Gary James' Interview With The Rock Photographer Known as The Z Man
Michael Zagaris



He photographed some of the best known Rock acts of the 1970s, including Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, The Who, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Clash, Blondie and Tom Petty. But before all the glamour and glitter of the Rock world, he worked for Senator Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. And that is where our conversation starts with Michael Zagaris, affectionately known as "The Z Man."

Q - Is it accurate to say that you were a speech writer for Robert Kennedy? How did you meet him?

A - That is a misnomer. In my press review I wrote three times I never wrote speeches for Bobby Kennedy. I did research for his speech writers. When I worked for him I was basically, for lack of a better word, I was a glorified page. I did things like answer legislative mail. I ran errands. I brought things from the office into the Senate chambers, committee meetings sometimes. I did a multitude of things which people that were in college working on The Hill for Bobby or whatever senator or congressman you were working for, we did that. I got that job through Pierre Salinger. That was my first job on The Hill. Pierre, after the assassination, was appointed to be the Senator from Northern California after Clair Engle, who was the Democratic Senator from Northern California, died. So, L.B.J. appointed Pierre as the Senator. I went to work for him. My dad contributed to his campaign and helped him raise money through parties. And so, like most young people that worked on The Hill that were in college, it was a patronage job. I loved President Kennedy when he was alive. I was in high school. Working on The Hill was an eye opening adventure. I was at George Washington University. I was playing ball and I was working on The Hill. This is in the '60s. And all of that is what people aspired to do at a certain age in a certain time, and anything seemed possible. My dream at that point, and it was a dream, I was gonna play pro football for six or seven years and then I was going to run for Congress and then I was going to run for Senate. Then I was going to be President. That's one of the reasons I was a Sino-Soviet major. I wanted to negotiate my own treaties with the Russians and Chinese. You tell people that now and they just laugh. Like, "What? Are you kidding?" But in the context of the time that was perfectly feasible. Well, Pierre was, ultimately in '64, was defeated by George Murphy, who was basically a song and dance actor from Hollywood, much like Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So, Pierre's done. He goes to Paris. He comes back maybe six months later. I'm still in school. Calls up, "How are you doing?" I said, "I'm taking seventeen and a half units, playing ball." He said, "Where are you working?" And I said, "I was working for the pharmaceutical manufactures company, but I quit the job." He said, "Would you like to work on The Hill again?" I said, "I hardly have any time. I don't know how that's gonna work out." I said, "Why? What do you have in mind?" He said, "How would you like to work for Senator Kennedy" I thought he meant Teddy. I said, "That would be cool." It turned out it was Bobby. And that's how I went to work for him. And when you say how did you meet Bobby, anytime you have a job like that you meet them in passing. Occasionally there'd be people from our office that would go out to Hickory Hill. I remember when we were playing ping pong and touch football. In the middle of the afternoon we went back to the house and sandwiches were brought out, soft drinks. I remember Bobby sat on the stairs. He threw issues around and everybody debated it. And it was a young crowd. When I say young, people my age were about the youngest. But there were people from their late twenties to early forties. Some people where from the Justice Department. Some people were friends in the Democratic Party, but it was all young people. He would mainly listen while people went back and fourth. That was one of the reasons I really believed in him as a person. He was constantly growing and absorbing not just issues and things that were happening. I felt that he really felt the pulse of what was going on in our country. At that point in time everything was going on from the the growing uproar about us being in Vietnam, what was going on racially. In the summer of '67 there were the riots in Detroit. '68 it was tumultuous. So, all of that was going on.

Q - Now, how would you address him? Would you call him Bobby? Senator?

A - Oh, Senator. I'd call him Bobby to my friends. (laughs) But you never called him Bobby. You called him Senator.

Q - In the times you were in his house talking about different issues, would anyone ever dare to bring up if he thought there was a conspiracy involved in his brother's death, or was that strictly taboo? You just wouldn't mention that.

