Photographer shot covers for hit albums before quitting drug-addled rock scene
Life Story
Guy Webster, who has died aged 79, was one of the top celebrity photographers of his time and shot album covers for dozens of rock acts of the 1960s, including the Rolling Stones, the Doors, the Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas, and Simon and Garfunkel.
While studying photography in Pasadena, California, he became involved in photographing rock stars when a friend at Columbia Records asked him to shoot a cover for the Rip Chords. His photograph for their 1964 Three Window Coupe, featuring band members as surfer dudes admiring a bikiniclad girl, evoked the sun-drenched beach culture of
California and won Webster a contract with the
Dunhill label.
His first professional album cover was Barry Mcguire’s Eve of Destruction in 1965, featuring a black and white image of the singer emerging from a manhole. He next worked with The Mamas & The Papas, the first of several commissions for the band who, as they spent much of their time stoned, were not the easiest of customers.
For their 1966 debut album If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, he turned up at their rented house in Los Angeles to find it thick with smoke. Band members were so high they could barely stand, so he persuaded them to squeeze themselves into the bathtub.
He found out later that he had included a toilet in the picture, which might have made the album unsaleable in chain stores. So Lou Adler, the president of Dunhill Records, came up with the idea that the album should be shrink-wrapped, the wrapping featuring a sticker reading ‘‘Including California Dreamin’ ’’, which could be peeled off to reveal the offending sanitaryware.
The album rose to the top of the charts, thanks in part to the controversial cover, and made Webster’s name. ‘‘Within one year, I was making money,’’ he said. ‘‘Within two years, I was rich. Suddenly I was a celebrity.’’
He would go on to shoot many of the most famous covers of the era. For the Doors’ eponymous 1967 debut album he focused on their enigmatic frontman Jim Morrison, using chiaroscuro to enhance the singer’s high cheekbones and sultry good looks.
Webster preferred to work outside the studio. For the 1967 album The Mamas & The Papas Deliver, he persuaded the band, who were not getting along, to jump fully clothed into his swimming pool. ‘‘The mood improved,’’ he recalled. He took Simon and Garfunkel off to Franklin Canyon in Los Angeles, where he posed them on a dirt road, looking over their shoulders, for their 1966 Sounds of Silence album.
Webster’s work with the Rolling Stones began with a call in 1965 from their manager Andrew Loog Oldham. Come and photograph the band, he said, but you won’t be paid because it is an honour to work with them.
Webster said: ‘‘Well, it’s an honour for you that I take these pictures.’’
He and the band returned to Franklin Canyon, where he shot the cover for their 1966 anthology Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass), muting the vivid Californian colours to suggest an English bucolic scene.
Webster attributed his success to the fact that he was the same age as many of his subjects: ‘‘It wasn’t like I was this 50-year-old guy trying to shoot 19-year-old rockers.’’ He was soon shooting covers, working for magazines and expanding into Hollywood. ‘‘The secret to success,’’ he said, ‘‘is to work seven days a week and never take a vacation.’’
But the drug culture was taking its toll on many of those with whom he had worked, and by 1971 Webster had had enough and took off for Spain, then Italy. Before he left, he bumped into Morrison, whom he had known at school, and barely recognised the shambling, bloated figure. Two months later, Morrison was dead.
Guy Michael Webster was born in Los Angeles to Quaker parents. His father was an
Oscar-winning lyricist and Guy grew up playing with Dean Martin’s children and playing baseball with Harpo Marx’s son. After college, he entered the army and, as a conscientious objector, was assigned to menial jobs.
One day he was asked whether he knew anything about photography, as the army was looking for someone to teach recruits. ‘‘I said, ‘Oh yeah, I know everything.’ It was a total lie. I’d never taken a picture.’’ But he mugged up in library books and became head of the base’s photography department.
By the time he left the army he knew what he wanted to be, but his parents refused to finance his studies at art school. To make money he took portraits of children and dogs.
He spent most of the 1970s in Europe, studying art history in Florence and collecting vintage Italian motorcycles. Returning to the US, he resumed his career as a photographer, mainly of Hollywood stars.
Webster’s first marriage, to Bettie Beal, was dissolved. He is survived by his second wife, Leone James, and by four daughters and a son. –