‘I bunked off school and became Bob Marley’s photographer’

On a chilly morning in 1973, a 14-year-old Dennis Morris made a decision that would change his life forever.

“Bob Marley was coming over to do his first tour of England and I decided I wanted to photograph him, so I bunked off school to go to the club where he was doing the first date in London.

“As he walked towards me, I said ‘can I take your picture?’ and he said ‘yeah man, come in’.”

During breaks in the soundcheck, Marley began chatting to the schoolboy about growing up in England, while Morris questioned him about his life in Jamaica.

“And then he told me about the tour and he asked me if I’d like to come along. So next morning I packed my bag, as if I was doing sports, went to the hotel and we were off.”

The tour ended prematurely as members of the band demanded they go home at the first sight of snow, says Morris, yet those few weeks would start a career that would see him photograph many of the world’s biggest music stars.

Many of these – including an iconic image of Marley taken in the band’s van during that tour – feature in a major exhibition of his work which has been on show at The Photographers’ Gallery in Soho.

Born in Jamaica in 1960, then having moved to London’s East End aged five, Morris’s interest in photography began when he was nine and became a choirboy at a local church, which had a “very eccentric” vicar and its own photography club.

“There was a darkroom in the vicarage and I saw one of the older boys printing a photograph and I just knew that was going to be my life, really,” he explains.

Having captured his first photos of Marley in 1973, Morris was there to picture him again when the reggae star returned to London two years later to play a legendary gig at the Lyceum Theatre.

“I took some great shots of him because I’d seen them perform from that first tour, so I knew exactly how he performed and I ended up with a cover for NME, Melody Maker and Time Out magazines.”

Morris would continue to work with Marley, taking photographs of the star up to his death in 1981.

“My ambition was not to be a music photographer, my ambition was to be a war photographer – but I got a sidetracked in a great way,” he says.

Even so, Morris was still able to find his own version of photographing conflict when he was was invited to photograph the Sex Pistols on tour during the height of the punk scene in 1977.

“It was such a chaotic scenario, constantly being threatened, and being attacked whenever they were on the streets, and the gigs were chaotic,” says Morris.

“When I worked with the Pistols I found my war, really – for me it was perfect.”

Other artists – from Patti Smith to Oasis, Goldie to Radiohead – would also follow, with Morris travelling the world with acts.

Yet the Londoner says he always saw this work as a way to finance his real passion – reportage and documentary, which also features heavily in the exhibition.

His early work led to projects like Growing Up Black, which investigated black culture in 1970s London; Southall – A Home from Home, which particularly focussed on the Sikh community; and a look at life in the capital in This Happy Breed.

“I was documenting my community, my neighbourhood and then beyond that,” he explains.

“I was able to get people to open their doors… I just have a natural knack – I can’t explain it, they see me, they trust me.”

It is this ability which Morris believes has proven so successful in his work, whether it be in documentary-making or the music industry.

“If I’m doing a photograph of musicians, what I try to do is take away that mask to reveal their true self because they have an image which they project.

“A lot of people say to me, whether it’s from Bob Marley to the Sex Pistols, they feel that they’re in the environment with me – it’s not just a snapshot, it actually gives you that feeling that you are there, you’re a part of it,” he explains.

Morris says he has been incredibly pleased with the reaction to the exhibition, which first opened at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris before moving to The Photographers’ Gallery, where it closes later this month.

“People say they have been seeing their past lives or their parents’ lives or whatever it may be. Like with the Growing Up Black images, a lot of young kids were told by their parents what it was like when they first came to England… and they’re like, ‘oh, wow, it really was like that’.

“Then on the music side… they’re seeing intimate moments of a band or a movement, it’s an insight into what it takes to get to where they got to.

“I’m just very, very proud of it all,” he says.

• Dennis Morris: Music + Life runs at The Photographers’ Gallery until 28 September, while a new book, Dennis Morris: Music + Life, published by Thames & Hudson, is available now