A - Nobody mentioned that to him directly that I ever heard, but we all talked about it. When I say we all, I mean not just people at that thing, but I think everybody talked about it. I remember (Jim) Garrison at one point had come to the office and we were told later not to say anything to anybody because it would basically look like were were trying to undermine what was going on at that time in D.C. But, he never believed the Warren Commission, that it was a single bullet. Since then there have been a million books written about Jack's assassination, about Bobby's assassination. The best thing written to date I think is David Talbot. He wrote a book called The Devil's Chessboard. He talked to Adam Walensky. He talked to anybody that was still alive, Ben Bradlee. And they traced it all to Allen Dulles, who Jack fired. Allen Dulles founded the C.I.A. He'd come from the O.A.A. He and his brother John Foster Dulles were always huge in this country. Once Dulles founded the C.I.A. they were doing their own covert assassinations of any leftist government around the planet that was basically unfriendly to American business. (President) Eisenhower was hip to it. He warned about that in his farewell speech. After the Bay Of Pigs, where Jack felt he was lied to, it was like, "Hey, you're done. Get the fuck out of here." Dulles was supposedly the person who put this together. I'm doing like a capsule telling you about this. You've got to get the book! It's one of those books if you get it, you will not put it down. David told me he had friends at both The Washington Post and The New York Times. When they received the book in the Review Department they were like, "Holy fuckin' shit! This is unbelievable! This is amazing! Our Editorial Board won't let us touch it. We can't review it." He had a book launch for a book that he had written about San Francisco. It was called Season Of The Witch. It was a best seller for two years. And so, after the book launch, he, Oliver Stone and I go out to dinner. We end up back at Oliver's hotel room and David's half way through the book. Oliver's going, "Hey, are you sure you want to do this?" He goes, "What do you mean? I've devoted a year and a half already." He said, "I'd think long and hard about it." I said, "Oliver, what the fuck? You did JFK. Why are you trying to talk him out of this?" He said, "Because from the moment I did that movie, everything changed. Most people won't answer my phone calls. If I want to do a project I have to raise all the money." I said, "I get it, because it was so close to the truth. We're lucky we're here. As fucked up as it is here, you're in Russia, you're in Venezuela, you're in any number of countries, they will shoot you down on the fuckin' street and let you lay there for a few hours just to let people know this is what happens if you want to fuck around with stuff like this."

Q - I interviewed a guy by the name of Warren Rogers, who was a close friend of Robert Kennedy and wrote a book titled When I Think Of Bobby. I asked Warren Rogers if Robert Kennedy accepted the Warren Commission Report or believed there was a conspiracy. He said Bobby accepted the Warren Commission's findings.

A - He didn't believe that. I don't know where that guy got that because Bobby called the guy at the C.I.A. and said, "Hey, I know it was you guys. I know you were behind this." We were told a number of times don't say anything publicly. It'll look like you're trying to undermine our government. No, he never bought into the Warren Report. Maybe Bobby didn't know this guy that well and gave him a stock answer. But that was never the way it was.

Q - Oswald never acted like an innocent man.

A - Listen, I'm not saying Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't involved. Just like Sirhan Sirhan. He was involved. He wasn't the person that killed Bobby. The person that killed Bobby was standing almost directly behind him with the gun barrel almost against his ear where he had black powder burns. That's why they pulled The Manchurian Candidate right after it happened. We've never recovered as a country from this. It wasn't one guy in either case.

Q - On to your career as a photographer. Back in the days of The Fillmore, The Winterland Ballroom and The Avalon, you could just walk into those venues with your camera and no one would give you a hassle? There was no need of a band's management or the promoter to take photos? Is that how it worked?

A - Yeah. That was the way it was in all the places that I shot early on. Now remember this, at that point in time hardly anybody was bringing in a camera. I mean, in San Francisco there was me. There was Jim Marshall. There were about ten or twelve other people. When people really started bringing in cameras, that was 1970, 1971. People were bringing cameras as fans. When I was starting to do my book, (Total Excess), I would go to The Fillmore. I'd have three joints in my pocket. I had a tape recorder and a camera. I talked to the guys backstage. It was easy to walk backstage and then hang with the bands. The bands that I mainly hung with were the English bands. They had a Road Manager. Sometimes their manager was with them. We were all, at that point in time, the same age pretty much within two or three years. And we're all figuring it out. We'd smoke a joint or two. Tape recording, nobody was worried about rights or people ripping 'em off. So, it was a whole different thing. It really started changing by '72, '73.

