Right Place, Right Time: The Life of a Rock & Roll Photographer

Product Information

Bob’s “Sid Vicious with Hot Dog” photo was acquired by The National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1999 for their permanent collection. The Experience Music Project, Seattle, acquired his “Clash Live in Boston”, “Tina Turner Multiple Image”, and “Bloody Sid Vicious” photos for their permanent collection in March 2012.

In 2004, Gruen was presented with Mojo magazine's prestigious Honours List Award for Classic Image in London. John enjoyed having his picture taken. He knew how to do it and posing came naturally to him. He saw it as part of show business, which it very much is. For many years, people have been saying, “You should write a book.” People are really interested in the ’70s. People are always asking me, “How did you do it?” None of my colleagues had the breadth of starting out with groups like Ike and Tina Turner and LaBelle and continuing going right into Elton John and John Lennon and Led Zeppelin but also coming to KISS and Alice Cooper. I did studio, live, record parties, nightclubs, everywhere. I didn’t visit the music scene as a journalist; I was part of it. I went to CBGB to see friends and take pictures. One of the major milestones in your career is your connection to punk. You were probably one of the first people to witness the early punk scene in New York and England, and your photos are definitely some of the most important documents of that period. I want to ask about a bunch of artists you were connected to, but the New York Dolls seem like a great starting place.The US government at that time was trying to throw John Lennon out. President Nixon was afraid of John, you know, he was a leader in the Antiwar movement. And so for preaching about peace, the government wanted to throw him out of the country. And I thought that the Statue of Liberty was a symbol of welcoming to the United States and that it would be a great symbol for his case. And I suggested it and I was very happy that he agreed with me, So we went and took the picture, which I feel is one of my most important pictures. A lot of people relate to John Lennon as a symbol of personal freedom, similar to the statue of Liberty. Shortly after John Lennon moved to New York in 1971, Gruen became John and Yoko’s personal photographer and friend, making photos of their working life as well as private moments. In 1974 he created the iconic images of John Lennon wearing a New York City t-shirt and, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty making the peace sign - two of the most popular of Lennon’s images. B.G.: They were out of sorts until I was 50 years old. Actually, a year before my dad passed away, he came to one of my a biggest exhibitions, which I did at Studio 54. He saw what it was, he saw 3000 people coming to enjoy it. And then when my mom was 94 years old, she came to my exhibit in Brazil, which was a very massive exhibit, 280 pictures and a really big 13,000 square foot room, a very elaborate exhibit. It made my mom very proud. Finally. She didn’t really know what I was doing until her younger friends started seeing my books around her house and tell her how good they were.

Oh, she wasn’t just an influence – she actually taught me how and when to squeeze the buttons and how to print my pictures. She was also a lawyer, so she taught me about the business side of things, to think about my pictures after they were printed. At a very young age, early teens, even before – way before I took up photography – I had small home businesses, so I learned all about expenses, income, outgoings, losses and gains, and so on.” A.K.: So is that something that you get when you’re just spending all the time with the artists? When you’re being the fly on the wall? And then I had given him that T shirt, the New York City T shirt about one year earlier. So, when we were sitting there on the roof with the beautiful skyline all around us, I asked if he still had that shirt a and he knew which one I was talking about. So I knew he still had it with him. I knew he liked it and he knew where it was and he looked comfortable in it. We took the series of pictures. We had no idea at the time that it was going to become as popular as it did. It was just one more of many photos that we had taken, but that one seems to stand out. People really like it. Like any friends you make,” he says, “you learn how to get along with them, and both John and Yoko were very perceptive people. They were aware of living in the present and how to have a good time. They were very funny – not many people might be aware that Yoko is quite witty, but then you couldn’t live with John without having a good sense of the absurd. Since 1980, Morrison Hotel Gallery has been the primary representative for Gruen's photography. His work is included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle. [9]

Get Musée in Your Inbox

Elton John on stage with legs in the air at Fillmore East, NYC. April 9, 1971. Photograph: Bob Gruen So the CBGB’s bands were experimenting, they were practicing, they were learning how to be good. And most clubs don’t let you learn. Most clubs want you to bring a crowd right from the beginning. But CBGB, this was a place where people could come in and learn how to play in front of an audience, learn what works and what doesn’t. And I remember that night with Blondie, I thought, “Wow, this is all coming together. I always want to create, to make art, but you do have to pay your rent. So I always wanted to have something where I could make art and make something that people relate to their feelings, but at the same time to get paid and pay my rent. And, perhaps unusually for the time, they ate very well – Yoko was very knowledgeable about nutrition and health, and she certainly made John well-informed of that. She also stood firmly for feminism and equality, and that was something John became quite aware of, too.”

