Punk + Rock in the Eighties

The Early Days
1979-1981

From the Beginning:

I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a Midwest University town that played an important role in politics and music culture in the 60’s and early 70’s. The MC5 and Iggy Pop and the Stooges played a part in the political rebellion and coined the phrase Motor City Rock in parallel with the legendary Motown sound. Second Chance, a small club near the campus became an insider destination thanks to the owner’s keen eye for outlier bands that were up and coming. It’s still surprising to me that the club ever existed in a town dominated by college kids. But for me, Second Chance changed my life. Early bands like Sonic’s Rendezvous, Cheap Trick, The Romantics and Destroy All Monsters were in rotation with Xerox flyers stapled to telephone poles announcing their next show. Most of the time, the bar was half empty, but not for long.

Meanwhile in London, The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Jam spearheaded a movement fueled by local politics and race riots. One that I consider the “real” punk rock movement, while a handful of early bands including The Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads in New York City camped out at CBGB’s, a dirty hole in the wall club on the Lower East Side. New York bands had jumped on the London bandwagon. A collision of two worlds, London’s political punk rebellion and the more experimental “punk-adjacent” residency in the US had evened out the playing field.

Second Chance and Bookies had become my world, but by 1978, New York had become the punk rock epicenter now that English bands were booking US tours and capturing the attention of music press. The city was an unsupervised warzone, but tome, it sounded like a challenge. I was accepted into Parson’s School of Design as a “legitimate” reason to move, but it was no secret; I was enrolling for one reason. The music scene.

Once I arrived, I learned the lay of the land. Strict rules were required to be part of the Lower East Side music clique. It didn’t matter how dilapidated your block was, you never rented anything North of 14th Street or West of 3rd Avenue. St. Mark’s Place at8th and 3rd Avenue - this was my new “student campus.” On any given day, I’d run into Dee Dee at Ray’s pizza or Jimmy Destri picking out paint at the hardware store. I was inside the bubble, but being a part of the club scene was too passive. I wanted more. So, I grabbed my little Nikon FM with a 50mm lens, quit art school in my first semester, and over the next 2 years, ended up shooting hundreds of bands fulltime. I took it seriously from day one. My days were long, developing film at midnight, packing envelopes for the US and Japanese music publications in the morning and keeping up with my show schedule. I felt more like an athlete than a rock photographer student-fan with a camera. My late-night socializing had been replaced with non-stop working. But I loved every minute of it.

And looking back, the dirt, the crime, the drugs, I wonder how I ever put up with it. But I knew then as I know now, just how lucky I was to experience and capture this epic moment as a photographer. One that is hard to imagine replicating. Every hard-earned minute I spent contributing to the culture seems unthinkable now. But by early 1983, I knew the party was winding up. Punk was out, new wave was in and the “nothingabove14th street” rule was out the window. So, at the end of an exhilarating and frenetic run, I packed up my photos and went out and got a “real job.” (And if you’re curious, it was a good job, and you’ll have to watch the video to find out more.)

So, decades later, my archive finally came out of the closet.
In 2023, I began posting photos that had never been seen before on social media, and overnight, fans began sharing life-changing stories about the music and bands and culture we are all grateful to have been a part of. The Clash, The Jam, The Heatwave Festival are my standouts. No iPhones. Real photos, shot with film and a digital-free camera. All authentic, in the moment, and nothing felt like it was an afterthought. I relive every moment when I write and recall the stories behind my photos, and I’m happy to finally pull them out of storage and share with everyone. Thank-you for being a fan, and more to come!