It all clicked after Mirror front page

Top music snapper Dennis launched career with photo he took aged 11

- MATT ROPER

Dennis Morris was just 11 when his lifetime behind the lens was launched on the front page of the Daily Mirror. Now 65, he is one of Britain's most celebrated rock photographers, renowned for portraits of stars from Bob Marley and the Sex Pistols to Marianne Faithfull and the Stone Roses.

Back then, he was a boy wandering the streets of Hackney, East London, looking for something to snap. One Sunday, he stumbled upon a protest and started taking pictures.

One of his pictures was sold to the Mirror by an agency for £16 and appeared on the next day's front page.

Loitering with the Kodak Box Brownie he had been given at a photography club for choirboys in his church was also how Dennis got the chance most photographers only dream about.

Hearing that Bob Marley and the Wailers were in London, the reggae-mad 13-year-old bunked off school to see his hero. He waited from 9am to 3pm outside the stage door of the Speakeasy Club in London's West End.

Dennis recalls: "I approached Bob and asked if I could take his picture. Laughing at my Cockney accent, he said, 'Yah mon, come on in'.