ROCK ’N’ ROLL: ‘LIVE AND UNSEEN’
MUSIC CAPTURED BILL BENTLEY’S ATTENTION WHEN HE WAS JUST A 6-YEAR-OLD KID GROWING UP IN HOUSTON DURING THE 1950S, WATCHING ELVIS PRESLEY’S “ED SULLIVAN SHOW” APPEARANCE. THE OTHER MUSICIAN WHO CAUGHT HIS EAR AS A KID WAS GEORGE “BONGO JOE” COLEMAN, A STREET PERFORMER WHO’D BANG ON AN OIL DRUM OUTSIDE A THRIFT STORE ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE GALVESTON HOTEL WHERE BENTLEY’S FAMILY WOULD STAY FOR A WEEK EACH SUMMER.
By the time Bentley was a teen, he was traveling all over the city to hear music.
“My poor parents had no idea what was going on,” he says. “My friend’s dad owned a pharmacy in Fifth Ward, so we’d hang out there. Juke Boy Bonner would be at a juke joint. Somebody would be playing at Brisco’s BBQ. Lightnin’ Hopkins was playing on the streets. Albert Collins and Johnny Copeland played at these clubs on Dowling Street at night. I remember, when I was young, we’d wait in the car for my dad. He worked at the Houston Post. There was a holy roller church near there. They’d get to screaming at night. Between the clubs and the church, it was this cacophony of great, crazy noise.
“My life in rock ’n’ roll started then and has always been that way. I don’t know what else there is for me at this point other than music. I guess some people golf. No thanks.”
For more than 40 years, Bentley has worked in close proximity to music. He spent a brief time as a music critic in Austin, then headed to Los Angeles where his jobs included publicist, label exec, producer and talent scout for labels including Warner Bros., working with ZZ Top, Neil Young, Lou Reed, R.E.M., Elvis Costello, the Replacements and scores of others.
A few years ago, Bentley left his job at the Concord Music Group. He’s spent much of the time since working on the recently published book “Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen.”
The premise that yielded the lavish book was simple: The Smithsonian, in late 2015, put out a call to fans of rock ’n’ roll to dig out their photographs of some of the most influential acts in popular music. The idea was to crowdsource a book with live photographs that hadn’t been previously published. As often as possible, the Smithsonian tried to find photographs shot by amateurs. Bentley and the Smithsonian pored over more than 4,000 snap shots and from them selected 200 acts to include. Bentley wrote text for each act to accompany the visuals.
The entries span decades and genres. Beloved ’60s totems like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Who are included, as are hip-hop pioneers like Run-D.M.C. and more recent acts like Nirvana and the Flaming Lips.
Additional personality comes through in the venues, which range from Max Yasgur’s farm, which provided the backdrop for the Woodstock festival, to smaller
venues like Washington, D.C.’s enduring 9:30 Club.
For the most part, the performers chosen wouldn’t cause much debate, though Bentley says, “I got busted for getting in a few of my guys.”
Though his career took him way out West, Bentley always kept connected to his Texas roots. He was an ardent fan of the psych-rock pioneers the 13th Floor Elevators in the ’60s. When Bentley learned in 1990 that Elevators’ frontman Roky Erickson was broke and in terrible health, Bentley organized “Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson,” a tribute album that raised money for the singer. He subsequently did a similar tribute to Texas treasure Doug Sahm and recently helped Texas punk rocker-turned-roots rocker Alejandro Escovedo make one of the best albums of his career.
Both Sahm and Escovedo are in “Live and Unseen.” “Call it favoritism,” Bentley says. “But ask Bob Dylan about Doug Sahm, and he’ll tell you.”
Sourcing the photos was a complicated process, too. While fan photos are today a ubiquitous part of the concert-going experience, that hasn’t always been the case. The Smithsonian found a gold mine in the work of Jimmie Willis, a Waco-based photographer who shot in the 1950s at the Heart O’ Texas Coliseum.
“It was hard to find good photos from the ’50s,” Bentley says. “But Willis shot early Elvis, Jimmy Reed, Fats Domino. After he died, they were getting ready to throw his negatives away at the dump. The guy who saved them, though, he didn’t know if the estate would come after him. But they were so good, the Smithsonian had to have them. There’s one of Elvis holding his guitar, it’s a revelatory picture.
“It’s been a real education to me about how rock ’n’ roll photography has evolved. Now, good luck getting people not to shoot. Everybody’s a photographer now.”
Among the photographers included in the book is another Houstonian. Violeta Alvarez got her start doing concert photography at Houston venues like Emo’s in the ’90s and also shot for Houston-based Justice Records, which at the time put out records by Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Ray Price and others. Since then, her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, New York magazine and others.
Her photographs of ZZ Top and Alice Cooper are included in the book. (She also has an exhibit of heavy-metal photographs on display at the Next Door Gallery. )
Bentley sees the music as the connective tissue. “Music is just the universal language, that’s always been my take on it,” he says. “If somebody loves music, well, I probably have something in common with them. That’s how I feel this book is. Maybe it’ll turn some people onto something they hadn’t heard. I never really thought of myself as a publicist. I was just a fan trying to share good music.”
Admittedly, not every fan can say things like, “Well the thing about Lou Reed, there were really two Lou Reeds … ,” and then describe their long, lasting friendship.
But Bentley sounds a little relieved at 67 to be a little further from the center of the music industry.
“After so many years in label management, I liked living this freelance life,” Bentley says. “I liked being left alone a little bit. No safety net, sure, but also no meetings.”