Long-time Haight resident and music/sports photographer extraordinaire, Michael Zagaris, who took this iconic photo of SF’s legendary music promoter Bill Graham in front of Winterland on December 31, 1978, takes us down memory lane — and into the future.
MZ: This was late morning of the last show ever at Winterland. Even at the time taking the photo, I was in disbelief because Winterland was such a great venue, not only for rock and roll. They used to have the ice capades, which I didn’t give a shit about, but I remember as a kid it was a big deal. They had boxing matches. I saw Ali vs. Frazier there in ‘76. Outside was like being at the fight: limos pulled up, every pimp and player in town was there. In between rounds, hundreds of people, 100-dollar bills flying around, people drinking, doing cocaine, smoking. And when the fight was going on, people were on their feet screaming and yelling. That was Winterland.
Bill had gone from the Fillmore, which needed to be upgraded, to the Fillmore West. Then if you were a really big band, they’d move you from Fillmore West to Winterland because it seated more people.
I was hanging out. I’d have a camera to document what I was doing. A tape recorder. I’d have two or three joints in my pocket and I’d hustle my way backstage. You could do that back in those days, hang out with the bands. We’d smoke weed and talk. I’d just turn on the tape recorder. We were all in our 20s, part of the same thing. Even if you were Eric Clapton with Cream, you were a kid! You were like, [English accent]: “Oh, fuck me! This is fuckin’ amazing! Can you fuckin’ believe this!?” [laughter]
HSV: You were there. What a trip. That’ll never happen again. There will be no photographer who gets to see this explosion of rock and roll that happened here in SF like that.
MZ: None of what I did in photography would’ve been possible without Bill. He really helped me. He let me shoot. He saw me backstage a lot and never hassled me about “where’s your credential?” Bill was cool.
In the time I graduated from high school here to when I started law school in September of 1967 in Washington DC, the nation started changing radically. California and SF started changing. It was monumental. It went from the Beach Boys and the beach culture to the Warlocks which I knew nothing about because I was still in DC when they were happening.
I knew by October “This isn’t what I thought it was gonna be, but I’ll stick it out.” I’d worked for over a year with Bobby Kennedy in DC. When he announced his candidacy for president, I stayed in law school but went to work with him here. Ended up at the Ambassador Hotel the night of the election.
We all know what happened. I had to fly back the next morning to SFO from LAX because I had a contract final in law school. When I got off the plane, I’m walking through the terminal, I hear that Bobby has died in surgery. I’m numb. I get to law school, going to class. I remember I sat down, they passed out mimeographed sheets with the questions on it. I sat there for 10 or 12 minutes, and I had in my wallet these little square headshots from baseball cards. I had Juan Marichal, I had Roberto Clementi, I might’ve had Mays. I took Marichal out, put it on the first bluebook, took a quarter out [mimics rubbing paper], transferred the picture onto my bluebook, put a little balloon on the mouth and wrote, “This is all bullshit.”
Obviously that was the end of law school. My parents freaked. My Dad said, “Now what are you gonna do, big shot?” I said, “I don’t know but I’ll know when I see it.” I was immediately reclassified 1A. And then I dropped acid, not to escape, in search of truth, in search of self, like a sacrament. And it was all of those things. It was like the veil had been pulled back.
HSV: How do politics relate to music? It seems to be the thing that catapulted you from law school into rock & roll and sports photography.
MZ: It’s all the same. Everything is interconnected. Music is politics. And our music, what happened here in the Haight? It was one of the great experiments, although we didn’t look at it that way. We were conduits. What was going on at that particular moment in time was no different than what went on during the Renaissance. A very unique energy was moving through us, whether we were musicians, writers, filmmakers, politicians. I don’t think any of us thought about it much because we were living it, we were IN it. We were really fucking living in a magic moment in time. That’s all it is. It’s moments. We’re all spacedust.
HSV: What’s in your coffee, Michael Zagaris?
MZ: [laughs, holds mug up] Would you like some?
FULL TRANSCRIPT
PART 1
HSV: Alright y’all! Haight Street Voice here and I’m super over the moon to be here at Michael Zagaris’ house in the Haight, staring at a photo that he took which is kind o a good beginning of this interview I’m about to do with the fabulous legendary photographer Michael Zagaris.
This is the Sex Pistols at Winterland on January 14, 1978 taken by Michael Zagaris, and I was standing pretty much where he’s standing when he took this photo. It was my very first concert, and it’s where we’re gonna start this interview. And there’s the man himself, right here.
MZ: Wow. Look out now. We should open the windows. I don’t want the bullshit to overtake us! [laughter]
HSV: Alright let’s start … Hi, thanks for having me here! I’m gonna sit down, let’s sit down.
MZ: Okay.
HSV: Let’s see, that’s gonna be bright. I’ll sit over here. You sit down.
MZ: You sure? You can move that chair …
HSV: Yeah, I’ll sit here. We’re wingin’ it, kids. So I thought we’d start with that Winterland photo because you are being so incredibly gracious and wonderful to allow me to use that amazing iconic photo of Bill Graham in front of the Winterland, because this IS the winter edition, I thought it would be very apropos. And I just finished interviewing David Graham.
MZ: Sure!
HSV: And Bill is sort of this idea of survival, the apple, music, and how it’s woven into the fabric of San Francisco. I though the could start with you telling me about Winterland, that photo of Bill, what that was about.
MZ: That photo I took of Bill was actually in front of the marquee at Winterland, the late morning of the last show ever at Winterland. It was gonna be the Grateful Dead, the Blues Brothers, and that was gonna bring down the curtain. Even at the time taking the photo, I was in disbelief, because Winterland was such a great venue — not only for rock and roll, they used to have the ice capades which I didn’t give a shit about, but I remember as a kid it was a big deal. They had boxing matches — I remember seeing Ali-Fraser there and it was like being at the fight: limos pulled up, every pimp and player in town was there. In between rounds, hundreds and thousands of people, you know, 100-dollar bills [arm gestures flailing], people were drinking, they were doing cocaine, they were smoking, and when the fight was going on people were on their feet screaming and yelling. That was Winterland.
HSV: What year was the Fraser thing?
MZ: 1971. That was a big deal. That was one of the big fights.
HSV: Do you remember the first gig you saw? I mean that’s a big question to have you go back that far, but at the Winterland?
MZ: Probably the Dead. I mean Bill used to always have — at that point in time when they started using Winterland, Bill had gone from the Fillmore, which needed to be upgraded, it was kind of small, to the Fillmore West. He’d have his shows at Fillmore West and usually he’d book — if you were playing, you’d come in and play Thursday night and Friday night, and then if you were a really big band. Saturday and Sunday night they’d have it at Winterland because Winterland seated more people.
I saw the Dead, Quicksilver …
HSV: So that’s like ’66?
MZ: No, Winterland they didn’t start using until ’68. I can’t remember the first show I saw there. I mean I was doing so many shows for a while, I was going 2 or 3 shows a week. Because by that time, I had started working on a book on how the English musicians had come over here using our blues roots a lot of which many Americans had never heard, using their sense of style and fashion and changing our culture and in turn being changed by it.
HSV: Yeah.
MZ: So I was hanging out. And in those days, I mean I would show up Fillmore West to start out, I’d have a camera. I wasn’t a photographer at the time but just to document what I was doing. I had a tape recorder. I’d have 2 or 3 joints in my pocket and I’d hustle my way backstage — you could do all that back in those days — and hang out with the bands. We’d smoke weed and we’d talk. I’d just turn on the tape recorder.
