Leica Rolling Stone
The Greatest Rock-n-Roll Photographer of All Time, Jim Marshall
It wasn’t the first time a brash photographer clashed with security at a rock concert, stopped from going backstage without a pass. Jim Marshall, a fierce competitor who would elbow you out of his way to make a picture, was lashing out with his equally sharp and ill-tempered tongue at the bouncers blocking his way. Impresario Bill Graham, who ran the show, overheard the ruckus, intervened, and declared, “Jim Marshall’s face is his backstage pass.”
Indeed, “What a punim!” as my grandmother might exclaim, referring sarcastically to less shocking examples of facial affinity on the cuteness spectrum. But Marshall wasn’t born with that snorkel. His pendulous protuberance, resembling that of an elephant seal, was a self-inflicted morphological mishap. I used to joke, with no lack of affection, that Jim’s snout deserved an urn of its own when his number came up, a cenotaph for a life lived large and a fortune blown on cocaine. His septum was gone, dissolved, allowing his nose to hang on his face like a fishing lure. He could poke a Q-tip in one nostril and out the other and wasn’t too proud to demonstrate. Only Jim’s Leica, much of its black paint worn down to brass by constant use, was equally emblematic of his persona, practically an anatomical appendage itself.
