Roberta Bayley first encountered photography as a teenager captivated by the Beatles. After seeing the group perform at the Cow Palace Arena near San Francisco on August 19, 1964, when she was 13, she began taking photographs of photographs of the band using a family Kodak camera. She later took a basic photography class at age 15, then attended three years of college before dropping out, selling her Nikon and moving to England.
Bayley moved to New York after dating musician Ian Dury in England and subsequently took up with Richard Hell, whose band Television played CBGBs every Sunday night. After the two broke up on good terms, Hell asked Bayley to photograph him. She shot what became a well-known image of the Heartbreakers, the band Hell formed with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan from the New York Dolls, featuring fake blood and a poster caption Hell suggested: "Catch them while they're still alive," a reference to their reputation in the scene.