Bob Gruen – HuffPost 12.24.12

Mike Ragogna: Bob, what advice do you have for new musical artists?

Bob Gruen: Well it’s different nowadays from when I was shooting in the seventies and eighties, where a band could play in a club and get local support. There are so many bands nowadays, but I think the idea is still the same; play as often as you can, try and be as good as you can every night, and just keep meeting more and more people and entertaining. Try and communicate with the audience. I think that most bands that people really like are bands that communicate with the audience. A lot of bands rehearse their songs and they think it’s important that you do the song perfectly, but when you’re standing in the audience, you want somebody to talk to. You want somebody to relate to. It’s more than just doing the songs perfectly. It’s all about communication. A few of the bands I like, from Tina Turner to Green Day, come out there and actually talk to the audience and relate to them in that moment, in that night, and not just do the same rehearsed set all the time.

MR: What advice do you have for new photographers?

BG: So many people are taking pictures nowadays because it’s gotten so much easier. Every cell phone has a camera that works amazingly well, but I would tell people to take a lot of pictures. If you take a lot of pictures, you’re bound to get a couple of good ones and if you just show the good ones, people think you’re good. That’s all you need is a couple of good pictures to show what’s going on. I think one of my pet peeves is people who go out and take two hundred pictures at a party or an event or something and then they put all the pictures up online somewhere and you have to sort through and you can’t find any good ones. One of the secrets to my success was that I was good at editing. All the professional photographers take a few hundred pictures when they go somewhere and then they edit it down. You just get two or three great ones and people get the idea, “Wow, that’s an amazing moment!” rather than having to sort through a hundred and fifty pictures trying to find that moment. So I think people should take a lot of pictures and just show the good ones.