Henry Diltz, rock music photography icon and co-owner of La Jolla’s Morrison Hotel Gallery, once told a local reporter he’s smoked dope with everybody he’s ever shot, “except for Donny Osmond and maybe one of The Monkees.” He also fondly recalls closing L.A.’s famed The Troubadour nightclub with his friends The Eagles more than once. In fact, one such storied outing led to the picture for the cover of the band’s first album, taken at dawn in some roughhewn backcountry about 60 miles outside the city.
All in a day’s work for Diltz, who’s as adept at seizing that kind of opportunity as he is at capturing the visual reflections of the previous generation.
But all those controlled substances amid all that fame and fortune were no match for a work ethic beyond reproach. That album cover with Crosby, Stills & Nash sitting in front of a ramshackle house didn’t exactly snap itself. Neither did any number of classic Jackson Browne album photos or candids with Joni Mitchell and Mama Cass Elliott and Mick Jagger and Jimi Hendrix and John Sebastian and The Doors and any other ’60s music staple on the tip of your tongue.
Rare gems every one, each with its own luster and resilience ” each an ideal addition to the resplendent crown that is “California Dreaming.” This Genesis Publications masterwork, released last fall, contains 344 pages of Diltz’s representative brilliance. Tie-dye-patterned overleafs pepper passages from Diltz’s daily diary, which in turn sit sporadically among the photos and the commentary from 48 editorial contributors. Even the cover and binder reflect the era ” the unassuming faux blue denim fabric and sienna tegument beckon the reader inward, where a culture’s lifeblood sits atop the finest paper stock available.
“Henry Diltz,” Graham Nash writes in the book, “has been present at incredible moments and has captured the essence of the so-called California sound. His archive is a history of those times.” Such irony, especially from one of the era’s own. To call this an archive is to call “The Shawshank Redemption” a prison film. And if you’re within my earshot, you’d better not dare.
Clearly “” and literally ” this is an insider’s look at the musical events that defined the 1960s.
“I’ve always felt in my heart like a musician,” Diltz said. “I feel that way today. It’s my lifestyle. It’s my soul. Photography was just a thing I enjoyed doing on the side. It kind of took over. But I still enjoy playing music, and I dabble in it. Our group still records once in a while.”
The “group” is The Modern Folk Quartet (MFQ), and it’s “dabbling” in plans for its tenth recording, this one set for Japan. MFQ’s history dates to 1962, an ideal point in music lore for Diltz to forge connections with the fraternity he’d later commit to film. Former Monkee Mickey Dolenz, one of the “California Dreaming” contributors, notes that Diltz was always at the right place at the right time, taking every opportunity to seize the moment.
“Henry played on some Monkees stuff,” Dolenz writes. “He was just one of the people that was always around. It was never, ‘Call Henry Diltz and book him for the session.’ It would be more like, ‘Whoa, man, a flute would really sound good here. Henry! Henry, got your flute?’ There was a huge entourage, and Henry was part of that.”
“Musicians hang out,” Diltz responded. “You hang out all the time, backstage or in the recording studio or on the bus. It’s kind of a way of life. You hang out and you stay up late. I think that’s what made me able to take all those pictures. I hung out first and secondly took the pictures. I was very seldom on assignment, waiting for half and hour to get the shot.
“Somehow, I got picked by the cosmos to document all that stuff. Never once did I think that I’d have all those pictures of all those people and that there’d be this historical archive of music in the 1960s and ’70s. It was just something I did with my friends.”
Now, we have a chance to meet the same group, under the best of conditions. And we don’t have to buy a single album.
The book is available through the Morrison Hotel Gallery, 1230 Prospect St., (858) 551-0835, or Genesis Publications, www.genesis-publications.com. The first 350 copies were minted as a deluxe edition, which costs $1,250. The remainders cost $500.