David Dalton is an early authorRolling Stone writer who profiled the likes of Janis Joplin, Charles Manson and Little Richard before going on to pen biographies of some of pop culture’s most towering figures, died Monday in New York City at the age of 80. Toby Dalton, his son, said that cancer was the cause of his death.The New York Timesreported.
John David Dalton, born January 15, 1942 in London, was raised in British Columbia. In the Sixties, he moved to the United States with the help of his parents. Dalton soon became immersed in New York City’s emerging underground art scene. He began working for Andy Warhol as an assistant. (Dalton would eventually immortalize the iconic artist in his autobiography. Pop: Andy Warhol’s GeniusThis was written 50 years later with Tony Scherman. His proximity to Warhol and the Factory’s revolving cast of glitterati led the young Dalton to start photographing British Invasion bands and other artists. After learning about the creation ofRolling StoneIn 1967, Dalton began sending photographs to Jann Wenner, his co-founder.
“He was taking photographs of groups like the Shangri-Las, and Jann wanted captions,” Dalton’s wife Coco Pekelis told theTimes. “So David started writing. And wrote and wrote and wrote. I asked him the other day when he knew he was a writer, and he said, when his captions got longer and longer.”
Among Dalton’s most notable works during his time atRolling StoneAn extensive, multi-part feature that profiled Charles Manson (counterculture cult leader) and his criminal mastermind Charles Manson was written in collaboration by formerLos Angeles Times journalist David Felton. This revelatory piece, which featured a prison interview with Manson in the jailhouse, won them a National Magazine Award for 1971.
Dalton’s Aug. 6, 1970 cover story profiling Janis Joplin on tour with her newly-formed Full Tilt Boogie Band would mark one of the last major interviews with groundbreaking singer before her death in October of that year. Dalton’s time with Joplin would lead him to write the 1972 biographyJanisAn excerpt from, which features Joplin ruminating over the lives Zelda Fitzgerald (and F. Scott Fitzgerald) was published by Rolling Stone. Dalton would also cover Elvis Presley’s run of Las Vegas Shows in 1970 and pen a revelatory cover story on R&B legend Little Richard that same year.
After his time spent withRolling Stone, Dalton moved on to write biographies — motivated primarily in part to his growing sense of mortality. “When I wrote rock journalism I was younger,”In an unpublished autobiography, he wrote that was quoted by Times. “I was involved in the scene as it was happening, evolving. I went anywhere at the drop of a hat. When I got into my 30s I began writing about the past and have lived there ever since.”Joplin’s biography was later renamed Janis Joplin: Piece of My Heart: Janis Joplin’s PortraitHis published works are included in this collection.Rolling Stones: Unauthorized Biography, The Beatles: Get back, James Dean: The Mutant EmperorAnd Who is that Man? To Find the Real Bob Dylan. Dalton also assisted musicians write their own autobiographies, including Marianne Faithfull’s Faithfull, An Autobiography, Meat Loaf – To Hell and Back, Steven Tyler’s Do you find the Noise in Your Head bothersome?, and Paul Anka’s My Way.
Dalton is survived his wife, son, brother and sister.