California Rocks!

For those who grew up in the rock era – roughly from 1960 to 1980, though there are rival histories – it was a time in music that is burned into memory, both good and bad, with a brilliant luster. For those who came not long after, the era can take on a sense of mythos with larger-than-life figures and a select host of fallen heroes. (Or perhaps it all looks vastly over-rated, like we Boomers ourselves.)

Such reactions may be expected at the new Sonoma Valley Museum of Art exhibit, “California Rocks! Photographers Who Made the Scene, 1960-1980,” which gingerly opened its doors July 1. About 100 photos are spread through the gallery’s full square footage, images at once iconic and intimate.

More than a march through rock imagery, the exhibit also draws deeper into the rock era with photos that are by their very subject rare: from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young rehearsing on a rustic stage at Young’s Broken Arrow Ranch, in Redwood City; to Lou Reed shooting up onstage while performing “Heroin” (photo by Michael Zagaris).

“What makes a great rock 'n’ roll photo is when you look at it, you hear the music,” said rock critic Joel Selvin, the show’s curator, when he spoke with the Index-Tribune prior to the show’s opening.

“That could be somebody playing music. That could be somebody sitting in a chair. You just look at a photo, and you hear the music. That's always been the guide to me for these kind of images.”

Selvin is well-known to Bay Area readers as a music writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, from 1970 (when he was just 20) to 2009, when he was laid off – along with 210 other editorial employees. “We thought we were rats leaving a sinking ship, but the ship managed to stay afloat, I'm glad to say,” said Selvin.

No matter, he’s kept plenty busy doing what he’s always done: writing about rock. As well as occasional and sometimes pointed reviews in the Chronicle (many compiled in his “Smart Ass” collection), his list of books goes back to a 1990 biography of Ricky Nelson to last year’s “Fare Thee Well,” about the post-Garcia career of the former Grateful Dead.

"Fare Thee Well“ was co-written with Pamela Turley, who joined Selvin touring the museum the day before the show’s opening, their faces covered as has become the social norm. Picture-hangers and electricians hanging the final pieces all wore facemasks. And one of the most remarkable things about the exhibit turns out to be the most poignant: no one is wearing a facemask in the Age of Rock.

So we can see these familiar faces. Here’s Jim Marshall’s snap of the Beatles taking the stage at Candlestick Park for their final public performance; the oldest of them is just 26. Here’s another Marshall photo of a breezy Mick Jagger backstage at the San Francisco Civic, holding the center of attention before a Stones performance. Here’s a wary Bob Dylan, caught in moment the program notes call “relaxed” by Arthur Rosato, one of his road crew.

It’s that kind of exhibit: the familiar faces are everywhere, from Frank Zappa to the Beach Boys, Janis Joplin to Linda Ronstadt, the Grateful Dead to Tom Petty.

Selvin was contacted by the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art last fall, when deputy director Margie Maynard got the bug to put together a photo exhibit of the impact of the rock scene – not in New York, but in California .

She helped curate a similar exhibit at the Experience Music Project in Seattle (now the Museum of Pop Culture), though she’s been with SVMA since 2010. One might say she has an experienced eye: She points out a photo of a tipi silhouetted by the blue of night, a campfire within illuminating someone.

“Only in the 1970s could a campfire photo like that be considered a rock ’n’ roll shot,” she says. She’s right: the fact that it’s a Joel Bernstein photo of Graham Nash on the Santa Cruz coast may help.

As Selvin said, “I take this seriously as a curator,” and he’s applied his encyclopedic knowledge of West Coast rock to the photo selection, the photo notes on display, and the 40-page program itself – available mid-month – for which he wrote the introduction.

There’s also a soundtrack of rock classics and obscurities suited to the era, courtesy of Selvin’s own Spotify list. It plays in the background as museum guests tour the exhibit.

“It’s such a perfect boutique museum,” he says as he surveys the bones of the exhibit. He’s full of anecdotes from just outside the frame – he was sometimes literally seated next to the photographer – but whether or not he was there, he knows this scene.

The exhibit is subtitled, “Photographers Who Made the Scene,” and the photographers themselves are given full exposure in the notes. Selvin knew many of them personally: Bernstein, Marshall, Henry Diltz, Baron Wolman, Michael Zagaris and others, some with lucky one-time shots (Beth Sunflower Bagby’s disturbing image of the Stones onstage at Altamont, surrounded by Hell’s Angels) to the psychedelic (Bob Seidemann’s capture of the Dead on a deserted Daly City street, their faces glowing).

Accommodations are being made for the current health crisis, of course. The museum will only allow 25 people at a time into its 4,000-square-foot exhibition space, far below its 228 allowed maximum.

“Our visitors have told us that they are ready to come back to the museum if they can do so safely,” said SVMA director Linda Keaton. “SVMA is an excellent place to social distance, and we hope the public will feel safe enjoying ‘California Rocks!’”

The exhibition opened July 1, but there won’t be a big opening – having a reception in the museum in July 2020 just isn’t going to happen – though there is guarded talk of a private party with the real stars of the exhibit, the photographers themselves.

The exhibition runs through Sept. 13, at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, 551 Broadway. Admission is free for members, $15 for the general public, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday.

Email Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.