Sidney Smith is not a musician, but he’s lived a rock ‘n’ roll life. Several, in fact.
He was a rock photographer who embedded with the Allman Brothers Band, spent Mardi Gras with Paul and Linda McCartney and shot members of Led Zeppelin partying with Professor Longhair.
He was a male stripper and a four-time husband.
He’s the founder of Haunted History Tours, New Orleans’ most prominent ghost tour company.
He’s a grieving father and a memoirist, which may turn out to be his final act.
In January, Smith announced on Facebook that he’d been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.
At 71, his medical history is extensive. He’s beaten cancer three times previously. He also endured a hernia, a staph infection, sciatica, two knee replacements, one hip replacement, two cervical fusions, two spinal fusions, vertigo, the removal of his gall bladder and two rotator cuff tears, which rendered his right arm unable to hoist a camera.
Rock photographer Sidney Smith walks down the stairs inside his New Orleans home on Tuesday, August 19, 2025 past where he keeps a small “shrine” on a shelf dedicated to his favorite band, The Beatles. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
PHOTO BY CHRIS GRANGER
“I managed to get through that,” he said. “But pancreatic cancer is a little different.”
A positive person by nature, in late June, he still thought he might outlive his prognosis.
“They tell me that I’m not going to live out the year, which I find kind of hard to believe,” he said June 27. “Maybe I’ll be one of those that breaks the odds.”
Weeks later, he’s not so confident. His weight loss has accelerated. On Aug. 13, he was hospitalized with complications related to pain management.
Since returning home, he’s often extremely fatigued. He is on oxygen and receiving IV infusions of fluids and vitamins. “Intolerable” days are becoming the norm.
After his diagnosis, friends convinced him to write a memoir. He divvied up his life into the 21 chapters of “Being Sidney,” augmenting his stories with more than 200 photographs from his archives.
“Being Sidney” is set for publication in mid-September. He hopes he lives long enough to see it.
Running away with the Allmans
On a hot afternoon this week, Smith was at home in the Broadmoor neighborhood, being attended to by Laurie O. Dawes, a friend since kindergarten.
Wanting to show visitors proofs of “Being Sidney,” he was frustrated to find his downstairs office computer turned off. These days, he has little tolerance for wasted time.
Just inside his front door is a signed note for anyone who might find him unresponsive: “Do not resuscitate.”
His house is a gallery of rock ‘n’ roll greats. Upstairs is a shrine to the Beatles. Smith’s own photos lining a downstairs hallway trace a chronology of Jerry Garcia in 1972, Bruce Springsteen in ’74, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in ’75 and Tom Petty in ’76.
New Orleans photographer Sidney Smith in the 1970s.
PHOTO COURTESY SIDNEY SMITH
He inherited his first camera from his father, an art teacher at Alcee Fortier High School, which Smith also attended. The Warehouse, the grungy brick concert venue that stood on Tchoupitoulas Street, offered a teenage Smith ample opportunity to photograph music legends.
“The Warehouse was the Fillmore East of the South,” he said, referring to promoter Bill Graham’s famous New York venue. “It stunk and it was crowded, but we loved it.”
He ingratiated himself by taking pictures of roadies as well as musicians; the roadies gave him backstage and stage access. His photos turned up in national music magazines.
In November 1970, at age 16, Smith snuck into Tulane University’s homecoming dance to photograph an up-and-coming Southern rock band called the Allman Brothers. The Brothers took an immediate shine to him.
Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers Band, left, with photographer Sidney Smith in 2012.
PROVIDED PHOTO COURTESY SIDNEY SMITH
“I wasn’t some hotshot photographer. I was a kid with a camera. I was pretty damn naive.”
Off and on for years, he traveled with the Allmans, photographing them backstage, in hotel rooms and at their compound in rural Georgia. Smith identified with the 2000 movie “Almost Famous,” the semi-autographical account of Rolling Stone writer Cameron Crowe’s adventures as a fresh-faced teenage journalist on the road with a rock band in the 1970s.
“That,” he said, “was my life.”
Mardi Gras with the McCartneys
In November 1974, Smith attended a George Harrison concert in Baton Rouge. Emotionally overwhelmed to be in the same building as a Beatle, he shed tears.
Two months later, a press agent called him from New York. Would he want to shoot Paul McCartney’s “Venus and Mars” recording sessions at Allen Toussaint’s Sea-Saint Studio in Gentilly?
Photographer Sidney Smith looks through a book of his photos from the time he spent with The Allman Brothers Band in the early 1970s. Smith sits at the kitchen table in New Orleans home on Tuesday, August 19, 2025. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
PHOTO BY CHRIS GRANGER
Driving to Le Richelieu Hotel in the French Quarter, Smith kept telling himself, “I can’t cry. I’ve got to hold it together.”
Joe English, a drummer Smith had met through the Allman Brothers, introduced him to McCartney at the hotel pool.
“It was a slow-motion walk for me,” Smith said. “There was Paul McCartney in his bathing suit with his wife, Linda. He’s looking at my photos and commenting on them, and I’m having an out-of-body experience.”
He spent the next few weeks photographing McCartney at Sea-Saint, as well as Paul and Linda’s Mardi Gras adventures, costumed as clowns. It was a dream come true.