Q - Did the groups in those days appreciate the fact that you were photographing them?

A - Some did. Some didn't care. Nobody was going, "You're not taking pictures of me, are you?" Again, we were all in our mid-twenties. Everybody was all kind of like, "Oh fuck, this is great." They're in America for the first or second time. They're young. They want to get laid. They want to get high. They're playing music. They're kind of like, "Fuck!" Then you started getting the record companies involved and the publicists. It happened in sports as well. Now there's money to be made. This part of basically a revolution. Not just in music, but in culture. Once there's money, the corporations and the people that work for the corporations, they're in big time. They want a piece of the pie. And more importantly, not only do they want the money, they want to control the narrative, control who does everything.

Q - Where would you place these photos you were taking? Newspapers? Magazines?

A - Sometimes hip newspapers. Creem magazine, Circus magazine, Rolling Stone. Those are all the people I worked for. Underground magazines in the Bay Area, in New York. Some of the English bands, I'd shoot Melody Maker, New Musical Express. London would buy the pictures. The record label.

Q - Did you ever photograph Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin?

A - Janis and Jim Morrison I did. Not Jimi. It's funny. I saw Jimi twice. The first time I went with my cousin and dropped mescaline. The second time I did mushrooms and saw him. I ended up literally right in front of the stage where I thought I was Jimi Hendrix. (laughs) So, I had the Jimi Hendrix experience.

Q - Yeah. You really did.

A - (laughs) Yeah, exactly.

Q - After photographing Janis or Jim, did you get the opportunity to go backstage after the show and talk with them?

A - I talked to Jim because I met Morrison with Jim Marshall, the day that Jim Marshall and I met. It was May 18^th, 1968.

Q - Great memory!

A - Well, I was in law school and working for Bobby at the time. He was running for the presidency at that time. He was going up and down California and Oregon for the primaries. I called in sick because there was the Santa Clara Folk Rock Festival. That was Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis with Big Brother, Country Joe And The Fish, Steve Miller and his band. Ravi Shankar, The Doors, and a host of other bands. I wasn't even a photographer. I was working, so I had a camera and I bullshitted my way into the pit. I remember I bought two rolls of film. My plan was I was going to shoot one frame of each band and then maybe a whole roll on The Doors. There was this guy with a corduroy coat. He had about seven camera and was like going crazy taking pictures. It looked like a fraternity guy from San Jose State was giving him trouble. This guy, all of a sudden, pulls out a fuckin' knife, a big Bowie knife type thing and puts it at the guys's throat. I'm standing behind him. The fraternity guy almost shit, and split. I said, "Hey man, is that knife real?" He turns around and puts the knife at my throat and says, "Yeah, it's real, motherfucker," and reaches behind and pulls a gun out of his waistband behind his pants. He said, "And so is this." I said, "Fuck man, who brings a gun and knife to a Rock concert?" He said, "I do." I said, "Who are you?" He said, "I'm Jim Marshall, motherfucker. Who are you?" From that day on we were best friends. Jim Marshall and I were smoking a cigarette. Jim goes, "Hey Jimmy," and Morrison turns to see both of us and goes, "Marshall, what the fuck are you doing here?" And that was my introduction to Jim Morrison. At that point in time, in California, they (The Doors) were huge. "Light My Fire" was like the big anthem. So I ended up shooting a whole roll on him. At one point it started to rain, He's got these lizard pants on and he's going back and forth. I thought he was high. He was actually half drunk. And it started to rain and he slipped and fell on his side, literally right next to me. He put his hand on my shoulder, I thought like to help himself get up. He leaned over my shoulder and threw up into the pit of people behind me. Janis, I shot earlier that day. I didn't talk to her, but met her backstage at Winterland about three months later.

Q - You were friends with Bill Graham?

A - Yup.

Q - What kind of a guy was he?

