The first band I ever saw were the Beatles, on 19 August 1964 at the Cow Palace Arena near San Francisco. I was 13. I remember every 29 minutes of it: 17,000 screaming girls making a deafening din and thousands of flashbulbs going off at once, lighting up the entire stadium. I’d been a Beatlemaniac since seeing a clip of them at the London Palladium on the Jack Paar show, then live on the Ed Sullivan show. I bought magazines with them in and wondered what kind of person took the photographs. So my first forays into photography were taking photographs of photographs of the Beatles with the primitive family Kodak.
When I was 15 I took a very basic photography class, but later, after three years of college, I dropped out, sold my Nikon and went to England. I started dating Ian Dury, then after we broke up, a friend gave me a one-way ticket to New York where I started going out with Richard Hell, whose band Television played CBGBs every Sunday night. Richard and I split up on good terms, and he asked me to take pictures of him. My first was the famous fake blood photo of the Heartbreakers, the band he formed with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan from the New York Dolls. Richard suggested captioning the poster “Catch them while they’re still alive” because they had a nefarious reputation.
In January 1976, I started taking pictures for Punk magazine. I was working the door at CBGBs by that point, so I was always in a position to take photos of the bands playing there: Television, Talking Heads, Blondie and, of course, the Ramones. Sire Records paid me $125 to shoot them against a wall for their first album cover. We were friends, so there was no hair or makeup and I wasn’t telling them how to pose. I shot three rolls of film and one shot happened to be perfect, but my most popular photo is this one of Joey on the beach at Coney Island.
Punk magazine did a “fumetti” – an Italian style of comic strip – starring Joey and Debbie Harry as star-crossed lovers, with speech bubbles in their photos. Andy Warhol was the mad scientist and [music journalist] Lester Bangs played a biker. John Holmstrom did a drawing of Joey for the cover. This Joey photo wasn’t used because he was smiling at the camera – breaking the fourth wall – but it’s just kind of a perfect picture. It’s unusual because he’s carrying a surfboard and Joey didn’t surf! We were just having fun at the beach. There’s a childlike aspect because he was shy. Looking like that, he knew there was no other path for him than rock’n’roll, so he’d got in a band as soon as he could.
I’d read that for shooting outside you should use Plus-X film, but this session is the only time I ever used it. Most photographers used Tri-X, because you got a better range of light and dark. Buried to the right of Joey is a Schaefer beer can, a New York beer that’s no longer made, which is a cool touch. Joey didn’t like the photo – he said, “You made my legs look thin.” Like it was my fault he had skinny legs.
Also, the Ramones never smiled. Sire used a vertical shot from my album session where they’re smiling, with the caption: “The Ramones: they’re so punky, you’re gonna love them.” They wanted them to be this cute band that would appeal to Bay City Rollers fans, but Joey went, “No way. Bury that picture. Never use it again.” After that they never smiled in photographs again, but I have this one on top of my bookshelf and it makes me very happy. I think other people like it for the same reason.
I sell more of it than the album cover photo. Eddie Vedder has a copy. Karen O has one in her kitchen. Andrew Watt, the superstar producer of Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones, has it. I never wanted to become a professional photographer taking pictures of people I don’t know. For 98% of my career I never got paid but I had a lot of fun. I was just taking photographs of my friends.
Roberta Bayley is the recipient of the Icon award at the 2026 Abbey Road music photography awards. This year’s winners will be revealed at the awards celebration on 24 September at Abbey Road Studios, London
Roberta Bayley’s CV
Born: Pasadena, California, 1950
High point: Maybe taking the Ramones’ album cover
Top tip: Photograph what you really like, because then if you’re not successful, at least you’ll have photographs of what you love
