Herb Greene Dies: Photographer Who Chronicled The San Francisco Rock Scene Of Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead & Janis Joplin Was 82

Herb Greene, whose iconic photographs of the San Francisco rock scene of the 1960s captured the era’s superstars – Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, among others – in their prime, died Monday, March 3, at his home in Maynard, Massachusetts, following a long illness. He was 82.

His death was announced on Facebook by his wife Ilze Greene.

Born April 3, 1942, in Indio, California, Greene had moved with his family to Yuba City, California, where, in his final year of high school he took up photography. After high school he attended San Francisco State University but left college for a job as staff photographer at the city’s high-end department store Joseph Magnin, where he took pictures of the fashions of the day including bell bottoms and miniskirts.

Around this time he met and married a woman named Maruska Jiranek, who landed a job with San Francisco rock impresario Bill Graham. Greene had already befriended the young Jerry Garcia, photographing Garcia’s band The Warlocks even before they became The Grateful Dead.

Many of Greene’s photographs of the scene’s stars would be published in Rolling Stone and other rock magazines. In addition to the Summer of Love’s core groups – the Dead, the Airplane, Joplin’s Big Brother and the Holding Company – Greene would go on to photograph such classic rock greats as Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, The Pointer Sisters, Carlos Santana and Sly Stone.

What would become one of his most famous photographs, a group portrait of the the Jefferson Airplane, became the cover of the band’s hugely successful 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow, the record that featured the group’s biggest hits of the day, “Somebody To Love” and “White Rabbit.” The photograph was taken in Greene’s dining room, where a friend had scribbled what looked to be a series of hieroglyphics, a perfect backdrop for the psychedelic vibe.

Other album covers shot by Greene included the Pointer Sister’s 1974 record That’s a Plenty, earning Greene a Grammy Nomination for Best Album Cover. Later he shot album covers for The Grateful Dead’s In the Dark (1987) and the Bob Dylan-Grateful Dead collaboration Dylan & the Dead (1989).

Many of Greene’s images are on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and his work is part of the permanent collections of both the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the De Young Museum in San Franciso. 

Greene is survived by wife Ilze Greene; daughter Charlotte Greene; daughter Eden Tavares (from his first marriage to Jiranek); sisters Delfina Cecelia Greene and Rene Cress; two granddaughters; and in-laws and other extended family.