Southern Rock Crowd, Atlanta, Georgia © 1978 Bruce Steinberg

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In late summer of 1978, I flew out to meet the Doobie Brothers on a short east-coast tour to discuss the package design for their forthcoming album, “Minute by Minute,” in time to make a production deadline.

I’d already been working with the band for the preceding two years on their prior two albums, “Best of the Doobies” and “Livin’ on the Fault Line,” and had no immediate need for more live-performance shots. So I took advantage of my time on the road with them to start shooting a photo essay I’d been thinking about, documenting what went on both behind the scenes and in the front of the house on such a tour.

I shot their guitar tech handing off freshly tuned guitars, their drum tech lurking behind risers with a fire extinguisher in case a flaming gong mallet got out of hand, and their on-stage sound tech at his mixing board intently looking for cues from the musicians to adjust monitor levels. I drove between some of the gigs with their truck driver, and shot the long load-ins and load-outs at each show.

At most indoor venues, the audience was generally in the dark with only the first few rows of fans illuminated by light reflected back from the stage.

But at the last stop on the tour, at Georgia Tech Stadium in Atlanta, the Doobies hooked up with the Atlanta Rhythm Section, Santana, Eddie Money, and others for a big daytime concert billed as the Champagne Jam. From where I stood on the side of the stage, I could see the entire audience in daylight, and it started to draw my attention away from what was happening up on stage altogether.

In particular, I was struck by a large Confederate flag someone in the audience had planted right in front of the stage as well as these two dangerously cute girls who stood out above the crowd as they sat perched on their boy friends’ shoulders on that hot Georgia afternoon. All around them was a sea of mostly white, mostly male fans, everyone collectively immersed in their own private realities of the moment. It occurred to me that I was looking out over the quintessential southern rock audience, so I quickly shot a few frames for posterity.

About 15 years later, at one of the Doobies’ reunion gigs at Shoreline Amphitheater back in the Bay Area, I was showing prints of this road series to some of the band members backstage. After all that time -- and many thousands of audience fans who’d passed in front of hundreds of stages since then – one of the guys stared closely at the 8x10 print for a moment, and said, “I remember her…”

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