In Music I Trust

James Joseph Marshall

 
 

“I love all the musicians – they’re like family. Looking back I realize I was there at the beginning of something special, I’m like a historian. There’s an honesty about this work that I’m proud of. It feels good to think, my God, I really captured something amazing.”

 

Jim Marshall (1936-2010) was born in Chicago and moved to San Francisco with his family when he was only two years old. There in the City by the Bay he remained during his lifetime. A Brownie camera was one of his first toys. Later he bought a Leica when he was in high school. After coming back from the serving in the Air Force, Marshall met John Coltrane. One day, while he was photographing backstage at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in 1960, Coltrane asked him for directions to Berkeley. “He asked me for directions to a club,” Marshall said later. “I told him I’d pick him up and take him there if he’d let me take his picture.” This way the visual linkage between Marshall and the best jazz and rock performers was strengthened.

 
 

John Coltrane

 
 

Thelonious Monk & Allen Gingsberg

 
 

Ray Charles

 
 

Miles Davis

 
 

Miles Davies & Steve McQueen

 
 

The Beatles

 
 

The Rolling Stones

 
 

Jimi Hendrix

 
 

Janis Joplin

 
 

Grace Slick

 
 

Jefferson Airplane

 
 

Jim Morrison

 
 

Led Zeppelin

 
 

Alice Cooper

 
 

The Who

 
 

Bob Dylan

 
 

Johnny Cash & June Carter

 
 

John Lennon

Dum Vivimus Vivamus

Dum vivimus vivamus is a Latin phrase that means “While we live, let us live”. It is often taken to be an epicurean declaration.

Emily Dickinson once used it in a letter written to William Howland:

“Sic transit gloria mundi*
How doth the busy bee,
Dum vivimus vivamus,
I stay my enemy!”

 
 

Portrait of Salvador Dalí, Philippe Halsman

 
 

Brion Gysin

 
 

Alfred Hitchcock

 
 

One of the members of Jefferson Airplane by Jim Marshall

 
 

Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger

 
 

Still from Tommy (Ken Russell, 1975)

 
 

David Bowie

 
 

Tim Burton

 
 

Beck Hansen

 
 

Michael Stipe, Mario Sorrenti for Interview Magazine, March 2011

 
 

Lady Gaga and model Rick Genest, still from Born This Way music video (Nick Night, 2011)

 
 

*Sic transit gloria mundi is a Latin phrase that means “Thus passes the glory of the world.” It has been interpreted as “Worldly things are fleeting.” It is possibly an adaptation of a phrase in Thomas à Kempis‘s 1418 work The Imitation of Christ: “O quam cito transit gloria mundi” (“How quickly the glory of the world passes away”).

Psychedelic Superheroes

 
 

Sunshine Superman is a song written and recorded by British singer-songwriter Donovan. The Sunshine Superman single was released in the United States through Epic Records in July 1966, but due to a contractual dispute the United Kingdom release was delayed until December 1966. It has been described as having, “proven to be [one of the] classics of the era,” and as, “the quintessential bright summer sing along”.

By 1966, Donovan had shed the overt Bob Dylan/Arlo Guthrie influences and become one of the first British pop musicians to adopt a flower power image. More importantly, his music was developing and changing rapidly as he immersed himself in jazz, blues, Eastern music, and the new generation of U.S. West Coast bands such as Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead. He was now entering his most creative and original phase as a songwriter and recording artist, working in close collaboration with Mickie Most and especially with arranger, musician, and jazz fan John Cameron. Their first collaboration was “Sunshine Superman”, one of the first overtly psychedelic pop records.

Sunshine Superman reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, and subsequently became the title track of Donovan’s eponymous third album. The song was written for Donovan’s future wife Linda Lawrence. The lyrics of the song mention not only Superman, but also another DC Comics superhero, Green Lantern.

 
 

 
 

By the way, writer Grant Morrison referenced the song in an issue of Animal Man by creating Sunshine Superman, an African American version of Superman who was a member of the Love Syndicate of Dreamworld, from a world based on the drug culture of the 1960s.

 
 

 
 

Beautiful Stranger is a song by American singer Madonna and was released on May 29, 1999 by Maverick Records. It was written and produced by Madonna and British songwriter and musician William Orbit, who had previously worked on the 1998 studio album Ray of Light. The song was written for the soundtrack and motion picture Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (Jay Roach, 1999). Mike Myers who plays the main role in the film, also appeared in the accompanying music video, directed by Brett Ratner. Beautiful Stranger is an up-tempo love song featuring heavily reverberated guitars and bouncy drum loops with lyrics telling a tale of romantic infatuation.It employs a lyrical theme and instrumentation similar to that found in the song Amazing which is included on Madonna’s album Music (2000).

The Two Queen Bees of Rock

 
 
“In the beginning, the rock world was all Adams and no Eves,” Newsweek commented. But now, “the typical rock group resembles a beehive, three or four drones humming around a queen bee.” Two “queen bees” singled out by Newsweek are Janis Joplin and Grace Slick. “There would be no Big Brother & the Holding Company without Janis Joplin and her nuclear-powered blues delivery,” the magazine noted.
 
Miss Joplin joined the four-man group in 1966 and transformed it into “an acoustical aphrodisiac.” She said: “The tenor of the band is different now. The guys are starting to sing and there is something to build around: me.” Miss Slick, who sings and writes for the Jefferson Airplane, has “a crystalline contralto that could haunt a house… and [is] author of two of its most brilliant songs, ‘Rejoice’ and ‘White Rabbit’.” She explained that she got more attention than the rest of the Airplane because “if you had a group of five cows and one pig, you’d look at the pig because he was different.”
 
BMI Magazine, March 1968

 
 

 
“This shot of Grace Slick and Janis was taken in 1967 for Teen Set magazine for an article on the two Queen Bees of San Francisco Rock. That morning I went over to Grace’s house and then had to pick up Janis. Janis wasn’t in the mood to do any pictures that day, but I begged her and she came along. Everyone always thought there was a huge rivalry between Janis and Grace, but they were dear friends…. by the end of the session, we were all getting pretty silly and clowning around.”
 
“Not Fade Away”
Jim Marshall

Alice and White Rabbit

Illustrations of Alice in Wonderland made using gouache by Josie Portillo

 
 

About the creative process the author wrote on his blog:  “I think I had “White  Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane on repeat when I was painting this, seriously one  of my favorite songs.”