He climbed a mountain with The Eagles. Rode horseback with America. ‘Rolled a fatty’ with Neil Young. Now, Henry Diltz takes New England.
Henry Diltz (left) with Paul and Linda McCartney. Henry Diltz Photography
August 13, 2025 | 10:01 AM
11 minutes to read
One early morning in 1972, Henry Diltz found himself trekking the California desert in the pre-dawn dark with The Eagles.
They’d left LA “at 2 a.m. when the bar closed. We drove three hours to the desert. We got there at 5 a.m. An Indian medicine man named Semu had given us peyote buttons. We were sucking on those as we climbed the mountain in the dark. We got to the top as the sun came up.”
… This is the kind of answer you get when you ask Diltz about a photo. (I’d asked about the photo he took for The Eagles debut album cover.)
There is nothing ordinary about Henry Diltz.
Every word out of the legendary rock photographer’s mouth is colorful. Every quote sparkles. Every photo has a banger of a story behind it.
The 86-year-old tells me he’s a “tiger in the bushes” when he shoots photos. Recommends I read Paramahansa Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi.” (“I gave it to everyone in ’65.”) One tale involves “rolling a fatty and watching llamas” with Neil Young. Another: riding through the desert on a horse (not sure if it had a name) with the band America. “We had a guide show us how to get to this bubbling oasis with palm trees in the middle of the desert.”
“If I’d’ve been a studio photographer, the story would be, ‘The group walked in at 2 p.m. They stood in front of the paper.’ But we would go on adventures!” he says with a gleeful laugh.
I sat rapt as Diltz, also the official photographer of Woodstock, told colorful behind-the-lens tales.
It’s exactly what he’ll do when he brings “Legends in Focus: The Photography of Henry Diltz” to New England. Catch him, VH1 Storytellers-style, at Boston’s Emerson College Aug. 14 (7 p.m., $60.) See a free public gallery showing from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Or you might take a Diltz-style adventure up to King Pine Ski Area in Madison, N.H. Aug. 16, for a barbecue dinner, meet-and-greet and full show with cash bar. ($85)
Living in the ‘60s California music mecca Laurel Canyon, Diltz became a fly-on-the-wall (or “tiger in the bushes”). His body of work includes photos of Paul and Linda McCartney, Brian Wilson, David Crosby, Joni Mitchell, The Who, Keith Richards…
… But I’ll let him tell you about that.
David Crosby. – Henry Diltz Photography
Diltz, honored with a Recording Academy Trustees Award during Grammy Week in 2023, was a Herb Alpert Scholar in Residence at Berklee College of Music in 2019 and 2020.
I called him at his home near Laurel Canyon to talk gurus, peyote, fireworks, James Taylor, and more. Warm and laid-back, he laughs at his own memories, endearingly exclaims “gosh!” often — and, a few weeks from his 87th birthday, still seems filled with wonder for this world.
Boston.com: I love that you’re bringing slideshows to New England, because slideshows are your true passion, what sparked your journey as a photographer.
Henry Diltz: I didn’t become a photographer the moment I bought the camera — I became a photographer the moment I saw the first slide on the wall. I went, “Oh my gosh. This is amazing. It’s like we’re right back there. I’m going to take more photos because it’s fun to have these slideshows.”
I started taking pictures just about 60 years ago. See, I was a folk singer before that, in Hawaii. We got to California in ’63; I picked up a camera in ’66 by accident, and it changed my life.
You were on tour in ’66 with your group, Modern Folk Quartet. You bought a camera on a whim one day in East Lansing, Michigan.
Right. We’d just played University of Michigan, we were in a Clark Cortez motorhome. We pulled over at a second-hand store because they’re so much fun. Oh my God, you gotta go see the treasures, right? Buy something you don’t need.
[laughs] Right.
I walked in behind [bandmate] Cyrus Faryar. Right inside the door was a table with little second-hand Japanese cameras, like 20 bucks. Cyrus, without stopping, said, “A camera, I’ll have one.” He grabbed one. I was behind him, and just imitated him. Why not?
We got back in the motorhome, Cyrus says, “Pull into the drugstore and I’ll buy film for everybody.” He handed each of us a yellow box of Kodak film.
We took pictures for two weeks as we traveled back to LA. We stopped at fields of cows. I got on my stomach and looked up and photographed cows looking down. At a junkyard, I found a toilet with a flower growing out of it. Our bass player had this old broken cardboard case he wanted to blow up in the desert with M-80 firecrackers.
[laughs] Oh my God.
The thing went boom! and flew 30 feet. I got a picture of it up in the air and him running away in the background. [laughs]
[laughs] A perfect fireworks shot.
We get back to LA; we develop the film. I was surprised to find out it was slide film! I said, “Let’s have a slideshow!”
