A Dazzling Conversation with Rosie McGee
Photo Courtesy Susana Millman
Photographer, author, artist, and publisher Rosie McGee came to the U.S. in 1951 as a five-year-old French immigrant who spoke no English. At 12, she was introduced to photography in her father’s darkroom and then borrowed his camera to cover a school event. By 1965, when she got involved with the San Francisco rock band the Grateful Dead, she’d already been documenting her life with a camera for years. With insider access, she took hundreds of photos of the band, mostly candid and behind the scenes, over the next 25 years.
In 1986, her intimate portraits of the Dead started being licensed to appear in dozens of books, films, and albums, as well as magazines including Rolling Stone (U.S., Australia, Japan, Germany), Time/Life Books Special Editions, Relix, and High Times. That continues to this day.
Since 2012, she has presented her photos and stories in venues ranging from coffee houses to nightclubs, libraries, academic conferences, museum exhibits, and music festivals. Some of her credits include the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the California Historical Society, Northwestern University, the American Popular Culture Association, the San Francisco Public Library, and the deYoung Museum. In addition, a few video interviews that were originally streamed can be found on YouTube here.
In her first self-published book (2012), Dancing with the Dead—A Photographic Memoir, she tells ten years of stories – illustrated by many of her photos – of living, traveling, and working with the Dead during their first decade as a band. Since then, the book has been continuously available in print, a Kindle edition, and a downloadable audiobook (with Rosie as narrator) on Amazon.
Her second self-published book (2022), My Grateful Dead Photos – 1966-1991, expands the timespan to 25 years to include 400 photos, 40% of them never seen before. In 2023, it was awarded the First Place/Gold Medal for Coffee Table Books at the Independent Publisher Book Awards. It also won the Third-Place Bronze Medal for its cover. Its second printing is nearly sold out.
Rosie lives in Oregon, enjoying her grandchildren, playing with her cats, running her business, and painting mandalas on wood rounds. And, of course, she continues to document her life with a camera. She says, “Photography is my passion and lifelong compulsion: I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.”
I had the pleasure and honor of asking Rosie about how photography came into her life, what it was like dancing onstage with the Grateful Dead, what community and family mean when speaking of the Grateful Dead, and so much more.
UZOMAH: What made you want to capture life in photos?
ROSIE: My father, who’d been a journalist in post-WWII Paris, loved taking pictures and always brought a camera when we went anywhere. (My parents, older sister, and I immigrated from France to the United States when I was five years old.)
Once we were settled in San Francisco, my father started ‘moonlighting’ for extra income, selling wall-sized photo murals of his photos of the Golden Gate Bridge and Muir Woods to the tourist restaurants at Fisherman’s Wharf. One night, he took me with him to the garage/darkroom, where he developed and printed these murals. It was magical seeing the photos emerge onto the blank photo paper in the 6-foot-long developer tray, and I was hooked! When I was 12, he lent me his camera to photograph a school event, after which I borrowed his camera so often that he finally gave it to me. From then on, I was compelled to document my life in photos, a practice I continue to this day.
For a long time, I was driven only by the act of taking pictures itself, capturing the world I saw through the viewfinder, without much regard for the artistic aspect of the results. That would come later.
U: When you came to America as a young child, and one that spoke no English, how did taking a liking to art and photography help you communicate your message?
R: When I entered an American kindergarten at five, I was paired with another kindergartener who was tasked with helping me learn English. But that was long before I had any interest in art or photography. My first creative urge manifested when I was 10 when I decided I wanted to become a stage actor. I followed that calling until I was 18 when I traded the world of the theater for the world of rock ‘n’ roll in 1964.
By then, I’d already been ‘the girl with a camera’ for many years, only now my subjects were musicians and others in the music scene - onstage and behind the scenes. Soon, I met the members of the Grateful Dead, and my life changed forever.
Grateful Dead at Troupers Hall, Los Angeles, March 25, 1966, © Rosie McGee
U: How did music become a part of your life?
