Like a lot of rock fans in the 1960s, Californian Larry Hulst seldom attended a concert without his camera.
The music scene was new and exciting as now-legendary performers such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison plied their trade on stage. Hulst seldom missed a show in San Diego, where he grew up, or Sacramento, where he lived after finishing a tour of duty in Vietnam.
“I spent most of my time standing in line to get good concert tickets,” said Hulst, 53, who lives in Colorado Springs, where he works as a photographer for the Air Force Academy. “Tickets were a lot cheaper back then than they are now.”
Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison are gone, but 30-plus years, 3,000 shows and 15,000 negatives later, Hulst is still shooting concerts–as a fan, he emphasizes, not as a professional rock photographer. Still, a traveling retrospective of his rock photos originally mounted by the Colorado Springs Museum in 1998 is booked into 2002 at museums around the country.
“Thirty Years of Rock and Roll,” which opens Saturday at the Elmhurst Art Museum, features 75 Hulst photos shot at concerts from the 1960s through the 1990s; most were shot using a telephoto lens, and all were shot from the audience.
“There’s a cross-generational appeal to this exhibit, and we’re expecting to draw big crowds,” said Elmhurst Art Museum curator Teresa Parker. Parker prepared to hang photos featuring Grace Slick performing in nun’s garb, the Ramones raising a sign bearing their trademark slogan “GABBA GABBA HEY” and Iggy Pop writhing bare-chested on a stage floor. The show, which continues at the Elmhurst museum through July 30, has drawn as many as 12,000 visitors during stops at other arts centers, according to Parker. Organizers hope it will draw as many as 15,000 Chicago-area rock fans to Elmhurst.
Unlike many rock photographers, Hulst had no interest in pursuing backstage shots or posed portraits.
“I make my living as a photographer, but when I shoot rock shows, I consider myself to be shooting as a fan,” Hulst said. “I’m looking to capture the emotion of that exact moment on stage when the performer is doing the best he can.
“I’ve only had one photo exhibit before, and that was mostly landscapes. The rock show was the Colorado Springs Museum’s idea, not mine. I guess for them it could be seen as a totally irrational move, or it could be seen as [depicting] people’s history.”
According to Matt Mayberry, public programs coordinator for the Colorado Springs Museum, the regional arts center initially approached Hulst at the suggestion of a staff member, who had read about him in a weekly newspaper.
“We had no idea how extensive Larry’s collection was until he brought in four or five overstuffed notebooks full of slides,” added Mayberry, who curated the show. “He shot both color and black-and-white, but we chose to go just with the black-and-white photos for aesthetic reasons; the images are starker and the details are sharper. Besides, archivally, color breaks down, but black-and-white lasts forever.”
When the exhibit’s three-month run brought in large numbers of first-time museum visitors, many of them teenagers and young adults, the Colorado Springs arts center decided to package “Thirty Years of Rock and Roll” as a traveling exhibit. Before arriving in Elmhurst, the photos were on exhibit at an arts center in Fayetteville, Ark., and a state museum in Columbia, S.C.
“Rock ‘n’ roll is a universal expression, and the photos do a good job of signposting history,” Mayberry said. “They’re not just focused on one period of time; they show how the music has changed over the years. Rock is so much a part of our culture now. It used to be rebellious; now it’s used to sell toothpaste.”
As rock moved into the mainstream and became big business, performers’ attitudes toward photographers changed accordingly. In the 1960s and ’70s, there were few restrictions on amateur or professional photographers at shows, Hulst observed. By the 1980s, as merchandising played an increasingly important role in artists’ concert revenues, many performers banned cameras at shows to prevent unauthorized use of their image, and Hulst was forced to smuggle in his camera on more than one occasion.
“The publicity agents have all the control now,” said Hulst, who peddled his prints for $3 each in front of a Sacramento record store in the 1970s and early 1980s and occasionally sells photos to Goldmine and Relix magazines. “There were always a few bands that were control fanatics, but in the early years most groups liked the glamor of seeing themselves in a magazine if the photo presented them in a positive way.
“And there wasn’t all the corporate sponsorship and emphasis on designer fashion like there is now.
“I don’t know how an 18-year-old kid today could afford to do what I did. I was paying maybe $12 to see a big act like Led Zeppelin. Now, some acts want $125 a ticket.”
Hulst, whose stepson is a member of the rock band Cake, shoots mostly at blues clubs now and seldom listens to CDs by new artists. His personal tastes run to veteran bands such as the Rolling Stones and Allman Brothers.
“But I keep track of up-and-coming groups by reading a lot of music publications,” Hulst said. “I think you get your best shows on bands’ first tours, when everything’s fresh. The Stones were spectacular on their 1965 tour. They were phenomenal in 1999, too, though.”
Hulst also attended the Stones’ infamous 1969 show at Altamont, where a concertgoer was killed by Hell’s Angels hired as security guards.
“That was scary,” Hulst recalled. “But I’ve been at more violent shows than Altamont. I almost got hit by a half-pint bottle thrown at a Little Feat show in Sacramento; it landed on the head of the guy next to me.”
“Thirty Years of Rock and Roll” opens Saturday and continues through July 30 at the Elmhurst Art Museum, 150 Cottage Hill Ave. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Admission is $3 for adults, $2 for students. Call 630-834-0202.