CBs was a very comfortable place. Hilly Kristal [was] unlike a lot of club owners. He just wanted a bar where he could have a beer and watch television. That way, if he had a nice bar, there would be enough people to pay the rent and make a little money. That’s all he wanted. Bob’s “Sid Vicious with Hot Dog” photo was acquired by The National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1999 for their permanent collection. He has, however, what he delicately terms “mixed feelings” about how professional photographers are often sidelined by amateur and “citizen” snappers. While it’s great, he allows, that we can all now take pictures (“the mystique is gone”), it is the younger photographers (“the kids that love the skill and art of it”) he sympathises with. Being an intuitive photographer is anticipating what might happen. You can’t see something and then catch it – you need to have good instinct, or you’ll never catch anything.” John Lennon’s ‘New York City’ PhotoB.G.: Early on as a teenager, I remember the first time I heard a record of Bob Dylan, a friend of mine came over and said, you got to hear this. He put the record on and I fell on the floor laughing. A.K.: And what about some of the other artists, like Led Zeppelin, Dylan and The Rolling Stones? Anything special comes to mind about those times? After touring with David Bowie, Leee worked as a tour manager for Iggy Pop who was at the centre of the Downtown New York early punk scene. Here, Leeee took historic shots of Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Debbie Harry, The New York Dolls and many others in this vibrant music and artist milieu which was centred on Warhol’s factory, CBGB and Max’s Kansas City. Leees’ relationship with Debbie Harry was particularly close and the images he discovered at the end of his life for the cover of his short autobiography are the most innocently beautiful ever taken. Also, Leee has the best early pictures of Debbie before she was blonde and when she performed with the Stilettos. Since this covers a multitude of musicians, bands, and styles of music, the music / bands / musicians covered may – or may not – all appeal to every reader, but this is more about Gruen, and how he went from a young kid with an interest in photography to accompanying and / or photographing virtually every musician of note at one point in his career. Some of the photographs are ones I’d love a copy to put on my walls for the beauty of the photography, alone. His stories are epic, if sometimes crazily so, others heartbreaking, and his photographs always iconic. B.G.: In a sense, I’m not really spending all my time thinking about the past, although, you know, it keeps coming up in the archive reminding me who’s this and who’s that in this picture and where was this picture taken and so on. But I don’t dwell on it. I tend to live in the present. It was fun, but I’m not going to do that again.

There’s a whole controversy about where punk started. Was it CBGB? Was it in New York or London? Who was a real punk? New Yorkers still had long hair. When I got to England, the hairstyles were dramatically different. People paid attention to cutting hair in odd ways and putting safety pins in their cheek or whatever, stupid things like that. They didn’t really call it “glitter” music until about two years after it was over. But at the time, they didn’t say David Bowie was a glitter band. There was no glitter band. Punk wasn’t a word till the magazine [of the same name by Legs McNeil and John Holmstrom]. The last group I wanted to ask about is Green Day. You’ve had a special connection with them for a couple of decades now. Who introduced you to the band? My wife and I are organizing all of that. I’m hoping to start placing that in institutions and museums for collectors. The Clash. 1979 So how would you do things, say for example, Green Day, you’re going to do this shoot, and work with them. What would be different today, aside from not having to stay awake for seven days straight? Unfortunately, some of those stories get lost to the sands of time (or copyediting) as a visual artist is forced to put pen to paper in an art form he has no experience working in. Like many autobiographies, Right Place starts to slide around its midpoint, its control over Gruen’s career timeline slipping as he affords large chunks of space to his work with a select few artists. Certain months or years are skipped over in mere sentences, while artists like John Lennon and Yoko Ono are afforded chapter after chapter, at the risk of making the book sound like a biography of someone else rather than him. The 80s are hardly a blink in the reader’s eyes, and the Roadrunner race through time in the last few chapters gives off the distinct impression that Gruen grew too bored to afford anything after 1981 more than a paragraph’s worth of space.

About Bob

He writes about musicians we all know, but he really knew them, behind the camera, and in front of it. Names I can only dream about seeing live, much less photographing them. A.K: It seems that you have a definite connection with the subject. Looking at the subject’s eyes when they’re looking at you, it’s like they’re playing with you. Bob was presented in June 2004 with MOJO Magazine’s prestigious Honours List Award for Classic Image in London and in November 2010 he was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame. For his many charitable contributions, Bob received the first ever John Lennon Real Love Award in December 2014 at the 32nd Annual John Lennon Tribute Concert.