Remember, at the point in time, we were all the same age.
HSV: Which is what?
MZ: Early 20s, 21, 22, 23, som younger, some older, but we were all part of the same thing. And even if you were a quasi star, like Eric Clapton with Cream, you were a kid! And you were kind of like, “Oh, fuck me! This is like fuckin’ amazing. Can you fuckin’ believe this?” [English accent; laughter] So it was easy to do.
HSV: It really was sex and drugs and rock n roll, right?
MZ: It was all those things and it was a lot more, and most of it we didn’t realize. It was also politics, people were against the war. I really think everything changed November 22, 1963 with the assassination of Kennedy. Things went downhill in this country very fast after that.
HSV: But it also propelled music to be that much more [launching noise] oomph, right?
MZ: That as part of it. After the assassination I remember the last Life Magazine in December. LBJ was the new president, he was on the cover, they had a story about how he was talking about what was next, how he wanted to sign the civil rights bill. On the very last page of Life Magazine, they used to always put picture of the week or something, and the picture was these girls chasing this Rolls Royce in London. It was the Beatles. But we hadn’t heard the Beatles yet.
The very next week, they started playing the Beatles on Top-40: “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” “Please Please Me”. They were on Ed Sullivan in February, the rest was history. The Beatles changed everything.
HSV: But this is the Haight Street Voice. We’ve gotta get back to the Haight.
MZ: Oh yeah!
HSV: I know George came here.
MZ: By the time George came to the Haight, the Haight was already dying. That was done. But they changed the trajectory of music, who played music and how they wanted to be.
HSV: I completely agree.
MZ: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills, Nash …
HSV: Talking about the Haight, I want to hear about you, Michael Zagaris, and how you came to the Haight. And you, in my personal opinion, did affect the trajectory of rock and roll photography. You were there. What a trip. That’ll never happen again. There will be no photographer who gets to see this explosion of rock and roll that happened.
MZ: I tell people I was really very lucky to have been born when I was born, where I was born, and in the time.
HSV: What brought you to the Haight?
MZ: I had graduated from college, I had started law school at Santa Clara. I’d gone to Bellarmine prep in San Jose before that, and in the time I graduated from high school I went back to school in DC, the nation started changing radically. San Francisco and California started changing — I mean it was monumental. It went from the Beach Boys and the beach culture to the Warlocks which I knew nothing about because I was still in DC when they were happening.
By the time I got out here, I started law school in September of 1967. I knew by October of ’67, “Fuck! This isn’t what I thought it was gonna be, but I’ll stick it out.” And so I ended up in February of that year, Eugene McCarthy wins in New Hampshire. A week later, Bobby Kennedy announces his candidacy for the presidency. I’d worked for a year and a half for Bobby in Washington DC. Stayed in law school but went back to work with Bobby here. Went up and down the Valley, went up to Oregon once for the Primary. Ended up at the Ambassador Hotel the night of the election here.
I’m on the podium with everybody. I remember walking into that room because we’d come from the stairs where there were a bunch of suites. And it was so hot but it was festive, we were ahead and we were gonna win. We were gonna be going to Chicago. He was gonna be the Democratic candidate. He was gonna be the president.
I’ll never forget, I was trying not to get knocked off the podium, I’m in the back, Jesse Unruh was in front of me, and Bobby said [with Bobby accent], “Now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there!” I’m following everybody, we go down, there’s a few little stairs. I thought we were going back up to the suites. Somebody said there might be some busses, we might go to one more hotel. As I started into the kitchen, I hear — it sounded like somebody let out a string of firecrackers. My friend Bill Eppridge, a photographer who had been with us sporadically, he was shooting for both Life and Time magazine, he was behind me, ran by me, knocked me against the wall yelling “9 MILLIMETER!” My first thought was, “9 millimeter? That’s a fisheye lens …” I didn’t even equate it with a gun. I took about five more steps, we’re in the kitchen, slipped, I almost fell and I’m thinking it’s cooking oil. It’s blood from Paul Schrade the union man that was behind Bobby who had also been shot. I remember I saw Rosie Greer, he had somebody against the wall and people were screaming and yelling, “Break his hand! Break his hand!”
Now when this was going on I still had no idea what the fuck was happening. And I remember hearing a friend of mine who was shooting for NBC, a mini-cam, yelling something. And the I could hear Ethel Kennedy and I saw feet, and I saw it was Bobby’s feet. When this is all happening, you’re just — well, to make a long story short, we all know what happened — I had to fly back the next morning to SFO from LAX because I had a contract final in law school. When I got off the plane, I’m walking through the terminal, I hear that Bobby has died in surgery. I’m numb.
I get to law school, going to class and I remember I sat down, they passed out mimeographed sheet with the questions on it. I sat there for god, I don’t know, 10 or 12 minutes, and I had in my wallet these little square headshots from the baseball cards, and I remember I had Watt Merishell, I had Roberto Clementi, I might’ve had Mays — so I took Merishell out, put it on the first blue, took a quarter out [mimics rubbing paper], transferred the picture onto my bluebook, put a little balloon on the mouth and then wrote, “Mike, this is all bullshit.” And I proceeded to fill 8 blue books with how America was fucked and murdered its leaders, so obviously that was the end of law school.
HSV: Wow.
MZ: My parents freaked. I remember my Dad said, “Now what the fuck are you gonna do, big shot?” And I said, “You know what? I don’t know but I’ll know when I see it.” And when you’re young, that’s a great answer. If you’re a father you’re like, “Are you out of your fucking mind?” I was immediately reclassified 1A. And then dropped acid — not to escape, not to get fucked up. I had read Huxley’s Doors of Perception, I had read a book on an acid trip called Don’t Look Now. And when Revolver came out, I knew the Beatles had dropped.
I dropped acid in searched of truth, in search of self, you know, like a sacrament. And it was all of those things. It was like the veil had been pulled back.
HSV: And isn’t it interesting how — we’re just gonna go wherever we’re going …
MZ: Yeah, yeah!
HSV: … how psychedelics— talk about full circle — are being decriminalized now in a much more, you know, respectful way.
MZ: And as therapeutic. Now all of that being said, here’s the irony: most of my generation — and many of us at the time thought that we were changing the world, we were changing the planet … people were dropping acid the way people would get a case of beer and get fucked up, you know, before that. It was like an amusement park ride.
Now, while things are starting to open up, I see these millennials and these techies: “Hey! We’re all microdosing!” [exaggerated voice] And I’m like, “What the fuck dude?” It’s not about being productive. I’m more like Terrance McKenna: if you’re gonna trip, take a heroic dose. [laughter]
HSV: Like Dr. David E Smith. He’s not a true believer in microdosing. He thinks if you’re gonna go big, go big.
MZ: Right.
HSV: Really blast into those areas …
MZ: Right! And it’s funny, because David is a really good friend, he and Millicent.
HSV: Shoutout to you guys!
MZ: I used to live right across the street from them from ’82 to 2005. He saved me and he saved Kristen a few times. He’s done so much for so many people. He doesn’t trip anymore. Most of us don’t trip anymore. All the shit that I used to, you know, heroic dose? I didn’t care … let’s put it this way: I never thought … I knew bad things could happen, but not to me. And I think as you get older you kind of want to be in control.
