TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

His Memories Don't Clash With New Recording

ADVERTISEMENT

By CURTIS ROSS

cross@tampatrib.com

Published: November 2, 2008

TAMPA - The evening of Oct. 13, 1982, must have felt like rock 'n' roll nirvana to Bob Gruen.

The Who, Gruen's favorite band during the '60s, was headlining. Opening the show was David Johansen, lead singer for The New York Dolls, whose brief, early '70s career Gruen had captured on film and video.

Sandwiched in between was The Clash, the pioneering English punk band enjoying the peak of its U.S. popularity thanks to the radio and MTV hit "Rock the Casbah" (composed primarily by recently dismissed drummer Topper Headon).

The Clash's set recently was released on CD as "Live at Shea Stadium" (Epic), and Gruen says it's every bit as good as he remembers.

"My memory is that it sounded great," Gruen says by telephone from New York City. "But sometimes in the moment, it sounds great and later you hear the tape and it doesn't sound like the memory."

"Live at Shea Stadium" lives up to Gruen's memory. He wrote the liner notes for the CD, and the booklet features his photographs of The Clash before, during and after the show.

"The Clash were fantastic the first time I saw them in London in 1976, and they just got better and better," the 63-year-old says. "I never saw a bad gig."

Gruen has seen a lot of gigs.

He shot his first concert in 1965 - the Newport Folk Festival at which Bob Dylan shocked the crowd by playing with an electric band. He shot Ike & Tina Turner and Elton John. The shot of Led Zeppelin in front of the band's private jet? The cover of Kiss' "Dressed to Kill"? The photo of John Lennon in his "New York City" T-shirt? Gruen. Gruen. Gruen.

He has photographed some of the biggest names in rock, but he was particularly fascinated with the Dolls, a group whose magic never seemed to translate outside the five boroughs.

"New York Dolls," Gruen's book of photographs chronicling the band's brief but tumultuous life, was released in September.
Androgyny has been part of rock 'n' roll since Little Richard, but the Dolls took it to aggressive, sleazy heights, adorning themselves in makeup, teased hair, blouses and too-tight trousers, all atop the highest platform shoes known to the pre-Kiss world. The band released two albums for the Mercury label - a 1973 eponymous debut and a 1974 follow-up, "Too Much, Too Soon" - but neither made a dent in the charts.

"The sales people from Mercury were horrified. They were embarrassed," Gruen says. "The Dolls were wearing lipstick and women's clothes on the cover of the '73 debut. A lot of promoters took one look and went, 'What is this? This is weird, this is crazy!'"

That outrageousness sealed the Dolls' commercial fate. But combined with the band's driving, back-to-basics rock 'n' roll, it helped foster the punk rock movement on both sides of the Atlantic.

"People hear about outrageous, but the music was really the basic blues rocked up and played a little faster," Gruen says. "They were untrained, but they made it sound good.

"I think that's an important thing," Gruen says. "They were obviously untrained and obviously having fun. People saw them and thought, 'I could do that.'"

The Dolls' fans could be as much a part of the show as the band.

"When I saw the Dolls for the first time at the Mercer Arts Center, it was packed with people," Gruen recalls. "People were walking through and dancing with the band."

Similarly, The Clash and other punk bands broke down the wall between audience and band.

"It was important for the band to be in touch with their fans, but at Shea, the stage was high with a security zone that kept them right back," Gruen writes in the "Shea Stadium" liner notes.

Like the Dolls before them, The Clash "were not separate from their audience," Gruen says. "They were real and grounded in the present."

Even at Shea Stadium, the photographer says, "they were capable of reaching the audience with that power."

Reporter Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568.

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT