Rock Photographer, Tour Manager Was 78 – Deadline

Tom Wright, whose large profession embraced pictures of many rock greats and time spent as a tour supervisor for The Who and different main acts, has died. He was 78 and particulars on the place and the trigger weren’t instantly out there.

Don Carleton, govt director of the Briscoe Heart for American Historical past, remembered Wright in an announcement posted to the group’s web site. Wright named the College of Texas heart because the repository for his archive of greater than 120,000 images and hundreds of rock music tape and phonographic recordings.

Wright’s “compelling and intimate images of performers, audiences, and live performance venues present a real insider’s perspective into the historical past of rock music from the Nineteen Sixties to the Nineteen Nineties,” the assertion mentioned.

“He skillfully used his digital camera to doc the lives and work of a number of the most influential rock bands, together with the Rolling Stones; Rod Stewart and Faces; Joe Walsh’s first band, The James Gang; the Eagles, and most particularly, Pete Townshend and The Who,” saidCarleton. “His work was enormously enhanced by his shut friendships with members of the bands with which he traveled and lined. These relationships gave Tom an intimate, off-stage entry that allowed him to {photograph} these artists as they ready for his or her concert events and as they traveled on tour. I’m deeply saddened by his passing.”

Wright studied pictures at England’s Ealing Artwork Faculty within the early Nineteen Sixties. He met fellow scholar Pete Townshend, founding father of The Who, they usually bonded over an enthusiasm for American blues greats.  Wright turned The Who’s official photographer in 1967.

“One factor is definite, had I not met Tom Wright, The Who would by no means have develop into profitable,” Townshend mentioned. “We’d have remained a strong little pop band doing what a whole lot of others have been doing across the similar time.”

Wright went on to tour with , handle, and {photograph} musicians and the truth of life on the highway. His perception led guitarist Joe Walsh to name Wright “the Jack Kerouac of rock and roll pictures.”

In 2007, Wright revealed Roadwork: Rock and Roll Turned Inside Out, a chronicle of his photogaphs and highway tales.

No info on survivors or memorial plans was instantly out there.