HSV: When you get older, you don’t really need to blow out your brain because you’ve already gone to the edges. You’ve already been to the edge.
MZ: Right. But you know what, the one thing that most people are uncomfortable with? The Unknown. I used to search out the unknown! Sixty-foot wave? Fuck yeah! [laughter] This’ll be the ride of my life!
HSV: You’re a surfer?
MZ: Yeah, I did that too! I’m always looking to, you know, I love excitement, I love the adrenaline rush. That’s what life is all about.
HSV: You’re around some really incredible musicians and artists and thinkers and the whole thing. I’m just picturing you backstage with Eric Clapton at the Winterland — the conversations! Were you — you don’t want to be completely high on acid and try and do a shoot.
MZ: Actually, a couple times I did. That shot [points] I did of The Who and Pete Townshend, that was their last show at Winterland in March of 1976. And right before we went on, I’m on my knees in the dressing room backstage loading up film into my cameras, and Keith Moon comes backstage and stands over me holding up a plastic baggy and he goes [English accent] “I’ve got a surprise for you!” And I said, “Surprise?” And he’s holding up this plastic bag and it looked like he’s got beef jerky in it. I said, “Jerky?” He goes, “Jerky?!” Opens it up and pulls it out and it’s withered. “This is a magic mushroom, isn’t it!” I went, “Oh wow.”
So he tore it in half, ate half of it — remember, there was a big Budweiser — takes a drink of the Budweiser and he says, “You fancy some?” I said, “Moonie, I’ve got to fuckin’ shoot.” And he says, “And I’ve got to play me fuckin’ drums!” So I thought, fuck, and okay, and I remember bitter as hell, washed it down. About 3 minutes later we’re going up on stage and he’s in front of me and I pulled the back of his shirt and I said, “Moonie, what kind of trip’s this gonna be?” And he says, “Don’t know!” [laughter]
I started that night shooting from — they had two stands maybe 10 feet back from the stage that they shot video from — so I’m up there with Kristen and I’m shooting and about halfway through the show all of a sudden my mouth’s getting dry and you know you get that feeling in your stomach, and I’m starting to come on but I’m continuing to shoot. And I remember she handed me another camera body and there are trails. I’m like … and she says, “Hey, are you okay?” I said, “No, I’m really starting to come on.” She said, “To what?!” I said, “Moonie and I split a mushroom.” And she said, “And you didn’t give me any!!!” And I said, “You weren’t there!”
Five minutes later, I said, hey I’ve gotta go up onstage. I’m not freaking out but I’ve got to get my shit together. So now we’re on the side of the stage, I’m trying to shoot, they’re playing and now it’s getting really claustrophobic. You know how when you’re really going up fast and you’re like, no I don’t want to go any higher, I want to get off on this floor.
HSV: Yeah!
MZ: Well it doesn’t work that way.
HSV: No, it doesn’t. [laughter]
MZ: So I remember we went backstage and there were some stairs where I could get to the balcony. And so we’re now at the front row of the balcony. And I guess — Kristen tells me I had been standing there for about 10 minutes just kind of like, “Wow! And she’s like, “Are you shooting any of this?!” So I started shooting and that’s when I got this shot, what many people say is one of the great rock n roll shots of all time. Pete’s throwing his guitar in the air. Right after I shot it, Moonie stands up on his stool and collapses into the drum kit — symbols, drums go over, he ends up on his back. Pete grabbed one ankle, John Entwistle grabbed the other and they dragged him off. That was the end of the show! [laughter]
So yeah, sometimes I did drop to my peril! But yeah, in psychedelics I learned so much about life, about the universe, much more than I ever did in school, law school, working for the Kennedys. It was a real eye-opener which is why it was made illegal almost everywhere because the people in power — regardless of the country or government — they want you to look to them for the answers. And that was religion is: “No! THIS is the Way”.
HSV: Right. Well thanks for that story. I’m gonna bring it back to the Haight again.
MZ: [laughs] Good luck editing this, by the way! [laughter]
PART 2:
HSV: We were talking politics and I’m thinking how do politics — do they relate to music, but it seems to be the thing that catapulted you into the rock & roll, and sports
MZ: You know what? It’s all the same. Everything is interconnected. You can’t — you can, you can do whatever you want, but I tell people, even now, they’ll go, “Hey man! Stay in your own lane. Let’s leave politics out of this.” And I go, “You know what? Fuck you! This is all the same. It’s all one lane and everything is connected.” When I hear people say, “I don’t know want to know about politics” I say, “You better! Because that is what controls the planet. That’s what controls the economy. That’s what controls your life and the people that make the laws the put on your body and … if you’re a woman and you say you’re not interested in politics, where are you with Roe vs Wade? Where are you with empowering yourself as a woman on the planet?
It’s all politics.
HSV: Right.
MZ: Music is politics. And our music? What happened here in the Haight, it was one of the great experiments, although we didn’t look at it that way. And I think many in my generation — me being one of them — thought we were gonna change the world. That we could change the world.
Now I think we were really conduits. What was going on at that particular moment in time on the planet was no different than what went on during the Renaissance. And that energy , for lack of a better word, it wasn’t magic but it was a very unique energy that was moving through us, whether we were musicians, writers, filmmakers, politicians.
HSV: Peggy Caserta who owned Mnasidika has become a dear friend, do you remember Mnasidika the clothing store?
MZ: Oh yeah.
HSV: Janis’s lover and dear friend. The clothing, providing that, but she always says that everything was just exploding: There’s be music, artists, and Bobby Weir said the same thing, there was this community, this deep connection with each other.
MZ: Yes! And it was energy. And I don’t think any of us thought about it much because we were living it, we were IN it. And only as you get older and you’ve got more time and you move away from something do you have time to reflect.
[pointing at his photos on wall] People say, “It must’ve been incredible doing all this knowing how incredible it was.” I know how incredible it is now. I was caught up in the energy but didn’t have the wisdom, the time, to realize how magic! That we were really fucking living in a magic moment in time. And that’s all the planet is: it’s moments. You know, we’re all space dust. And it’s the atoms …
HSV: [laughs] What’s in your coffee, Michael Zagaris?
MZ: [laughs, holds mug up to camera] Would you like some?!
HSV: I don’t drink kool-aid anymore! [laughter]
So let me ask you this: Bill Graham, thank god for him because he was really able to — this is sort of to keep this in the Winterland / Bill Graham thing in the amazing photo that you’ve been so kind to let me use on the cover. Bill came — we all know his background and then to be running the Fillmore and Winterland and these crazy kooks, the Acid Tests, let’s go to that! The music, the thing — to have the foresight of organizing all that, what a trip for him to sort of be the ringmaster.
MZ: It was! And even was that was happening, you know Bill coming from the Mime Troupe to that, this was all new to him — like it was to me! I was into music from the time I was 5 years old. I mean I remember the summer that Elvis hit. I was into James Brown. I was into all of that. Bill was into different things but you don’t realize as you’re coming up. Bill learned about the scene as he was in it. People forget: When Bill started producing shows, you know who was the big producer was? It was Chet Helms. I don’t want to say Chet was a hippie — Chet WAS a hippie. He and Janis hitchhiked out here from Texas. Bill was a totally different person. He was more of a business man. He wanted to be an actor.
