As a music journalist for more than 50 years, Michael Goldberg has put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, depending on the era) to write his musings about music and band interviews for an underground newspaper (The Berkeley Barb), daily newspaper (San Francisco Chronicle), national magazine (Rolling Stone), and a pioneering website (Addicted to Noise—also the title of his 2022 anthology).
But early on in his career—and often later—Goldberg also brought his camera with him, taking both posed and candid shots of musicians from across genres as they (mostly) rolled through the City by the Bay and surrounding environs.
That career began with photos of Jim Morrison with the Doors, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Grateful Dead in 1967 at the breezily titled KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Musical Festival (in, of course, California) shown here.
Oh, and as he was 13 years old at the time, he had to hitch hike to the event.
Goldberg has busted open the boxes of negatives, prints, and digital files and put the best of the best together in Jukebox: Photographs 1967-2023 (258 pp., $33.99, HoZac Books).
Goldberg’s lens knows no boundaries of musical genre as he captures the titans of Classic Rock (Who, Stones, Dylan, Springsteen the Band, Neil Young), punk (Ramones, Clash, Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop), and country (Jerry Jeff Walker, Johnny Paycheck).
Also blues (Muddy Waters), reggae (Peter Tosh, Toots and the Maytals), N’awlins funk (The Meters, Professor Longhair), hard rock (Alice Cooper, Blue Öyster Cult), soul (Stevie Wonder), new wave (Talking Heads, Blondie, Devo) and singer/songwriters (Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt, Lou Reed, Warren Zevon, Van Morrison).
There’s also a subset of San Francisco-based punk acts in the ‘70s including Crime, the Avengers, the Nuns, and Pearl Harbor and the Explosions. They’re likely unknown to most readers, but Goldberg’s photos show them full of youthful angst, energy, and snarl.
He’s also able to show how sometimes in the space of a few years or a few decades how performers like Emmylou Harris and Neil Young change their look and stage presence.
Most of the shots are of live performances, but Goldberg was able to gain access (sneakily or otherwise) to hotel rooms and backstage green rooms, catching performers in less guarded or “on” moments.
There’s a lot of ground covered in the 56 years of photos that Michael Goldberg has collected here. And just like a jukebox noted in its title, this book shows a wide variety and amalgamation of musical choices.
To order Jukebox: Photographs 1967-2023, visit HozacRecords.com/books
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
