If you grew up in a bedroom plastered with images of the Ramones, the Clash or Debbie Harry, chances are Bob Gruen took at least one of them. Now, the life-long New Yorker, 68, has a new photo exhibition at POP International Galleries in SoHo which collects around 100 of his rock ‘n’ roll images — including the famous one of John Lennon wearing a “New York City” T-shirt.
“These pictures were not taken with the idea of having a framed picture in a gallery,” Gruen tells The Post. “They were taken to go into magazines, which people lived with and put on their walls.” In fact, the exhibit is staged to look like a teenager’s bedroom. Three out of five people come through the show, look at the bedroom installation and say, ‘That’s what my bedroom was like! ’ ”
This is his rock ’n’ roll photography New York.
KISS
Corner of Eighth Avenue and 23rd St., 1974
“Gene [Simmons, bassist] was actually wearing my suit and my wife’s clogs. The suit is three sizes too small for him so it makes him look like the Hulk. Even though they had makeup on, no one really stopped to bother us that day. In New York, you have to be more than weird to get attention!”
Keith Richards and Tina Turner
The Ritz, formerly at 119 E. 11th St. at Third Avenue (now Webster Hall), 1983
“This was the [show when] Tina came back to launch her career without Ike Turner. Keith was there, David Bowie too, and even John McEnroe. Everyone was very happy for her. You can see that in the photo. I think it was taken [backstage] about 2:30 a.m. They’re holding a Jack Daniels bottle, but they’re holding it as if it’s a Grammy Award! Every Tina show I’ve ever seen has been mind-blowing.”
Courtney Love
Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. at Bowery, 2004
“The night before this show, Courtney was put in jail. She had played [a concert] the night before, and something had fallen offstage and struck a girl in the crowd. The girl claimed Courtney had hit her, so they arrested Courtney and kept her up all night. But she arrived only a few minutes late for the [next] show and rocked the house. You can see Courtney using the crowd to support her — she walked on top of them to the the bar, got a drink, then walked back to the stage!”
Foxboro Hot Tubs
Don Hill’s, formerly at 511 Greenwich St., at Spring Street, 2010
“This is the [garage-rock side project] of Green Day, who usually play rock stadiums but also like to play small venues. To see them this close up is always an exciting experience — instead of 60,000 people, it’s 100, and it’s 2 1/2 hours of full-tilt, nonstop rock ’n’ roll. They have a song called ‘It’s F–k Time’ and they must have played it six times that night. Every 20 minutes, Billie [Joe Armstrong, singer] would just go, ‘What time is it? It’s f–k time!’ and do the same song again!”
The Ramones
CBGB, formerly at 315 Bowery, 1975
“We started out in Forest Hills and took the subway to CBGB, where the Ramones were playing a show. They played two sets — each was about 12 songs long, so that meant it was about 15 minutes total! They had attitude and it felt like they were out to conquer the world — which they did.”
The Clash
Atop the GE Building, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 1981
“The New York Post front page printed on [Joe Strummer’s T-shirt] wasn’t real. Some guys who worked with the band told me Joe had gone to one of those places where you can get your own headline printed. There was actually a ‘clash’ in Times Square when they played at Bonds in 1981 because the show was oversold.”
Debbie Harry
Coney Island, Brooklyn, 1977
“Punk magazine was [doing a photo shoot with Debbie Harry] that day. I wasn’t shooting that, but I went along because the people involved were friends. Debbie was walking towards me, and it worked out perfect. You can’t take a bad picture of Debbie, especially then. She was the Marilyn Monroe of her generation.”