Throughout the late 1970s I stood at the front of CBGBs for the Contortions, Damned, and the Voidoids. Afterwards I drank beer and play pinball at the back of the club. I was never friends with the big names. The bartenders were my friends, the doorman with the yellow construction helmet let me in for free, college co-eds thought I looked like David Johansson from the New York Dolls and by the time they discovered I was simply a poet, it was too late to try for someone else. I was lucky and CBGBs became my home away from home.
Foto by Bob Gruen