Eve-Marie: Which gigs stood out the most for you?
Edward: The ones that stood out? There was quite a few of those. Like the Dead Kennedys at the Whiskey in the late seventies. The Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat and MDC at The Barn was quite a memorable show, quite non-stop!

Eve-Marie: Did you always shoot from a certain angle?
Edward: I’d want to be able to get the drummer in the photograph. That was always really important to me. What’s the point of having a photograph with three band members if there’s actually four. That’s not the band.

Eve-Marie: How did these photos find their way to fanzines?
Edward: I’d give these photos to my friends at fanzines in the Midwest, they knew my work and would hit me up. It was good for the scene and good for me to get them published and get my work out there. It was a great thing for me to see them published. With social media, now that has become a very different thing. Everybody now knows about it instantaneously, it’s not hidden or secret. That kind of stuff is gone. The underground aspect is gone. Back then you had to know about it and be there. It was cool to be part of that. Now there’s almost an app for everything: make your own zine. Everything is much more formatted now.

Eve-Marie: Around 1984 you stopped shooting, did that mark the end of punk rock for you?
Edward: The scene changed and I also changed around the same time. Thrash bands started up and I had absolutely no interest in that music. Like, a lot of the early punk bands could not really play but at least they had something else. Thrash bands were just loud. I also got a photography studio looking out on downtown LA and I started shooting studio photography and started working for record labels that were actually paying me. By 1983 I had already worked on 80 punk rock record covers. I never advertised, never asked for work. My phone number was unpublished. The first album cover I did was Circle Jerks’ Group Sex and it kind of worked from there and never stopped.

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