Robert M. Knight
Raised in Hawaii and based in Las Vegas, Robert Knight is one of the most prolific rock photographers in the business. His career spans from 1968 to the present.
Robert is best known for his “Guitar Legends” archive, and has worked with everyone from Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King, Joe Perry and Buddy Guy to modern guitarist like John Mayer, Slash, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Joe Bonamassa, and Steve Vai. Knight’s rock and roll archive contains over 175,000 images.
Knight is also part of Guitar Center’s Hollywood RockWalk team as co director having inducted photographed over 400 major artists since 1985. Knight and partner Maryanne Bilham have an exhibition of Rock Stars on the exteriors of the more than 250 Guitar Centers across America, one of the largest outdoor gallery shows of original photographic art. Robert has published several books “50 Rock Guitarists” Japan release; Hollywood’s RockWalk, The First Decade; Rock Gods, “Slash” which came out in 2012. Knight has a new book called Rock Gods: Fifty Years of Rock Photography-2. Knight has also had major gallery shows in Hawaii US and Canada.
He is also a featured contributor to Led Zeppelin book – The Photographers and the high end Genesis Publications book on Jeff Beck which came out in 2016. Knight is also the subject of the award-winning feature-length documentary, Rock Prophecies, which won many film festival awards and was on high rotation on PBS.
Below are a very special collection of photographs and words by Robert Knight.
Robert was a friend of Stevie Ray Vaughan, and was the last artist to photograph him on the day that he tragically died in a helicopter crash, shortly after the concert finale.
August 26th, 1990.
The last flight of Little Wing
Right from the beginning I was a fan of Stevie Ray Vaughan and got to see him play several times before I actually got to meet him. In the spring of 1989 I received a call from Jeff Beck who was starting a major 50 show tour with Stevie Ray. Jeff wanted me to come back to Princes Paisley Park in Minneapolis where they were rehearsing to do some photography and shoot the beginning of the tour.
Stevie and I bonded straight away with our love of Jeff, Jimi Hendrix and many of the blues artists I had worked with. I actually brought photos of Jimi for Stevie. I shot many of the dates on the 1989 tour and in 1990 Stevie came out to LA to talk with me about some private things going on in his life.
Later in the year I received a call from Stevie asking me to fly back to Wisconsin to photograph the two day epic, Eric Clapton shows at Alpine Valley and he wanted me to shoot the poster for a new Fender ad with himself and Eric.
I flew back, spent the first day just hanging out with Stevie as Eric wanted all the press photographers to shoot on the first day but I was promised that I would be the only one photographing on Aug 26th. I shot back stage with Eric with Stevie’s brother and his band and photographed the final performance of his life!
- Robert Knight
Never miss new art.
Sign up with your email to receive news and updates.
