New book documents Bristol’s music and youth culture from the 80s

A photographer who has documented a city’s street music and youth culture since the 1980s is publishing a double picture album of his work.

Beezer, real name Andy Beese, 60, from Bristol, worked with the likes of Pulp, Paul Weller and Vivienne Westwood and is highlighting some of his most poignant images from his archive.

At 16 he was given a camera while studying audio visual at Brunel College and said it became “a continuation of my teenage years”.

The double album Until Now is being released on the 7 July through Bristol publisher PC Press.

Beezer previously published a book called the Wild Days which included scenes from Bristol and Glastonbury.

He said he was “very young” when he started taking photos in 1982, but it was an amazing time.

“There was music going on every night of the week and I always went out with my camera,” he said.

“I was heavily into reggae and sound systems and it was so good to be able to go out and photograph the things that you enjoyed.”

However, he said there was a “really dire, really dank atmosphere at the time”, and “everyone was skint”.

“It was Margaret Thatcher, everyone was moaning and we had less but looking back on it now it felt like we had more at the time,” he said.

The double album includes pictures of St Paul’s Carnival and Glastonbury Festival, and artists Mark Stewart, The Wild Bunch and Massive Attack.

“So a wide variety of people in gigs, [and] there’s a huge social documentary section on different things going on in the city or protests,” he said.

“It was very raw what I was shooting but it was anything going on.

“An average day [could be] photographing the manager of Bristol Rovers doing a Sikh protest on Nelson street then photographing a gig or an event in the evening.

“But words like ‘youth culture’ didn’t exist then and the kind of stuff I shot, there were very few outlets for it because it just wasn’t popular – especially on the music front.”

He said popular bands at the time were Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Simply Red, so “more sculpted bands”.

He said his main focus when he went anywhere with his camera was trying to get that “one Glastonbury shot that covers the weekend, that sums it all up… it was totally unrehearsed”.

And for anyone interested in photography, he said “use it as a tool”.

“If there’s something you’re interested in and you’re not confident, it could be dancing or anything like that, a camera’s a good way to get up close and personal with it and see where you could fit in with it,” he said.

He said he is “so proud with this double book. So many people [in my archive] have passed and it’s really sad. People aren’t around forever, but images are”.