It was a hot Wednesday afternoon on July 28, 1978, where 64,000 people had gathered at the Oakland Coliseum for a surprise show to celebrate the 34th birthday of one of the greatest rock stars. Among the crowd was 30-year-old aspiring British photographer Carol Scott. She was able to score a ticket to the concert that had only been announced two weeks prior. On the day of the show, with her 35mm Nikkormat camera in hand, she squeezed her way to the front row to be able to photograph none other than the Rolling Stones.
“It was very difficult,” Scott said. “I’m only 5’2, and everybody was a foot taller. I got my camera, and then all of a sudden, this man next to me just hoisted me up on his shoulders.”
With the help of a stranger, Scott was able to snap a close up of the Stones lead singer, Mick Jagger. Scott’s portrait of the rockstar has been part of the National Portrait Gallery in London since 1980.
“I had [my daughter] Cameron with me and I had an appointment with the curator [Colin Ford]. I took my portfolio to show him, and he fell in love with my picture,” Scott said. “He said it was the most romantic picture he’d seen of Mick Jagger, and so they purchased it for their collection. They also loved my picture of Rod Stewart. But they didn’t purchase that one. They wanted to know that if they ever had an exhibit, that I would loan it to the gallery.”
Another photo of hers of Bob Dylan performing an acoustic set at a fundraiser at the Berkeley Community Theater in November of 1980 for the Bread & Roses Festivals of Music was published in the Melody Maker, a London publication, for a story by award-winning American music critic and author Joe Selvin.
While those two photos have been widely seen, the rest of her pictures of artists touring in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco from 1976 to 1985 remained hidden, until two years ago.
The North Bay was first to see some of the photos from her extensive archives. In 2024, Scott was invited to showcase 36 of her images, including some from her time photographing The Grateful Dead, including Jerry Garcia, a founding member and the lead guitarist for the band. The exhibit at Sausalito Center for the Arts, in honor of the late musician included artwork by him and Scott’s images.
Currently, 36 of her images — including eight that have never been shown — are currently on display at Rockridge Cafe ( 5492 College Ave.) in Oakland through Aug. 5. Also, nine of her photos of Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead are on display at Equator Coffees (1201 Bridgeway A) in Sausalito through Aug. 15.
A life changing move across the Atlantic
Scott first moved from London to New York in 1970 with $11 in her pocket. But, the Big Apple wasn’t for her.
“I looked around me, and everybody on the streets looked enormous,” she said. After a week, she had saved enough money to leave. Her next destination: Nashville.
It was in the historic heart of country music where she bought her first camera, and learned how to develop film. It was also in “Music City” where her daughter Cameron Scott was born.
Scott and her daughter remained in Nashville for a few years, and then moved to Berkeley in 1976. It was in Berkeley where Scott met photographer Richard Blair.
“He became like a mentor to me,” Scott said. “He taught me the basics of how to hold my camera properly, how to make a dark room out of a small closet, and how to build an L-shaped shelf.”
It was also around this time that Scott enrolled in Laney College to take photography classes, where she said she was taught by “really good teachers.”
“I love that she went to Laney,” her daughter Cameron said. “That was my first preschool, and she taught herself how to take photographs.”
Scott said that her time as a photographer was influenced by her great-grandfather who was a photographer, a portrait painter and a painter in the 1800s in Britain.
“They always say in the family that he was handed down to me,” Scott said.
Years later, Scott moved to the Rockridge neighborhood in Oakland. Her daughter lives in Emeryville.
Photography didn’t pay the bills
As Scott began to feel more comfortable with her camera, she ventured into the Berkeley music scene, photographing artists like Tim Stilletto of the Berkeley punk band Fang at 924 Gilman.
Scott remembers being on tour with the band and bringing Cameron along. She was too young to be able to get inside the venue, so Scott managed to get some of the punk rockers touring with the band to babysit her.
“They were so kind,” Scott said.
She became a regular at The Keystone Club — an intimate venue that operated between 1972 and 1984 — where she photographed artists like blues singer-songwriter Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and guitarist Lady Bo ( Peggy Jones).