Then I’d take pictures of all my friends: Mama Cass, Stephen Stills, The Turtles. I’d show these pictures on the weekend. I loved it when they’d say, “Oh, I didn’t even know you took that!”
So I just stumbled into it. I don’t even know why I grabbed the camera. But I’m so glad the universe steered me in that direction.
Soon your friends wanted you to take publicity shots. You started, accidentally, with Buffalo Springfield.
One day I heard music coming out of a friend’s house in Laurel Canyon. I walked to the door — Stephen Stills was over, playing guitar. I’d met him in ’63 in New York City, when he was a young kid who came to see our folk band.
He said, “Hey, Henry, want to come with us this afternoon to a folk club in Redondo Beach?” I said, “I’d love to!” Thinking I’d photograph people on the beach for my slideshow. And I did. I got a great shot of a guy with a monkey on his shoulder. They look similar.
[laughs] That’s great.
So I walked back to the club and see a huge two-story pink mural of a guy riding a bicycle. I thought, “That’ll look good in my slideshow.” When the band walked out, I said, “Guys, would you stand in front of that mural so I can show the size of it?”
They used that photo for publicity shots.
It was almost by accident.
Your first album cover was The Lovin’ Spoonful.
A friend of mine, Erik Jacobsen — his group was called the Knob Lick Upper 10,000 — called me one day and said, “Henry, I hear you want to be a photographer. I’m producing this new group; we need pictures. Why don’t you come to New York and we’ll pay for your film and processing, you can get practice?”
Being a musician, I could easily hang out in a dressing room. Photographers can be pushy. “Stand over there.” I never did that. I just hung out. When I saw something interesting, I’d quietly take the picture.
Almost photojournalist style.
I learned something a few years ago. A girl said, “What’s your Chinese animal?” I said, “Gosh, I think I’m a tiger.” She said, “Tigers are playful, sociable — but they’re loners. They like to hide in the bushes and watch other animals.” I thought, “Oh my God. That’s what I do.”
That’s a great analogy.
I never get in anybody’s face. I don’t start walking in and clicking. I quietly observe and take a picture of a real thing happening. That’s like a tiger hiding in the bushes!
[laughs] It is. And you have a Massachusetts connection: Wellesley-born lighting designer Chip Monck, who also did Newport Folk Fest, asked you to photograph a concert, and you ended up as the official photographer of Woodstock.
Edward Herbert Beresford Monck. His friends called him “Chip.” [laughs] One day in late July, my phone rang in my kitchen in Laurel Canyon— that’s the way every adventure started. He said, “Henry, I’m out here in New York. We’re going to have a huge concert in a couple in a few weeks. You oughta be here!”
I said, “Look, Chip, I’ve read about it, but I don’t know those people. How am I going to get a photo pass?” He said, “I’ll talk to the producer.” Next day, Michael Lang called me. He said, “Chip says we need you. I’m sending you an airline ticket and $500.” Click.
Woah.
That was all he said!
[laughs] Amazing.
I was there for two weeks while they got ready before the crowd showed. It was like summer camp. All these hippie carpenters hammering, building, sawing by a field of alfalfa. Then the Hog Farm [founded by Wavy Gravy] showed up from New Mexico, and set up kitchens. I’d photograph all these people who were also my people. [laughs]
What’s your favorite Woodstock shot?
Jimi Hendrix was supposed to close the show Sunday night, but they were so backed up that he didn’t go on until early Monday as dawn was breaking. To stand there next to him on the stage was amazing.
Then he started playing “The Star Spangled Banner” which was puzzling. What’s he playing the national anthem for? We were all anti-war hippies. Peace and love. Certainly against the whole idea of going over to Vietnam and killing strangers. I remember thinking, “That’s not our song. That’s Nixon.” But as he started putting in sound effects [makes guitar sounds] I was like, “Wow, maybe he’s reclaiming it.” That moment was amazing.
Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. – Henry Diltz PhotographyWow. James Taylor is local to Boston. How did you get connected with him?
The phone rang one day in ’69 and it was Peter Asher. I knew him from The Troubadour. Peter had just come over from England, [working] for [The Beatles’] Apple Records. He said, “Henry, I’m producing this new guy, and we need publicity pictures.”
I knocked on Peter’s door. He said, “Oh, he’s in the living room.” I walked in and James Taylor is sitting on the floor near a grand piano, finger-picking “Oh! Susanna” on guitar. It sounded like a music box. It was so beautiful. That was my first moment of looking at, and listening to, James Taylor. It was mesmerizing, the way he picks. I got down on my knees and took a few pictures of him finger-picking.
James Taylor. – Henry Diltz Photography
Then for better light, we went to my friend’s commune. James was standing near the shed, by a tall post. And he’s a tall guy. He put his arms on the post. And it looked so good, the way he filled the frame. Peter Asher saw that picture, and it became the album cover. So it was an accident.
