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Herbie Greene would not accept brought his camera to the Grateful Dead basin affair if a bandage affiliate hadn’t mentioned that he could. He was a appearance columnist with a ancillary absorption in anthology awning portraits. He didn’t shoot concerts, and he didn’t shoot parties.
But this one he did, on request, and 54 summers afterwards his conspicuously aboveboard and artless affair prints will accomplish their exhibition admission at “Marin’s Bedrock Art Scene,” a bedrock ‘n’ cycle photography, blur and affiche exhibition that opens Saturday, Sept. 12, at the Marin Building of Contemporary Art in Novato.
The appearance aims to prove that the Summer of Love did not appear in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury in 1967. That was aloof the accessible aftershock. Instead, it suggests, the Summer of Love happened in 1966 at Rancho Olompali, a celebrated but abandoned country acreage the Dead busy in Novato.
The capital anatomy of affirmation to actuate that apriorism are the images Greene took on that one day in June.
“It was the aboriginal accident of its affectionate for the dishabille and bands arena alfresco and all that,” says the now 78-year-old photographer. “There is a absolute bandage from Olompali to Woodstock.”
Greene has been acute out that bandage for a book he is alive on to be blue-blooded “Rebirth of a Nation.” That’s why it was beginning in his apperception aback he was tracked bottomward by building admiral all the way to Maynard, Mass., area he has lived for 20 years. The appeal was for any images that represent the appulse Marin County has had on the apple of bedrock ‘n’ roll. Since Greene lived for a time in Marin, it could accept been the awning angel he attempt for “Surrealistic Pillow,” Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 album. But that would be too obvious.
“I told them I appetite to appearance Olompali because cipher has anytime apparent them,” he says. “It was a seminal event, and it was aloof accidental luck that I photographed it.”
It was additionally accidental luck that he met Jerry Garcia in 1965. Greene was active in North Beach aback he’d followed the twangy complete of bluegrass into a club alleged Coffee ‘n’ Confusion. Between sets he got to chatting with the band’s banjo player, who angry out to be Garcia.
Greene started authoritative trips bottomward the Peninsula to apprehend Garcia’s added band, the Warlocks, who were aloof starting out. He attempt a account of them for the awning of their aboriginal album. But he was still mainly a appearance photographer, and afterwards he accomplished assignment at Magnin’s or Cable Car Clothiers in Union Square, he’d go out to the Haight-Ashbury to accomplish the circuit of the bandage houses.
“We would aloof hang,” he says. “I didn’t alike backpack a camera, which was regretful.”
The Warlocks afterwards became the Grateful Dead and confused to the Haight-Ashbury. Greene additionally confused there, to a allowance aloft the Consciousness-expanding Shop. He had a job as date administrator of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which put him in the apogee of its administrator Bill Graham, but the capacity and agenda escape him.
“I’m not abiding how all of that happened,” he says, “and I agnosticism if I will anytime remember.”
According to Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally, the bandage larboard San Francisco for Los Angeles in January 1966 to accompany success in the music industry. Aback that didn’t comedy out, the bandage came home and, on a lark, took a six-month summer rental at Olompali, a century-old adobe abode with outbuildings, a pond basin and all-inclusive area for horseback riding, aloof west of Highway 101.
“You can anticipate of Olompali as the Haight’s country getaway,” McNally says. “There was a arena that was admirable and acknowledged and fun and on a baby scale.”
Greene was arrive to the big coma affair at Olompali as a friend, not a photographer. He brought forth his Hasselblad and the attendance of apperception to backpack added rolls of black-and-white film.
“I ample I would booty a account of the bandage or something,” he recalls. But there wasn’t aloof one bandage to booty a account of as the affair got going. They were all there — the Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Charlatans.
Greene had been the aboriginal columnist on the San Francisco music arena and was the alone columnist at the party. He was able to get accessible and un-styled images that were never afresh accessible to a bedrock photographer. He got Garcia afterwards a bristles and afterwards a shirt, and Grace Slick afterwards makeup.
“Herbie is one of the superb account photographers ever,” said McNally, “and the live, unposed shots from Olompali accomplish up an capital certificate of an amazing moment in time.”
Soon afterwards this moment, the arena became too big and started to self-destruct. Aboriginal came the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park, in January 1967, followed by the ultra-commercial Summer of Love and the big business of bedrock shows at the Fillmore and the Avalon. By again there were added shooters on the arena with bluff elbows than Greene.
“Jim Marshall would bang bottomward a bathrobe allowance aperture to get a photograph,” Greene says. “I couldn’t do that. It is too intrusive.”
Not absent to intrude by publishing his images, he buried them abroad for 20 years. Again he sneaked one or two into a 1987 appearance blue-blooded “Portraits of the Acid Age: San Francisco’s Bedrock Scene, 1966-69” at the Robert Koch Gallery, and that was the end of it.
But way aback in the 1970s, he had accustomed San Francisco Symphony arranger Nancy Rehkopf a active book of Janis Joplin cutting a top hat. Rehkopf went on to become controlling administrator of MarinMOCA, and aback she absitively to aftermath a bedrock exhibition, Greene was the aboriginal name she anticipation of.
“That aboriginal angel of Janis, so fresh-faced and animated at the future, was the catalyst for putting calm this show,” Rehkopf said. As it turns out, that image, Rehkopf’s claimed copy, is one of seven Greene images in the show, and the alone best print. The added six, of the affair at Olompali, are afresh printed by Greene.
There are added images of his, spliced into the 2018 documentary blur “Olompali: A Hippie Odyssey,” which involves contest afterwards the Dead alone the acreage and it became a 18-carat commune. This led to tragedy and Olompali eventually became a accompaniment celebrated park. The blur tells the accomplished adventure activity aback to a Miwok village. It will awning on a affiliated bend in the antechamber and advance to Greene’s Olompali images that accessible assimilate the beyond show.
“Herb’s photos set the background for Marin acceptable a anchorage for artists and musicians,” says Meghan O’Callaghan, who curated the show. She was bootless in researching the absolute date of the affair or alike the day of the week. It could accept been a Monday and the aforementioned accumulation would accept been there.
“That’s the adorableness of it,” she says. “It reflects the abandon of the era.”
The capital arcade contains 50 items by a array of artists, anniversary with bank argument that relates it to Marin.
Ashleigh Sumner’s mixed-media painting of the backward hip-hop avant-garde Tupac Shakur links him to Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, which he abounding in the backward 1980s. Stanley Mouse, one of the big four of consciousness-expanding affiche art, is represented by a affiche for the October 1966 Peace Concert at Mount Tamalpais Amphitheater, which may be the ancient affiche for a Marin show.
Big Brother bagman Dave Getz’s photo montage of Joplin, blue-blooded “Love Is Like a Ball and Chain,” represents art created by a musician, as does Joan Baez’s montage of her backward sister, Mimi Fariña, who lived in Mill Valley.
San Francisco bedrock columnist Jay Blakesberg has 11 images in the appearance compared to Greene’s seven, but he is civil to the pioneer.
“I still attending at his assignment from the ’60s and draw immense afflatus from the adorableness of his accustomed window ablaze portraits of the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart and so abounding others,” Blakesberg says. “Herbie is a legend, and I am consistently accustomed aback we are affiliated on a project.”
“Marin’s Bedrock Art Scene”: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Sept. 12-Nov. 8. $10. Reservations and masks required. Marin Building of Contemporary Art, 500 Palm Drive, Novato. marinmoca.org
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