Pittsburgh to Cleveland: Four Decades of Rock ‘n’ Roll Anarchy
My career as a rock concert photographer started as an afterthought. I was a music-obsessed freshman at Carnegie Mellon University who had received a Yashica Electro 35 as a gift the previous year. The camera was strictly a hobby, something I used for snapshots of friends and family. One day in 1983, however, as my friend and I were leaving our dorm to catch a Psychedelic Furs show at David Lawrence Hall in Oakland, she said: “Hey, you should bring your camera.”
Within a couple years, I transferred to The Ohio State University. There were a multitude of small clubs that hosted concerts—places like Marco Polo’s, Travel Agency, Neely B’s, Bernie’s Bagels, and Stache’s—with a few bringing in the punk bands I favored at the time, such as Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth. I didn’t take my camera often at first, but over time I realized nobody else was documenting what I thought was an amazing music scene that received little to no coverage. This was pre-Nirvana, pre-Internet. Also, since I wasn’t a musician, photography allowed me to become a participant in that scene, not just an observer. As my technique improved and my confidence grew, I took more photos of more bands. To save costs I shot in black and white and eventually learned to process the photos myself. Those photos would end up on flyers and in fanzines, occasionally a record sleeve. I was dubbed by a local band as Jay Photo Man, and became the go-to guy when a band needed photos.
My early experiences photographing shows in the mid-1980s and early 1990s were formative. To give an example, at a club like Stache’s I had the chance to photograph bands like Pavement, Cosmic Psychos, Camper Van Beethoven, Samhain, Redd Kross, White Zombie, and countless others. When I first saw Nirvana there in 1990, only 40 people showed up, with half the crowd leaving after the local opening band finished their set. The next year, however, Nirvana sold the venue out (pictured above). There were probably more than 250 people packed in a place that maxed-out at half that number—though over the years it feels like I’ve talked to about 3,000 people who say they were there.
Photographing shows can get chaotic. I’ve had flashes ripped off my camera as stage divers flew over head. A friend standing next to me was buried by a stage diver and came out of the pile with a broken jaw. Another time, a guy next to me had some teeth knocked out by a passing boot. My first camera was hit by an errant pitcher of beer thrown into the crowd and was never the same afterwards. One of my most infamous photos is of Bob Pollard from Guided By Voices spitting beer on a man in the crowd. What you don’t see is the dousing Bob had received leading up to that moment.
I often joke that I take loud photos, but in essence that is part of what I’m trying to capture, those unique moments in a concert experience: the emotions, the movement, the sweat, the facial expressions, the flying beer. I not only want you to see my photos, I want you to hear them too.
Photo Essay is a monthly series on the CMOA Blog that features images from both emerging and established photographers working in a variety of styles—from documentary and conceptual, to fine art and commercial. For past installments, visit the archives.
Photo Essay is an original series on Storyboard that features documentary images examining the social, cultural, and political landscape in Pittsburgh and beyond.
This essay was a finalist for a 2016 Golden Quill Award recognizing excellence in regional journalism.
- Series: Photo Essay
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