Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll Photography

Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll Photography collects nearly one hundred portraits of rock’s central figures caught away from the stage, most of them made before their subjects had become famous enough to be well practiced at posing.

Shot from the mid-fifties to the mid-nineties, the pictures run from Elvis to Eric Clapton, the Beatles to Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix to John Coltrane, and many have rarely been published. The spontaneous, informal, everyday register is the point: these are glimpses of celebrities off stage, away from the glare of the spotlights.

More than fifty photographers contribute, among them Lee Friedlander, Lynn Goldsmith, Bob Gruen and Mick Rock, with texts by Glenn O’Brien, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Laura Levine and Greil Marcus. Published by Yale University Press for the Portland Museum of Art.