Herb Greene (April 3, 1942 – March 3, 2025) was an American photographer known for his portraits of musicians and bands from San Francisco's counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s.
Greene's photographed subjects include the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, The Pointer Sisters, Carlos Santana, and Sly Stone.
[2][3] Born April 3, 1942, in Indio in Riverside County, California, Herb Greene grew up on his father's pear orchard in Medford, Oregon.
After moving into an apartment near the Haight-Ashbury district, he met Jerry Garcia at a bluegrass café called the "Fox and Hound".
[5] The iconic wall of hieroglyphics used as a background for the Surrealistic Pillow cover photography along with many other famous photos of San Francisco musicians in the late 1960s was in Greene's dining room.
Before he had a chance to paint over it, his roommate drew the hieroglyphics which originally upset him but went on to be synonymous with the image of San Francisco psychedelic music.
His work was included in the Annie Leibovitz edited book, Shooting Stars: the Rolling Stones Book of Portraits (Straight Arrow Press, 1973), alongside photographers Jim Marshall, Baron Wolman, Annie Leibovitz, Nevis Cameron, Ed Caraeff, David Gahr, Bob Seidemann, Barry Feinstein, Ethan Russell, and others.