Richard Jones talks to Andrew ‘Beezer’ Beese about shooting 80s underground Bristol – and sucking in the lead.
“I grew up with a camera round my neck,” says Andrew ‘Beezer’ Beese, talking while on a visit back to Bristol to put the finishing touches to the first UK edition of his book of photography, Wild Dayz.
“Through my teenage years right up to this day,I’ve always had a camera with me wherever I go.”
The result is that Beezer was able to capture a body of work containing images of youth culture in Bristol that would otherwise have gone unrecorded. Those images make up Wild Dayz, the latest publication from Tangent Books.
The young Beezer discovered punk rock at the age of 11, and by his mid teens had widened his scope of influences to include music such as dub reggae and hip hop. He became part of the underground Bristol scene that was hugely influenced by the avant garde punk/funk of Mark Stewart and The Pop Group, and which eventually created the global superstars Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead.
(Left: DJ Milo and Daddy G of Wild Bunch at The Dug Out Club on Park Row in 1984. photo: Beezer)
Wild Dayz is a photographic record of those days, between the years 1983 to 1988, when Bristol’s underground music and fashion scene was at its peak. The pictures were mainly taken in black and white, which had as much to do with finance as aesthetics. “Shooting black and white was a lot cheaper than colour,” explains Beezer. “I developed most of the film in my bedroom in my mum’s council flat in Redcliffe.
“I left school in the early 80s with fairly low grades, due to me going out a lot between the ages of 12 and 16. There was a brand new audio-visual course going on at technical college in Bristol, so I borrowed a camera from a mate and put together some photos,” says Beezer.
“I didn’t have a clue what I was doing but I was accepted on the course. I did a documentary series of photos at a very rough boys’ school in Southmead. There, I met a religious education teacher who was putting out a book called God Rules, OK, with kids from broken families reciting bits from the Bible. She asked me to take the photos, and that was my first book.”
This could have been the start of a righteous calling for the young Beezer, but wicked bass lines and the devilish pleasure of all-night parties won the battle for his soul. “Bristol had a very healthy scene at that time, both for live music like Mark Stewart and the Maffia and DJ-ing. In 1984, Technics just brought out these DJ decks, all my friends were DJs, they would play all kinds of records – funk, punk, post-punk and then a lot of US hip-hop and electro stuff was coming in. There was also the graffiti that people like 3D and Banksy were doing. But we had no idea what it would escalate into.”
(Left: Maintenance workers on Clifton Suspension Bridge, shot for Venue magazine in 1986. photo: Beezer )
Beezer left Bristol to work in London in the late 80s and then moved to Tokyo in 1993 where he still lives and works and has a reputation as one of the city’s most cutting-edge photographers. Wild Dayz was originally published in Japan in 2005 and if you are lucky enough to find an import copy, it will cost you at least £75. The Tangent edition is priced at a more modest £20 and includes an additional eight pages of never-before published artwork by 3D from Massive Attack.
Beezer obviously has a knack for capturing the moment in his photography. He takes the viewer on a voyeuristic journey through Bristol as a riot city, through the no-go areas where even the police feared to tread, breathing in the carbon monoxide, sucking in the lead. There is a spontaneous, relaxed feel to the shots in the book, perhaps a reflection of his easy-going character, and the fact the subjects were all friends out for a good time.
Wild Dayz is available from from www.tangentbooks.co.uk. Price £20 ISBN: 9781906477318
