A writer, photographer, and one-time psychedelic poster purveyor, the Bay Area's Michael Goldberg started out on his high school paper and ended up working for Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the online music webzine he co-founded, Addicted to Noise. His latest book, Jukebox, collects his music photography from 1967 to 2023.

Below are excerpts from a recent conversation.


Andrew Hamlin: Which photography, growing up, made you want to take photographs? Which photos, subjects, approaches, magazines, books, etc.?

Michael Goldberg: My dad had an SLR [single-lens reflex camera], and he would always take photos when we went on family vacation trips. When we got back, he'd set up a screen in our living room, and we'd look at the slides he had taken. So I was used to the idea of taking photographs.

And when I was ten years old or so, he got me a Brownie camera and I started taking photos. And he set up a darkroom in our garage, so eventually I learned how to develop black-and-white film, and I learned how to make prints.


AH: You photographed the Doors and others at the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival in 1967. Did you risk life, limb, and/or sanity?

MG: No. It was one of the best experiences of my life ... You could make your way up to the stage. Most of the people were sitting in the crowd watching. Not that many people were standing. I got right up to the stage and took photos of Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek.


AH: Who were the most powerful Queer acts musically, and what were your impressions of them?

MG: I don't know the answer to that question. Sylvester was a Gay singer in San Francisco who appealed to Gay audiences, but, I think, to straight audiences too.

There were punk bands that had Gay and Lesbian members and straight members. From my perspective, it wasn't like a certain kind of music appealed to Gay and Lesbian folks. It just wasn't like that. There was a Trans woman I knew, and she practically lived at the punk club, the Mabuhay Gardens─ just loved punk bands.


AH: I was fascinated by your portraits of Jane Dornacker with Leila and the Snakes, and the all-female band Eyes. How did those acts, in their different ways, manifest feminism and female power?

MG: Eyes was the first all-women feminist rock band. I saw them at this Lesbian bar, Mona's Gorilla Lounge, in Santa Cruz in 1973. I was 19, going to UC Santa Cruz. My girlfriend at the time was a 33-year-old ...professor teaching a class called "Women in Film." She was a huge fan of Eyes; she'd shot 16 mm film of them.

She took me to see them, and I thought they were the greatest. I have a very poorly recorded cassette tape I made of some of their music at Mona's, and I listen to it often.

Eyes were all women on stage: Drums (Vicky Gilliam), bass (Nikki Nutting), guitar (Peggy White), vocals (Alicia Pojanowski), keyboards (Janet Small). That was a very feminist thing at the time. Women didn't play drums and bass back then. Not many played electric guitar. There were very few all-women bands.

Their original songs articulated feminist ideas. One of their songs was called "Siren Sniper." Pojanowski sings, "I'm the siren sniper / I bide my time / I'm the ruler of the earth / I bide my time / I'm the rock and basalt soul-stopper / The foam and cool fire death dropper / You'll know me when I come / I'm the kind of woman you warn yourself about / And I won't let you down."

Sadly, Eyes never got a record deal. There were some labels interested, but some of the group members thought a label would mess up their sound and weren't interested...

Leila and the Snakes were a cool band fronted by singer/writer Jane Dornacker; also in the band for a time was [singer] Pearl Harbor. Jane was a strong woman, and just by leading her bands and writing of co-writing the songs, she set a great example.

There was a lot of humor in Leila and the Snakes. Jane became a friend. Sadly she died in a helicopter crash in 1986.