“Sometimes the stories are better than the pictures,” says photographer Joe Stevens with a characteristic laugh, a melding of his old Brooklyn swagger and British punk attitude.

Whether through a camera lens or with words, Stevens, 67, a native New Yawkeh and long-time resident of Portsmouth by way of London, is a story-teller at heart. Catch up with him nearly any morning at his favorite haunt in this city by the sea, Caffé Kilim on Daniel Street, and he’ll happily regale you with stories of rock ‘n’ roll history — from free love in the fields at Woodstock, to the arraignment on murder charges of his old friend Sid Vicious, the sadly impressionable young bassist for the Sex Pistols.

Catch him in the right place and the right time, and Joe’s got a lot of stories to tell — so many that you would be forgiven if at first blush you thought the guy was full of it. It’s just not everyday you meet someone who had a hand in discovering the Ramones, has hung out with the likes of Paul McCartney, John Lennon and the Rolling Stones, snapped pics of Peter Gabriel in the bathtub, gave Alice Cooper a nice pair of tits, and visually documented many of the most important moments and figures in modern music over the past 40 years — well, not in Portsmouth anyway.

But Joe’s no bullshit artist. He’s got the negs to prove it.

Some 23 of those images have been reprinted, framed and are now on the walls of The Press Room in Portsmouth (next door to Kilim at 77 Daniel St.) through March 18 in an exhibit titled cheekily enough “Hung.” From the darling young Debbie Harry on stage at CBGB in the early days of Blondie, wearing a sexy red satin dress, with matching panties (“pre-bikini wax,” as Joe points out) to a freaked out looking Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, all wide-eyed and open-mouthed, these photos are nearly all attention-getters and conversation starters.

Many of the photos in this exhibit first appeared in Britain’s once excellent New Musical Express as well as its long defunct American counterpart, Cream magazine, in the early 1970s through the early 1980s when Joe was nicknamed “Captain Snaps.” The actual timeframe of the exhibit runs 1965 to 1985.

Joe’s current projects include an upcoming shoot with British chanteuse Imogen Heap, a classically trained pianist who’s very hot right now in electronica, as well as documenting the Dropkick Murphys sold-out four-night/ five-show run at the Avalon Ballroom in Boston during St. Patrick’s Day week (March 16 to 19). My guess is he’ll likely have a few stories to tell from those shoots, too.

Courtesy Seacoast Online