In May 1973 Bob Marley arrived at the famous Speakeasy Club in St Margaret Street in the west end of London as part of his Catch A Fire tour. Morris heard they would be doing soundchecks the day before the four-day stint and bunked off school to hang around and attempt to take photographs. Marley became quite taken with this young teenager and invited him to take pictures for the Speakeasy duration and for the following dates in Hitchin and Hammersmith.

Two years later, Marley returned to the UK as a world superstar at the peak of his powers, to play The Lyceum for two shows on 17 and 18 July. The music press wanted advance photos of the band in action and at play. Morris got his previous photos published the world over including in NME and on the cover of Time Out and Melody Maker. It immediately made him a sought-after photographer at barely 16 years old.

It was Morris’s photos of Marley that caught the eye of the young Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) who was a massive reggae fan. He requested that he take the first official shots of the Sex Pistols upon signing to Virgin Records in 1977. Still only 17, the Sex Pistols also allowed him unrestricted access to their rehearsals and tours. Younger than the band members he took hundreds of classic shots with them fully at ease in front of the lens. When the Pistols split, Morris accompanied Lydon and Richard Branson to Jamaica and with Lydon set about finding young reggae artists for Branson’s Island Records. He then became the Art Director for the label. 

Morris has featured in numerous publications including Rolling Stone, Time, Vogue and GQ and has published several of his own books such as Bob Marley: A Rebel Life, Destroy - Sex Pistols 1977 and Growing Up Black, a chronicle of black Britain in the sixties and seventies.

Buy his artwork from mainstream galleries here and watch this fab video of Dennis Morris talking about his work.