Joey Ramone smiling! And having enjoyable! On the seashore! Roberta Bayley’s greatest {photograph} | Photography

The first band I ever noticed had been the Beatles, on 19 August 1964 on the Cow Palace Arena close to San Francisco. I used to be 13. I keep in mind each 29 minutes of it: 17,000 screaming women making a deafening din and hundreds of flashbulbs going off directly, lighting up your complete stadium. I’d been a Beatlemaniac since seeing a clip of them on the London Palladium on the Jack Paar present, then reside on the Ed Sullivan present. I purchased magazines with them in and puzzled what sort of particular person took the pictures. So my first forays into images had been taking images of images of the Beatles with the primitive household Kodak.

When I used to be 15 I took a really primary images class, however later, after three years of faculty, I dropped out, offered my Nikon and went to England. I began relationship Ian Dury, then after we broke up, a buddy gave me a one-way ticket to New York the place I began going out with Richard Hell, whose band Television performed CBGBs each Sunday evening. Richard and I cut up up on good phrases, and he requested me to take footage of him. My first was the well-known fake blood photo of the Heartbreakers, the band he shaped with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan from the New York Dolls. Richard recommended captioning the poster “Catch them while they’re still alive” as a result of that they had a nefarious repute.

In January 1976, I began taking footage for Punk journal. I used to be working the door at CBGBs by that time, so I used to be all the time able to take pictures of the bands taking part in there: Television, Talking Heads, Blondie and, after all, the Ramones. Sire Records paid me $125 to shoot them towards a wall for his or her first album cowl. We had been buddies, so there was no hair or make-up and I wasn’t telling them methods to pose. I shot three rolls of movie and one shot occurred to be excellent, however my hottest photograph is that this considered one of Joey on the seashore at Coney Island.

Punk journal did a “fumetti” – an Italian fashion of cartoon – starring Joey and Debbie Harry as star-crossed lovers, with speech bubbles of their pictures. Andy Warhol was the mad scientist and [music journalist] Lester Bangs performed a biker. John Holmstrom did a drawing of Joey for the quilt. This Joey photograph wasn’t used as a result of he was smiling on the digicam – breaking the fourth wall – but it surely’s simply sort of an ideal image. It’s uncommon as a result of he’s carrying a surfboard and Joey didn’t surf! We had been simply having enjoyable on the seashore. There’s a childlike facet as a result of he was shy. Looking like that, he knew there was no different path for him than rock’n’roll, so he’d acquired in a band as quickly as he may.

I’d learn that for capturing exterior you must use Plus-X movie, however this session is the one time I ever used it. Most photographers used Tri-X, since you acquired a greater vary of sunshine and darkish. Buried to the fitting of Joey is a Schaefer beer can, a New York beer that’s not made, which is a cool contact. Joey didn’t just like the photograph – he stated, “You made my legs look thin.” Like it was my fault he had skinny legs.

Also, the Ramones by no means smiled. Sire used a vertical shot from my album session the place they’re smiling, with the caption: “The Ramones: they’re so punky, you’re gonna love them.” They wished them to be this cute band that might attraction to Bay City Rollers followers, however Joey went, “No way. Bury that picture. Never use it again.” After that they by no means smiled in images once more, however I’ve this one on prime of my bookshelf and it makes me very completely satisfied. I feel different individuals prefer it for a similar purpose.

I promote extra of it than the album cowl photograph. Eddie Vedder has a duplicate. Karen O has one in her kitchen. Andrew Watt, the famous person producer of Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones, has it. I by no means wished to change into knowledgeable photographer taking footage of individuals I don’t know. For 98% of my profession I by no means acquired paid however I had quite a lot of enjoyable. I used to be simply taking images of my buddies.

Roberta Bayley is the recipient of the Icon award on the 2026 Abbey Road music photography awards. This 12 months’s winners might be revealed on the awards celebration on 24 September at Abbey Road Studios, London