Exhibition of rock music photos going on display in Athlone this Friday

Before Paul Hewson became Bono, when he was a boy in national school in Glasnevin, he was close friends with James Mahon.

"I knew him really well from the ages of, let's say, four to eleven," James recalls. "We then went our separate ways. We went to different secondary schools and that was that, really."

Some time later, however, the connection with Bono set in motion a chain of events that would result in James spending two years as a freelance photographer for Hot Press, capturing photos of bands such as U2, The Clash, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, The Stranglers, The Virgin Prunes, and others.

Later this week, in Athlone, James's photos of these bands will be displayed in an exhibition for the first time.

The exhibition in Athlone Art Gallery, located in The Village at Burgess, will be launched on Friday (July 28) at 6pm. Richard 'Dik' Evans, founding member and guitarist with The Virgin Prunes, and brother of U2's The Edge, will officially open it.

Explaining how his spell as a music photographer started, James says he was told by his sister in 1978 that his school friend, Paul Hewson, was in a band.

"I thought, 'Ok, I'd better go see this band, but I'd rather not pay in!' So I went along, brought my camera and flash, showed the camera to the guy at the door and said, 'I'm a photographer'.

"I got in, and the band came on. Bono said to me, 'Hot Press are reviewing this, so bring your photos up to Hot Press', and I did. I brought them up to Niall Stokes of Hot Press, and gave them to him."

James, who was starting college in Trinity at the time, would go on to spend the next two years regularly taking photos at concerts and sending them in to Hot Press.

"I would have seen The Ramones, The Clash, and The Stranglers. They sent me over to Led Zeppelin in Knebworth, which was a slightly bizarre experience. There were two Knebworth concerts, a week apart. I think all the real heads went to the first one, and all the people who liked 'Stairway to Heaven' went to the second one, which was a more relaxed affair.

"I was able to stand at the crash barrier and take photos of the band without being jostled. Led Zeppelin were still very big, yet at the front row of that concert I was able to take photos without any fuss at all."

It wasn't always that easy.

"I was doing a Buzzcocks gig once, and a guy spat on my camera! It was the only time that ever happened. I was thinking, 'Well, it's punk rock, I guess it goes with the territory!' So I just wiped it off, and moved away."

Richard Evans of The Virgin Prunes, who is opening the exhibition on Friday, played briefly with The Hype before the band's name was changed to U2.

"Richard was in engineering in Trinity, a couple of years ahead of me," says James.

"The Virgin Prunes were brilliant. They were a real performance band, and some of their gigs were really something. Some of the U2 gigs were fantastic as well. You don't get to be that famous without playing good gigs.

"U2 were very young, they had lots of energy, and they really made a commitment to being serious about this. They didn't drink, or certainly didn't drink much, so they were clear-headed at 9am to start rehearsing and writing material."

He remembers cycling to an AC/DC gig on a cool summer's night in Dublin.

"When I went in to the hall, my camera lens and everything completely fogged up. The place was absolutely steaming, so I had to wait for about 15 minutes until my lens thawed out.

"If you look at the photos, you can see that the band were really giving it everything. This was before they were really big, and the energy they had then was incredible.

"I don't think the Sex Pistols played Dublin, but The Clash did. There are some photos of the The Clash (in the exhibition) and they are expert at posing. They're throwing these fantastic shapes."

Career-wise, James went on to become a computer engineer which, he laughs, was "a steadier business" than music photography.

But his photos remain, capturing the beginning of the post-punk era in live rock music. The decision to exhibit them at Athlone Art Gallery arose from a conversation James had with Alastair Gray of Burgess, a former schoolmate of his.

Some of his U2 photos were published in a 1989 book, 'U2: The Early Days', but the majority of those being shown in Athlone have not been seen before.

James says that, compared with today, performances by big acts in those years were more accessible to the general public.

"Bands would come to play in Dublin, and you would get to see them. There wasn't a big fuss about getting tickets. It wasn't like trying to get Taylor Swift tickets now. It was relatively inexpensive."

* James Mahon's one-man show of late 70s and early 80s band photographs opens in Athlone Art Gallery, in The Village at Burgess, this Friday at 6pm.