Guy Webster, Photographer of Album Covers by The Doors and Rolling Stones, Dies at 79

By Steve Marinucci

Guy Webster, whose photographs adorned album covers and billboards for acts like The Rolling Stones, The Mamas and The Papas, The Beach Boys, The Doors and Simon & Garfunkel, has died, his daughter Sarah Webster confirmed to Variety. He was 79. According to Harvey Kubernik, Webster’s biographer, he had been suffering from diabetes and liver cancer.

His album covers included The Doors’ debut album, The Byrds’ “Turn Turn Turn,” Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” the Stones’ “(Big Hits) High Tide & Green Grass,” The Mamas and the Papas’ “Deliver,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence,” Van Dyke Parks’ “Song Cycle” and Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Midnight Ride” and “Just Like Us,” which manager Roger Hart wrote on Facebook were the group’s two best. Individual music subjects included Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, Herb Alpert, Jerry Lee Lewis, Judy Collins, Jose Feliciano, Janis Joplin, Micky Dolenz, Ricky Nelson, Ravi Shankar, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and Sonny Bono.

He came from a show business family. His father was lyricist Paul Francis Webster, who won three Oscars for Best Original Song for “Secret Love,” “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” and “The Shadow of Your Smile.” The latter also won Song of the Year Grammy in 1965.

“I never meant to be a commercial photographer. I was going to be a fine art photographer,” he told Kubernik. “(Record producer) Terry Melcher said, ‘Hey, let’s do an album cover for The Rip Chords.” And I was still in school. It was for their Three Window Coupe album, with their song ‘Hey Little Cobra.’ … Terry actually got me started thinking, ‘I can shoot some album covers and make some money.’”

“Guy… set the bar extremely high for ‘pop and rock’ photography and photographers,” Record producer Lou Adler told Kubernik, who with his brother Kenneth, co-authored “Big Shots: Rock Legends and Hollywood Icons: The Photography of Guy Webster,” which profiled his work. ”His creativity…sensitivity and understanding of the subjects’ art and vision helped start and endure many careers.”

Webster recalled to Kubernik the session for the controversial album cover “If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears” by The Mamas and The Papas. “We were sitting around and … we were all really stoned. And in that apartment was that 1920s and 1930s bathroom with all the tile. I put them in the bathtub and I set up my tripod and my big two-and-a-quarter camera and shot that picture. And in that picture was the toilet. You can’t put a toilet on the cover of anything and sell it at Sears or one of those chain stores. So Lou came up with a great idea to put a little sticker on the shrink-wrap that said, “Including ‘California Dreaming’.” That covered the toilet. It became one of the most controversial album covers of its day. Which pleased us to no end.“

Webster said he loved shooting Captain Beefheart. “He was free thinking and not afraid to take chances. Not a corporate guy who was going to get the most money out of whatever it was. He was an artist.”

“Guy Webster translated the music’s essence in an understandable way, helping to define The Doors, Simon & Garfunkel, The Mamas & The Papas or the Brian Jones era of The Rolling Stones,” author Domenic Priore, who used a Webster photo of Brian Wilson on the cover of his book “’Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece,” told Variety. .

Webster also photographed Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan along with numerous celebrities, including Dean Martin, Barbra Streisand, Natalie Wood, Bob Hope, Bob Newhart, Burt Reynolds, Dennis Hopper, Edward G. Robinson, Elizabeth Montgomery, Eva Gabor, Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, John Belushi, Larry Hagman, Leonard Nimoy, Marlo Thomas, Priscilla Presley, Raquel Welch, Rock Hudson, Truman Capote and William Shatner.

“My dad was loved by all,” his daughter Sara told Variety. “He was a peoples person and touched the lives of so many. He will be greatly missed and we are heart stricken that he left us so prematurely but rejoice in the thought that he had a f–ing awesome life!”

[variety.com]

More great classic Stones photos on Guy's website: [guywebster.com]

The New York Times' obituary:

Guy Webster, Master of the Album Cover Photograph, Dies at 79



By Richard Sandomir
Feb. 19, 2019

Guy Webster was smoking pot with the Mamas & the Papas in the group’s rented house in Los Angeles in 1966 when he had an idea about how to photograph the four singers for the cover of their debut album.

He told them to head into a 1920s-era tiled bathroom, where they all squeezed, fully clothed, into the tub: John Phillips sat in the foreground, and behind him were Cass Elliot, Denny Doherty and Michelle Phillips, her legs stretched across the others’ laps. (Mr. Doherty told a slightly different story: that they had been hiding from Mr. Webster in the tub.)

“You can see how stoned they were,” Mr. Webster said when he showed the picture to an audience attending an exhibition about his career at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles in 2012. But the picture had a flaw: It included the toilet, an image he said would have limited sales of the album, “If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears,” in chain stores.

“So Lou Adler,” he continued, referring to the producer of the album and the president of Dunhill Records, “came up with the idea that when we put shrink wrap over the album, and put a sticker on it that says, ‘Including “California Dreamin’,” we can sell it at Sears. And when the kids take it off, there’s the toilet.”

