Herb Greene, Who Photographed the Grateful Dead and Other 1960s Rock Acts, Dies at 82

Herb Greene, whose evocative portraits of the Grateful Lifeless, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and others helped outline the rock scene that emerged in San Francisco within the mid-Sixties, died on March 3 at his house in Maynard, Mass. He was 82.

His spouse, Ilze Greene, stated the trigger was pancreatic most cancers.

Mr. Greene pursued music portraiture in his spare time whereas working for a few dozen years within the Sixties and ’70s, as a trend photographer for the Joseph Magnin division retailer and the boys’s put on retailer Cable Automotive Clothiers.

As a substitute of photographing live shows, which didn’t curiosity him, he invited bands and musicians to varied studios in San Francisco, together with one he had on Entrance Avenue, and to his house, the place a few of them stood in entrance of a eating room wall full of hieroglyphics drawn by a roommate with data of Egyptology.

His pictures of the Dead, a favourite topic, embrace Jerry Garcia, the band’s chief, in a vest and tie, enjoying a banjo whereas seated on a stool, with a wall-sized American flag behind him; Ron McKernan, the Lifeless’s organist, generally known as Pigpen, placing a threatening pose in entrance of Mr. Garcia; and the band on the nook of Haight and Ashbury Streets, within the district generally known as a middle of the hippie counterculture.