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Remembering Herb Greene
27 March 2025
Herb Greene, who photographed the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin in the mid-1960s, died from pancreatic cancer on March 3 at his home in Maynard, Mass. He was 82.
He was born in Indio, Calif., and raised on his family's pear orchard in Medford, Ore., and then in Yuba City in Northern California. His father, John, worked for fruit-packing companies before buying the orchard. His mother Lupe managed the home.
Greene's early interest in art led him into high school painting classes, which he found frustrating. A teacher suggested he try photography, which he studied at San Francisco City College before attending San Francisco State College to pursue anthropology.
He met Jerry Garcia at the Coffee & Confusion coffeehouse when Garcia was playing for a bluegrass band before forming the Warlocks in 1965. They would eventually become the Grateful Dead.
He brought his camera to Olompali, a ranch in Marin County that the band has rented for about six weeks in the spring of 1966 and where they partied and played music.
"I figured I would take a picture of the band or something," he remembered. "But there wasn't just one band to take a picture of as the party got going. They were all there -- the Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Charlatans."
In January 1967, Greene photographed the Human Be-In, a countercultural gathering of thousands in Golden Gate Park that was something of a preview of the Summer of Love.
His projects included:
- His Grammy Award-nominated art direction of the Pointer Sisters' 1974 album That's a Plenty, including a back-cover photo of the quartet dressed as if they were going to church
- The photo of Sly Stone seemingly leaping in the air on the cover of his 1975 album High on You
- The cover shot of seven pairs of eyes for the Dead's 1987 album In the Dark
- The inside portrait of Bob Dylan and the members of the Dead for their 1989 live album Dylan & the Dead
- Two picture books about the Dead: Sunshine Daydreams: A Grateful Dead Journal (1991) and Dead Days: A Grateful Dead Illustrated History (1996).
He pursued music portraiture in his spare time while working for about a dozen years in the 1960s and 1970s as a fashion photographer for the Joseph Magnin department store and Cable Car Clothiers.
He disliked shooting photographing concerts, preferring to invite bands and musicians to various studios in San Francisco, including one he himself had on Front Street, and to his apartment.
Shortly after meeting Garcia, he married Maruska Jiranek, an assistant to Bill Graham. After he and Jiranek divorced in 1981, Greene moved into a townhouse in San Francisco with a friend and her roommate, Ilze Kaneps, whom he married in 1983.
Greene is survived by their daughter, Charlotte Greene; another daughter, Eden Tavares, from his marriage to Jiranek; two granddaughters; and his sisters, Delfina Greene and Rene Cress.