“As a fifteen year old Smiths fan exiled in South Africa, my only avenue of sanity was buying music magazines”, explains Roger Sargent of a peripatetic adolescence to make Jack Kerouac green with envy. “The NME was my lifeline. I vowed that one day I’d work for them.”
Following pit-stops in Somerset, Derby and at photography college in Newport (where he was once ‘kidnapped’ by infamous rabble-rousers Fabulous), Roger ended up exactly where he wanted to be in 1993. The following years saw him shoot everyone from Rage Against The Machine to heroes ranging from Bob Mould (“I was a massive Husker Du fan”) and Paul Weller (“an absolute legend”), not to mention a cocky young outfit from Manchester called Oasis. ”It was at their first proper London gig at the Water Rats in March ’94” he explains. “I’d never met him before, but during the gig Liam looked straight down the lens of my camera, and no one else’s. He did barge me out of the way afterwards, though.”
At the turn of the ‘00’s, Roger’s friendship with The Libertines saw him catalogue the band’s rise and fall to stunning effect in his exhibition 'The Boys in the Band'. “Being with them with brilliant, but it’s not all I’ve done” he says.
“But I’m including a couple of pictures this time which have never been seen before.”
Iconic images come easy to this humble high-priest of the lens, but don't expect him to crow about it. “I’ve never been into the technicalities” he shrugs modestly. “I just need a gun that I can fire.”