IT was a career which started, aged 11, on the cover of the Daily Mirror.
Now 65, Dennis Morris is one of Britain’s most celebrated photographers, renowned for his iconic portraits of some of music’s greatest legends – from Bob Marley and the Sex Pistols to Marianne Faithfull and the Stone Roses.
But back then he was just a boy with a camera, wandering the streets of Hackney looking for something to snap. When one Sunday he stumbled upon a protest for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and began taking pictures, one of them was sold to the Mirror by an agency and appeared on the next day’s front page.
Loitering with the Kodak Box Brownie he had been given at a photography club for choirboys in his church was also how Dennis, still a young teen, got the chance most seasoned photographers could only dreamed about, and which would end up changing his life.
Hearing that Bob Marley and the Wailers were coming to London, the reggae-mad 13-year-old bunked off school so he could get a glimpse of his hero, waiting from 9am to 3pm outside the stage door of the Speakeasy Club in London’s West End where the band were to play their first gig in May 1973.
He remembers: “Finally Bob Marley and the Wailers arrived. I approached Bob and asked if I could take his picture. Laughing at my Cockney accent, Bob said, ‘Yah, mon, come on in.’
“‘I went into the club with him and took photos. During breaks, he asked me what it was like to be a young black kid living in England, and I asked him about Jamaica. I felt he genuinely took to me.
“After the gig, he asked if I wanted to come along on the tour. I said yes, and the next morning I packed my bags, said goodbye to my mum like I was going to school, went to their hotel and jumped in the back of the van.
“Bob just turned around and asked, ‘You ready, Dennis?’ ‘Yeah, ready!’ I replied, clicking my camera. And the adventure began.”
Dennis’s backstage photos of Bob and his band became famous the world over, appearing on the cover of Time Out and Melody Maker before the young snapper had even turned 17.
Even so, when Dennis, who arrived in London aged four as part of the Windrush generation, told his school careers advisor he wanted to be a photographer, he was told to think again.
He recalls: “The guy just looked at me like I was mad. Then he said, ‘Be realistic. There’s no such thing as a black photographer.’ Those were his words and I’ve never forgotten them. I told him about Gordon Parks and James Van Der Zee, but he just looked at me blankly and shook his head.”
Now considered one of the all-time great photographers of music and black culture, known for iconic images of artists and bands such as the Sex Pistols, Marianne Faithful, Grace Jones, the Stone Roses and Oasis, Dennis’s work is this week being brought together for the first time in a new book, Music + Life, as well as an exhibition at the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris.
Dennis credits Bob Marley with helping him belief in himself despite the careers advisor’s put down, he says: “Talking to Bob on a daily basis, at that pivotal point in my life, everything seemed possible.
“I told Bob how much I wanted to be a photographer. He said, ‘Well, they’ll tell you you can’t do it, but you have to believe, Dennis.’ He instilled that conviction in me that, if you believe in yourself, if you’re determined, you’ll make it.
“Bob and I just clicked. I never knew my father, and he never really knew his. He gave me the confidence to be myself”
While the first UK tour was cut short – “and I went home and got a hiding”, recalls Dennis – the two forged a close friendship which lasted until the Jamaican singer’s death in 1981 and produced some of the most famous images of the reggae icon, charting his rise from playing small crowds to packed stadiums.
They also caught the eye of a young John Lydon, who requested that he take the first official shots of the Sex Pistols after their signed to Virgin Records. Dennis was still in his teens and the same age as the band, who soon learned to trust him and allowed him unrestricted access to their chaotic existence and tumultuous rise to fame.
Again, it was the beginning of a friendship that produced world-famous images of the band, including their infamous boat trip down the Thames to the Houses of Parliament to promote the release of ‘God Save the Queen’. Dennis remembers: “From the first time I met them, it was a crazy, amazing rollercoaster ride. These four people challenged what British society had built up as its standard. They mocked the establishment and the royal family. Punk wasn’t a fashion statement, it was a state of mind.
‘If I learned from Bob Marley how to keep myself grounded, and about spirituality and my history as a black man, what I got from the Sex Pistols was how to kick down the door to get what you want, how to push back, how to resist.
“It turned out that we’d all literally grown up together. John grew up in Finsbury Park, just a few miles away from where I was in Hackney, and Sid (Vicious) grew up in the same sort of neighbourhood, in Stoke Newington. They were the white kids we used to see hanging out at the blues dances.”
He adds: “Deep down Sid was shy, quite a gentle person, tender, nothing like the way he’s portrayed. But he also had terrible stage fright, and he’d get overwhelmed by the adulation and hysteria. After he found (girlfriend) Nancy Spungen and started using heroin, he became a different person. John begged Sid to get rid of Nancy. When they were together Sid was like a kitten, but without her he would destroy his room, take drugs, cut himself.”
Dennis also chronicled the lives of Caribbean immigrants in the 60s and 70s as they struggled against hardship and racism, portraits which are just as raw and revealing as those of the music legends he is most famous for.
- Dennis Morris: Music + Life is published by Thames & Hudson for £40
