Photographer Linda Wolf produced a Memory Book, to commemorate the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, which she published in September 2015 in conjunction with the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s All-Star Joe Cocker Tribute Concert at Virginia’s Lockn’ Festival.
She is currently working on a new Tribute book to include coverage of the 2015 show.
North Shore News: What happened to the film you shot in 1970? How and where was it archived?
Linda Wolf: I saved it. I must have put it in my bags. That’s a good question I have no idea. The film may have been saved at Prolab. I really don’t know, all I know is I ended up with it.
North Shore News: You came out of the experience with 4,000 negs?
Linda Wolf: I’ve been able to salvage pretty much all of the best shots that were very thin through scanning at really high-res’s and using applications to bring out the photos themselves. I’m really pleased with things as I would never have been able to have them turn out that way if I’d been developing in the darkroom.
North Shore News: After Mad Dogs you went away to school in France and came back five years later. Where was that material?
Linda Wolf: They must have been at Prolab. When I came back Andee and I went through all the photographs because we thought we would make a book then. I remember being over at my friend Andee Nathanson’s (who was Andee Cohen on the tour) and we would spend hours – I’d sleep over there – with cups of coffee and just look through all of the proof sheets so they must have been in L.A. when I got back.
North Shore News: When you said you were looking at proofs with Andee, were you looking at both hers and yours?
Linda Wolf: Yes, because we were going to do a book in common at the time. We actually had a lot of prints made and put together boards with the prints and we used to ship them back and forth to each other over the years in a big box saying I think I can get this published. We never really did anything with them until now. Her book is called Andee Eye. It’s going to come out soon – she’s an amazing photographer for the access and the eye that she has. She’s also one of my closest friends even though we were not close friends on the tour.
North Shore News: Why was that?
Linda Wolf: I think she was angry. I don’t think she liked the fact that I was going to be on the tour because it came as a surprise to her. I think she was under the impression she was the only still photographer on the tour. It came as a surprise Denny had said yes to me too. Andee herself will say she wasn’t the person she became.
North Shore News: How did the Mad Dogs Memory Book come about?
Linda Wolf: For years, I’ve been involved in the women’s empowerment movement, feminist movements back in the ’60s and ’70s and moving on into the Third Wave movement and onward to now I’ve been involved with women’s and girls’ empowerment. I actually started a non-profit organization 25 years ago, Teen Talking Circles, now called Circle in Truth, which is still running to support young women and girls to develop agency. I thought that the women of the Cocker tour were not getting enough attention for who they were in this sexist world, especially in the male-dominated world of music. About four years before the Tribute concert I started interviewing the women of the Cocker tour and I amassed contact lists of the people on the tour. Joe and Derek Trucks decided they were going to do a tribute to Mad Dogs and Englishmen and after Joe died, Derek and Susan and their band decided to do it anyway. They were going to bring back all the alumni including me and they were wondering if I had contact information for everybody. I happened to mention this to my assistant at the time and he said, ‘Why don’t you make a book and sell it at the Lockn’ Festival?’ Better than that I thought I could give it away to all the alumni and the Tedeschi Trucks Band and all the friends that were going to be on the program. We went to work creating this very basic school annual-type memory book. It was just a thin paperback book but I had six months to create something that I thought would make everyone that was involved with the show happy. I ended up selling copies of it and doing a second printing. I have two left that are being sold as a crowdfunding campaign for the printing of the new book.
North Shore News: How’s the new Tribute book coming?
Linda Wolf: I’m only at the point of just beginning to work with the designer in California and I will be going back in November to give him some images to start with ideas for design. He’s an amazing designer and I happen to know him through a woman who I met on the Cocker tour who has also stayed very close friends with me. His name is Michael Vanderbyl, Vanderbyl Designs in San Francisco. I would say our goal is to have it out by the fall of next year.
North Shore News: What is the relationship between the two books?
Linda Wolf: There will be some of the same photos because those are the most powerful but lots of new ones. The prints are going to be extraordinary. It is called Tribute and is not only about Joe Cocker Mad Dogs and Englishmen but Tedeschi Trucks Band as well, so it will have photographs of the past, photographs of the summer after the tour ended when many of us were still a group and stayed together. We took Joe to Big Sur. Leon did his concert at Anaheim Stadium. It will also contain the 2015 photographs of the alumni tribute with new stories. We’ve plumbed my negatives for a lot of new work that I hadn’t even seen. I’d seen them but they looked so dark on the proof sheets I didn’t really realize something existed. It will include an introduction by Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. The book will not be sold at such a high price the people can’t buy it.
I want it to be a gift to raise the consciousness of the incredible magic that we create with music and art that heals us from the ills of the world and keeps us connected.
For more information on participating in Wolf’s private crowdfunding campaign for the new Tribute book, contact lher through her website: lindawolf.net. She has two of the original JCMD&E Memory books left which are part of the campaign and can be found at lindawolf.net/new-products/coming-soon-joe-cocker-mad-dogs-englishmen-yearbook-1.
