Bob Marley, Punk’s Birth, and a Life Behind the Lens
From backstage with Bob Marley to chaos with the Sex Pistols, Dennis Morris’s new book Music + Life offers a raw, intimate look at the legends who shaped music history.
By Johnnie Potter
At the ripe age of sixteen, Dennis Morris waited patiently outside the stage door of the Speakeasy Club for Bob Marley, saddled with guts and an eagerness that made up for the lack of a plan. Morris had one mission: to take the legendary musician’s picture. Luck was on his side that day, as Marley invited him along for the rest of the tour. “For a kid my age, in Jamaica, I could’ve been packing a gun,” he says. “But I had a camera. I think Bob took a shine to me and thought, here’s someone who knows what he wants.”
That one fortunate moment launched Morris into a career that would see him extensively document not just Marley, but The Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, and the rise of many others from up close. In his new book Music + Life, Dennis Morris pulls together photos from a career built on trust and instinct, with an exhibition opening at the Photographers’ Gallery in June.
To promote his upcoming exhibition, Morris attended a talk with his editor, Andrew Sanigar, in London, where he spoke about legacy, growing up Black, and what it means for his work to be seen now.
Morris already knew where his interest lay by the age of eleven. Initially, he wanted to be a war photographer, despite the fact that back then, as Morris recalls, there was “no such thing as a black photographer.” He made his way shooting on the streets of East London, documenting the moments that felt as charged as any battlefield: religious gatherings, markets, and the city’s multidimensional culture.
After capturing Marley, his photos from the tour eventually appeared in Time Out and Melody Maker, and remain some of the most cherished images of the artist.
Marley, 1973
“Are you ready, Dennis?’ I was sitting in the second row of seats, and click—I took this photo.”
When he returned home from the tour, “my mother gave me the paddle for disappearing. But you know, mothers,” he laughs, “once you start making money, they’re willing to forgive a lot of things.”
Morris’s work with Marley helped to define the uniform of reggae’s global fanbase. Soon after, his photos caught the eye of a young John Lydon. The Sex Pistols had already signed to Virgin Records by the time Dennis was first asked to shoot for them.
John Lydon backstage at the Marquee Club, London, 1977
His photos of Johnny Rotten and the band are now iconic, preserving punk at the moment it became a cultural movement, and, soon after, spread across the globe. He approached the band with the same intimacy that gave his images of Marley the effortless air of a close friend.
“We never thought we were starting a movement; it was just a way of life.”
The music press of the time — and even today — would cast Marley and the Pistols as godfathers of their respective lifestyles. To Morris, they were human first. It’s a perspective that runs throughout his archive. Music + Life is a humanistic work; there’s neither exaggeration nor spectacle. Andrew Sanigar, editorial director of the book, reflects on why it’s unique: “Not everyone has the confidence and curiosity of a sixteen-year-old that leads to moments like those in Dennis’s photos.”
That same approach guided Morris when he turned his lens away from the stage and toward everyday life. Between musicians, he documented the rawness of post-war multicultural London: Young black men, Rastafarian and soundsystem culture; movements brought over to the UK by Jamaican immigrants.
When asked what all his subjects had in common, often from one Black working-class boy to the next, he answered simply: “Just a sense of belief in a better future.”
Ken "Admiral Ken" Edwards, a well-known sound system operator and nightclub owner in London's music scene, Hackney, 1973
Count Shelly Sound System, Dalston, 1973.
Music + Life comes to The Photographers’ Gallery on the 27th of June, offering a rare chance to experience the fine print of the city's culture. The book is available online from Thames & Hudson.