A - Real intense. You know his story. He came from Europe. Walked across Europe to England. He lost some family to the Nazi's. Was raised by a foster family in the Bronx. Came here. He was in the right place at the right time. He wanted at one point in his life to be an actor. He used to wait tables in the Catskills. So, he was the impresario. I just went in one day to his office, introduced myself, told him I admired what he was doing and wanted to go to work for him. He said, "What would you do?" It ended up I didn't work with or for Bill, but I was always at The Fillmore. I was always at Winterland. At a certain point he saw me all the time. He had his people start hiring me to shoot different things. Anytime anything important was happening, even if I wasn't working for him. he'd make sure somebody would call me. When they had the Snack Benefit, where they had Bob Dylan, a lot of the San Francisco bands, Marlo Brando. Everybody came to Kezar Stadium to raise money for the schools. I was working for (Peter) Frampton. The Snack thing was on a Saturday. I got a call from Peter's keyboard player, Bob Mayo. He goes, "Z, Bob here. Are you going to go to that concert at Kezar?" I said, "I don't think so." He said, "Well, could you get me in?" Kezar Stadium was literally three blocks from my house. So, Bob took a cab over. I said, "Let's walk over. I'll figure a way to get us in." So, we get there and I thought, you know what? I think there's a way we can get in where nobody's gonna fuck with us. The 49ers used to use the locker room at Kezar Pavilion next door. Then you go through the tunnel and you're on the field at Kezar. I said, "Let's go down these steps. Yup, the doors are open." So we just walked through the tunnel and it led into the backstage where the stage is. So, we were hangin' out. Rumor was that Dylan was there. I'm seeing all the people in different bands, smokin' joints and getting high. All of a sudden somebody says, "Bob Dylan's here! They're going on stage." I'm with Chris. So, Bill is on the stairs. He's going, "Michael, Chris, c'mon up here." We went up and it was Neil Young, Dylan, Rick Danko, Marlon Brando. It was a Who's Who. Everybody was there. Bill orchestrated all of that stuff. He was kind of the Sol Hurok of Rock 'n' Roll at that point in time. Put on the best shows. All the groups loved him.

Q - Would you think Jim Morrison would be the kind of guy to fake his death?

A - No.

Q - Was Eric Clapton the one who really encouraged you to become a professional photographer?

A - Yeah, and I don't even think he realized it. I'd interviewed him maybe eight months before, you know, when Cream was breaking up. He came back and was staying at the South Sausalito Inn. He was playing just as a sideman with Delany And Bonnie. So, I went to the South Sausalito Inn. One of the reasons he liked it there was there were no telephones, no televisions. I just went up the stairs, knocked on the door. He answered and goes, "Oh, what's up?" I said, "I brought the transcripts of the interview I wanted you to read. I've got a little hash." Took out a piece of hash from my pocket, broke that up. We smoked it. Then we're having these esoteric discussions you have when you're high. He was reading a book on Native Americans. We're talking about how pure and cool the Indians were. Then he started going through the transcript of the interview. I had brought a stack of proof sheets to busy myself while he was doing that. He said, "What you got there, man?" I said, "Proof sheets. Stuff I've been working on." He said, "Oh, can I have a look?" I went, "Yeah. Sure." I handed him a couple of proof sheets and I gave him the loop. He held the loop about six inches above the proof sheet and his eye about six inches above the loop. He's goin', "Right. These are great." "Eric," I said, "If you actually put your eyed on the proof sheet and your eye on the loop you can actually see them." (laughs) Now he starts looking again and goes, "Oh, fuckin' hell. These are great, man!" He said, "Hey look, can we use these?" I said, "For what?" He said, "Albums. Song books. Look man, we'll pay you." I said, "Yeah. Cool. Alright. That would be dynamite." He said, "Look man, the writin's alright, but you should be doing this for a gig." As soon as he said that, I had been trying to figure out what I wanted to do, especially after Bobby was assassinated. I thought, "I'm done with law school. I'm done with politics." I told my dad. My dad freaked out. He said, "Well, what are you going to do now with your life, big shot?" I said, "You know, I don't know, but I'll know when I see it." He said, "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" I said, "I'll figure it out. I'll know when I come upon (it). I'll know what I'm supposed to do." When Eric said that, it was of like, bing! About a month later Humble Pie comes back to town and I met Peter (Frampton) the first time Humble Pie came in. So, I'm sitting in his room at the Continental Lodge and we're talking and I'm telling him about this thing with Eric. He goes, "Well man, you've got to come to London." At that point in time I was teaching in the 'hood, junior high school, until I figured out what I was going to do. I said, "I'm married. I don't have any money." He said, "Look, Mary and I have a place in St. John's Wood. I'm on the road a lot. Come to London and you can stay with us." And so, I ended up going to London in the summer of '71. Peter was actually over here (the U.S.). Mary was at the house. She was a model at the time. Mary had come with Peter a couple of times before, so we were all good friends. She would take me out. Her best friend was Twiggy. She was tight with Patti Boyde, who was married to George Harrison. So, we'd go to antique stores. We'd go to parties. I met people through Mary that I never would have met in ordinary life. The first that I met was American, had long hair. I immediately was taken into that scene the way if you were English and over here you'd be absorbed into it. "That guy's from England. He's cool. Let's have him at the party." So, I was literally in the right place at the right time and it spring-boarded my career in shooting bands. A lot of that, like anything like that in life, is who you know. I wouldn't have worked on The Hill had my dad not worked for Pierre Salinger. In doing that, that led to Robert Kennedy. It seems like so many things in life, this leads to this, leads to this. What does it mean? I believe in destiny. I believe in chance. People say, "God, you've done all these incredible things." I say, "I have." Some of it's been me, but a lot it has just been born in the right place, at the right time, with the right parents. I could just as easily been born in Cabrini Green (a Chicago public housing project), not knowing who my parents are, in a hard neighborhood from the time I came into the world. It would be just one big fight. Drugs. Jail. All of that. I reflect on that from time to time. For all us living in the time we've lived in, which is turbulent to say the least, we're all part of history. We all have different parts to play. We all have different stories and it should all be out there. Me and somebody else could be standing side by side, witnessing the exact same thing, and in the retelling or rewriting, there might be three disparate stories and truths.