HSV: Which he was …
MZ: He was later in life. He waited tables at Grossingers. He tried to get into that life, came out here, he was doing bookkeeping. And then when he started doing things for the Mime Troupe and started doing these shows, he was learning as he went. It was like you teaching yourself to swim! And because he was who he was, most of the people who did shows, they were pretty scattered or they were a mob. I mean Chet was a hippie. It wasn’t about the money, it was about doing the show. Bill was about the money. Bill if you were the second act? You go on at 9:15 — not 9:16, not 9:22 — and he was on your ass!
HSV: In my chat with David the other day for the Winter 2023 edition of Haight Street Voice he was saying how the shows were for the audience. Bill’s attitude was we’re doing this for the people. Let’s do nice things for the audience. Let’s give them an apple or buy bagels at the end of the night for the whole frickin’ audience! That kind of stuff. And really realizing it’s not about the bands — it IS about the bands but the audience is a huge thing. Right?
MZ: Oh sure! He took care of — when he put a show together, he would put a very eclectic lineup together. You could see Don Ellis, you might see Om, a band from the Mission, and then Don Ellis and his orchestra, and then the Grateful Dead.
HSV: DIdn’t he even have Miles Davis once?
MZ: [smiling] My only bad acid trip I ever had in my life was Miles Davis opening up for the Dead.
HSV: Oy yoy yoy!
MZ: That was right after Bitches Brew came out. That night I had taken a whole hit of something. Somebody told me “Just take just a half or I can’t be responsible.” And when Miles started playing I thought I was in Hell.
HSV: What was the venue?
MZ: Fillmore West. I’ve got the poster on the wall in there. I kept it.
HSV: We’ll do a little walk thru later …
MZ: I started freaking out and I went to leave. But as I got to the stair, all the Hell’s Angels were coming up. So I go “NO!!!” And I remember I turned around and there was a little restaurant and Bill had his office, and Bill was coming out and I went up to Bill and I said, “Bill, somebody dosed me. I’m really freakin’ out. I don’t know what to do.” And Bill goes [doing impersonation}: “Michael. You took LSD at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West?” I said, “Bill, somebody dosed me.” He said, “Come with me.”
And he took me behind the counter and into his office, locked me in his office. His office was pretty small. It was covered — walls, ceiling — with all Fillmore posters. And now I’m really coming on. I got in a fetal position under his desk. And then he brought in about 20 to 30 minutes later Johnny Walker. Johnny used to be, when you walked in, he would always greet you with an apple and something to say. He might go [impersonating]: “Have a lovely day! We’re gonna cure the sick, we’re gonna raise the dead, we’re gonna grow some hair on a bald man’s head! Have a lovely day!”
So he has Johnny come in. Well, Johnny is fucked up, he’d been drinking Old Mr. Boston Gin. So he gets down on his hands and knees and he pulls out this bottle and he’s nipping on it, and I’m goin’ “No man, no man, no man, I don’t want any …” And he starts telling me about his days in Alaska when he was a fur trapper! And how the foxes used to walk in the trail of the lead fox. And I’m like [mimics himself tripping] “Fuck!”
Ended up he crashed out, he passed out on the floor. Show was over, Bill comes in, I’m feeling better but I’m still pretty high and Johnny’s lying there. Bill goes, “You okay to go home?” I said, “Yes, thank you.” And he looked at me the way your Dad would, just like [gives a you should be ashamed of yourself look]
HSV: (laughter) My god! That’s a fantastic story! Oh my lord, I love it!
MZ: But you know what? None of what I did in photography at this point in time would have been possible without Bill. Bill really helped me. He let me shoot. He saw me backstage a lot and never hassled me about, you know, where’s your credential? He was really cool.
At two different times, I had no money. I mean like not only didn’t have money to pay my rent — I was lucky, Michael McClure was my landlord. He may have had less money than me. Sometimes I was 2 months late in paying rent. And Bill loaned me money a couple times.
HSV: Holy shit!
MZ: And when I’d come back 2 or 3 months later to pay him back, he’d say [mimicking]: “Please! Please don’t insult me like this! Your money’s no good here.” And I’m going, “Bill, Bill!” That was Bill. I mean Bill could be tough if you didn’t know him, but he had a heart of gold.
People always used to yell shit at him, because in between acts he’d come onstage while they’re changing the sets [mimicking]: “In 2 weeks, we’re gonna have Melanie heah, in 3 weeks Spirit from Los Angeles is gonna be here with 10 Years After …” And somebody in the back would yell, “Fuck you, Graham! You’re a ripoff!” And Bill would say, “Yeah, another heavy from Daly City!” And “You’re a schmuck, Graham!” And he’d go, “Come up heah and say that to my face!” And back and forth [laughter].
HSV: So I was just thinking while you were talking about being able to be backstage, and David and I talked about this as well a little bit, about how those were the days where everybody kind of knew everybody, like the photographer or the musician or the dancer or the light person. Now there’s no way that could happen. You have to have the pass and it’s SO regimented. We were talking about: Is it possible — we can never go backwards — but is it possible that we can have a scene again where there is a cool place where people can get together and, you know, you can come photograph. Do you think it’s possible for it to come back around in some way shape or form?
MZ: Only in small ways because now everything that’s cool — everything that’s cool — has been co-opted by the corporations.
HSV: Like Ticketmaster and all of that …
MZ: Not only Ticketmaster, even hip songs you hear in commercials. You can’t book a show without Ticketmaster and all that bullshit. Who was it that tried? Pearl Jam.
HSV: Pearl Jam, yeah.
MZ: And it kind of fucked them up.
It’s hard to do any of that now. Is it impossible? No. But it’s very difficult.
HSV: Well, even — bringing it back once again to the Haight, I keep trying to loop back — the Deluxe being gone. To me, that’s … even though it wasn’t my exact kind of venue, it was a venue and it was a community thing. I live on Page and Masonic. It was a place you’d go and go, “Oh, that band’s playing!”
MZ: The IBeam before that.
HSV: Oh the IBeam! I used to go there all the time. Is that kind of thing. Is it possible to have that kind of thing again? I don’t know.
MZ: Not like that. And you know what? All the things you’re talking about?
HSV: Yeah?
MZ: This has always happened. When this was happening in ’67, by that time already in New York places like Roseland that Bill used to go to …
HSV: I used to go there!
MZ: That was on its way out.
HSV: You ever go to Wetlands? That was downtown … anyway go ahead.
MZ: I’m trying to remember …
HSV: Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors and all that.
MZ: Exactly. Well, I remember Santana was playing one night and Bill had this stick and a cup and he was hitting it [laughs]. I’m shooting and he turns to me and he says, “Michael!” He says, “This is body music! I used to go to Roseland. Tito Puente, we would dance all night! And we’d be soaking wet and we’d come out and the sun would be coming up!” [laughter]
HSV: So I don’t know why I keep alluding to that. I guess because I’m hungry for something to be — we still have the Fillmore, but again, that’s turned into LiveNation. Even David was entertaining the idea, maybe there’s a place we could start a small venue. Not that we’re gonna start it, but just a small, groovy hang. I don’t even know if it’s possible or not.
MZ: It’s hard cuz it’s rent and it’s also booking bands, and the really hard thing now is the only bands that are making money — and at some point you HAVE to make money to fucking survive. We’re all in a band and my wife is pregnant and we’re making no money, we can’t pay rent, my wife’s gonna say, “You know what? You had a great time, but fuck these guys, you’ve gotta get a job.”
HSV: Yeah. And we’re getting older.
