One of rock’n’roll’s most legendary photographers, Lynn Goldsmith has chronicled the lives of everyone from Patti Smith and Bob Dylan, to Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, and her work often shows an up-close, more personal glimpses of the artists we’ve come to regard as untouchable icons.
Though she’s perhaps best known for her celebrity portraits, Goldsmith has had a richly varied creative career since the Seventies, turning her hand to everything from fine art to poetry. As her musical alter-ego Will Powers, she once collaborated with Todd Rundgren, Tom Bailey, Carly Simon, Nile Rodgers and Sting on a 1983 satirical self-help album; her photography spans from fine art and celebrity portraiture, to photojournalism for the National Geographic and the New Yorker, and shots of ‘the ordinary man”.
As Goldsmith puts it; “I like photographing people who want to be photographed.”
“It's not about the music that they make,” she says. “It's about who they are as people; how funny they are, how intelligent they are. I wish I'd gotten to work more with someone like Tom Waits, you know?”
Some of her favourite artists to work with are those she considers to be friends as well as creative collaborators: Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, and Patti Smith. Dylan, too, is another standout. “Dylan’s easy to work with,” she says. He's in control. He knows what he's giving you.”
In the late Seventies, Goldsmith joined Springsteen and the E Street Band on tour as they took Darkness on the Edge of Town around North America. After 1975’s Born to Run proved The Boss’s big breakthrough, its follow-up had a rawer, more brooding hard rock sound. The Darkness tour that followed would become legendary; as Springsteen played his first ever arenas, fan intensity around his music ramped up.
At the time, Goldsmith was in a romantic relationship with Springsteen, and her photographs of the Darkness tour capture him both as a rock icon on stage and as a quieter, lower-key songwriter behind the scenes. In the following decade, he would release The River and Born in the USA, cementing his place in the history books.
“Bruce has more than endured. Bruce has made people think of him in an iconic way, without dying,” Goldsmith says. “Bruce – like Bob Marley, like the Grateful Dead – they have people who aren’t just fans, they’re believers. You go to the church when you go to a concert; your fellow concert-goers are your brethren. There are not that many artists... I mean, look, Taylor Swift has taken it to a whole new level. They have a name – Swifties! We don’t have Brucies out there! I think it’s those artists who are able to create a feeling of community that people really respond to, we all have a need for belonging.”
In a new photobook for Taschen, out now, Goldsmith is revisiting her time with Springsteen and the E Street band on the Darkness tour. As speculation bubbles around a Springsteen biopic, with actor Jeremy Allen White rumoured for the lead role, the photographer talks us through her memories of some of the stand-out images, below.
Bruce Jumping to the Light, 1978
“This, I feel, very clearly represents the feeling of Bruce, and Darkness [on the Edge of Town]. He couldn’t be lifted up like that if it wasn’t for The E Street band. It’s like the music bringing you up into the light; you go beyond and outside of your body. That was the point of rock’n’roll; to heal, to uplift."
Bruce and Lynn, 1978
“I dance around in my shoots. Not as much as I used to, because I'm getting old and tired. But I want to have a good time. Bruce sticking out his hands like that... It’s because before he went on stage, he would practice various moves. I thought that was good, it was like his warm-up.”
Bruce, Manhattan, 1978
“We were waiting for the tour bus to pull up. I don't know [where we were headed] – I never wrote down where I was going!”
Rehearsing in New Jersey, 1978
“There are many, many books and photo books out there on Bruce Springsteen – but what I felt had not really been paid attention to, to the degree that I would’ve hoped, is the E Street band. No-one becomes great at what they do without the support of other people who are talented, and who believe in what you create. Even my best photoshoots come from when I use assistants and other people who are really into what I’m doing. Particularly since Little Stephen is back in the band, and Danny and Clarence are no longer with us, I felt like this was an opportunity to show the relationships between them.
The E Street band were like a family. Families have things that they like and don’t like about each other, but they’re a family. Bruce was sometimes the older brother, and other times the patriarch.”
Bruce Writing with Martin Guitar, 1978
"I think I'm pretty entertaining, and pleasant to have around, and most people I know welcome me in [to more private spaces]. That's the success of every photographer; whether you're shooting Marilyn Monroe, or whoever, it's about showing people the moments they don't get to see; that they can only imagine. That's an important aspect of documenting your life, or a life."
"It's always harder [photographing somebody when you're meeting them] for the first time, because you don't know each other. They don't know if they can trust you. They might trust you because they've seen your work, but still, they question how you'll make them look. I always feel when I can continue to work with anyone, that I'm moving forward in what we can create together."
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Darkness on the Edge of Town by Lynn Goldsmith is out now, and published by TASCHEN
