Behind The Lens: Tom Gundelfinger O’Neal on Photographing Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and the experience that started it all, at Monterey Pop Festival.

As a nineteen year old, nostalgia is not a word that I use often. Especially not in my own life. You hear your parents talk about the old days, you watch documentaries and you become invested in a world that once was. The only way you can come close to feeling it, is through music. For me, nothing feels more blissful than listening to those Laurel Canyon musicians of the Sixties and Seventies. Neil Young, CSN, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor to name a few. Although the music remains timeless and creates this sense of serenity for the listener, a candid photograph captured while throwing song ideas around in the studio or just chilling on the sofa with some friends, is what truly captivates a moment in time that was just destined to become iconic. 

As a big Neil Young fan, naturally, Tom Gundelfinger O'Neal is one of my favourite photographers. His ability to capture those perfect moments in time is a great gift that he has, and one that allows people of my generation to be able to immerse themselves in this particular time period. When you look at Tom's art and photographs, you are transported into the lives of the individual in the portrait. I asked him if he would chat with me, and I was so excited when he agreed. Before we were about to chat, he sent me some of the artwork that he had been working on (see below). We spoke all about his life behind the camera and the canvas, and it was fascinating to hear what he had to say. 

Tom's journey into photography all started with an album cover that he spotted in a record store on a sunny day in Carmel. "I’m standing there outside and looked out about ten o’clock in the morning, and I saw this Mama’s and Papa’s cover, I didn’t buy it that’s what’s weird about it, it was a lot of money, it was a dollar seventy five, I didn’t have much money like that. I had gone in there to connect myself with the music." Through the process of flipping through some records, he found The Mama's & The Papa's 'Deliver' album.

"In the process I was doing this and I pulled this Mama’s and Papa’s out and it stopped me, you asked me what was different, first of all the photograph was very animated, it wasn’t a posed photo, it was a candid shot where the band was in the swimming pool doing this really fun, thrilless thing, having a moment of joy and celebration and just screwing around. The construction of the album (in terms of the picture), the image went all the way to all four corners of the surface of the album, that was kind of rare. Usually, it’s centered in the middle. It just caught my eye and I said ‘Oh My God!’. I had been searching for some direction to go in my career. Early twenties, art major, heavily influenced by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, the abstract expressionists. I had been in painting competitions, painting on very large canvases and doing photography. I didn’t have a direction with my painting but as soon as I saw this photograph, it was an epiphany. It just said ‘I now know what I’m going to do, I am going to be a rock ‘n’ roll photographer’, I’m going to be Guy Webster. I’m going to be Henry Diltz. I put the album back and I walked out of the record store, having this existential glow about me. I floated out of the record store, it’s ten o’clock in morning, a beautiful morning in Carmel and I went that’s great. I know what I’m going to do, but how the heck am I going to do that!" 

While the 'Deliver' album had brought O'Neal some fantastic direction to what he wanted from his career, it was the experience of The Monterey Pop Festival that allowed him to practise his trade. "Right after that, maybe a week or two, there was an article in the local paper about an event that was coming in June called the Monterey International Pop Festival. I just went this is it. This is my opportunity. I don’t have to go to San Francisco. I don’t have to go to L.A., they’re coming right here." Although O'Neal had an impressive eye for creativity, he didn't yet have the credentials that would allow him to take photos of the people he really admired. He knew that he needed a contact that would guide him into his destiny, a childhood friend by the name of Terry Melcher rang a bell. 

"Not long after that, another week or so went by and producers of the Monterey Pop festival were coming up to L.A. with some other people on the board who had put this thing together. John Phillips of the Mama’s and Papa’s and Lou Adler, a manager and producer. I started reading on the backs of these albums, I went back to the record store and started looking for as much information as I could find about The Mama’s & The Papa’s. It also said, a guy with the name of Terry Melcher, along with three or four other musicians were coming up to Monterey to talk to the chief police about the whole organising of the event. I thought ‘Oh my god! This is perfect, I can introduce myself to Lou Adler, I can’t just walk up to him, but I can say hello to my childhood friend Terry Melcher who I went to school with in L.A. in Beverly Hills, in the second grade. He’ll certainly remember me'." 

Tom arrived at the police station at three o'clock, ready for his big opportunity that would allow him to share his craft with Lou Adler and Terry Melcher. "I go to the police station at three o’clock and I stand in front and here comes this long black limo. These very well dressed hippies get out of the car."

O'Neal had a photograph that fellow photographer Guy Webster had taken, that Tom had taken from a magazine, he rephotographed it and went in with his own technique. He painted on it and made it look psychedlic, a style that was incredibly popular at the time. When he was finished with it, he took it to Lou Adler and he was impressed. 

"I show it to him, he looks at it and he says ‘that’s cool, come on in’. I follow him and I walk on into this meeting right next to twenty-one-year old Michelle Phillips and John Phillips and he’s about six foot eight and he wears this big fur hat, we go in and now I’m a fly on the wall and of course, I didn’t have my camera, if I had been able to take pictures, they would’ve been invaluable." 

