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Grateful Dead fans dance at sunset during a 1980 concert in Maine. (Photo by Jay Blakesberg)
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Rock photographer Jake Blakesberg’s “Between the Dark and the Light: The Grateful Dead Photography of Jake Blakesberg,” comes to the Richmond Music Hall on June 8 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $99.99 to $199.99. (Photo by Jeffrey Bowling)
Legendary rock photographer and filmmaker Jay Blakesberg first took LSD on a snowy day in 1977. Home from school while his parents were still at work, the New Jersey native and his friends listened to the Grateful Dead, staring at the album covers as they began to breathe and come to life.
“It was a life-changing, profound experience for me,” the 59-year-old San Francisco-based music historian says of his first trip.
After high school, Blakesberg immersed himself in the culture surrounding the Dead and their rock ’n’ roll, hippie lifestyle. Selling photographs taken with his Pentax in parking lots while following the band on tour, the scrappy music lover eventually landed a paid magazine gig.
Forty years later, his photographs of “weirdos and misfits” have appeared in magazines from Rolling Stone to Relix, and he’s published photo books such as “Hippie Chick” and “Jerry Garcia: Secret Space of Dreams.”
“I went all in,” he says. “My whole life has been about passion and inspiration, finding that inspiration and pursuing it.”
While Blakesberg, who will speak at Richmond Music Hall on June 8, has captured snapshots of rock greats such as Neil Young, Carlos Santana and Bob Dylan, to name a few, while establishing himself as the go-to photographer on the music circuit and at Virginia’s premier jam-band festival, Lockn’, the Grateful Dead will always remain Blakesberg’s first true love.
“We wanted more of what the Grateful Dead were giving us, we wanted more LSD, and we wanted to embrace it all and have more experiences and dance with each other and sleep with each other,” he reflects. “People were realizing there were other things in this world other than what I like to call birth, work, school, death.”
It is stories like Blakesberg’s original rendezvous with a mind-opening psychedelic to finding a press pass at his first Grateful Dead concert in Hampton, which landed him backstage with the band’s guitarist Bob Weir and keyboardist Brent Mydland, that will be recounted during his visit to Richmond Music Hall.
During his East Coast tour, Blakesberg will present “Between the Dark and Light” — the name is a lyric from the Dead song “Comes a Time” — a 90-minute showcase of photos spanning his career, each laying the foundation for intimate, raw stories and snippets offering insight into the strange and magical counterculture of the Grateful Dead.
“We all have stories as Deadheads, and I have the photos to prove it,” he says. “It is essentially about my experience photographing the band beginning when I was a teenager and first saw them at age 15, until today.”
Blakesberg will take the audience on the journey of the band’s existence, but also through music and cultural history, as well as his own life.
“The moments in rock ’n’ roll for all of us have been emotional salvation,” says Blakesberg, who describes music as the ultimate connector. “Even if you’re not into jam bands, I think any music fan that came to this would enjoy it. I think it touches everyone in some way.”