R: Music was always present in the background when I was growing up: Beethoven string quartets when my father took over the kitchen to bake; Israeli folk songs, Caribbean drums, and Flamenco records played by my mom; the Black and country radio stations my sister and I listened to in our shared bedroom late at night; and for me, Broadway musicals as I hit adolescence.
Then, I went to college at 16 and was introduced to folk music at the many “Hootenannies” (open mic nights) held there. I liked the idea of being a folk singer so much that I walked around San Francisco’s North Beach with a big guitar, entertaining audiences at the coffee houses by singing Bob Dylan songs I’d translated into French. However, I was delusional and not a good singer. So, the night Janis Joplin performed right after me at the Coffee Gallery’s Open Mic Night, I skulked home, shoved my guitar into the back of a closet, and never sang in public again. (I sometimes joke that I couldn’t have been THAT bad, as I did once “open for” Janis!)
While I was destined to love music, dance with it, and be absorbed into both the lifestyle and business of it – I was fated to never create it.
U: As you danced on stage while the Grateful Dead were playing live, what was the most memorable of all the concerts?
R: I need to clarify that I was neither a trained dancer nor an actual performer. In those early days, dancing onstage with the Dead was simply my response to being so moved by the music, especially when in an altered state, that I was compelled to get as close to its source as I could. And so, for a song or two, I stepped out onstage into that magical circle of musicians, and no one ever stopped me. I’ll always be grateful to the band for that incredible privilege, which they granted for a number of years.
The most memorable instance would have to be the very first time I stepped out from the shadows to dance onstage. It was at the “Human Be-In: A Gathering of the Tribes” in Golden Gate Park on January 14, 1967, where over 20,000 like-minded people came together for the very first time, with minimal advance publicity. It was nothing short of a pivotal event in the history of the counterculture and exhilarating to witness and photograph from the front edge of the stage.
Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Phil Lesh were onstage at the Human Be-In, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, January 14, 1967. © Rosie McGee
U: How has music been a healer and revelation to your being?
R: I have long been burdened with an overactive brain that natters on about all manner of things - whether I’m awake or trying to sleep when the mental free-for-all intrudes into my dreams. Music is one of the only things that can quiet the noise and take me ELSEWHERE. If I’m able to add dancing to the equation, then it can be transcendent. On those occasions, I am transported to a place of revelation, and when I return to myself, I’m in a more elevated space. I live for and long for those moments and will continue to pursue them as long as I live.
U: You had a different approach in formatting your second book, My Grateful Dead Photos and How I Came to Take Them, 1966-1991. Where you showed more than discussing as much, what made you go about that way? How does it allow the reader to be opened to the world of the Grateful Dead more or less than your first book?
R: While it had always been my dream to publish a high-quality photographic art book of my early days of Grateful Dead images, I had neither the means, skills, nor experience to make that a reality.
So, in 2010, after a number of agents and traditional publishers had rejected my photo-book proposal (and a friend insisted that, at the very least, the stories themselves “HAD to be told”), I took a chance and committed to publishing the stories myself – which I did in 2012.
That first book, Dancing with the Dead, is a personal memoir, my stories of the first ten years I lived, traveled, and worked as part of the Grateful Dead’s inner circle. As such, it does give the reader many glimpses into the lifestyle of a band that was just embarking on its 30-year journey.
Cover of Rosie’s first book, print edition paperback, cover photo from the Dead’s Europe ’72 tour, © Mary Ann Mayer
But while its 60,000 words of text are illustrated by 200 of my photos, the limitations of both the Kindle and print technologies required the photos to be small and low-resolution. As a result, the photos aren’t shown to their full advantage.
It was nearly ten years before I was able to realize my vision of a high-quality art book of Grateful Dead photos. I still didn’t have the means, but by 2021, the Kickstarter crowdfunding of creative projects had proven to be a viable path for projects like mine. And so, I launched a fantastically successful Kickstarter campaign, which funded the production and first printing of my book with 1,100 preorders, as well as 500 overstock copies that sold out in a week.
This vote of affirmation from over 850 Kickstarter donors gave me the confidence to create the book I’d always dreamed of, and the generous funding allowed me to hire a top-notch designer/production manager to guide me through the 18-month process.