When McCartney hosted a wrap party aboard the Mississippi River boat Voyageur, Smith shot 40 or so rolls of film. As the party ended, he set down his camera bag to savor the moment.
It was promptly stolen.
Paul McCartney, costumed as a clown, in New Orleans on Mardi Gras 1975. Sidney Smith, a young New Orleans photographer, was hired to document McCartney’s time in the city recording the “Venus and Mars” album.
PHOTO BY SIDNEY SMITH
He’d tucked two rolls of film in his shirt pocket; another was in the camera around his neck. But the rest of the film he’d shot, along with most of his cameras and gear, was gone.
Smith was devastated: “I lost my innocence that day.”
Disillusioned, he abandoned his dream of becoming a full-time rock photographer.
Stripper-grams and ghosts
Shifting gears, he founded Merry Minstrels Singing Telegrams. He specialized in “stripper-grams,” bursting into song in offices, bars, homes and hospitals in various states of undress.
“This was in the ‘70s, ‘80s and even into the ‘90s,” he said. “I was stripping longer than I should have.”
Realizing that “I can’t be a 70-year-old stripper, but I can be a 70-year-old tour guide,” he launched Haunted History Tours in 1995.
From French Quarter ghost tours, Haunted History expanded to cemetery, true crime, voodoo and vampire tours. The company hosts over 100,000 customers annually.
Smith conducted tours early on, but soon realized his strength was in marketing and running the business. He hired guides who were also actors and storytellers. “Everybody,” he says, “loves a ghost story.”
A ‘Hugh Hefner’ arrangement
He always sustained his love for, and connection to, rock ‘n’ roll. He eventually picked up his camera again. He befriended the next generation of Allman Brothers offspring and, in 2019, published a book of his Allmans photography. He was an early promoter of child prodigy Brandon “Taz” Niederauer, now Jon Batiste’s touring guitarist.
New Orleans photographer Sidney Smith’s home in the Broadmoor neighborhood is also a gallery of photos he took of such rock legends as the Allman Brothers Band, Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney and Lou Reed. The framed artwork above the doorway depicts Smith and his late son, Justin, who died in 2023. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
PHOTO BY CHRIS GRANGER
Along the way, Smith was married four times. After his fourth divorce, he shifted to a more loosely defined domestic model: “I reconstructed my life in a Hugh Hefner type of situation.”
Meaning multiple girlfriends simultaneously, generally decades younger than him.
“I’m extremely honest with everybody in my world. I don’t lie to anybody.”
Themed pictures of his girlfriends decorate the glossy invitations to Smith’s legendary birthday bashes.
The parties, set in and around his lush backyard and pool, feature live bands, loads of crawfish and celebrity guests. In recent years, he’s issued wristbands to help control the crowd.
He didn’t throw a birthday party this May, largely because of his cancer diagnosis. But he was also preparing for court.
Remembering Justin
Smith’s son Justin was born in 1981. As an adult, Justin struggled with mental health issues and substance abuse.
Sidney Smith poses in his living room with photographs of his son Justin Smith who died in June after collapsing on Decatur Street, in New Orleans, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
He and his father were extremely close. Justin lived in an upstairs bedroom of Sidney’s house and helped market Haunted History Tours, even as he sometimes didn’t take his psychiatric medication.
In June 2023, Justin, who was 42, disappeared. His frantic father spent weeks looking for him, only to discover that his body had been at the Orleans Parish coroner’s office for 25 days. Justin had died of a drug overdose without any identification.
“Nothing is a greater tragedy than losing a child,” Smith said. “And my son Justin was a beautiful person. He was an artist. He was a kind soul and he died way too soon.”
Angered by the delay in identifying Justin’s body and that it was allowed to decompose at the morgue, Smith sued coroner Dwight McKenna, alleging negligence. In July, Civil District Court Judge Marissa Hutabarat found McKenna’s office was liable for “outrageous and reckless” misconduct.
That wasn’t the end of Smith’s crusade.
Earlier this month, he took the unprecedented step of securing an injunction from Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill that prohibits the Orleans Parish coroner’s office from handling his own remains. Smith’s previous lawsuit created a potential conflict of interest, Murrill agreed.
So a coroner from a different parish will collect Smith’s body when the time comes.
‘Being Sidney’ a little longer
Despite making his living from ghost tours, Smith isn’t sure ghosts — or any sort of afterlife — exists. “I believe that there’s something out there,” he said.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen to me when I’m gone. I would love to think that I would be reunited with loved ones. It’s a lovely thought, a very romantic thought. But no one will be more surprised than me if that happens.”
The Allman Brothers Band shot from the back facing the crowd at The Warehouse. (Photo by Sidney Smith)
That said, he’s “totally OK” with his terminal diagnosis. “It is what it is. I would love to live, like anybody else.
“But I’m not afraid or anything like that. I’m good to go, if that’s what happens.”
Appropriately enough, he’s “Being Sidney” until the very end.
“If I die tomorrow, I will have had a great life. I am happy with who I am as a person. I’m happy with what I’ve done for others.
“Somebody told me the other day that people leave my life a lot better off than they came into it. And I would like to think that’s true.”