As the door person at CBGB and photographer for Punk magazine, Roberta Bayley was one of the first to document the '70s punk scene in pictures. Her legendary photos have appeared in several significant books about the era, including the photography collection Blank Generation Revisited: The Early Days of Punk Rock (1997). Besides photographing and making mischief with some of the most important musicians of the '70s, Bayley is the co-author of an unauthorized biography of Patti Smith and a true renaissance woman. Bayley recently spoke to PopMatters from her home in New York, which she shares with her bird Preston, who occasionally tried   joining the conversation.

PopMatters: You were originally from California, so what led you to London and then ultimately to New York City in the early '70s?

Roberta Bayley: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, about twenty miles north of San Francisco...