Photo: Television’s Richard Lloyd in the hospital (1977). Photography GODLIS.
Back in 1973, when New York City’s Bowery was a more grim and foreboding place than it is today, Hilly Kristal set up the CBGB club on the site of a former biker bar and remade it into the birthplace of punk rock. As fate would have it, members of the proto-punk band Television spotted Kristal as he was hanging the white awning outside the club and let him know that yes, they played Country, Bluegrass, and Blues (CBGB).
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The band sent their manager Terry Ork to negotiate a booking, which involved convincing Kristal that they could bring enough friends to support the bar while the band would make money from the door. Kristal had plans to put the stage near the front door but original frontman Richard Hell told him it was a terrible idea. Word has it that the band helped build the stage so that they could begin performing at the club in 1974.
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Hell left the band in 1975, and Television went onto success without him. Their first album Marquee Moon was critically acclaimed and they quickly built a cult following. In 1976, a young photographer known only as Godlis stepped inside CBGB for the first time, saw Television performing live, and was hooked. For the next three years, Godlis documented the emerging punk scene in a series of moody black and white photos of Patti Smith, Richard Hell, the Ramones, the Talking Heads, and Blondie, among many others, published last year in History is Made at Night.
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At the same time, Godlis was photographing the bands by day, collaborating with them on photos they could use to promote their music. In the fall of 1977, he was asked to create a photo essay documenting Television guitarist Richard Lloyd’s trip to the hospital for a procedure that would purify his blood after heavy drug use, just as Keith Richards had done. The story was to be then published in Rock Scene magazine, to provide an explanation as to why Television’s highly anticipated second album Adventure was being delayed.
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Lloyd was staying at Beth Israel Hospital, just a few blocks north of the East Village, where he had the run of the place. Imagine a hospital with rules so lax you could sell marijuana out of your bed – that was par for the course in New York City back in the days. Naturally a photo shoot was easy to set up. Godlis spoke to Dazed about creating music and art in Old New York.
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Photo: Television’s Richard Lloyd in the hospital (1977). Photography GODLIS.