Photographer’s 3,200 Undeveloped Film Rolls Hold History of Rock ‘n’ Roll
Photographer Charles Daniels has been photographing famous rockers like Rod Stewart, Jimi Hendrix, The Who’s Pete Townshend, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, and others since the late 1960s. However, tens of thousands of his photos have never been seen — they are sitting in roughly 3,200 rolls of undeveloped film in his Boston home.
Much of Daniels’s work was shot at the famous Boston Tea Party, a concert venue in Boston, Massachusetts, that hosted famous bands like the Grateful Dead, Chicago, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, The Allman Brothers Band, Joe Cocker, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Sly and the Family Stone, and more.
“The Tea Party was open from 1967-1970 in two locations,” Daniels tells PetaPixel. “I was the only emcee.”
The Master Blaster, as the club’s flamboyant emcee was known, kept his camera handy as he schmoozed with the celebrity musicians. Daniels was able to capture countless unguarded moments as Led Zeppelin, The Who, Faces, and others launched their careers at this very venue.
“He was a great guy… he was somebody that everybody liked,” says Ray Riepen, who started the Tea Party in 1967.
Photographer Lou Jones, who has been working in Boston since 1970, describes Daniels as “very approachable…everybody wanted to be the Master Blaster.”
Daniels enjoyed the act of shooting but never spent time on developing (pun intended) his photography. Most of the exposed rolls just went onto be collected in some garbage bag, although the photographer kept the important ones in Ziploc bags or at the bottom of his fridge in his house in Somerville, Boston.
After the Boston Tea Party closed due to the escalating cost of booking bands that started playing large outdoor festivals, Daniels started working at other venues where he also kept on shooting.
“There was one night when I was running between the Music Hall [now the Boch Center’s Wang Theatre] and the Orpheum [Theatre], announcing bands in both places,” Daniels recalls. “I don’t know if you know Boston at all, but it was actually quicker to run between the two than to try and drive.
“Bands at the Tea Party often played there Saturday night then would play on the Cambridge Common for free on Sunday afternoon. It’s hard to explain now since it has been completely gentrified, but back then, Harvard Square [in Cambridge, Massachusetts] was the center of the counterculture scene.”
All of Daniels’ imagery was either candid or live on stage. He never posed subjects and he never used a flash.
In 1975, Daniels joined guitarist Ron Wood during his first tour with the Rolling Stones. The band’s tour photographer at the time was the now-legendary portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz.
“Annie was the official tour photographer, and she wasn’t thrilled that I was allowed pretty much-unlimited access with my camera,” says the Master Blaster.
The Start of a Massive Undertaking
Daniels’s massive collection of undeveloped film was hidden away from the world for decades, but a push to process the unseen historical photos has gained momentum over the past couple of years thanks to social media.
“It’s kind of a COVID story,” explains the Master Blaster. “Our local arts council, the Somerville Arts Council, offered a series of small seed grants to help artists back in 2020. We used the money to develop about 100 rolls at a local Boston Lab, Colortek, which I have been using for years.
“I’m not on social media at all, but my partner [the artist Susan Berstler who founded Nave Art Gallery] started posting a few images that turned up on Facebook. I should probably admit that I didn’t always label the canisters after I shot a roll.
“She was mostly posting the music images — I think we found some Frank Zappa, J Geils, and Faces on tour in that first batch. The response to those pics convinced us that we were sitting on something special.
“When we realized how much truly old and difficult to develop film we had, Susan started looking for a lab that specialized in that and we found Film Rescue.”
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