By Geoff Stanton
John Olson is best known for his time as a Vietnam War photographer, notably his five days in the terrifying furnace of the Siege of Hue. His war images were confronting, immortal, framed in death.
So it was a surprise that he was commissioned by LIFE Magazine to take a series of portraits featuring rock stars with their parents. “A hell of a lot more difficult and unrewarding than war photography” Olson recalled. The assignment took over a year, and carried Olson from the suburbs of London to San Francisco Bay and Brooklyn.
“Everyone had told me that Frank Zappa was going to be really difficult, and he couldn’t have been more professional,” said Olson. “My father has ambitions to be an actor,” Frank told LIFE in 1971. “He secretly wants to be on TV.” Zappa’s mother had different tabs on her son. “The thing that makes me mad about Frank,” she said, “is that his hair is curlier than mine — and blacker.”
“I got a lot of the drug stories, a lot of the rock & roll stories, and a lot of the anti-war stories” explained Olson to LIFE.com. “So when this story came up, I guess I received it because of my age.”
He had also worked for the rock promoter Bill Graham for several years and had some experience in dealing with rock stars’ egos and unprofessionalism. “But” he said, “without exception, the performers behaved like regular human beings as soon as their parents were around. They were polite, on time and not stoned. That’s the primal power of parenthood, I guess.”
Eric Clapton with the grandmother who raised him, Rose Clapp. © John Olson/Time & Life Pictures
Olson also travelled to Surrey, England, to visit the home of Eric Clapton’s grandmother, Rose Clapp, where her grandson’s lifestyle had brushed off onto her parrot. “Eric’s grandmother left the room, and the parrot talked. It said, ‘Fuck you!’ Mrs. Clapp came back and I said, ‘The parrot talks. What does he say?’ And she said, ‘He says “Gobble gobble.”
So Eric came and we’re talking and I asked, ‘Hey, what’s that parrot say?’ and he looked at me like I was crazy. He said, ‘The parrot says “Fuck you.” “Delaney and Bonnie had stayed in the house for a while and taught the parrot to shout ‘fuck you!’ at anyone who walked past the cage,” Olson told the Guardian. “That was about as rock’n'roll as it got.”
The Jacksons: Michael (front left) and his brothers Jackie, Marlon, Tito, and Jermaine by the pool. John Olson/Time & Life Pictures
“It was very controlled,” Olson said of the Jackson shoot. “As I remember, they followed my requests to a T, and were incredibly polite. The dad was pretty stern.” Joseph had been a crane operator only three years before, but was now relentlessly pushing his kids towards fame – the quest that would shape Michael’s strange future. “It wasn’t hard to know they could go on to be professionals,” Joseph had told LIFE at the time. “They won practically all the talent shows and I wasn’t surprised when they did make it. Because, you see, we were trying awful hard.”
Ginger Baker with his mother, Bexley, London. "He would bring people over and they would say, 'You realize your son is brilliant,' and I'd say, 'Is he? I wish he was a bit more brilliant at keeping his room tidy.'" John Olson/Time & Life Pictures
“I had worked with Ginger Baker before, I think I had worked with Joe Cocker before, I had worked with Grace before — and some of these people, especially Ginger Baker, the first go-round had been really difficult, nasty,” Olson said. “But when they were with their parents, they were totally different people. Ginger Baker, who had been terribly obnoxious before, acted like a grown-up. I don’t think it had anything to do with respect for me, so it must have been the parents.”
"When he was 4 we used to put him to bed in the day and get him up to play at night for parties," Elton John's mother told LIFE. Reggie Dwight at home with his mother Sheila Fairebrother and her husband Fred. John Olson/Time & Life Pictures
Joe Cocker was "cool and withdrawn — a temperamental mixture of Harold Cocker, his civil servant father who preferred gardening to posing with his famous son, and his outgoing, chatty mother." John Olson/Time & Life Pictures
Richie Havens, the artist who opened Woodstock, at home in Brooklyn. Havens was one of nine kids - in '71 most of the others were still living at home. John Olson/Time & Life Pictures
Grace Slick, from Jefferson Airplane, at home with her mother Virginia Barnett and daughter, China. When Olson had started the assignment she had still been pregnant. John Olson/Time & Life Pictures
Donovan at home with his folks. Unfortunately for Donovan, he was one of the only musicians in the gallery whose career was experiencing a lull, and the photo never made it into the pages of LIFE. John Olson/Time & Life Pictures
"In the last few years we've become good friends. What I like best about him is that he seems to feel no need for me to be like him, so we're not offended by each other's differences," a slightly fresher-faced David Crosby told LIFE in 1971. "Like he knows I get high. He doesn't do it and he doesn't approve of it, but he doesn't inflict his values on me." John Olson/Time & Life Pictures
The photos eventually made it out as ‘The Rock Family Affair’, in the September 1971 issue of LIFE Magazine.