Q - Your story of being a photographer in what some people have referred to as the Golden Age Of Rock will never repeat. It is your story.

A - I feel bad and maybe I shouldn't, just from where you've come from and where I've come from and where it is now. Can you imagine trying to start a band with something that's a new, innovative, fresh sound that will also capture people's interest? Rock 'n' Roll, that whole period from the early to mid '50s through the '70s, that was not just a musical renaissance, but it was a cultural renaissance. I think all of us that were in it, even if we thought we were innovative and molding, I think we were channeling something too that we didn't understand. We were part of something. It was all so much more than just the music. It was fashion. It was style. It was a sexual revolution. And it was a lot of other things that we probably then and maybe even now don't fully understand. And it was global. Now, what do you do that's new that hasn't been done before?

Q - In Rock music? Nothing. It's all been done before.

A - Yeah. It's funny. Three years ago Jimmy (Page) came here with Scarlet. So, we got together and hung for a couple of days. In the second day he was going, "Are there any bands that really like catch you?" I said, "I'm not as connected as I was. There are some groups, War On Drugs. Nobody really like it was. Why? What about you?" He said, "There's this one group, Greta Van Sleet," and I started laughing. I said, "That's like you guys when you started out, although not quite as good." I said, "That's not new."

Q - Who is Scarlet?

A - His girlfriend. She's a poet. He's got a daughter Scarlet, but he's lived with Scarlet his girlfriend for I think almost four years now. She's from London. She's a poet. She's beautiful. She's much, much younger than him, but she's very cool. Jimmy goes everywhere with her. When she has readings he'll sometimes sit in the audience in another room. He doesn't want to draw attention. He wants it to be about her.

Q - He doesn't look the same anymore. Who would recognize him?

A - People that are Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page aficionados. There are people like that, whether it's Jimmy Page or Mick Jagger. They can pick you out of a crowd of five thousand people. The fact Jimmy is still alive is pretty amazing. He still plays and he plays well and he wants to be in a band. He's been trying to get Led Zeppelin together forever. I read reports a couple of months ago they might get back together. It's all on Robert.

Official Website: Zagaris.PhotoShelter.com

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