For a quarter of a century photographer Johnny Moto has documented the weird and wonderful goings-on of the Oxford music scene.

Blessed with a keen eye for the unusual, his pictures have recorded key moments and personalities in the city’s rich life of rock and roll.

Some of his most iconic images have now gone on show at the spot so many were taken – The Jericho Tavern. The veteran Walton Street venue, which hosted early shows by Radiohead and Supergrass, and which continues to stage up-and-coming artists, is exhibiting 33 of his images.

They will be on show indefinitely at the upstairs concert space, reminding visitors of the city’s great musical heritage and of the talent of this larger-than-life music buff.

“I’ve always loved live music,” says Mr Moto (not his real name, but the only moniker by which he is known to friends, artists and industry insiders). “And taking pictures is the perfect way to engage with music and capture it’s energy and passion.”

The pictures span Johnny’s career as a photographer – an eventful period. Johnny spent his early years in Hampshire, living on an RAF base where his airman father was stationed.  Johnny was educated at schools across England and Germany, before settling in Oxfordshire when his dad was transferred to RAF Benson. “I had a small James Bond camera as a kid,” he says. “It was only a plastic thing which took tiny three-inch square photos, but I loved it.”

But it was when he took the Queen’s shilling, leaving Icknield School in Watlington, at 16 to join the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers that he got a real camera. “It was a Pentax ME SLR with a standard lens,” he recalls. “And it got a lot of use. I left school without a single O-Level to my name. But I was accepted as an an apprentice mechanic. I had to take my written tests three times to get in.”

Johnny found himself, and his Pentax, in Germany, working on armoured personnel carriers. Photography took a back seat until he left the army at 23, returning to Oxford to work as a driver.

“I decided to start photography properly,” he says. “I went to Oxford College, learned camera skills, dark-room techniques and got a job on the Banbury Citizen.”

But, in 1993, and with the former Yugoslavia disintegrating into all-out war, Johnny again shelved his camera and volunteered to drive aid to the besieged Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

“It was dangerous and the things I saw made a deep impression,” he says. “I had my camera but couldn’t take any artistic shots – just snapshots.

“When I got back I started again at the bottom, began going to concerts again and photographed them. I approached local music mag Nightshift to see if they wanted any pictures – and they did.” Johnny still works for the respected monthly magazine. “Nightshift is one of the reasons we have such a good music scene. It spurred me on to support local music as best I can,” he adds.

Some of Johnny’s earliest pictures show seminal Oxford bands Ride and The Candyskins and Supergrass, which helped define the city's music scene in the 1990s, while others depict other local favourites Rock of Travolta, The Young Knives, The Epstein and Mephisto Grande. There are also shots taken further afield – including a rakish Nick Cave playing in London.


Johnny says it was hard to whittle the pictures down to just 33. Johnny relies on old-fashioned skills rather than a computer. “I just record what goes on,” he says. “I am, first and foremost, a music-lover. I don’t understand photographers who stand in the pit for three minutes and go. Sometimes it’s not until the last moment you get that perfect picture.”

  • Johnny Moto's exhibition launch
  • Jericho Tavern, Oxford
  • Music from The Goggenheim, The Lampost Gullivers, Vienna Ditto, and Frances Pugh & The Whisky Singers
  • Saturday, October 6
  • 8pm
  • Tickets £5 on the door