After the encounter at the police station and a very heated discussion with the chief of the police, Tom got to speak with Lou Adler once more. "I said ‘you liked the photo?’ and he said ‘yeah, I liked it’, I said ‘this is what I do, I would love to get some pictures of your band and some of the other bands, I can do this effect to them (pointing to his artwork)’ and he said ‘yeah, that’s great, go see Derek Taylor'. He was The Beatles’ publicist and he told me to tell him 'that you can give me a full set of credentials, all access’. Here I am, I had hardly started taking photography and I had credentials that anyone would die for today. 

The next question I asked Tom was whether having a good relationship with the person you are photographing makes for taking a better picture. I also asked if he remembered the time as carefree. He went on to reflect. 

"It helped you learn a lot more about what kind of photos you wanted to take. You went to parties and gatherings. They weren’t parties with information, they were spontaneous get-togethers. There were no contracts. You didn’t wear a lanyard with a big plastic envelope on it showing all of your credentials. I didn’t wear anything around my neck at Monterey Pop, I just had something in my pocket. Something I could take on my shirt or something.  I had access at the time. To go to the Whiskey A Go Go, they would say ‘yeah, ask Tom, come through the back door, come through to the dressing room.’ None of that would happen today. I never thought of it being carefree but I had a little bit more time. There was always that saying ‘don’t be so uptight, just go with the groove, get in the groove, float’. There was a lot of hanging out. The music happens, there’s a pool, all of a sudden everybody is going in. That happened a lot and it doesn’t happen like that now." 

I was incredibly fascinated by how Tom was so involved in all of these musicians' day-to-day lives. That he was there to capture some of those moments that many, (including myself), would have loved to have been a fly on the wall of. I was interested to know if he'd been present when any of the musicians, like Crosby Stills, Nash and Young for instance, had come up with a song. This is what he shared: 

"The closest thing I saw of them getting an idea to write a song was Ohio, the massacre in Ohio. Kent State in Ohio. I remember talking to Neil, he did an album called ‘Journey Through The Past’, it was a soundtrack album, a film that he made. I was up in his ranch, in his recording studio, it was all handmade, redwood and everything and it was beautiful. We’re talking about the concept for the album and he has his big flying V Rickenbacker guitar and he’s not wired in. He’s just sitting there, like when you talk to someone and they’re doodling or something. As we were talking, he was strumming ‘old man take a look at my life..’, the notes to it on the guitar and I didn’t go ‘oh, that’s cool, Neil! (laughs)’. It was nothing like that. In my subconscious, I was like ‘this is frickin’ cool’". 

It is no secret that the album cover of 'Deja Vu' by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young is the most acclaimed photograph of O'Neal's. The story has been shared multiple times on how they got the photograph to be how it was. But here is what Tom had to say: 

"The mood that day was the guys were a little bit tired. They had been up all night at the studio and they got up around noon, had breakfast about one o’clock in the afternoon, and they had a big breakfast. Their blood sugar was low and I had to make them stand completely still for the album cover because I was shooting with this tintype camera which had a two minute exposure. Deja Vu was quite a journey, it was very challenging, but I had a lot of fun."

However, it wasn't just Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young that Tom enjoyed working with, alongside many others, Steppenwolf were a band that helped Tom use his creativity further, especially when it came to album covers. 

"I’m very proud of Steppenwolf 7. The way that was put together. All of it by hand. Very laborious but they really gave me a lot of creativity. That was truly one of my most fun albums. It’s very graphic. Two big skulls on the cover and the group is down on the bottom of the cover. It’s a collage of several things. I did one with the drummer of the band, he was the creative genius of the band, Jerry Edmonton, we did Slow Flux together. We made it out of letters, we found it in a hardware store, it was quite fun to build that."

Although some of his most iconic photographs are more than fifty years old, Tom still has a great lust for life. He is still involved in many projects and loves to revisit some of his best work. For instance, he recently wrote a book called 'Gundelfinger: Memoirs Of a Rock & Roll Photographer'. 

"The book came out of necessity because Monterey Pop was going to be here, it was the fiftieth anniversary and I couldn’t have this incredible event come by and not have a book. That was the impetuous of the book and we put it together very fast and we started choosing pictures, to give an idea of what Monterey Pop was and it was basically a memoir. I use the word very frivolously, Deja Vu and beyond, just leaving it open. I’m working on another one, where there will be a lot more." 

( http://www.tgophoto.com/rock-book)

It is truly admirable looking back at what Tom has achieved over his life. I expressed to him that his pictures were so important to someone like me, who wasn't alive at the time of these events, yet someone who adores the music. When I look at Tom's pictures, it feels as though you are in those moments with him and they are captured so beautifully, it's almost as if his camera was struck with gold. I can't wait to speak with Tom about similar things in the future, and it looks as though he still has a busy life ahead of him. 

"I’m painting, I’ve got a gallery agent, as well as a photo agent and the gallery agent is really excited about putting my work out there and seeing some art dealers. The originals will be in some of the galleries, there will be copies that you can buy online and that’s exciting. I am also working on another book."