Herb Greene
Acclaimed images of The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and more
What a treat to be able to offer you some stunning limited edition photographs from the archives of acclaimed San Francisco based photographer Herb Greene. As a friend of many of San Francisco’s most influential musicians, Herb Greene worked as few photographers have: not as a documenter from the outside, but as a pioneering member of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture he captured for posterity. His archive includes defining early photographs of The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service, among others. The wall of his studio was painted with a distinctive set of hieroglyphics that formed the backdrop to many of his famous studio portraits, and which appeared on the cover of Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow LP. He also photographed visiting British musicians, including Led Zeppelin on their first US tour in 1969. We present a very special portfolio collection from that session which you can read about below. We especially love the tagline he used at the time, “Immortality at reasonable rates.”
Herb Greene’s signed silver gelatin photographs are available to purchase in a range of physical sizes. Scroll down the page to view the collection. By clicking on the green button under each image you will see price and size options.
We have also created a virtual space where you can view a selection of Herb’s photographs framed and hanging on the walls in a room setting. You will find a link to this virtual gallery further below as you explore this page.
Please get in touch with us if you have any questions.
Led Zeppelin: The Portfolio
This is a complete treat for Led Zeppelin aficionados. A large format clamshell box measuring 23.5 x 19 x 1.5 inches, containing 18 silver gelatin photographs from Herb Greene’s 1969 session with Led Zeppelin. Just 21 portfolios are available worldwide.
Here’s Herb Greene with one of the portfolios, to give you a sense of the scale of the box.
Shooting Led Zeppelin
By January 1969, Herb Greene’s gift for rock portraiture was well established in the circles that mattered. As the man behind some of the most iconic images associated with the San Francisco rock’n’roll explosion, his classy touch was world-renowned. Thus, countless musical personages, local, national and international, sought out the photographer, riding the freight elevator to his workshop atop an old one-time opera house in the Western Addition ghetto. The space was shared with underground filmmaker and light show auteur Ben van Meter, as well as the printing presses of Underground Comix. This period was to produce some of Greene’s best and most celebrated work, and in cases such as this Led Zeppelin shoot, capture a never-to-be-repeated zeitgeist. They had asked promoter Bill Graham about Herb, having been impressed by his pictures of the Jeff Beck Group.
Herb recalled: “The stuff that came out of that studio, once it was printed, was spectacular. Out of the Jeff Beck Group sitting, I got the cover of Rolling Stone, which was pretty phenomenal. But the window light and stuff required a lot of work in the darkroom. Bill Graham got me the commission to do Led Zep, he recommended me. It was their first US tour. So they showed up and I really didn’t know whom they were. I mean, I knew who the Yardbirds were, but I had no idea that this was the “new” Yardbirds.”
This then was the quartet that would evolve into the true behemoth of 70s rock and become the most successful British group of the era, surpassing even at one point the sales of the Beatles. But these shots depict a different Led Zeppelin. A freshly-minted troupe, who had yet to establish their hard-rocking credentials with the American audience. A relatively innocuous aggregation, some way from hosting the debauched bacchanals of future legend. That January, the unknown Zeppelin was in San Francisco on their first US tour to open for Country Joe & The Fish at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West. Coincidentally, that weekend also saw the release of their eponymous debut album, a signal record in the evolution of rock during the coming decade.
Greene’s portraits convey a remarkable innocence, despite the somewhat bleary-eyed look of the musicians; unsurprising perhaps for a session held within a grueling winter slog across the States. Interestingly, the group’s members are not decked out in the Kings Road-Carnaby Street finery of their stage get-up, although one can espy a lacy stage top beneath Robert Plant’s tightly buttoned velvet jacket. Instead, they sport basic on-the-road attire, and in fact the frosty temperature of San Francisco in winter sees Page take to wearing the lengthy greatcoat that would soon be the virtual uniform of many male British rock fans in the 1970s. Nevertheless, these are still some of the most revealing photographs of Led Zeppelin ever taken. Four men on the cusp of rock’n’roll immortality, captured for posterity by the knowing lens of Herb Greene.
Led Zeppelin – a selection of images from the portfolio, which also includes one image of The Grateful Dead, who were there that day.
Visit the virtual viewing room
Click on the green button below to view our beautiful virtual viewing room featuring some of our favourite Herb Greene images, framed and on display.
This isn’t a replica of our physical gallery space—far from it. It is a gallery that we have designed from scratch and that only exists in the virtual world. You can navigate around the space easily, and click on individual artworks to view price and size information. I hope you enjoy experiencing the virtual collection.
Herb Greene
The music revolution was a vital and integral component of the sixties San Francisco art scene. Herb Greene photographed the rock musicians and other members of San Francisco’s cultural milieu during the height of its creative productivity. Greene, a friend of many of San Francisco’s most influential musicians, worked as few photographers have: not as a documenter from the outside, but as a pioneering member of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture he captured.
Many of his photographs have become signature portraits of these musicians. His revealing portraits of Jefferson Airplane, Jeff Beck,The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Carlos Santana, Sly Stone, Rod Stewart and many others helped create astonishing family album for an entire generation. In 1974, he received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Album Package for The Pointer Sisters “That’s a Plenty.”
His work is part of the permanent collections at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts as well as the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. Publications include The Book of the Dead -1990 and Sunshine Daydreams – 1991.
