At the age of 12 I was working for the Clash, handing out flyers. I looked older than I was and got to see all the punk bands before getting into reggae sound systems. Multicultural Bristol was a great place to grow up, and by the time I was 14 or 15 I’d be going out late most nights and coming home mid-morning.
Having failed the entrance exam to be a gas fitter, I enrolled on an audio-visual course – one of Thatcher’s new National Training Initiatives. I specialised in photography and started documenting all those nights out – my friends and the scenes I was already part of – offering an insider’s perspective. Photography also gave me an opportunity to explore new environments. If there’s something you’re not sure about, a camera is a good way to have a look at it, be part of it, and then learn from it.
After college, I got work as a stringer for NME, and also for a Bristol magazine called Venue. This picture was taken for a Venue editorial called Life on the Bridge. I went to get some shots of the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the toll keeper and so on, and on the day I was there a gang of maintenance guys happened to be on site to change the lightbulbs on top of the towers. They said: “Do you want to come up and take a shot of us?” Of course I said: “Yeah!”
I had to climb up a ladder at the side of the bridge to the middle of one of the towers, then switch to another ladder. At the top, I needed to do a little jump across to the 150-year-old wooden floor inside the turret of the tower. The gap was only about half a metre, but below me the cars driving across the bridge looked like matchboxes and the people looked like pinheads. I was like: “Fucking hell!”
One of the guys came up with me in case I had any problems, the rest started from the middle of the bridge and walked up the chain that held up the suspension cables. This was just before their lunch break, so they didn’t waste any time. I was still thinking about the fact that I’d overcome my vertigo to get up there and was trying to avoid looking down when suddenly there they were on the chain in front of me. I have outtakes of them all still standing up – there’s no safety equipment and they’re not hanging on to anything. Perhaps if the mayor or someone had been visiting they’d have worn harnesses, I don’t know. They just said: “Is this all right? Hurry up, Beez!”
It’s 40 years since I took the picture, but it feels like it’s gone in a flash. Actually, I heard that one of those guys only retired last year. If someone asked me to go and shoot the same thing, in the same conditions, I’d probably do it but what with health and safety, a shot like that wouldn’t happen today. I don’t know if they even had any hard hats, no one was wearing one, and I don’t know if the picture caused them any trouble afterwards. But the trust who own the bridge have bought copies of it and I used to see it round Bristol, in restaurants and so on – it’s certainly one of my most popular shots.
I’ve been described as a photographer and a historian, which is funny – the work ages, but I’m still around. I’m glad to have left my mark, but the volumes I’ve just brought out are called Until Now: A Life in Photographs because I’m still doing it, and hope to carry on for a long time yet. Still, I look through those older photos and there are so many people in them that aren’t here any more. People don’t last for ever, but photos of them do.
Beezer’s CV
Born: Bristol, 1965
High point: “Having 93 simultaneous exhibitions at Adidas stores across Japan when they were the main sponsors of my Wild Dayz book in 2004. And, holding and seeing the Until Now Alpha and Beta editions for the first time was like holding newborn twins.”
Top tips: “1) Try to get that one image that sums it all up. Let the picture say everything without text. 2) Use your camera or images to get deep within your scene. If you’re part of it then you’re halfway there. 3) Being freelance is great when you’re working, crap when you’re not. 4) Print a picture instead of sending data. Look at a photobook instead of images on a monitor.”
• Until Now Vol 1: Books Alpha and Beta are published and available through PC-Press. Until Now: Here We Are Part 2 is at Farsight Gallery, London, 10-14 January