The result, the 340-page coffee table book My Grateful Dead Photos and How I Came to Take Them – 1966-1991, is a labor of love that was well received and of which I am very proud. (As of January 2024, a second printing of the book is nearly gone.)
Three-minute video featuring a sample of Rosie's photos from her book, My Grateful Dead Photos 1966-1991
U: What was your favorite Grateful Dead song to dance to on stage that was also a fan favorite and considered one of the band’s best songs?
R: I’ve long resisted any calls to express my opinion of “best,” “greatest,” or even “favorite” designations for anything, partly because my opinions are changeable at the drop of a hat and partly because the real answer is, “It depends.”
That being said, I’ll answer the part about my dancing, but keep in mind I danced with them only from ‘67 to ‘72.
I loved dancing to Cold Rain and Snow, the jams for The Other One, Playing in the Band, China Cat/I Know You Rider, can’t RESIST dancing to Bertha; of course, Sugar Magnolia; if I was high enough – St. Stephen, especially when they transitioned to The Eleven - or Dark Star; and to this very day, for reasons I simply can’t explain, Brown-Eyed Women and Jack Straw.
U: The following that the Grateful Dead has is a sense of community and family. Can that be shown in any other form of music other than with this band?
R: Well, that question is broad enough to fuel a Master’s Degree dissertation in Cultural Studies! 😊 I’ll do my best…
It’s hard to define the line between a band that has a massive and fervent fan base and a band that has a bonded cultural community/family. For example, one could argue that the Rolling Stones have a huge and fervent fan base, and they do sell out global tours without much difficulty. But do the Stones’ fans filling a 60,000-seat stadium feel like a family – a bonded community with its own language, iconography, way of dressing, and deeply shared beliefs? Maybe they do during the concert, but what about after they’ve all gone home? Probably not.
While the Deadhead community certainly is a fervent fan base, it’s far more than that and has, in fact, been called a cultural phenomenon. Books are written about it, many universities offer Grateful Dead Studies, and anyone who wants to know more can research it extensively online.
But much of that academic scrutiny strays from the core of what we experienced at the live shows during the 30 years the Grateful Dead existed – and that we continue to experience in an ever-evolving form at the Dead-related events that have followed.
The core of it all was the MAGIC of the wide-open improvisational and joyfully adventurous nature of the music and the band’s deep symbiosis with their dancing audiences. I’m aware those are woefully inadequate words to describe it, but as folks today like to say, “If you know, you know.” Oh, and let’s not forget: the FUN!
And YES, that deep sense of community and family can be found elsewhere, worldwide, and across time, with any form of music that brings people together for the purpose of joyful communal dancing to transcendence – with or without drugs, I might add.
Late-night bonfire at 3-day Grateful Dead-centric music festival in Oregon, © Rosie McGee
U: In a career that spans decades and captures the most iconic events and musicians in history, what keeps you inspired and wanting to still create?
R: While I myself do span decades, my photographic career does not.
As I noted earlier, photography was at first a childhood compulsion that morphed into a passion and has been a constant in my life - but it wasn’t a career.
I earned my living for over 40 years working in offices – the first 20 in the music business. Later, I worked in the corporate world as an Operations/Facilities Manager, Gift Shop Visual Display Coordinator, Multimedia Producer, and once, a clerk-typist for a detective agency – my first job at 17.
In 1986, I began licensing my Grateful Dead photos for their use in books, films, magazines, etc. By then, I’d taken classes to improve my technical photography skills and briefly considered becoming a professional/commercial photographer.
But I decided I loved photography too much to turn it into a constant hustle for money to pay my rent and utility bills. I’ve never regretted that decision, as my passion for expressing my love of life through my photos has never wavered.
While I’ve intermittently photographed concerts over the years, as well as creating portraits of musicians and others, I’ve also been photographing scenic beauty, trees, flowers, and anything that I come across that moves me to pick up my camera.
Oregon Coast near Yachats, (c) Rosie McGee
Please visit her website for more information about Rosie’s photography and life through photos, along with links to purchase her books and to order prints of her photos, which can be found here.
