Chuck Boyd Photo
collection
Chuck Boyd’s love affair with photography began when his mother gave him a camera as a gift when he was 13 years old. He quickly found his artistic voice and at 16 years old went to work for Los Angeles radio station KRLA covering special artist promotional functions, and later for Tiger Beat, shooting rock acts for the influential teen culture and music magazine.
In 1967, an independent record producer and National Promotion Director for Sunn Amplifiers named Buck Munger hired Chuck as Sunn’s official photographer to shoot Hendrix, the Who, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and dozens of other artists. As a result of this affiliation, the two later became best friends. According to Buck, he was one of the most trusted and well liked photographers in the entertainment business, a true fan of the music. Since he was often shooting for a musical instrument company, which meant free gear and full page ads in the trades, Chuck always had unlimited stage access. At the time, among his peers, he was recognized as the best available-
Chuck was a true photojournalist, not paparazzi. Artists trusted him not to distribute compromising pictures. Like his shots of George Harrison's wife on tour with Eric Clapton, or some very famous rock stars shooting heroin, or the tangle of bodies on Keith Moon's bed. Chuck took his camera everywhere and recorded everything. He never broke a confidence, and turned down tons of money to protect the people he thought of as friends.
The band Wrinkle, named by The Who’s John Entwistle, were Chuck's best rock & roll buddies. He met them in L.A. and followed them to Portland at the time they were being produced by Munger. He went on the road with them as road manager and lived at the drummer's house for years. When Chuck decided to come out of the closet about his homosexuality at a time when there was considerable pressure for a gay person to remain in the closet, the members of Wrinkle were the first people he trusted, and all of them remained his friend until his death .
According to Munger, Chuck was the first gay man the members of Wrinkle ever knew personally and thought of as family. He recalls back in 1969 that while driving back to L.A. after a Cream gig, Chuck was describing a new drug he had encountered called LSD, to which he reported having strange reactions, like "homosexual tendencies," to which Buck replied, Well, then, I sure don't want any of that shit, a conversation they laughed about for years after.
Chuck continued to work with Buck on artist promotion packages for Gibson Guitars and Moog
