Photo Books · Digital PDF
As told by Press, the Backstage Pass
Decades of award nights and concerts, seen from backstage.
Press is a laminated backstage pass. For decades it hung around the neck of photographer Robert Goldston, Sr. at award shows and concerts, and it has opinions about lighting, crowds and security guards.
Gus the guard says "Hmm." Dolores the usher has a flashlight. Spider the stagehand has a roll of gaffer tape. And out under the lights are the legends: voices, horns, harps and keyboards that filled the room.
Real photographs from a lifetime of nights in the photo pit, and one pass that got Robert in every time.
Every photograph in this book is real, taken by Robert Goldston, Sr. on his travels. The stories are fiction, written as a gift to the photographs; the italic line under each story title tells you what the photograph actually shows.
![Three photographs of a singer in a striped knit cap and polka-dot vest, singing and throwing both arms in the air on stage. [Name to be confirmed]](assets/shop/books/music-legends-on-stage/01.jpg)
Prologue
Good evening. My name is Press. It says so right on my front, in capital letters, under a little plastic window that has been wiped clean on more shirt-tails than I care to count. I am a laminated backstage pass, and for more years than I will admit I have hung around the neck of the photographer Robert Goldston, Sr.
I have been to concerts and award shows, big halls and small clubs, stadiums in the sunshine and ballrooms with carpet the color of soup. I have been bumped, jostled, sneezed on and once dipped in a bowl of punch. I have never been lost. Robert would not allow it.
Over the years I have developed opinions. I have opinions about lighting, which I score out of ten. I have opinions about crowds, which are wonderful until they are standing on you. And I have opinions about security guards, especially Gus.
Gus guards the stage door. Every night, for years, Gus has held me up to his flashlight, squinted, turned me over, turned me back and said, “Hmm.” He has never once said hello. Dolores the usher says Gus says hello to nobody. Spider the stagehand says Gus once said hello to a fire extinguisher, but only because it was red and he thought it was in charge.
So hold on to your ticket. The house lights are going down. Here is what I saw from Robert's chest, one night at a time.
Three spreads from the book: the photograph on one page, its story on the other.
No. 2No. 2
Bob Marley laughing as he plays an electric guitar at the microphone, in front of a painted mural of a crowned figure and
a lion.
Some stages have curtains. This one had a painting. Behind the drum kit rose a huge mural of a crowned figure in a richly patterned robe, and beside him a lion with a magnificent mane. I gave the lion top marks for posture. Lions never slouch.
In front of the mural stood Bob Marley, the Jamaican singer and songwriter who carried reggae music around the world with his band, the Wailers. In Robert's photograph he is playing an electric guitar, his head tipped back and his eyes closed, laughing in the middle of a song. Cymbals glint all around him and microphone stands poke up like reeds.
Spider the stagehand was crouched behind an amplifier with a roll of gaffer tape. Spider tapes down everything. Cables, set lists, loose carpet, once a sandwich. He looked up at the mural and then at me. “That lion has a better pass than you,” he said.
… the story continues in the book.
No. 7No. 7
Nina Simone singing into a microphone in a tall wrapped headdress and long earrings, one hand raised.
There are loud nights and there are quiet nights. This was the quietest room I ever hung in, and it was full.
Nina Simone stands in Robert's photograph in a tall wrapped headdress and long drop earrings, her eyes lowered, one hand holding the microphone and the other lifted with the fingers spread. It looks as though she is shaping the song in the air.
She was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, and she trained as a classical pianist. As a girl she wanted to be a concert pianist, and she studied hard toward it. People came to call her the High Priestess of Soul, and in this picture you can see why. Nobody in that room was looking anywhere else.
Dolores switched off her flashlight. Dolores never switches off her flashlight. She says the aisle is a dark and dangerous place and somebody has to keep an eye on it. That night she clicked it off, folded her hands and stood perfectly still at the back.
… the story continues in the book.
No. 29No. 29
Two photographs of Prince singing at a vintage-style microphone, on a set with palm leaves, lanterns and a backing singer in red.
Some performers bring a band. Some bring a light show. In these two pictures, Prince brings a whole room. There are palm leaves overhead, a brick wall glowing with a lantern, a drummer's cymbal at one side and, in the first picture, a backing singer in a red dress just behind his shoulder.
He sings into an old-fashioned silver microphone, the kind with the grille shaped like a little radiator, wearing a jacket that glitters as if it has been dipped in stars. In one picture his eyes are lowered. In the other he looks out from under his brows with an expression that seems to say he already knows how the song ends.
Prince was born and raised in Minneapolis. On his first album, For You, the notes say he played all twenty-seven instruments himself. Twenty-seven! I can barely manage being one thing.
… the story continues in the book.
63 pages, 31 stories, one storyteller. Digital PDF for $2.95.
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