New Orleans photographer Sidney Smith braces for closing act | Keith Spera

Sidney Smith isn’t a musician, however he’s lived a rock ‘n’ roll life. Several, actually.

He was a rock photographer who embedded with the Allman Brothers Band, spent Mardi Gras with Paul and Linda McCartney and shot members of Led Zeppelin partying with Professor Longhair.

He was a male stripper and a four-time husband.

He’s the founding father of Haunted History Tours, New Orleans’ most distinguished ghost tour firm.

He’s a grieving father and a memoirist, which can become his closing act.

In January, Smith introduced on Facebook that he’d been identified with terminal pancreatic most cancers.

At 71, his medical historical past is intensive. He’s crushed most cancers thrice beforehand. He additionally endured a hernia, a staph an infection, sciatica, two knee replacements, one hip substitute, two cervical fusions, two spinal fusions, vertigo, the removing of his gall bladder and two rotator cuff tears, which rendered his proper arm unable to hoist a digital camera.

“I managed to get through that,” he stated. “But pancreatic cancer is a little different.”

A constructive individual by nature, in late June, he nonetheless thought he would possibly outlive his prognosis.

“They tell me that I’m not going to live out the year, which I find kind of hard to believe,” he stated June 27. “Maybe I’ll be one of those that breaks the odds.”

Weeks later, he’s not so assured. His weight reduction has accelerated. On Aug. 13, he was hospitalized with issues associated to ache administration.

Since returning dwelling, he’s typically extraordinarily fatigued. He is on oxygen and receiving IV infusions of fluids and nutritional vitamins. “Intolerable” days have gotten the norm.

After his prognosis, buddies satisfied him to write down a memoir. He divvied up his life into the 21 chapters of “Being Sidney,” augmenting his tales with greater than 200 images from his archives.

“Being Sidney” is ready for publication in mid-September. He hopes he lives lengthy sufficient to see it.

Running away with the Allmans

On a scorching afternoon this week, Smith was at dwelling within the Broadmoor neighborhood, being attended to by Laurie O. Dawes, a pal since kindergarten.

Wanting to point out guests proofs of “Being Sidney,” he was pissed off to seek out his downstairs workplace laptop turned off. These days, he has little tolerance for wasted time.

Just inside his entrance door is a signed be aware for anybody who would possibly discover him unresponsive: “Do not resuscitate.”

His home is a gallery of rock ‘n’ roll greats. Upstairs is a shrine to the Beatles. Smith’s personal images lining a downstairs hallway hint a chronology of Jerry Garcia in 1972, Bruce Springsteen in ’74, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in ’75 and Tom Petty in ’76.

He inherited his first digital camera from his father, an artwork instructor at Alcee Fortier High School, which Smith additionally attended. The Warehouse, the grungy brick live performance venue that stood on Tchoupitoulas Street, supplied a teenage Smith ample alternative to {photograph} music legends.

“The Warehouse was the Fillmore East of the South,” he stated, referring to promoter Bill Graham’s well-known New York venue. “It stunk and it was crowded, but we loved it.”

He ingratiated himself by taking photos of roadies in addition to musicians; the roadies gave him backstage and stage entry. His images turned up in nationwide music magazines.

In November 1970, at age 16, Smith snuck into Tulane University’s homecoming dance to {photograph} an up-and-coming Southern rock band known as the Allman Brothers. The Brothers took a right away shine to him.

“I wasn’t some hotshot photographer. I was a kid with a camera. I was pretty damn naive.”

Off and on for years, he traveled with the Allmans, photographing them backstage, in resort rooms and at their compound in rural Georgia. Smith recognized with the 2000 film “Almost Famous,” the semi-autographical account of Rolling Stone author Cameron Crowe’s adventures as a fresh-faced teenage journalist on the highway with a rock band within the Seventies.

“That,” he stated, “was my life.”

Mardi Gras with the McCartneys

In November 1974, Smith attended a George Harrison live performance in Baton Rouge. Emotionally overwhelmed to be in the identical constructing as a Beatle, he shed tears.

Two months later, a press agent known as him from New York. Would he need to shoot Paul McCartney’s “Venus and Mars” recording classes at Allen Toussaint’s Sea-Saint Studio in Gentilly?

Driving to Le Richelieu Hotel within the French Quarter, Smith saved telling himself, “I can’t cry. I’ve got to hold it together.”

Joe English, a drummer Smith had met via the Allman Brothers, launched him to McCartney on the resort pool.

“It was a slow-motion walk for me,” Smith stated. “There was Paul McCartney in his bathing suit with his wife, Linda. He’s looking at my photos and commenting on them, and I’m having an out-of-body experience.”

