keep the pictures. Just don't tell my mom.'" That arrest, however, led to Weiss becoming more aggressive. He went to Circus Magazine, one of the leading rock magazines in the '70s and '80s.

"I talked to the secretary, and I think she liked me because she thought I was cute or whatever, and she got me in to see the art director, Al Rudolph," Weiss said. "He gave me some advice and said, 'Come back when you think you got something. So I went to Aerosmith and Ted Nuge nt at Giants Stadium in 1978, and it was the time Aerosmith wouldn't let anyone photograph them because they were all drugged out. So I snuck my lenses in and got some killer shots. Two weeks later, I got a call from Circus asking if I had any shots of Aerosmith. I brought them down and they didn't seem too excited about them and told me to leave them. A month and a half later, I go to the newsstand and see the Beatles on the cover with an insert on the cover that said something like 'Stephen Tyler Super Exclusive Centerfold.' I was like, 'That's my shot.' I opened the centerfold and saw my name there. I cried. They paid me $125, but I would have paid them."

Eventually, the industry noticed his talent, and Weiss was working on everything from concerts to publicity shots for "The Robert Klein Show," where he met his first celebrity, The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia.

"Jerry showed up and was chilling, waiting for Robert to interview him, and I said, 'Hey, want to go up on the roof and shoot some pictures.' He said, 'Sure,' and he grabbed his case and we spent about 10 minutes together. I love it because the case is all tattered with burnholes and the Dead sticker on it. It's an iconic image. I didn't get high with him up there, but he did. I think he blew some smoke in my face. But I didn't want to get in trouble. "

Weiss' first official shoot was at Peter Frampton's house in West Chester, N.Y. At the gallery, you can see the photo that was sent as Frampton's publicity shot around the world in 1979, with Framption in shorts, petting his dog, Rocky, next to the doghouse.

Weiss began getting tons of gigs, including some for US Magazine, including rock spreads for ZZ Top, Van Halen and Cheech & Chong. "Basically we had an hour or two to shoot them, and I said, 'We have to do something here,'" Weiss said about the stoner celebrities. "I said, 'Do you mind taking off your clothes?'" And they had this skit with the dogs, so they took off their clothes and got on all fours on the bed. The headline was 'Dynamic Dopers.'"

Perhaps Weiss' biggest claim to fame was his album cover for Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet" album. Featuring a buxom brunette in a wet yellow T-shirt, the album was released and eventually pulled off shelves for being too risque. "It was the time when the (Parents Music Resource Center) was really cracking down, and 100,000 or 200,000 copies got out," he remembered. "Then they pulled it because of the pressure. When you look at it now, it's nothing. A picture like this would be an ad for a bubble gum company."

Weiss' photographs caused other controversies, as well. "I went with (Twisted Sister's) D ee Snider for the Senate hearings with the PMRC and my pictures were flipping by as I was taking pictures of Dee, who was talking, and they were saying, 'Who can think of Ozzy stabbing Ziggy (the doll) in the head with blood coming down?' And I'm thinking, 'That's my idea. But what about Bela Legosi and all of that. They are just movies.'"

Even Weiss' first album cover caused issues for Twisted Sister's "Stay Hungry." "We shot a lot of stuff with the whole band, and then they left and I asked Dee to stick around to do some solo shots, maybe for the inside jacket," Weiss said. "So I went down to the deli and saw this bone, and got it and threw it at him during the shoot. He grabbed it and went crazy with it. When the record company saw it, they picked it for the cover. I think the band almost broke up over it."

That led to many more covers for KISS, Dokken, Christina Aguilera and - his least favorite - Air Supply. He even shot a baptism for Bon Jovi, shot Richie Sambora and Heather Locklear's wedding and has been Ozzy's photographer since 1980.

"My first photo shoot with him was for the cover of Circus," Weiss said. "It was supposed to be a black-and-white, small picture for a story on rock's most athletic performers. As a joke, they gave it to Ozzy. And he came in with boxing gloves, boots and a tutu, and it ended up being the cover. When it came out, Sharon (Osbourne) was pissed. But it generated so much publicity, they ended up liking it and booked me for more stuff with him. We're very close."

Along the way, Weiss has met his share of egomaniacs ("Mariah Carey was a primadonna") and jerks (Glen Danzig wouldn't perform one night if Weiss was in the building after a photo shoot), but the photographer says most of his subjects have been great to work with.

For now, Weiss keeps working hard and is enjoying showing off his photos in Atlantic City, where his mom, Rita Weiss, lives. "I never had a show, so this kind of gave me a deadline," says Weiss, who was asked to do it by Boogie Nights co-creator and fan Dave Pena. "It was a lot of work doing it, but it will be fun when I start selling some stuff. (Art ranges from $400 to $5,000). If they are willing to spend even $100, it's flattering that they want to put it on their wall or give it as a gift. For me, it was never about the money."