Ian Tilton is one of Britain’s most celebrated rock and performance photographers, working from Manchester throughout the 1980s and ’90s at the epicentre of some of the most electric moments in music history.

For three and a half years, Tilton was the official photographer for The Stone Roses — shooting their record and magazine covers, studio portraits, and intimate black-and-white documentaries on the road. His book Set In Stone: Ian Tilton’s Photos of The Stone Roses (Omnibus Press) stands as the definitive visual record of the band’s extraordinary rise.

He was brilliantly placed to document the Madchester and Liverpool scenes — working with The Smiths, New Order, Happy Mondays, 808 State, Björk, The Charlatans, Inspiral Carpets, The La’s, The Farm and hundreds more bands on the rise during the second summer of love.

In 1989, Tilton became the first photographer to shoot Nirvana, travelling to New York to photograph the then-unknown band and their Sub Pop label-mates TAD for SOUNDS magazine. The trip is the stuff of rock ’n’ roll legend: the whole group sleeping on a hard Manhattan apartment floor, until one night outside CBGB’s, Ian was hit by a Greyhound bus. Discharged from hospital — severely injured and full of painkillers — he returned to the apartment, where Kurt Cobain and the band insisted he take the only bed while they continued to rough it on the floor.

A year later, Nirvana invited Tilton to Seattle for an exclusive front cover feature for SOUNDS. The session produced one of the most iconic images in rock photography — a photograph taken backstage after a guitar-smashing gig, capturing Kurt Cobain exhausted and full of angst, in a moment of raw, unguarded emotion. The photograph was voted No. 6 in Q magazine’s Top Ten Best Rock ’N’ Roll Photographs of All Time. David Bowie sat on the voting panel.

Over a career spanning decades, Tilton has worked with Oasis (catching their earliest gigs in 1993 and ’94, even photographing the Gallaghers before Oasis existed), Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Simple Minds, Iggy Pop, The Cure, Morrissey, The Pixies and Sonic Youth. His work has appeared in SOUNDS, Melody Maker and Select, and is featured in The 100 Greatest Rock N’ Roll Photographs, Q Special Edition.