Michael Leach

Michael Leach was immersed in the best music from the day he was born. His mother took him to shows with her from an early age, and he saw the Stones, The Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, Steppenwolf and Grand Funk all before he was a teenager. At 14 he bought his first camera and started going to shows on his own, convinced he could do better than what was in the magazines of the day. Joseph Scaylea of The Seattle Times saw some of Michael’s Zeppelin shots and told him, "if you love it, keep doing it".

 Michael went on to shoot stadium rock in the 70s and the beginning of the pre-grunge punk rock scene in Seattle.  He moved on to Amsterdam in the 80s, where he ended up staying for ten years, and then moved back to the US.  He retired from photography in 2003 "after a mad horde rushed at the walls of an exhibition and took every one of the prints,” he says. Now he focuses on digitizing and archiving his huge collection of rock concert photography.

Michael lives in Brooklyn.