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Chester Simpson made his name at the top of the game photographing some of the most recognizable figures of the past four decades in rock music.
Chester Simpson’s trip as a rock ‘n’ roll photographer has been a gas. It has been filled with celebrities, bright lights (some of them his own), parties, groupies, travel and fame.
He has been one of the foremost photographers of rock stars for 40 years (he’s 68), learning his trade at the notable feet of such luminaries as the late, lamented photographers Ansel Adams and Jim Marshall—one of the first of the breed concentrating on rock music, featured in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame documentary on the 50th anniversary of Woodstock.
Simpson began his journey in his Roanoke hometown, learning photography’s basics at Virginia Western Community College in the early 1970s and talking his way into the first internship The Roanoke Times & World News (as it was then known) ever gave. It was unpaid. (Note: The writer of this piece worked with him at the paper.) At the RT&WN, he found himself under the wing of the estimable Howard Hammersley, who helped him get into the San Francisco Art Institute (hitchhiking across the country at 22 with a young woman), where he met and thrived under Adams’ and Marshall’s tutelage.
Simpson is a Northside High graduate whose father worked at Burlington Industries in Vinton and his mother was a nurse at Roanoke Community Hospital. His mom, a hero to him, died in 2007 and his dad in 2008. He is divorced and has a 32-year-old son, Daniel, who lives with his artist wife in London. Simpson’s cousin is former Roanoke Mayor Nelson Harris, who recently bought the old family cabin on Bent Mountain, where the family gathered to make apple butter, a family tradition.
His initial interest in photography sprung directly from his efforts as an artist. He began at Virginia Western as an art student (studying under Vera Dickerson, meeting his long-time friend artist Ken Stockton there, but “I kept getting these ideas” and wasn’t finishing his drawings. So he picked up a camera.
During what he calls his “rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle,” he became hooked on heroin and his mother—refusing institutions—helped him get clean in 1985. It was a dark point in a bright life, one that found Simpson taking advantage of the many opportunities he often stumbled into.
He discovered early that the best way to get backstage at big rock concerts “was to bring groupies. I always had a bunch of girls who wanted to be back there.”
As a teenager, he worked a paper route, picked and sold blackberries, then toiled at Winn-Dixie and Kroger (Winn-Dixie fired him after a marijuana bust). He was rarely not busy.
His most valuable lesson learned from people like Marshall and Adams, he says, is to be generous with other photographers, especially young ones.
He is semi-retired now mostly because of COVID. “All the jobs went south,” he laments at the loss of work shooting Washington big-wigs. “But I’m shooting festivals and certain shows. And that keeps me busy enough.”
Simpson’s work and bio can be found at rock-n-rollphotos.com (which also contains a delightful interview with critic Matthias Hombauer). The Rock Photography Museum has a fascinating podcast, featuring him, at rockphotographymuseum.com. He is working on a memoir tentatively titled “Tales of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Photographer.” Should be quite a read.
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