MZ: And now, all the young bands? They don’t last very long because there are very few places to play. This is happening in London, this is happening in New York, it’s happening with studios. You know, Wally Heider Studios used to be downtown in the Tenderloin, everybody would mix there. The Record Plant — all these places, they’re gone!
Nothing is forever.
HSV: Still have Hyde Street Studios, that’s still there.
MZ: Yeah.
Well, you know what the one constant on the planet is?
HSV: What?
MZ: Change. And most people don’t like change because with change is the unknown. And even a woman in an abusive relationship, married to Ike Turner, beating the shit out of you, it’s bad but at least you know the parameters of bad. And leaving Ike Turner to go out into the world alone, a lot of people would go, “Oh fuck. I’m not doing that.”
So I don’t know.
HSV: We have the Chapel too. There are a few little pockets of places in the City still.
MZ: Yes.
HSV: But I’m just talking about the Haight of course. The Milk Bar tries. I don’t want poo-poo the Milk Bar but [43:03] there’s something, it’s not grooving.
MZ: No, no, the Milk Bar has always been the same thing.
HSV: It needs a groove, it needs a better booker? I don’t know.
MZ: Nightbreak used to be a great place for a while. But you know what? Those are small places and the bands —
HSV: Chris Isaaks …!
MZ: Remember when Chris first started he did his residency there, he’d do weeks at a time. They would use our place at Frederick and Clayton, our upstairs, that was backstage for about 2 weeks where they’d dress and finally Chris just said, “You know what?” First it was the band and then it was the band and the girlfriends and all that, and she’d say, “You know what? Our son is trying to sleep for school. I don’t want to walk abound with a bunch of fucking groupies and all these people. No. Done.
HSV: That reminds me, I wanted to jump back to Michael McClure being your landlord.
MZ: Yeah.
HSV: Which is astounding. I don’t know if people know who he was. He was a Beat.
MZ: Yeah. You know what, when I first moved in I had no fuckin’ idea who he was.
HSV: What was the year?
MZ: 1973.
HSV: So the Beat thing had already passed, clearly. But he was still hanging out?
MZ: And then somebody said, “Oh, your landlord. He’s a famous poet.”
HSV: And that was on Downey?
MZ: No. He and Joanna and Janey their daughter lived on Downey. They were renting. They had bought this place at 861 Ashbury. At that point in time when I moved in, two-thirds of the places in this whole neighborhood were for sale. They were all for sale for between $28,000 and $35,000 with 3/4 federally insured rap loans. Now had you purchased something then you probably would’ve had to put that much into it again to have it rewired, get the plumbing up to date, but that was everything.
So somebody — the story that I heard — somebody in Joanna’s family died and left her some money and they used that as a down payment, and that’s why they stayed. And then ultimately they separated and were divorced in ’83 or ’84.
HSV: What a landlord to have, my lord, as far as landlords go, I would imagine Michael McClure would be a pretty boss landlord.
MZ: Well you know what he was because he because he didn’t handle it, he didn’t deal with it. [laughter]. That’s why I could get away with it for awhile with being 2 months late.
HSV: Yeah.
So you came in after the whole Dead house cuz they had already moved to Marin.
MZ: They had moved to Marin but they would’ve been right down the street. Wes Wilson, who lived across the street — you know, the poster artist?
HSV: Yes, of course!
MZ: He had separated from his family. I think he’d gone back to Kansas, but his wife and daughter were still there. Cuz Kelly used to babysit for us.
HSV: Alton? No wait …
MZ: No, not Alton Kelly. Wes Wilson’s daughter, Kelly Wilson. In fact, when the Dead, remember when they were busted?
HSV: Oh yeah.
MZ: One of the reasons Jerry wasn’t busted — he was over at Wes’s house when all the shit came down!
HSV: Ah! And Michael Stepanian and Brian Rohan came in and helped them out, from the Haight Ashbury Legal Organization.
MZ: Yep, Stepanian and Rohan.
HSV: Rohan, god rest your soul, Brian, we love you!
MZ: Brian the man when he was audited by the IRS and they wanted to see his books he said, “Oh, I don’t have any books. It’s all up here” (points to head). And the IRS said, “Yeah, sit down.” They jammed him big-time. I think he did some time. That’s a whole other story!
HSV: Brian, you’re free now!
MZ: Brian’s a Red Sox fan, so he deserved it! [laughter]
Stepanian and all those guys, the story I heard was if you were busted, if you were a dealer and the DEA busted you, you’d get your 2 calls. Who do you call, you call your fucking attorney. You called Brian or Michael, the minute you got off the phone, they’d literally beat the shit out of you because they knew that was gonna be their last shot. Oh yeah.
HSV: Wow. Holy moly. I just thought about Brian. I loved him to pieces. He was a great supporter of the magazine. He was like, “How much does an ad cost?” And I said, “Oh for you, you’re new, I can give you a discount.” And he said, “You’re the worst business woman ever!” And he wrote me a check like right then and there.
MZ: Well he was the worst businessman ever! [laughter]
HSV: [reviewing notes] Okay, music scene then and now, clubs, can we bring it back. I have a feeling that somehow there’s gonna be a — people are really hungry for something groovy here, a scene where you can all get together, doesn’t even have to be buy a ticket and go to a show. Everybody just kind of shows up.
MZ: Well it has to be organic, and that stuff still happens. It’s harder now, especially with the phones and with social media and influencers. All of that has changed everything. And again, everything’s in constant change. And we’re older. Someone might see some of this and be like, “Oh this is all bullshit.” Well, a lot of the things when we were in our late teens, early 20s, that older people told us, “This is the way it is” and we were like, “What?! No! That’s in the olden days.”
HSV: David said something very interesting too, is that a lot of musicians have lost interest in playing together — in all sorts of ways. Like jamming. Now you can make a record on a machine, alone now, so that whole thing of jamming and getting together: “Hey man, show up at my house and we’ll jam out tonight.”
MZ: The same with families. This [pointing to cell phone] has made everything different. And you know what, there’s a constant change, and I don’t want to go too far back, but space dust, and evolution, and all the ways it’s constantly moving and changing. And we’re now going into the ethernet. Our minds are taking in more information visually, orally, in a month, than many of our grandparents took in in a lifetime. It’s rewiring our brains. It’s changing us as a species. I mean, straight up!
And so all of these things, it’s all factored. It’s nothing that a lot of people think about because right now we’ve got to keep it together to deal on a daily basis with paying rent and doing all the things we’re doing. You know what it gets back to is, who are we?
HSV: [laughs] You are going deep. I love it!
MZ: Why are we here? What is this all about? And as crazy and esoteric as it sounds, that’s really what it is all about. Why are we here? What is the meaning of all this?
HSV: The thing that I find beautiful, like I said I lost my mom, she got sick when I was 11 and she passed when I was 19, but the Sex Pistols show (panning to his photo) — where we began with this interview — and here I am full circle with the guy who was at the same show I was at how many years ago? 1978
MZ: 40 odd years ago.
HSV: 40 years ago? The ‘90s see like yesterday to me.
But here we are Ben Fong-Torres is back in my life, I went to SF State back in the ‘80s … so I feel like that’s part of the change you’re talking about, is that it IS a circle.
MZ: Sure!
HSV: And it IS coming back around. I’m going to be 62 next year and I just feel hopeful, I feel like, wow, the grooviness of what I had back when I was coming of age seems to be coming around more and more often in my life. Like sitting here talking to you or hanging out with Ben Fong-Torres and Joel Selvin and talking to people about the Sex Pistols. That excites me.