He spent the following few weeks photographing McCartney at Sea-Saint, in addition to Paul and Linda’s Mardi Gras adventures, costumed as clowns. It was a dream come true.

When McCartney hosted a wrap celebration aboard the Mississippi River boat Voyageur, Smith shot 40 or so rolls of movie. As the celebration ended, he set down his digital camera bag to savor the second.

It was promptly stolen.

He’d tucked two rolls of movie in his shirt pocket; one other was within the digital camera round his neck. But the remainder of the movie he’d shot, together with most of his cameras and kit, was gone.

Smith was devastated: “I lost my innocence that day.”

Disillusioned, he deserted his dream of changing into a full-time rock photographer.

Stripper-grams and ghosts

Shifting gears, he based Merry Minstrels Singing Telegrams. He specialised in “stripper-grams,” bursting into track in places of work, bars, properties and hospitals in varied states of undress.

“This was within the ‘70s, ‘80s and even into the ‘90s,” he said. “I was stripping longer than I should have.”

Realizing that “I can’t be a 70-year-old stripper, however I could be a 70-year-old tour information,” he launched Haunted History Tours in 1995.

From French Quarter ghost excursions, Haunted History expanded to cemetery, true crime, voodoo and vampire excursions. The firm hosts over 100,000 prospects yearly.

Smith carried out excursions early on, however quickly realized his power was in advertising and operating the enterprise. He employed guides who had been additionally actors and storytellers. “Everybody,” he says, “loves a ghost story.”

A ‘Hugh Hefner’ association

He all the time sustained his love for, and connection to, rock ‘n’ roll. He finally picked up his digital camera once more. He befriended the following era of Allman Brothers offspring and, in 2019, printed a ebook of his Allmans pictures. He was an early promoter of kid prodigy Brandon “Taz” Niederauer, now Jon Batiste’s touring guitarist.

Along the best way, Smith was married 4 instances. After his fourth divorce, he shifted to a extra loosely outlined home mannequin: “I reconstructed my life in a Hugh Hefner type of situation.”

Meaning a number of girlfriends concurrently, usually a long time youthful than him.

“I’m extremely honest with everybody in my world. I don’t lie to anybody.”

Themed photos of his girlfriends adorn the shiny invites to Smith’s legendary birthday bashes.

The events, set in and round his lush yard and pool, function reside bands, a great deal of crawfish and superstar company. In current years, he’s issued wristbands to assist management the group.

He didn’t throw a celebration this May, largely due to his most cancers prognosis. But he was additionally making ready for court docket.

Remembering Justin

Smith’s son Justin was born in 1981. As an grownup, Justin struggled with psychological well being points and substance abuse.

He and his father had been extraordinarily shut. Justin lived in an upstairs bed room of Sidney’s home and helped market Haunted History Tours, whilst he generally didn’t take his psychiatric remedy.

In June 2023, Justin, who was 42, disappeared. His frantic father spent weeks in search of him, solely to find that his physique had been on the Orleans Parish coroner’s workplace for 25 days. Justin had died of a drug overdose with none identification.

“Nothing is a greater tragedy than losing a child,” Smith stated. “And my son Justin was a beautiful person. He was an artist. He was a kind soul and he died way too soon.”

Angered by the delay in figuring out Justin’s physique and that it was allowed to decompose on the morgue, Smith sued coroner Dwight McKenna, alleging negligence. In July, Civil District Court Judge Marissa Hutabarat discovered McKenna’s workplace was accountable for “outrageous and reckless” misconduct.

That wasn’t the tip of Smith’s campaign.

Earlier this month, he took the unprecedented step of securing an injunction from Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill that prohibits the Orleans Parish coroner’s workplace from dealing with his personal stays. Smith’s earlier lawsuit created a possible battle of curiosity, Murrill agreed.

So a coroner from a special parish will accumulate Smith’s physique when the time comes.

‘Being Sidney’ a bit longer

Despite making his dwelling from ghost excursions, Smith isn’t positive ghosts — or any type of afterlife — exists. “I believe that there’s something out there,” he stated.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen to me when I’m gone. I would love to think that I would be reunited with loved ones. It’s a lovely thought, a very romantic thought. But no one will be more surprised than me if that happens.”

That stated, he’s “totally OK” together with his terminal prognosis. “It is what it is. I would love to live, like anybody else.

“But I’m not afraid or anything like that. I’m good to go, if that’s what happens.”

Appropriately sufficient, he is “Being Sidney” till the very finish.

“If I die tomorrow, I’ll have had an ideal life. I’m proud of who I’m as an individual. I’m proud of what I’ve finished for others.

“Somebody told me the other day that people leave my life a lot better off than they came into it. And I would like to think that’s true.”