Herb Green, who filmed Grateful Dead and other 1960s rock acts, died at 82

Herb greens such as the Grateful Dead's inspiring portraits, Jefferson planes, and Janis Joplin, helped define the rock scene that emerged in San Francisco in the mid-1960s, died on March 3 at his home in Maynard, Massachusetts.

His wife, Ilse Green, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.

For nearly 12 years in the 1960s and 1970s, Greene pursued musical portraits in her spare time as a fashion photographer for the costumes of Joseph Magnin Department Store and for menswear retailer Cable Car.

Instead of filming concerts that he had no interest in, he invited bands and musicians, including various studios in San Francisco, to his apartment, which was standing in front of a wall in a dining room filled with hieroglyphs drawn by a roommate with knowledge of Egyptology.

A photo of his death, a favorite subject, features band leader Jerry Garcia in his vest and tie, sitting on a stool playing a banjo, with a wall-sized American flag behind him. Ron McCernan, a deadly organist known as the Pigpen, takes a threatening pose in front of Garcia. and a band on the corner of Hate and Ashbury Streets in the district known as the heart of hippie counterculture.

“Harvey was there at first so he was able to create a document that no one else had done,” historian of the Dead, Dennis McNally, said in a phone interview. “When his name came out and Led Zeppelin passed on his first tour of America, they asked Harvey to be captured.”

Greene worked with Led Zeppelin in January 1969 when the band had just released their first album and wanted a promotional photo.

“I didn't give them much direction,” he said in 2014 when he published photos of the shoot to Rolling Stone. “These guys were on the road and didn't really want to be there. We had 40 minutes so we took individual portraits and group shots.”

The deaths appeared unexpectedly during a session with Led Zeppelin at previous theatres. At one point, the Pigpen took a .22 caliber revolver from the holster and began firing into the seat.

“It absolutely surprised Zeppelin,” Green said in a video interview with the Morrison Hotel Gallery in Manhattan, which displayed his photos.

“This is my best story,” he added. “The day the Grateful Dead surprised Led Zeppelin.”

Some of Green's photos were used on the album cover. One of the most famous was a group portrait of the Jefferson plane, which was on the cover of the band's second album, “Shralicistic Pillow” (1967).

Another photo from the same shoot showed band singer Grace Slick turning his back against a hieroglyphic wall and giving the camera his right middle finger. Slick, who said he doesn't like posing for photos, told Rolling Stone in 2004 that the gesture was “because it's a pose I can handle.”

She said, “It's so uncomfortable, but it's not that I'm giving a fake smile.”

Unlike Slick, Janis Joplin smiled at Green's camera. In the shot she was taken while walking with Mr. Green, a neighbor in San Francisco, she wore a top hat, a flower print dress and a dark jacket.

Herbert Bauer Green was born on April 3, 1942 in Indio, Coachella Valley, and grew up in the pear orchard of the family in Medford, Oregon, and in Yuba, Northern California. His father, John, worked for a fruit packing company before buying the orchard. His mother, Lupe (Valencia) Green, managed the house.

Harvey was interested in art in high school. However, when the paintings in the class irritated him, the teacher suggested moving on to photography. He studied the subject at City College in San Francisco, then attended San Francisco State College (now the University), where he studied anthropology, but did not graduate.

He met Garcia in the early 1960s at the Beatnic Coffee House in San Francisco, known as Coffee and Confusion. At the time, Garcia was playing with the sleepy hollow Hogstompers in a bluegrass band.

In 1964, Mr. Greene married Marska Ziranek. After he and Zilaneck divorced in 1981, Green moved to a townhouse in San Francisco with a friend whom he married in 1983 and her roommate Ilse Canetz.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Green was survived by his daughter, Charlotte Green. Another daughter, Eden Tavares, was from his marriage, Mr. Ziranek. Two granddaughters. and his sisters, Delphina Green and Rene Cress.

Greene came to know the deaths well in the spring of 1966 when he brought the cameras and brought them for a short visit to Olonpali, a ranch in Marin County, which the band rented for about six weeks.

“I thought I'd take a photo of a band or something,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2020.

Green's photos at Olompali include naked and naked dancing in live music.

In addition to the famous photos he took in the 1960s, Green's project included his Grammy-nominated art direction for his Grammy-nominated 1974 album “That's A Ponthy.” A photo of Slystone, which appears to be on the cover of his 1975 album, High on You. A cover shot of seven pairs of eyes from the 1987 album In The Dark. And an inside portrait of Bob Dylan and the members of the Dead for his 1989 live album “Dylan & the Dead.”

Green also published a book filled with two photographs on the deaths. “Sunshine Daydreams: The Grateful Dead Journal” (1991) and “Dead Days: The History of Grateful Dead Illustrations” (1996).

Greene said it was a 1968 studio photo, someone else's studio photo, despite his immersion in the dead, and someone else's studio photo, who held his biggest hold.

“There's something about it,” he said in an interview with the Morrison Hotel Gallery. “If I die and have to go to St. Peter, I need to get into a piece, and that's right.”