MZ: Yeah!
Selvin was another person who helped me out a lot cuz he’d come from the Berkeley Gazette. And he started his own music newspaper.
HSV: I didn’t know that! What was it called? I’ll ask him.
MZ: Ask him. Because the first 4 or 5 issues I did a lot of things for him. And he was great with that, yeah.
You could do that then. It was lot easier. Now you can’t get a magazine or a paper together unless you millions.
HSV: I’m doin’ it and I don’t have millions.
MZ: Well yeah [holds hand up as if holding bigger magazine than HSV] but if you’re doing Sports Illustrated, you literally have to have any where from — you have to be ready and willing and able to lose $5 or $6 or $10 million for seven or eight years before you go into the blue. Who fucking does that?
HSV: I might be doing that but on a much lower level! [laughs] But, you know, it’s creeping forward.
MZ: Yes!
HSV: Again, this full circle of the Bill Graham mural which is where I saw you when they did the unveiling on Post at Fillmore; that and then Joel Selvin I just saw him at Amoeba a couple days later doing a book signing … I just feel that there’s really huge effort — not effort but joy of keeping the plates spinning of what the thing is.
MZ: This town has always been special, magic — I mean I could throw a lot of words around, but the energy here, not just the fact that it’s a port city with the Orient, but it’s always been a hot spot for freaks …
HSV: The Beats in North Beach and the Hippies … Bagdad by the Bay, Herb Caen …
MZ: The gold rushers … all of that. And it’s an energy. And again, when I say energy, all the stuff that’s really important in life, you know, from the counterculture and all that — that’s all an energy. And that’s as important if not more important than all the other things, the spinoffs. You can’t put a word, a name to it, but it infects all of us. That’s why you are you, doing what you’re doing, that’s how we met.
Now that being said, what does it mean? It means something. I’m not sure but it’s not random and it’s not coincidence. And that’s all of this, and that’s why we’re here.
HSV: It’s the Wild West. I mean my grandmother came from El Paso, Texas in I think it was 1890 or something in a covered wagon with her family to come get the gold. This is the edge of the thing, you know?
MZ: Oh yeah! Unless you’re Bear who went to Australia!
HSV: Well, there’s that, yeah!
MZ: He told me, “You know, Z, you’ve gotta move cuz California when the earthquake comes it’s gonna break off and there’s gonna be nothing.” And I said, “Bear, where the fuck am I gonna live in Australia?” He goes, “Hey man, I’ve got property. You can put a teepee on it.” [laughter] And he was serious! And I said, “Yeah, probably not.”
HSV: And speaking of Bear — again, bringing it to the Haight — can you give me a story of … well, let’s do this: The Haight then, the Haight now, you’ve see it change greatly, and I know some people are really angry about the kids on the street. Like Bob Weir said, “You found your home. Keep it clean. Make it pretty.”
Do you think the Haight still has an essence of — is that vibe still lurking?
MZ: I think it wants to be and I think it’s attracted a lot of different and disparate groups of people. And Bob will tell you this if you talk to him again, even during the Summer of Love a lot of the people that came, they weren’t the people that were here the Summer before when people were going to Nevada and the scene was really starting.
HSV: The Charlatans.
MZ: Basically when the scene was the Family Dog and the little places around there. It’s ever-changing. And by the time the Summer of Love came, I’m sure a lot of the people, the veterans, that’s when they decided, “Hey you know what? Fuck this. We’re getting out of here.”
HSV: But how do you feel when you walk down Haight Street now, you know, when you go to Gus’s Market or whatever you do? Do you feel sad or …
MZ: Every day is different. Depends on where my headspace is on a particular day. I think it’s sad if you get past the Post Office, that whole stretch on Haight that’s been basically nothing there for a year and a half because of that fucking landlord.
HSV: Maven.
MZ: Yeah, the high rents.
HSV: But they did open a new toy store there. We wish you well.
MZ: Yeah, if one person is crazy and does it and, you know, and if they ball out, they might be able to cover their rent, with the rents. The landlords make more writing that shit off. So I see that.
A lot of the gutter punks I’m way done with. A lot of the kids that are runaways, the kids that leave their homes in Oregon at 18 their gonna live on the street. When I think about that, it’s different from what it was in ’67. Who wants to live on the fucking street every day, like all the people right outside where you work — where’s that at? What does that have to do with freedom?
HSV: Maybe they have no better place to be. Maybe they came from a really fucked up situation.
MZ: Okay, here’s my thing there: if you’re going to do that you can’t just go camp out in a neighborhood where your freedom suddenly is gonna start impinging on other peoples’ freedom — especially if you’re in your, like many of them, late 30s to early 40s to mid 50s to 60s, alcohol, substance abuse, mental health issues — all of those things, it’s not a good look. None of that was here in the ‘60s.
HSV: Well, you said a lot of people were taking acid — I’m just playing devil’s advocate.
MZ: Oh yeah. No, no, no, you’re good.
HSV: They were dosing, they were partying it up.
MZ: They were dosing.
HSV: And drinking too — look at Janis!
MZ: And that was the beginning of the end for all of that because of that. That’s when kind of like the dream for a lot of people died.
HSV: The 27 Club: Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain …
MZ: A lot of those people — like Kurt, that’s two generations later — they were all troubled, with a few exceptions. Jim Morrison’s dad never realized who Jim was until he was gone. He was an admiral. Jim was — he lived in Alameda at one point, when his dad was in the Navy, cuz his dad was a fucking admiral. Janis, god rest her soul, Janis was a fucking mess from Day 1. She had a heart of gold. She could be your best girlfriend, but when she drank, she could be like so many people when they drank.
I remember one night she and Bill having a shoutout. I thought Bill was gonna hit her. He didn’t. She was like [drunken tone]: “Fuck you, Bill, you motherfucker! You’re crazy.” And it was like not Jackie Kennedy here.
Courtney Love was kind of the same way. I love women that don’t take any shit, but Janis, for me, was not my cup of tea. Her performances, unbelievable. What a voice, what a woman. I was more into Julie Driscoll, but that’s me. Everybody’s got their own — what they like.
HSV: How did we go down that road?
MZ: All the people that are dead.
HSV: And the neighborhood, how it’s changed.
MZ: You know what? The drugs and a lot of it, I think most of the people on that list that OD’d, that’s the fucking last thing they thought was gonna happen. They were …
HSV: Invincible?
MZ: Wrong place, wrong time. I mean fuck, that could’ve been me, and I say that to people. They say, “Oh no, you’re shit was together.” You know what? I was lucky. That could’ve been me, that could’ve been anybody. What we were doing, we were … it’s not different than Lewis and Clark. We were taking wild rides if not into outer space into inner space, which, you know, in some people … I had a friend that worked at Discount Records in Berkeley. He left me one night at the Fillmore West, I didn’t see him for two weeks. He was up in a tree, they finally got him down, he was in a mental hospital for 10 or 11 months. Never was the same. His wife left him.
HSV: Wow.
MZ: That shit can happen. A cautionary tale.
HSV: Haight Street Voice is hyper local with a global perspective.
MZ: Right.
HSV: So it’s not just this community, communities everywhere. What would you like to say to the Haight Ashbury let alone communities everywhere all over the world, Michael Zagaris?
