THE HAMMER & THE NAIL
I've been ill the last few days and lamenting over decisions made long ago. Did I waste an education at an accredited school to follow my own muse or should I have used it to reap the benefits of a college graduate with the honors that mirror a nearly perfect GPA.
After a youthful traumatic event that would entail a decade, my muse and passion was to document the music and musicians that defined my generation & I did with inferior equipment, essentially zero money, my skills and my time. There were others of the day who were well known in the bay area, i.e., Herb Greene, Gene Anthony, Robert Altman, Jim Marshall, Baron Wolman, Henry Diltz but they did it for the money as much as the love of capturing on film the most storied era known to mankind. Forty years later, I wonder if my footsteps will be left in the granules of sand like the pillars of what is best known as The Golden Age?
Those were the glory days of pundits of the neoteric psychedelic sound & I wanted to somehow be instrumental in the perpetuation of what was to be on the proverbial horizon. Sam Andrew once alluded to my body of work and simply stated, "You don't give yourself enough credit" and perhaps so as my business acumen can only surpassed by one Chester Leo Helms who would be the worst in recorded history. The dichotomy that would identify me from today's God's of iconic images, would be the lexicon used to augment the images.
Altman is still the reigning King in my eyes but Bob Minkin & Jay Blakesberg stand alone in today's world of rock n' roll photography.
Are the images I took long ago at The Fillmore East comparable to Marshall or Altman or Diltz? I think they are as good but the descriptive words about those we most idolized and emulated may have separated me from all the rest. I know Robert only through my friendship with Chet but his images are like those of Minkin and Blakesberg, they exude an ambience that permeated a room, they capture the soul of the subject and I think along the way, I essentially did the same.
I've managed to get chosen images in selected books, written the introduction to five of them so, I'm happy with that but I ponder over my decision long ago. If I had done it for the money, would it mean as much to me as the friends I've made along the way?
With an impending lecture in October with Gary Duncan, Tom Constanten, Jerry Miller & Artie Kornfeld and myself, would that have been feasible if they weren't my friends? Who could correlate an event at The Speed Museum with those legendary names with nothing more than a phone call on the spur of the moment?
The quandry is, I'm happy for them but why am I on the panel?
Sure, I called them and had their arrival confirmed but what and why do they need me?
It is the difference between the hammer and the nail.............collectively we are the remnants of what I have referred to for years as the last of the original Rainbow Warriors.
I continue to do it my way, a bit caustic at times but with archaic cameras, a retention of passion for those who have left legacies that were embryonic during the apex of Haight Ashbury long ago, it's not about the money, it's about comaraderie, those that made and make a difference and my destiny to see they are not forgotten.
Somehow I wonder if that will be remembered as much as the songs that we patterned our lives to so long ago.
I wonder...............
Cheers
Don
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