By 1972, Jim Marshall (1936-2010) was already a premier photographer of the golden age of rock and roll. But that year, he got the assignment from Life magazine that would change his career forever: head to Los Angeles and shoot the Rolling Stones putting the final polish on their soon-to-be-canonical double album Exile on Main St. (recorded the basement of a château in the south of France, a process also documented in Stephen Kijak’s 2010 Stones in Exile).
Marshall’s embed was successful enough for Keith Richards to dub him “another Stone,” and Marshall walked away with a catalog of Rolling Stones images unrivaled in their candid intimacy. Many of those images appear in the upcoming book The Rolling Stones 1972; they’re also on display until September 8 (2012) at a new installation at New York City’s Steven Kasher Gallery.
The gallery offered Mother Jones this sneak peak of some of Marshall’s best shots of the Stones, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, and other heroes of 1960s-era rock.