“I’d take myself down there when I had a babysitter and buy a ticket to go in,” she said. “I have my camera, and I just started taking photographs.”
She also photographed at the Greek Theatre. Her archives include photos of The Grateful Dead, Etta James, Joni Mitchell and B.B. King.
Photographing these now music icons was a dream come true for Scott, who, even when she lived in London, listened to American music via pirate radio stations. It was through these stations that she discovered blues music.
“Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and the Rolling Stones. They were influenced by these blues guys too,” Scott said.
Her gigs at these East Bay music venues led her to form friendships with some of the artists including Muddy Waters, Frank Zappa, and John Lee Hooker, whom Scott said she photographed the most through that decade.
Her photo rounds in Berkeley, led her to meet other people in the music industry who gave her access to shows in Oakland and San Francisco.
“I met a man up on campus [UC Berkeley] who was a promoter for Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings,” she said. “I had my portfolio with me and I showed him, and he said, ‘Will you photograph Willie and Waylon when they come to town?’ “I said yes, and that was my first paid gig.”
At the time, Willie Nelson had hired several members of the Hells Angels to help him promote his shows in California.
Although Scott was starting to get paid to photograph, that wasn’t enough to sustain her and her young daughter. Scott worked as a waitress in Oakland, and later joined a law firm, also in Oakland, where she started as a receptionist then became a paralegal.
“I couldn’t make money taking pictures,” she said. “It was totally male dominated.”
Scott recalls meeting Bill Graham — who, at the time, was one of the most renowned concert promoters — while at Bob Marley’s last Oakland show at the Oakland Civic Auditorium (now Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts).
“I told him I was a photographer, and I’d love to show him my work sometime,” Scott said. “And he turned on me and he snarled, ‘Why would I ever want to look at your photos?’ That was the reaction I got from that man.”
“I’ve always been proud of that aspect of the story,” Cameron said. “She was out there doing this despite and regardless of what these people were saying and being discouraging. She was driven and did it on her own.”
Bringing the archives into the public eye
In 1985, Scott decided to develop a new chapter in her life, which included getting married. But that wasn’t the sole reason why she decided to put her camera to rest. Her eyesight had changed making it difficult to continue taking pictures.
“I found that discouraging. I would normally hold my camera, and a lot of times I balance it on my forehead to hold it steady,” she said. “I couldn’t do that very easily with glasses, and it was pretty off-putting.”
All of the boxes with her negatives from that decade remained tucked away in a bedroom closet in her home in Rockridge.
It wasn’t until 2022, after suffering a health scare that Scott and her daughter Cameron decided it was time to show the world the rare moments Scott captured during that influential era of music.
“I’ve known for a long time how amazing they are,” Cameron said. “It’s documenting my whole childhood alongside all these photos too.”
Part of the archives include candid photos of Cameron alongside blues singer John Lee Hooker learning how to play the guitar at his home in Los Altos.
The mother-daughter duo have spent countless hours going through negatives, all while listening to the artists Scott photographed.
“It has been discovering, scanning, organizing, archiving, and it’s still a process. It’s a huge process,” Cameron said. “But we had already scanned probably about 40 to 50 images.”
Cameron estimates the duo has scanned “a couple of hundred” images.
“This [project] is a reflection of my life, my childhood growing up in Berkeley,” Cameron said. “Her story of tenacity, being driven, being a hardworking single parent; I witnessed that firsthand. To be able to uncover it and help and let her work be out there and to be recognized as a woman doing this work, I couldn’t be more grateful.”
Scott’s wish is to be able to have a larger exhibit at home. Her dream, she said, would be to showcase this decade of photographs at major museums, including the Oakland Museum.
“People would come up to me and say, ‘Your pictures bring such joy.’ That made me feel like, hey, that’s the point of why I’m making all these pictures,” Scott said. “I had one man come up to me in Sausalito who saw the show and realized that the photos hadn’t been shown in 40 years by anybody,” Scott said. “He said, ‘Why did it take you so long?’”
