Marley, Lydon & me: Shooting the punky reggae party

Dennis Morris likes to say that he always wanted to be a war photographer. He was fascinated by the work of Don McCullin and Robert Capa. Tim Page was his hero: “He was the photographer for The Doors and when Jim Morrison died he said he had to find another war, so he went to Vietnam.” Morris’ wars were reggae music and punk, and the unlikely crossover between the two.

His photographs of Bob Marley and the Sex Pistols have defined our memories of those times, and he was instrumental in the career of John Lydon’s post-Pistols project Public Image Ltd. It wasn't exactly mortal combat, but it had its moments of drama.

“With Sid [Vicious] everything he ever did was going to lead to something. You had to just be aware of that, and get it. The night after the Sex Pistols gig in Coventry, my room was next door to Sid’s. All through the night I just kept hearing this almighty racket. It was just like hell was going on there.

"When it stopped, I got up, pushed the door, it wasn’t locked. He had completely destroyed his room. It was like a war zone where there had been a direct hit. Anything that could be smashed was smashed, he had set his bed alight, the whole thing. I just got these amazing pictures. And there he was lying in the middle of it, passed out.”

“The tour was supposed to be over a couple of weeks,” recalls Morris. “It was in winter. One morning they woke up and it was snowing. Bob opened the curtains, and he said: ‘Wha’ dat?’ I said, ‘It’s snow, Bob.’ He said, ‘What you mean snow?’

So Peter (Tosh) and Bunny (Wailer) were determined - they said it was a sign from Jah that they should leave Babylon. There was a massive argument. Bob was saying ‘We have to continue delivering the message.’ They refused, so the tour collapsed, and they went back to Jamaica.”

When Marley returned two years later to play the Lyceum Ballroom in London, Morris was in the photographers’ pit.

John Lydon at the Marquee Club, London, 1977 © Dennis Morris

The reality is, if it hadn’t been for Malcolm or Vivienne there would have been no image. John is a dynamic performer, but the imagery of the Pistols did not come from him

Dennis Morris

“It was so hot inside that all the body-heat went up and hit the ceiling and when it came down it was like it was raining.

All the Rastas went ‘JAAAAAH!’ It was madness really - an incredible gig. I got the front cover of NME, Melody Maker and Time Out and that threw me into the music industry.”

Stylistically, Morris viewed his photography as reportage. His image-defining shots of the Pistols were, he says “about moments”, and they have the same intimacy that Alfred Wertheimer achieved with Elvis in 1956.

“None of it was ever taken in a studio,” Morris says.

“Even when I started working in a studio, one of my big influences was Irving Penn… like when I did a famous shot of Marianne Faithfull for the Broken English album cover, we were together in the studio, we just got blind drunk.

"The way I work is, if I was an actor, you’d call me a method actor, as an artist, I’m a method artist. I get into the world of my subject. So with Marianne, to get that; she was a great drinker, and other things, so that shot was her going [drags, exhales], and there it was.”

With the Pistols, Morris argues that manager Malcolm McLaren and his then-partner, designer Vivienne Westwood were vital. “John is, sadly, forever slagging off Malcolm and Vivienne.

The reality is, if it hadn’t been for Malcolm or Vivienne there would have been no image. John is a dynamic performer, but the imagery of the Pistols did not come from him.”

Morris’s influence on Lydon’s musical direction after the Pistols spilt went further than merely taking photographs. He suggested that Lydon should accompany him and Virgin boss Richard Branson on a talent-spotting trip to Jamaica.

“When we arrived in Kingston, came out of the airport, there was this group of Rastas and they went “Johnny Rotten, maaan!” and I knew from that moment we were going to be cool.

I knew U-Roy really well, I knew Big Youth really well, Lee Perry - so John was going from studio to studio hearing the music at source. That was an influence, realistically, on the sound of Public Image.”

Working with i-D magazine founder Terry Jones, Morris was instrumental in the design of PiL’s first two album sleeves, which led to a job with Island Records, combining A&R and art direction.

Morris signed dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and the punk-reggae group The Slits. For Johnson’s first album, Forces of Victory, he amended an old BBC microphone (changing the letters to LKJ):

“The concept was, whenever there’s a revolution, the two things they’d try and seize were the TV station and the radio station.”

For LKJ's second LP, Bass Culture, Morris flew to Berlin to photograph a subway sign, then flew straight back again, amending it graphically to suggest Johnson was descending into a basement blues party.

The Slits were a less successful collaboration, due to a personality clash between Morris and guitarist Viv Albertine.