"But everybody smoked grass back then; it's what made me want to take photos. It was just part of what made that wonderful renaissance, what made the '60s mellow."
Following that thread, Paul McCartney's first words to Diltz were, "Henry, have you got anything to smoke?" The year was 1971, and the McCartneys were staying in a rented house in Malibu. Diltz had known Linda Eastman as a fellow photographer in New York and was surprised to find out that the wealthy rock scenemaker had married the former Beatle. "They needed photos to go in this Ramsongbook. Then they wanted to use one for Life magazine," recalls Diltz of his famous cover shot. "It ran in black and white because there wasn't time to do it in color. It was a last-minute replacement."
Morrison Hotel: The cover of the Doors' 1969 album is one of Henry Diltz's most famous images.
Diltz's 1971 shot of the McCartneys: "Henry, have you got anything to smoke?"
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On display Friday, March 9, and Saturday, March 10, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, March 11, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is free.
Scottsdale Seville, 7001 North Scottsdale Road, Suite 163, in Scottsdale
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"Then I got another call from the Virgin Islands," he continues, affecting the English accent of a posh personal assistant. "'The McCartneys want you to come here and take more photos. Paul wants you to do that fly-on-the-wall thing you do.' So I spent a week floating around the Virgin Islands on boats with them while they recorded London Town and took all the pictures of them in the sunshine with aloha shirts. And I knew Paul liked to smoke it, so I brought an ounce of Maui Wowie with me. The whole week I was there, three or four times a day he'd walk up and say, 'Henry, have you got one rolled?' because I had the best grass of anybody there. So we got to be really good friends that week."
Although Diltz was the official shutterbug for some of the era's biggest concerts including Woodstock and the Monterey Pop Festival, he wasn't given clearance to shoot any photos at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh, possibly because his closeness with McCartney drew the ire of the notorious Allen Klein, who was still managing the other ex-Beatles. "Allen Klein was a giant asshole. During sound check I saw him with these two goons dressed up like limo drivers, pointing his cane and having people kicked left and right, anyone with a camera. So I didn't even try to take a picture until the middle of the concert when Harrison and Dylan were singing together. But generally I like to be left alone. These days, I don't even do concerts unless I'm working with the group and I have all access. And even then I have to fight with security guards."
Diltz got another taste of the paparazzi life when his teen-magazine editor ran afoul of the Osmond Family and he was forbidden from taking photos of the group's Hawaiian concert. "They had me dye my hair black, put brown makeup on my face so I'd look Hawaiian and I sat in the second row. And I wore a straw hat so I could sneak my cameras in and photograph the whole concert."
But, says Diltz, the business quickly began to change by the mid-'70s. The down-to-earth music of the late '60s was giving way to disco, heavy metal and glam rock, none of which lent itself well to casual, candid album covers. "My partner Gary decided to become a film writer. I still did an occasional cover but I'd be shooting for other art directors. It wasn't the same old team. It got corporate, too big. I remember shooting a lot of heavy metal concerts for the record companies thinking, 'Where's the melody?' You sure don't leave those concerts humming a tune. It's all just about dudes and foxes. On that level, it was fun, but . . . ," he trails off. "The music business in general has gone to shit. All the music guys who ran those record companies are gone now and it's these bean counters and lawyers running things."
A bigger blow to Diltz came in the '80s when album covers got reduced to CD size, a change that brought the art form to a crashing halt.
In part, though, the nostalgia for classic rock album art is why people are responding so passionately to Diltz's gallery shows and his accompanying slide presentations. "People come up to me and say, 'I don't know how many hours I spent looking at this cover.' That 12-inch square was the perfect size to look at and imagine what that guy was like.
"I never thought into the future," reflects Diltz, summing up his almost accidental career. "It was always about the moment. When I was shooting the Doors, they were just another band. Jim wasn't dead yet and we were just pals having a good time taking photos on the beach. You never think, 'What if these guys get famous and I'm the guy who photographed them?' I never once thought about it, not even in some stoned reverie. People say, 'Oh, you must have some great archive,' and I always fought that notion. I'd say, 'Fuck you, I'm not a professional.'"
