The primary subject of the photo series on display now, the first solo artistic exhibition at Paper & Leaf, would appreciate the venue.
He was, after all, known to get high.
With a little help from his friends, of course.
Bainbridge-based photographer Linda Wolf’s collection of classic rock imagery from the historic 1970 Joe Cocker “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” tour, along with shots from the Mad Dogs Tribute Concert event and reunion with the Tedeschi Trucks Band earlier this year, will be on display at the island cannabis shop through mid-January. The exhibition happened just in time to mark the one-year anniversary of Cocker’s death last December.
Wolf, who moved to Bainbridge in 1990, has created many photographs which can be found in museums, libraries and private collections around the world — including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Stephen White Gallery, National Museum of Women in the Arts and the National Library of France in Paris, among others.
It was in the world of concert photography where she first made a name for herself when, at the age of 20, while traveling with Cocker and the many musicians on the “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” tour, she served as one of only two official photographers.
Wolf boarded the tour bus — along with 42 others, three kids and a dog — and captured more than 4,000 images during their two months on the road.
Footage from many of the historic performances on the tour show her moving around on stage freely capturing the show, Wolf said. It was a very different time in the entertainment industry.
“In the ‘70’s, that’s the way it was,” Wolf said. “We were all part of this ‘Mad Dogs’ circus and so there wasn’t this feeling of separateness. Everybody was together making it happen, including the audience. Oftentimes, the lights would be on in the auditorium so that everybody felt [like they were] a part of it.
“It was a very special time,” she added.
Wolf recalls Cocker — one of Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Singers” — as a caring, friendly and casual man. He was just one of the gang, she said, and very much still the Yorkshire-born gasfitter he was before becoming famous.
“We all loved him,” Wolf said. “He was so, so loving. He just had a great ability to bond with people.”
She recalled one particularly personal moment when, later in his career, Cocker performed at the Moore Theatre and brought with him something special for her, who he had not seen in almost 40 years by then. Another “Mad Dogs” tour alumni had given Cocker an important tape days before to give to Wolf.
Then, after the concert, when Wolf and her family went backstage to visit with Cocker, he proceeded to deliver the tape to her immediately, not through an assistant or a roadie, but himself.
“When Joe emerged from the dressing room he went straight to me,” she remembered. “And [from] the same coat that he was wearing on stage, he pulled the tape out and handed it to me. And it was like, ‘He carried it?’ ‘All this time?’ To make sure he wouldn’t forget to give it to me. It was really an emotional moment for me, because it reminded me how much I mattered.
“It was just like him to do that,” she laughed.
Wolf’s work done during the time she spent living in France will be the subject of a second exhibition at Hitchcock Delicatessen in downtown Winslow early next year.
She said she has also begun writing a memoir as well.
Visit www.lindawolf.net to learn more about Wolf and her work.
The barrier-breaking bohemian said that though she shoots with a digital camera these days and hasn’t been in a darkroom lately, her shooting technique and her creative mindset have not changed. She loves the continued democratization of photography, she said, through more user-friendly cameras, cell phone imagery and even Instagram.
“Art elitism is, in my opinion, part of a systemic issue in our culture,” Wolf said. “I think that every human being should recognize that they can be creative and artistic and learn.”
