Ian Dickson

What made you get into photography and how did you start your involvement with Rock’n’Roll?

I was working in the north-east of England for a mobile crane manufacturer, in the publicity department as a graphic designer when I bought a second-hand Russian Zenith B 35mm camera one lunchtime and got totally hooked. I’d sit at my desk daydreaming about becoming David Bailey – so much so, that I got fired!

Next day, I decided that I would be a professional photographer and set about doing it. I started off photographing kids and babies around the new housing estates that were springing up at the time. Six months later, I was made in-house photographer for the Tyneside Theatre Company in Newcastle, thanks to Chris Steele-Perkins, my predecessor, who put me up for the job. About a year later I was introduced to a guy called Bob Brown, at a theatre first night.

He turned out to be the manager of the City Hall, the city’s major rock venue and he invited me to come along whenever I wanted to photograph the bands that appeared there. My first shoot at the Hall was Rod Stewart and The Faces, not a bad way to start!

What sort of music were you listening to and how did you get involved with punk?

My music tastes are widespread! I first got into Elvis when I was about 10 or 11 years old. I first heard “”All Shook Up”” on an ancient clockwork gramophone in a friend’s back garden and things were never the same. In 1963, I got into The Beatles and, a little later, Bowie. By 1976, I was working for Sounds and they sent me to photograph the Pistols and their audience (the paper was most specific about that) at Notre Dame Assembly Hall in Soho. That was my first taste of real punk, though I’d done The Stranglers and Patti Smith a little earlier.

You photographed the Ramones on tour here? What kinda of effect did you notice them having as they toured? Was the crowd different in attitude/reaction?

Again, I did The Ramones for the paper, at Eric’s in Liverpool. They got a fantastic reception in this sweaty, overcrowded little club. The photos of the boys, in the book, are from that assignment and show quite well how they went down.

Punk was as visual as it was vocal which must have been a godsend. Yet somehow rock’n’roll always seems to look best in black’n’white? Have I got a point or am I talking rubbish?

No, you’re not talking rubbish. Punk was never glamorous – quite the opposite in fact. Old sweaty clubs and pubs – none of your Wembley bright lights and all that razzmatazz, so black and white photography was it. I actually never shot any colour on any punk band, so that says it all.

I particularly like the relaxed backstage pictures of bands like the Stranglers. They were obviously pretty relaxed around you. What did you make of them and their attitude as supposed outsiders in the punk scene? As attending quite a few gigs was there any difference in audience reaction, atmosphere to say the Pistols playing as opposed to the Ramones or the Vibrators?

I was very handily placed as Sounds photographer, you must remember. The paper was the first to champion the movement, so there was kudos in that for me. As a result, the individuals I met were extremely “”professional”” in their working with me (as far as they could!) so I had no problems with them at all. Audience reaction was pretty straight across the board – loud, short and fast!

You took some pictures down the Roxy Club of The Rezillos ?? (How did they all fit on stage ?) What did you make of the place and how did the audience react to you photographing ?? Ever have any trouble photographing?

A tight squeeze – but that was true almost everywhere. I can’t really remember much about the Roxy – after a while, every gig looks like the last one! Now and again, I’d get caught up in the stampede down the front. There have been moments when I’ve been taking photographs with my feet six inches off the floor, honest. The worst thing was the gob. I couldn’t wait to get home sometimes, to have a shower. I counted it a blessing if it happened to be raining after I’d left a gig!

Punk seemed to throw up a number of women photographers such as Pennie Smith and Erika Echenberg (R). Similarly so on the New York Scene. Why do you think this happened and what do you think of their work?

Erika was actually my assistant for a short time as she learned the ropes. I’d send her out on shoots I couldn’t get to and she did very well. Then she met Brian James. Pennie Smith is one of my favourite photographers, male or female and I have enormous respect for her. My wife, Shoko, has also taken up the cause and is the resident photographer at Concorde 2, a venue you may have heard of, down here in Brighton.

What is your favourite punk photograph taken by yourself and also by someone else and why?

For obvious reasons, the John Lydon autobiography cover shot from that gig at Notre Dame but, on an equal basis, the Paul Weller shot too. I can’t split them. I like a lot of Ray Stevenson’s work and Dennis Morris’s also.

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