MZ: There’s only love, which unites all of us. It’s very difficult at this point on this planet where we are right now, but I think the Haight for everything it represented, and everything it could represent, is kind of like a beacon in the middle of an angry sea. And even if we can’t live up to and become all the things we want to, we can at least try.
The Haight has always been about creating, creating your own reality. Creating peace. Creating love. And me even saying that now, some people will laugh, you know, because we’re in a very cynical period of history on our planet.
HSV: We want to feel connected to something because the world’s all over the place. Just saying hello, hey, how you doing? That’s why I love working at the store because I say hi to everybody.
MZ: Yes! And that store too, what that store, what people come from all over the world, it’s kind of like this was the ideal. It’s the same reason people go to the fucking cemetery in Paris where all the famous people are buried.
HSV: Jim Morrison!
MZ: Jim Morrison.
You want to go to an energy spot, even if it’s not that anymore, but where that was. This was a magical moment in time. Nobody can deny that. And, especially if you weren’t alive or you weren’t there, I think you want to go, subconsciously if not consciously, to where maybe I can feel what it was like, or some of that can come up into me. That’s what the Haight is.
HSV: Like the Pyramids and the Mayan Temples …
MZ: The Ann Frank house — all of these different places on the planet people go to. The Roman Coliseum! You can go there and be like, “Wow, this is what it was like!”
HSV: Breathtaking!
MZ: I mean, for me, that’s never been enough! I want to fucking live it! I still do! I want to — like that day of protest at People’s Park I was telling you about. I didn’t want to just bear witness, I wanted to become the revolution and everything about it and feel it. The same with the music. I started doing this not because I wanted to be a photographer or wanted to capture the musicians. I wanted to be in the band! I wanted to be the Beatles. I wanted to be the Stones. I didn’t have the discipline to play the instrument well enough to put in the two or three years.
What was the next best thing? Well, when you’re with the band, it’s the band, it’s the road manager, occasionally a girlfriend or a groupie, and the dope dealer. And the photographer!
HSV: And the journalist! [laughter]
MZ: Yeah, and the journalist! And you come and to me, all of this, everything I’ve done, and in sports too, I AM in my mind, when I’m doing this, I AM a player. I’m a baseball player, I’m a musician, and I’m using the camera as a mirror to freeze moments in time of the places I am that I can share with people later. But in the meantime, I AM that. It’s no different than an actor that’s using the Stanislavsky Method, that when he’s acting, he’s not acting. He has become who he is. And it enables you — cuz life is so short, as many cool things as there are and there are a lot of cool things around, no matter how cool they are, for me at a certain point I get bored. I’ve done this, I’ve toured with this person, now what? This has allowed me to put on different coat, a different …
HSV: Well, yeah! There’s a fine art to you! I think of being on the sidelines of a frickin’ football game or a baseball game, and being visible and having those guys doing 100 percent what they would be doing if you were there or not there. That’s an art in and of itself.
And the same with musicians. I don’t go running up to people backstage. I step back, hang back, and they invite me in and then I’m still quiet about it.
MZ: Yes.
HSV: That’s an art. But the baseball thing and the football thing, I commend you highly because the photos you’ve taken are brilliant.
MZ: You know what? I played. And to me, from day one when I do that, it’s no different than when I played. When I first started with the 49ers, Bill Walsh, I said I have to have total access because I want to be invisible. The first couple weeks, we’d go to the stadium, I’d have my locker, I’d walk around pregame, I’d have a jockstrap on, maybe a half shirt, my camera, and the first couple weeks guys were like, “Z! What the fuck, man?” But then after that? You’re invisible cuz you’re just like they are so nobody — it allows you to show that world, the way that world really exists.
The same with the musicians: You walk in, smoke a joint, pretty soon we’re — you know, I’ve got tapes of Joe Cocker the first time he played at Fillmore West, they’d driven up from LA, and I said, “Oh you guys drove up? Did you come up 5?” He said, “Oh no, we stayed …” What was that place in Santa Barbara with all the candles, the hotel?
HSV: Hearst Castle? No.
MZ: No. It’s a famous old hotel. He said, “So, the next morning we got in our vans,” and he says, “We dropped some acid and drove up Highway 1.” I said, “Wait a minute!” [mimics smoking a joint and voice muffled as if holding puff in] and the tape recorder is going, “So you dropped acid on Hwy 1?” And Joe Cocker says, “Oh yeah.” And Chris Stainton said, “Yeah, it was fucking amazing!” And I said, “Well how did you drive?” And he said [mimics English accent] “One minute we’re bowlin’ along and we go around a corner and it’s like we’d driven into heaven! The sky! The ocean! It was like fuckin’ blimey! It was amazing!”
And at that point in time too, Nixon was president and was starting to spray the marijuana fields in Mexico with paraquat. And I remember Chris Stainton, who was at that point in time was Cocker’s keyboard player but he also played with Traffic, the Stones. He goes [waving hand as if with joint, smiling] “Well, he didn’t get this one!” [laughter]
HSV: I just flashed on Jane Goodall and how she sat and became invisible with the gorillas, and Fosse, they just became one with the gorillas.
MZ: Yeah!
HSV: They became part of the environment.
MZ: Yeah!
HSV: The fine art of your incredible work. And I want to also mention, I grew up with the ‘70s Raiders. I grew up Biletnikoff, I grew up with Kenny Stabler, I grew up with George Blanda, I grew up with the A’s and Vida Blue — and that’s part of the Bay Area! I’d like to say that that whole vibe …
MZ: Those guys are all my friends!
HSV: The beauty of those teen years! Maybe that’s because I’m from here.
MZ: Oh no, because they were like — Oakland was like Baltimore. Remember when you were growing up, before they went to L.A., that crowd was a blue collar, working class, middle class crowd, and they were all — the Raiders were part of the community! All those guys? They used to hang with the people.
HSV: John Matuszak, there was a bar my folks would go to and John Matuszak was there once and my mom says, “Oh what position do you play?” And he say, “I’m a nose guard.” And she said, “Oh no wonder your nose looks like that!” And my dad thought, “Oh no!” [laughter] It was fine. They had another drink.
MZ: He used to hang out at the Palms.
HSV: Good ol’ John Matuszak.
PART 2:
HSV: Alright, we’re still hanging out with the Z Man here, and we’re going through and looking at some of the photographs he’s taken over the years. Tell me about this one …
MZ: That was Lynyrd Skynyrd. I took the picture in Herb Greene’s studio.
HSV: Good ol’ Herb.
MZ: December 30, 1976. They were playing New Year’s Eve show at the Oakland Coliseum. I had shot them for three years. I met them on the night of the first gig they ever played. They were opening up for The Who at the Cow Palace. And the reason they did that was The Who’s road manager at the time, and tour manager, was Peter Rudge who was their manager.
And my friend Jack Miller, he managed bands in Marin County, and paid for it by dealing dope. He was a Christian dope dealer. [laughter]. I’m shooting backstage with The Who and Jack comes in and says, “Hey you gotta hear these guys” cuz he had gone in and met these guys and I said, “Hey, I’m taking pictures of The Who.” And he said, “No, come with me. Just for one song to hear them.” So I went onstage and stayed for 3 songs. They were better than The Allman Brothers. They blew my mind. Then I met them afterwards, after the show and we became friends. Any time they’d come here I’d shoot them. And then they played 2 shows at the Oakland Coliseum in July — July 2 and July 4 — those were the last two times I shot them. Then their plane went down in September [October 20, 1977] I was supposed to be on doing a week of shows and at the last minute they bumped me and about 7 other people to save money. And as it turned out, probably saved my life. Artemis (drummer) called after the crash from the hospital in Mississippi and told us about the whole thing.
