Here’s another story from Jim Marshall’s book Trust, and
in it he explains the reason for the title. The picture below is Jim’s shot of
John Coltrane that he talks about below, and further down is his picture of
Miles Davis backstage at the Isle of Wight Festival, 1970. I was knocking
around somewhere there but wouldn’t have had the bottle to approach Davis, not in a
million years!
“I first photographed Miles Davis in 1959, but not too
well. I remember after a show in Berkeley California, a little later around
1960, I went up to him backstage and asked why he had a green trumpet. He shot
back at me, ‘Motherfucker, do I ask you why you have a black camera?!’
Frightened the shit outta me for the next five years! After I moved to NY in
1962, I did a couple of covers for Miles, live records on Columbia. I went down
the first time he played for Bill Graham at Winterland in San Francisco. I had
made him a picture of my Coltrane photo that I had taken in John’s garden.
Backstage was crazy. He was surrounded by all the media, press, local TV
stations and newspapers… it was a real big deal. I saw him and said, ‘Hey
Miles’ he sort of grunted and acknowledged my presence. I gave him the print
and said, ‘This is for you.’ ‘What is it? I’m busy.’ ‘It’s just something for
you.’ ‘I’m busy,’ he says again. I walked away and he opens the package. People
are all over him, asking questions, bothering him and trying to get to him, he
tells them all to shut the fuck up and leave him alone. He’s looking at the
print. He loved Coltrane. ‘Hey Marshall, did you take this of John? You knew
him like that? Why don’t you take pictures of me like this?’ And I said, ‘Why
don’t you let me?’ After that I could do whatever I wanted with him. He had his
moods but we were cool. It was trust. If John trusted me, then so did Miles and
with trust I got great shots of him.”
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