“In the midst of Scotland’s punk explosion, a Glasgow maths teacher hung up his mortar board and picked up a camera. His name was Harry Papadopoulos and his photos would come to define and inform Scottish popular culture in the1980s”
WHA THE HERALD
“A testament to the power of photography as a tool of cultural, historical record” PERSPECTIVES.ORG.UK
‘‘Harry’s photos are magical and technically fantastic. He was a photographer that these spectacular times deserved” WWW.CAUGHTBYTHERIVER.NET
“In a swift shutter’s click, he captured an era when the sound of Scotland echoed across Britain and the world … Relive the days when music fans would get black fingers from inky weekly music papers with this fascinating retrospective”
WHAT PRESENCE! THE ROCK PHOTOGRAPHY OF HARRY PAPADOPOULOS
THE SCOTSMAN
“An unmissable history lesson from a major artist” THE LIST
“Harry Papadopoulos is the great unsung documenter of postpunk, who, between 1978 and 1984, captured a crucial era in pop history” NEIL COOPER, WWW.THEQUIETUS.COM
Introduced by Ken McCluskey
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd, West Newington House, 10 Newington Road, Edinburgh EH9 1QS www.polygonbooks.co.uk Text copyright © Birlinn 2012; images copyright © Harry Papadopoulos 2012 The right of Harry Papadopoulos to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 000 0 00000 000 0 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library. Printed and bound by ?
CONTENTS!
FOREWORD by Peter Capaldi 000 INTRODUCTION by Ken McCluskey 000 PHOTOGRAPHS by Harry Papadopoulos 000 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 000 INDEX 000
Design and art direction by Teresa Monachino
foreword by PETER CAPALDI! This book is dedicated to…
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Vestibulum justo elit, hendrerit vitae consectetur sit amet, vestibulum ut enim. Nam iaculis fringilla purus vitae ultrices. Pellentesque porttitor libero eu nunc sodales pulvinar. Suspendisse neque tortor, iaculis vel dapibus in, sollicitudin vel risus. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Ut nec sem nulla, at pretium quam. Ut velit enim, cursus sit amet mattis ac, cursus vel lacus. Aenean mi massa, gravida eget aliquam quis, tempus eget ipsum. Praesent elementum vestibulum molestie. Nam laoreet diam sed est volutpat porttitor. Integer faucibus hendrerit nunc viverra suscipit. Nunc vulputate tincidunt tellus, quis molestie augue tempor sed. Vivamus a quam libero, in placerat odio. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Cras pulvinar aliquet mi sit amet suscipit. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Ut in nunc at nunc malesuada tincidunt. Fusce suscipit tellus ut lacus porttitor nec aliquam sapien mattis. Sed dapibus, lacus id congue malesuada, est enim aliquet purus, eu vulputate arcu nibh vel eros. Nunc tortor justo, malesuada vitae aliquet nec, facilisis eu urna. Ut sed ante laoreet sem convallis convallis. Nulla condimentum molestie felis, id feugiat tortor lobortis ut. Curabitur blandit congue porta. Nulla facilisi. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Praesent nunc dui, varius elementum auctor eu, tristique a turpis. Maecenas hendrerit nisl mauris, lobortis lacinia lacus. Sed justo quam, tempor eu congue id, interdum id erat. Morbi eleifend accumsan vulputate. In suscipit ipsum ut arcu fringilla tristique sit amet bibendum dolor. Ut viverra tellus et turpis ultricies quis sagittis lacus adipiscing. Maecenas at arcu turpis. Vivamus eu quam at lacus volutpat facilisis. Integer hendrerit elit ac sapien feugiat et posuere risus sagittis. Mauris metus ligula, viverra sagittis ultricies sit amet, lobortis a nulla. Proin quam lacus, interdum non rutrum at, egestas malesuada velit. Maecenas velit erat, lacinia ac scelerisque non, gravida sit amet nunc. Phasellus quis metus leo, vel tempus augue.
6/7
HARRY PAPADOPOULOS!
This remarkable collection of photographs by Harry Papadopoulos, published here together for the first time, documents his work in the frontline trenches of the pop business between 1978 and 1984, especially in Glasgow and Edinburgh where he focused on new, native bands. It was an unparalleled period for Scottish music, creatively and commercially, and Harry worked diligently to capture the era’s frenzy, froth and fervour. In the early days, Harry beavered away as an enthusiastic fanzine contributor and gig photographer before relocating from Glasgow to London to become a staff photographer for Sounds music weekly. Harry’s approach to his job invariably followed the same rules, whether he was taking photos of bands live on stage in sweaty wee clubs, under pressure of time and being elbowed by pogoing fans, or photographing a band at length for a feature and with more control over the elements. His strategy was simple: employ a minimum of fuss. Make the best of what’s available. Don’t complain about what’s wrong, and just get on with it. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t limit yourself by imagining what the photo’s going to be like before you’ve got it. Harry put bands at ease with his laidback attitude. He seemed wiser – like a quieter, thoughtful older brother. He neither coerced or cajoled, nor imposed arbitrary rules. Here, I speak from first-hand experience. I was a member of The Bluebells (young readers can look us up on Wikipedia; older readers might care to reminisce on YouTube), and Harry’s plans for our early Glasgow photo sessions generally began with him saying, ‘Let’s all go for an adventure and see what happens.’ One minute, you’d be up a tree in Kelvingrove Park, the next you’d be in a second-hand car showroom playing around in an open-top Triumph Spitfire. Oh yes, Harry was as pleasantly persuasive with second-hand car vendors as he was with bands.
