Review: Steve Roney & Scott Davis – ‘Pictures Alive Rock Shows of the 80s And Beyond’

API Printing 

Reviewer: David Pearce

This book contains a wealth of pictures from concerts in the 1980s and 90s. What is so remarkable about that? Nowadays, pictures of concerts are available on Instagram and various other platforms instantaneously. If we want to, we can even watch live video with poor sound quality and views of the stage that are blocked by a sea of phones.

Let me take you back to an era when mobile phones barely existed outside of the ranks of Yuppies parading their massive bricks to proclaim their ‘status’! Those phones were simply for talking into. The idea of texting was not on the agenda, while taking pictures and recording video was unimaginable and the internet belonged strictly in the realm of science fiction.

Cameras were banned from all arenas, a practice that persisted into the early years of the 21^st Century, so any gig photos were strictly the carefully chosen shots that a band wanted to use to publicise a concert or to appear on the sleeve of an album. If you were found with a camera it was sometimes confiscated and always had the film taken out to destroy any pictures you had taken. Steve Roney was not an official photographer, but he wanted his own record of the concerts, and by disassembling his camera, hiding the various parts in his sleeves, and then reassembling it under cover of the darkness of the concert hall, he was ready to capture a fans’ eye view of the night. Until mobile phone technology became too common to be controlled anymore in a concert venue, we never really saw that fans’ eye view which makes this book of concert pictures such a time capsule. Along with the pictures you get Steve Roney’s memories and reflections of each one together with the ticket stubs and set list. It’s a treasure trove of memories and experiences, so let’s dip into a few of the featured concerts.

The first featured concert is Van Halen from 13 June 1981 in Oakland California, and Steve reflects on how he got too cocky and ended up having two rolls of pictures taken out of his camera. So there are no concert shots at all. What he does have is a picture of him holding the Van Halen guitar pick thrown to him by Eddie Van Halen which, as he reflects, was ‘pretty f***in’ cool’! A month later he was at Ozzy Osbourne’s concert in Santa Cruz, supported by Motorhead, in an arena with a capacity of just 2000. He got some good pictures of Ozzy himself and a beauty of one of his guitarists with the lighting giving an almost painted quality to the final shot. The set list shows him finishing with the Black Sabbath classic ‘Paranoid’. He saw Ozzy again on 30 December 1981 on his Diary of a Madman tour and got a fantastic picture of Ozzy’s guitarist Randy Rhoads who had been recognised as ‘Best New Talent’ by Guitar Player, and who would tragically die in a plane crash less than three months later.

18 July 1982 saw Day on the Green #2 in Oakland and the natural light afforded by the outdoor venue pays dividends with the feature act for Roney being Iron Maiden on their first major tour of the US. The featured photographs capture the young Iron Maiden in all their early glory in a set of concert photos that really leap off the page. Another Van Halen gig almost got derailed when security found his camera. However, he was able to take it in after giving security his ‘only roll’ of film. Having already given one of his friends a second roll of film ‘just in case’ he was able to capture some classic stage shots including a leaping Eddie Van Halen that is simply incredible. A gig by British band Judas Priest provides, for me, some of the best pictures in the book. It’s great seeing them in their prime delivering a show featuring great lighting and the sight of Rob Halford standing on a motorbike!

The final concerts featured in the book all date from the year 2000 and feature legendary rockers Kiss on their farewell tour. By this point Roney’s pictures are simply stunning, partly because of the vastly improved stage lighting, but largely because his ability to frame a shot quickly and cleanly had been honed by years of trying to avoid detection by security. In this lost era of guerilla photography, just getting a picture that you could then develop was enough of a challenge. Getting a great picture was the province of photographers like Steve Roney, a chronicler of the high point of rock shows where even small arenas could play host to legends of music. 

You can purchase a copy of ‘Pictures Alive Rock Shows of the 80s And Beyond‘ – here