Michael Ochs, Top Collector of Rock 'n' Roll Photos, Dies at 82

New York Times

28-07-2025

Michael Ochs, who out of nerdy devotion to rock history preserved ephemera of the music industry seen by many as junk, and who realized belatedly that he had built the world's leading collection of photos chronicling the modern history of popular music, died on Wednesday at his home in the Venice Beach section of Los Angeles. He was 82.
His wife, Sandee (Lewis) Ochs, confirmed his death. She said that in recent years Mr. Ochs had suffered from Parkinson's disease and multiple myeloma.
In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ochs (pronounced oaks) worked as the manager for his brother, the folk singer Phil Ochs, and then went on to work in publicity at Columbia, Shelter and ABC Records. Michael Ochs gained a reputation for rescuing the trash of his employers and other labels.
The hobby wound up overtaking his career, granting him a singular position in the music industry. He employed a staff of six to handle about 15 to 20 requests every day from journalists and historians to reprint images from a collection of more than three million photographs, photo negatives and proof sheets.
In 2006, The New York Times labeled his archive 'the premier source of musician photography in the world.' In 2003, the rock historian Peter Guralnick told The Los Angeles Times, 'When we talk about the dustbin of history, Michael actually discovered the dustbin.'
Mr. Ochs's photographs represented virtually total coverage of every musician who made the pop charts over the decades, starting in the 1950s. His 70 file cabinets began with an '80s group called the A's and continued all the way to ZZ Top.
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