8/9
Harry‘s parents
The son of a Greek-Cypriot father and Scottish mother, Harry was raised in the scenic rural splendour of Garelochhead, Argyll and Bute. When he was seven years old, in 1961, the family moved to the grittier inner-city Glasgow suburb of Craigton. He was educated at Penilee Secondary School in Glasgow before heeding his dad’s concern that he should attain some qualifications for a ‘proper job’. Harry duly gained a degree in the cutting-edge trade of the time, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, from Paisley College of Technology. Harry’s adult career swiftly turned full circle: in 1977 he found himself back at his Penilee alma mater as a maths and physics teacher after qualifying at Jordanhill College of Education. Secondary-school maths back then was a dry and dusty subject. Harry had always possessed an abundance of artistic creativity, and this manifested itself in his classes where he encouraged his reluctant students to compile graphs based on the NME album and singles pop charts.
While his pupils appreciated this unorthodox approach, his fellow staffmembers disapproved of long-haired Harry’s experimental attempts to ignite his pupils’ enthusiasm. From then on, Harry became a doer rather than a teacher, although he was eventually to return to teaching and make long-delayed use of his E&EE degree managing web design courses in various London colleges in the 1990s. It was Harry’s love of photography that provided him with a purpose and an escape, and led him to capture the energy of a vibrant, selfconfident new youth culture emerging from post-industrial Scotland: punk rock. Punk’s fabled do-it-yourself ethos perfectly suited Harry’s entrepreneurial flair and his impulse for guerrilla photography – snatching pictures on the fly. As a cheesecloth shirt-wearing, loon-panted hippy, Harry had frequented most touring bands’ opening Scottish gigs, including Deep Purple, The Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa and Neil Young. He would take photos, develop the prints overnight and then flog them to fans queuing outside the next gig. Harry readily embraced the streamlined urgency of punk and postpunk as it rang out from an abundance of Central Belt record shops: Listen, Bruce’s, Graffiti, Bloggs, Echo, to name a few. These ratty, longlost emporia were the prime hubs of the new music scene, and it was here that Harry found another outlet for his lensmanship by hawking black-and-white 10x8s for the princely sum of 45p. Although Scotland’s safety-pinned youth had fought the good fight in the punk wars of 1976/77, only Glasgow’s Simple Minds, The Skids from Dunfermline and Edinburgh’s Rezillos had made any headway and broken out of the student union and pub scenes. With the growth of independent record labels such as Glasgow’s Postcard (the self-proclaimed ‘Sound of Young Scotland’, indeed), and Fast Product and Pop Aural in Edinburgh, groups such as Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, The Fire Engines, Josef K and The Scars exemplified a vital freshness resounding within Scotland’s major cities. Likewise, fanzines proliferated overnight, and it was in one of these, The Ten Commandments, that Harry had his first photos published. Throughout the first six months of 1977 punk was semi-officially banned by Glasgow’s city fathers. Publicans, moreover, tended to prefer a more mature, rockier clientele, one content to sup a reflective pint to a backdrop of Yes and rhythm’n’booze covers. Most of the punkier gigs were promoted in nearby Paisley in the Silver Thread Hotel and the Bungalow Bar. Paisley’s thriving but unhealthily named scenesters included XS Discharge, The Fegs, The Mentool Errors and the wonderfully named Groucho Marxist label.
Harry in 19??
10/11
The Rolling Stones at the (venue) in 19??
14/15
24/25
David Bowie, 1978
38/39
Edwyn Collins, 1980
56/57
1981
ABC, September1981
ABC
Heaven 17
Alan Horne
Howard Devoto
Alan McGee
Jazzateers
Altered Images
Julian Cope
Angelic Upstarts
Kid Creole
Aztec Camera
Marvin Gaye
Billy MacKenzie
New Order
The Bluebells
Positive Noise
Blue Rondo Ă La Turk
Restricted Code
Cabaret Voltaire
Scars
Chris Burcham
The Beat
Crispy Ambulance
The Fire Engines
Fun Boy Three
Vic Goddard
Gill Scott Heron
Wah!
76/77
Suggs, January 1983
Madness, 1983
130/131