Bob Gruen - Right Place, Right Time

Copyright 2020 Bob Gruen. All rights reserved.

All photographs by Bob Gruen or from his personal collection unless otherwise credited

: Lyrics from Its Alright, Ma (Im Only Bleeding) written by Bob Dylan. Copyright 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music.

Cover 2020 Abrams

Published in 2020 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932352

ISBN: 978-1-4197-4213-2

eISBN: 978-1-64700-013-4

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For my grandchildren, in the hope that they enjoy the freedom of rock and roll

Bob had the ultimate backstage pass. He was backstage with all these bands.

Can you imagine the stories hes got?

Alice Cooper

One Sunny day in 1979, I was crammed into a small rental car with a young heavy-metal band called Riot. We were driving across Texas from one show to another.

I was telling them stories about my life as a rock photographer, and the driver was listening so intently that he missed our exit. The next exit was now fifty miles away, so that little mistake added a hundred miles, and ninety minutes, to our drive. But nobody in the car seemed to mind. They just said, Tell us more stories, Bob.

Until then, I had never realized just how many great stories I had, and how interested people were in hearing them.

I took my first concert photos at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan famously shocked the world by going electric; camped at the Woodstock Music Festival; met John and Yoko at an Aretha Franklin concert and became their friend and personal photographer; drove Tina Turners Jaguar down the Pacific Coast Highway in a fog so thick that I couldnt see the road; was at CBGB for the birth of the New York punk scene.

I documented Salvador Dal making the worlds first moving hologram of Alice Cooper; became friends with the notoriously wild Keith Moon, drummer for the Who; toured with the ever-colorful New York Dolls; rode the bus with the Sex Pistols for their ill-fated American tour; and took the picture of Led Zeppelin members posing like rock gods in front of their jet plane.

And those were just some of my stories up to that day in Texas in 1979. Since then Ive collected a lot morehaving a long and hopeful conversation with John Lennon just two nights before he was murdered; living for close to a year in Japan and connecting with the rock scene there; flying with Green Day in their private plane; and hosting Joe Strummer on my couch.

Just about every music fan knows my photos. Theyve seen them for years on album covers and posters, in books and magazines, in art galleries and museums. Some of them are iconic: the picture of John Lennon in the New York City T-shirt, the Clash on a rooftop with the Empire State Building behind them, the Ramones in front of CBGB, Tina Turner whirling across the stage. The history of rock and roll is captured in my archive of many thousands of images, more than half a century of rock culture told in one classic image after another.

Those photographs, however, show you only what I saw. Right Place, Right Time is about how I grew as a personfrom a young kid with no particular agenda, with a camera and a passion for capturing the moment, to a professional photographer witnessing the evolution of generations of musicians who have come and gone, never quite made it, or succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

For me, this book is not just about rock and roll. It is about freedom... the freedom to express your feelings, out loud. My focus has always been to communicate that sense of freedom, the passion and desire to be fully in the moment.

Tommy Ramone once said that in order to create a successful rock band, The image and the sound must gel. Punk author Legs McNeil (Please Kill Me) concurred, You have to have a great song, and you also have to have a great image to go with it.

Theres the style, the swagger, the show, the song. But rock and roll also needs an imageas much as it needs a guitar and a mic. And this was even more true before the YouTube era, before the Internet existed, even before Rolling Stone published its first issue. In small broadsheets and fanzines, on album covers and concert posters, the image has always been what helps draw the fans to the concerts.

To me, my photos arent just pictures, and the artists in them arent just acts. I wasnt visiting the rock lifestyle as a journalist, I was living it. Ive been lucky enough to work, travel, and become friends with many of the greatest artists in music. They became my extended familymy wonderful, crazy, wildly creative, and sometimes dysfunctional extended family.

Like any family, weve had our ups and downs, experienced one anothers triumphs and tragedies, and attended one anothers weddings, birthday parties, and funerals.

Ive lost some of my most inspiring friendsJohn Lennon, Joe Strummer, Giorgio Gomelsky, Joey Ramone, so many... too many! But Ive made new ones, as wellBillie Joe Armstrong, Supla, and Jesse Malin, unofficial mayor of the Lower East Side.

Because these people are my family, my stories about them arent the usual ones. I know them as wildly talented, three-dimensional, and often perfectly ordinary people. My career has given me an intimate perspective that I hope comes through in these pages.

I reflect on taking the first photos of John and Yokos baby, Sean. Going shopping with Tina Turner, and watching her cook dinner for her kids. Sitting at the bar in CBGB with Johnny Rotten, right after the Sex Pistols had broken up. And Ill never forget Debbie Harry kissing me on New Years Eve 1979 in Glasgow.

All the time I hear from young people, I want to follow my dream. In Right Place, Right Time, Ill share what following ones dream means to me: It means believing in yourself, giving up security, and taking chances. It means getting out there and living your lifeloudly.

My own dream was simple. I wanted to take good pictures, go to interesting places, and meet fascinating people. Someone once asked me and Malcolm McLaren, the manager of the Sex Pistols, how we had planned for our success. We both said, Plan?

Malcolm summarized this attitude well: When you go to sleep at night, you have plans for the next day. The next morning you wake up, the phone rings, and your plans change. You make the best of the day, every day.

It takes courage to live like that, every day unplanned, with unexpected turns. But you have to do it if you want to follow your dreams. Its a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and then you have to do the right thing. That isnt something you can plan. You have to follow your instincts and try to not second-guess yourself.