Bob Gruen

Bob Gruen and Joe Strummer

As chief photographer for Rock Scene Magazine in the ’70s, Bob specialized in candid, behind the scenes photo features. He toured extensively with the emerging punk and new wave bands including the New York Dolls, Sex Pistols, Clash, Ramones, Patti Smith Group and Blondie. Bob has also worked with major rock acts such as Led Zeppelin, The Who, David Bowie, Tina Turner, Elton John, Aerosmith, Kiss and Alice Cooper.

It was his New York Dolls photographs that got him friendly with Malcolm McLaren who at that time was managing the Dolls for that short period.

A little-known fact that how Bob Gruen came to England and met the Sex Pistols was because his most lucrative pictures were of … The Bay City Rollers.

Bob Gruen I made more money with them than I did with John and Yoko, or the Dolls or anybody else I’ve worked with. I photographed a lot of bands back then, and when I was traveling in Europe or Japan I could go to the magazines and sell them two or three pictures each of Kiss, Debbie Harry, The Rolling Stones, maybe one or two of the Dolls, and thirty-seven or sixty-four of the Bay City Rollers. They might do a story on some of these bands, but they’d do a whole special issue on the Rollers. I was cleaning up. One of the first things I did with my Roller money was buy a 54 Buick Special. In ’76 my son was in Paris, which was my original inspiration for going to Europe.

Jane Friedman was there with John Cale. I went to his show and met Patti Palladin and Judy Nylon and some people from the French press. I ended up working out a deal that lasted for years with one magazine there which printed many of my pictures. Because French laws made it very difficult to send money out of France, I’d wait until they owed me for several issues and then go and pick my money up, have some great meals, travel around Europe and the trip would pay for itself. I went to Paris with Blondie, toured England with the Clash, and had a great time. When I first got to London, Malcolm’s was the only phone number I had. He had just started the Sex Pistols. He found me a rooming house that was really cheap and took me to a place called Club Louise, where he and a lot of the kids who were buying his clothes were hanging out.

Bob’s “Sid Vicious with Hot Dog” photo was acquired by The National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1999 for their permanent collection.

It was a lesbian club and they were used to unusual people coming in. The punks, kids who were cutting and dyeing their hair weird, who would get into trouble looking like that in a normal pub, started hanging out in the basement of Club Louise because they felt comfortable there. The Sex Pistols were the local conquering heroes by this time. They’d played a few gigs. Johnny Rotten was sitting around with an attitude like he was some cool guy. I met Billy Idol, Siouxie, (who was part of a bunch of girls called the Bromley Contingent with Sue Catwoman) and Marco, who later played with Adam Ant. I remember Marco looking over at the Sex Pistols and saying– ‘gee, I wish I had a band’. I just told him, ‘why don’t you start one? I mean, look at the competition, it doesn’t seem that hard’.

The next time I came over he was playing in his own band. I remember Joe Strummer and Mick Jones had just gotten together, and I went with Vivien (Westwood), Jon Savage and Carolyn Coon in Vivien’s tiny mini to the ICA to see the Clash play their second show. I have pictures of that. I thought they were a fucking great band, and after I came back to America I started to hear more about them. I liked them and wanted to see them again the next time I went to London. Bob Gruen Interview by Carlo McCormick (originally posted in The New York Trash)

Bob remained working and is still working up to this day (2024) in music and is a legend.



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