James Taylor. – Henry Diltz PhotographyAnother fateful accident.
It’s funny, the universe was on my side. [laughs] Same thing with Crosby, Stills & Nash on the couch.
Right. It was initially for publicity photos, not the album cover.
I knew all three. These well-known musicians were going to make a super-group. They needed publicity shots. So we went out with Gary in his ’56 Ford station wagon, hopping out here and there. We found this old house with a couch in front. They just jumped on the couch spontaneously. I took pictures.
Crosby, Stills and Nash. (Or in this case, Stills, Nash and Crosby.) – Henry Diltz Photography
Publicity shots were all black-and-white in those days. But I took color [for my slideshow]. When they saw it, they said: “Wow! That would make a great album cover. But we’re sitting in the wrong order, because since you took that picture two days ago, we decided to call ourselves Crosby, Stills & Nash.” They were originally going to be Stills, Nash & Crosby.
I said, “Let’s go back. It’ll take five minutes.” We got in Gary’s station wagon— but the house was gone. Flat. Bulldozed to build a parking lot. Like that song Joni wrote.
Yes! I was just going to say, “Pave paradise, put up a parking lot.”
[laughs] The song wasn’t about that, but it fits perfectly.
The theory behind a lot of your work seems to be: Have an adventure, see what happens, document it. It does fit that tiger-in-the-bushes vibe. You told me about the first Eagles album adventure. What’s the story behind your second cover for them, “Desperado”?
Gary knew this old ghost-town — a Western movie set out in the Santa Monica Mountains, in Agoura. The Eagles spent a day in this derelict town playing cowboys with their friends Jackson Browne and J.D. Souther. We had real guns with movie blanks. They went bang! They started playing cowboys, shooting at each other, grabbing their chests, falling down in the dirt.
The Eagles, during the shoot for the cover of “Desperado.” – Henry Diltz Photography
Suddenly, fire engines came. A cloud of smoke [from the blanks] was rising in the Santa Monica Mountains, and someone thought the hills were on fire.
Your stories are unreal.
[laughs] It was fun.
You’ve also got great Neil Young photos.
Neil Young was a good friend of Gary’s. We’d go to his Broken Arrow Ranch for a weekend, walk around. Of course, we were always smoking God’s herb. I can say that now that it’s legal. It wasn’t legal in the early ’70s, but every musician smoked it. We’d smoke a big fatty and look at llamas and geese.
[laughs] I love it.
One day Neil wanted us to go in this barn where he had a great guitar stashed. I turned around, he was standing in the barn door with this little farm dog — it’s just a great shot. Once again, accidentally. Most pictures I took were not planned.
Neil Young. – Henry Diltz PhotographyWhat slides stand out to you now, as you bring these slideshows to Boston and New Hampshire?
Joni Mitchell lived near me in Laurel Canyon. She needed publicity photos, so we went to her house. We walked up the steps; she was sitting in the front window waiting. Gary started talking to her for five minutes, and I took some pictures. So natural. Nobody even noticed.
Joni Mitchell. – Henry Diltz PhotographyWith all these stories and accidents, it does feel, like you said, like fate guiding you to bear witness.
Photography, it’s a reason to be there. Permission to hang out and watch. I’m thankful to the universe for giving me that. Being a photographer was like having a passport into interesting people’s lives.
One time Rolling Stone called up. They said, “Henry, what are you doing today? I said, “Oh, nothing.” They said, “Could you fly to Las Vegas, go to Truman Capote’s house, and take a picture of him? We have a story, but no cover.”
As I knocked on Truman Capote’s door, I thought: What the hell? I read his short stories in college — now here I am knocking on Truman Capote’s door? How random is that? How fabulous is that?
I read the Indian gurus. Swami Satchidananda Saraswati did the morning wake-up in his orange robe at Woodstock. In “The Golden Present” he says: We’re all here to learn. But you should think of yourself as the only student, and everyone you meet is your teacher.
Wow. That’s profound.
I think about those matters a lot: What is life? What are we supposed to do? I was a psychology major at the University of Hawaii because I was interested: Who are we? What is the reason? Reading these Indian gurus answers a lot of those questions. I would look at it that way: Gosh, how wonderful that this happened.
Meaning you look at your life as a photographer that way?
Yeah. From picking up a camera, to being in Laurel Canyon, to these album covers. Why would that happen to me? That’s quite a coincidence. Or are there coincidences? Maybe it was my divine plan here on Earth.
For more events, information, and photographs see henrydiltz.com.
Lauren Daley can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagram at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.
Lauren Daley is a longtime culture journalist. As a regular contributor to Boston.com, she interviews A-list musicians, actors, authors and other major artists.
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