“If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears” rose to No. 1 on the Billboard album chart and enhanced Mr. Webster’s growing reputation as one of the top rock ’n’ roll photographers of his time. Over a frenetically busy period between the mid-1960s and the early ’70s, Mr. Webster shot album covers for the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Simon & Garfunkel, Captain Beefheart, the Byrds, the Beach Boys, Tim Buckley and Nico, as well as continuing to work with the Mamas & the Papas.

“He knew about the power and longevity of music,” Harvey Kubernik, who with his brother, Kenneth, wrote “Big Shots: Rock Legends and Hollywood Icons: The Photography of Guy Webster” (2014), said by telephone. “He treated music as an art form that would be around for the next century.”

Mr. Webster died on Feb. 5 in Ojai, Calif. He was 79. His wife, Leone (James) Webster, said the cause was liver cancer.

Several months after that bathtub session, Mr. Webster invited the Doors to his small studio behind his parents’ Beverly Hills house to photograph them for their first album, which would be released in early 1967.

“In walked Jim Morrison, and he said, ‘Guy!’ ” Mr. Webster recalled in an interview that appears in “Big Shots.” He did not recognize the longhaired lead singer, but Mr. Morrison reminded him that they had been in the same philosophy class at U.C.L.A.

After removing his cheap beribboned shirt at Mr. Webster’s request, Mr. Morrison became the focus of the cover photo, his face much larger than those of Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, who looked more like satellites than bandmates.

“I’m sure they hated me for this cover because they weren’t equal in size,” Mr. Webster said at the Annenberg lecture. “The songwriter is the guy on the far right — Krieger wrote ‘Light My Fire,’ Morrison didn’t.” But, he added, “I’m happy I went with it, because it was so popular.”

Guy Michael Webster was born on Sept. 14, 1939, in Los Angeles. His father, Paul Francis Webster, was a lyricist who shared Academy Awards for best original song for “The Shadow of Your Smile,” “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” and “Secret Love.” His mother, Gloria (Benguiat) Webster, was a homemaker.


Mr. Webster at his Venice, Calif., studio in 2014. Credit: Lisa Gizara

After graduating from Beverly Hills High School, Guy attended Whittier College and then entered the Army. When asked whether he knew anything about photographry, he lied and pretended that he did, but studied books from the library at Fort Ord in California and became the head of the base’s photo department.

After his discharge, he disappointed his parents by telling them he would study photography at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena rather than attend Yale. They refused to pay for his education, fearing he would become no more than a paparazzo.

While he was at Art Center, his ambition to be a fine-art photographer was derailed by his friend Terry Melcher, Doris Day’s son, who was a producer for Columbia Records. Mr. Melcher introduced him to Mr. Adler, who was intrigued by Mr. Webster’s portfolio and hired him at Dunhill.

One early project was Barry McGuire’s third album, named for his apocalyptic hit single, “Eve of Destruction” (1965). For the cover, he photographed Mr. McGuire in a manhole, in black and white.

Columbia asked Mr. Webster to work with Simon & Garfunkel on their album “Sounds of Silence” (1966). He brought them to the shady grasslands of Franklin Canyon in Los Angeles, where he posed them on a dirt road looking as if they were walking into an unknown future. He also brought them to meet his father, a shy and professorial man who had collaborated with Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael and others.

“Paul Simon said, ‘Hey, you want to hear our new song?’ ” Mr. Webster recalled in “Big Shots.” “And he pulled out his guitar in the living room in Beverly Hills, and my dad was sitting there, who is not a rock and roller, and he listened to ‘Sounds of Silence’ for the first time. ‘Oh, my God, you guys, what a brilliant song.’ ”

By the early 1970s, Mr. Webster, burned out by the pace and the travel that were part of his rock work, moved to Europe for several years. In Italy, he studied art history at the University of Florence and started building a large collection of vintage Italian motorcycles.

Returning to the United States, he began photographing Hollywood stars like Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Candice Bergen and Jane Fonda. Some of his pictures appeared in well-known publications like The Los Angeles Times and lesser-known ones like Wet: The Magazine for Gourmet Bathing; he also photographed movies on location and provided publicity shots for actors.

“He had an ability to make celebrities feel very safe,” Leone Webster said in a telephone interview. “He also had these adorable pictures of the Kardashian girls growing up — he was like their family photographer.”

Mr. Webster also managed his father’s music archive and licensed his photographs for reissues over the years.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Webster is survived by his daughters, Sarah, Merry, Jessie and Erin Webster; a son, Michael; two grandchildren; and a brother, Roger, also known as Mona. His marriage to Bettie Beal ended in divorce.

Mr. Webster’s work with the Rolling Stones began with an unusual offer in 1965 from Andrew Loog Oldham, their producer and manager: Take photographs, but don’t expect to be paid because it’s an honor simply to work with the band.

“And I said, ‘Well, it’s an honor for you that I take these pictures,’ ” Mr. Webster, who shot the bucolic cover for the United States release of the anthology “Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)” (1966), said at the Annenberg event. “He paid me for one album cover. Three of them came out during the years using my photographs.”

[www.nytimes.com]