Baron Wolman: An Interview with Rolling Stone's First Chief Photographer

By Christian Hoard
Published June 28, 2007

In early 1967, Baron Wolman was a freelance photographer living in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, a few doors down from Janis Joplin and just around the corner from the Grateful Dead. Wolman was passionate about rock and roll ­ just like a young journalist and Berkeley dropout named Jann Wenner, whom Wolman met in April, 1967 at a Rock and Roll symposium at Mills College. "After the conference, Jann told me his idea for a magazine. I said, 'It sounds like a good idea,'" Wolman says. "Then he said, 'Well, you wanna be the photographer? 'Cause we're gonna need a photographer.' I said, 'Sure, why not?'"

Baron Wolman

When the first issue of Rolling Stone hit newstands in October, 1967, Wolman was the magazine's chief photographer. "Jann was twenty-one. I was thirty. I was the old man of that group," Wolman says, laughing. "But Jann was very professional. The writing was always good, the layout was always good, the pictures always looked good." During his two-and-a-half-year stint at RS, Wolman shot everyone from Jimi Hendrix to legendary artist/groupies the Plaster Casters. "Back then, the musicians were more willing to reveal their true selves. We had all access, all the time," Wolman says."They saw us as part of the family, not the enemy."

"It isn't as if these shots are the only thing I've done in my career," says Wolman, who now lives in Santa Fe and still works. "But you wouldn't know it from the way people focus in on the Rolling Stone years."