But yeah, these guys were great.
HSV: Did they do Day on the Green?
MZ: Yeah. I’ve got pictures of Bill and Ronnie coming onstage together. Bill loved them.
HSV: The Day on the Green was probably the biggest Bill ever got, right? That’s as big as it got, right?
MZ: He also did part of the Stones in ’81.
HSV: True! Forgot about that. [panning camera] Who is this?
MZ: That’s Fidel Castro.
HSV: Holy cannoli.
MZ: He used to have a hard time sleeping so he’d get up and go to these stadiums in Havana cuz he loved baseball and he’d pitch at 3 in the morning. That’s Roberto Salas who was his photographer who took that. That was in 1965.
HSV: Wow, that’s incredible. I was like what were you doing in Cuba? [laughs]
MZ: You know what? I’ve never been. I’ve always wanted to go.
HSV: Me too. That’s kind of one of my bucket lists.
MZ: [Walking to hallway to framed proof sheet] This is one roll of film. This is at Kezar, the SNACK Benefit Concert.
HSV: Oh yeah, over here on Stanyan.
MZ: That woman up there?
HSV: Marlon Brando’s wife?
MZ: No. That’s Sarah Dylan, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. There are very few pictures of her.
HSV: Wow. She looks a little like Dylan there. The profile. The hair.
MZ: Marlon Brando with Joan Baez. Francis Ford Coppola with the guy who used to run the Trident. I can’t think of his name but you know who it is. Neil Young.
HSV: Wow. Look at how young Neil is!
MZ: Bob [Dylan]
HSV: What year is this?
MZ: March 23, 1975. Rich Danko. Francis Coppola’s girl Friday. John Brody and his wife, 49er quarterback! [laughs] This is all one roll of film!
HSV: So sports and rock and roll really aren’t that far from each other at all, are they?
MZ: Oh no.
Francis. Bill was over here. Marlon Brando. Brando was Bill’s idol. Kristen, we’ve been together it’ll be 50 years in August.
HSV: She’s a photographer?
MZ: No. Painter, downhill skier, rebel.
HSV: Beautiful woman.
MZ: You’ve got Dylan, Brando …
HSV: Wow. Are you still doing rock and roll photography?
MZ: Not that much.
HSV: Do you miss it?
MZ: I miss the time because when I was doing it was like I was in the band. But it’s different now.
HSV: Now you’d have to have the credential and the pass and the …
MZ: Now let’s say you go to the Rolling Stones. You go by 4x4s. They’re with their families. It’s now like you’ve been up two nights. You’re doing coke. It’s not the lifestyle anymore.
HSV: It’s compartmentalized. And Keith Richards even gave up cigarettes, can you believe that? Love him.
MZ: Barry Feinstein, friend of mine, took this one. He was Dylan’s photographer all through England. This is in Liverpool with a bunch of kids.
HSV: That’s a brilliant shot. What year is that?
MZ: That was in ’65 or ’66.
HSV: He was still kind of up and coming at that point?
MZ: He’d already made it big. He was big in New York and he’d been to London. I mean he was big everywhere.
HSV: I played piano with him in St. Louis, Missouri.
MZ: Oh wow!
Jim [Marshall] took this. This is Miles Davis here in town. He used to always go to the gym and box.
HSV: Tell me a Jim Marshall story now that we’re staring at this. Do you have one off the cuff?
MZ: Yeah. The day I met Jim I was working for Bobby Kennedy and I called in sick and it was during the Santa Clara Folk Rock Festival in San Jose. I had a camera with 2 rolls of film. I was going to have to take one of shot of each band, and then save the other roll for The Doors. And there was this guy with like 5 cameras and a hat and he was giving people shit. I had conned my way down into where the pit area was and it was a real low stage. And then this guy, who turned out to be Jim Marshall, pulls a knife, puts it to the throat of this fraternity guy and he says, “Get the fuck outta here motherfucker!” And I’m standing behind him and Jim’s putting the knife away and I say, “Hey man, is that knife real?” He goes, “Yeah it’s real [holding to neck] , and so is this!” And he pulls out a gun! And I said, “Who brings a fucking gun and a knife to a rock concert?” He said, “I do, man!” And I said, “Who are you?” And he said, “I’m fuckin’ Jim Marshall. Who the fuck are you?” And we became good friends from that moment on ever since.
HSV: Wow, beautiful.
MZ: One of the greatest fights ever. Ali-Fraser.
This is Jim [Marshall]. He took that at Monterey. [famous image of Hendrix lighting guitar on fire].
HSV: Do you think he was really that close or is this zoomed in?
MZ: Oh no. He was right there. In those days we were always right there. There was no zoom. It would be like this.
HSV: Well those kind of cameras had zoom but you were actually right there.
MZ: That proof sheet? I’d be like from here to here.
HSV: Brilliant.
Human Be-In!
MZ: Look at all the people: Ginsberg, McClure, Gary Snyder, Ferlinghetti, Leary, Richard Alpert …
HSV: I’m trying to think, was this Wes Wilson or is that Stanley Mouse or is it both?
MZ: I think it’s Wes. It’ll say right there.
HSV: I’ll figure it out later. I loved that they always had small print at the bottom that said get your tickets at Mnasidika for the Fillmore or whatever.
MZ: Oh yeah.
HSV: Oh, Edie Sedgwick.
MZ: Billie Name took that. He turned Andy’s fame into silver.
In that show I told you about my old bad acid trip ever?
HSV: Yeah?
MZ: That is right here … [down hall] April 10, 1969.
HSV: [laughing] Even the writing feels “Aaaaaaaah! Where am I going?!?”
MZ: Lou Reed.
HSV: That’s on the cover of your book.
MZ: Yeah, and Chris intended that.
HSV: Tell us the title of your book so I have it on film camera here.
MZ: Total Excess.
HSV: Which is not available. But you’re going to hopefully somehow make it come back.
MZ: This is Kristen. We almost got busted. We were shooting at the Embarcadero Center and I had my Japanese light man hitting her with lights. And she had on a mink coat and naked underneath and would open it up …
HSV: Woo!
MZ: And somebody called and the cops came. They said they were gonna bust us but I knew one of the cops cuz he worked Park Station. He said if you tear this town in 10 minutes you’re gone. You guys can walk away. And so we did and he goes, “When are these pictures gonna be ready? I’d love to see one.” [laughter]
Billy took this also, this is Nico.
HSV: Of course. Billy who?
MZ: Billy Name. And I was in love with her and I used to always about every other week I’d take the train from DC to New York and I’d go to the Cafe Wha and I’d wait to meet her. And finally in about 3 months she came in one day and I was in the corner writing poetry. I just started and I couldn’t get up the courage to go talk to her. And I’m thinking “fuck!” And she finally walked out.
And you know him, he actually lived in the Village at the time, he’s a singer and he’s very popular, I’m tell him this story and he goes, “What? You didn’t talk to her?” He said, “I was 17 years old. I lived in the Village at the time. I went up to her one day at Cafe Wha and bummed a cigarette. She brought me home and I lived with her for 3 months! You fucked up!” [laughter]
HSV: Who was this guy?! Now you’ve got me wondering! [phone rings and interview ends] Saved by the bell!
(The mystery lover is … Jackson Brown!)
