Baxter Dury on making the cover of Ian Dury’s New Boots and Panties!!: ‘I walked into the shot and said, “Can we go now?”’

The musician and writer on bringing ‘devil art’ to the home counties – and learning to embrace his dad’s legacy

Born in 1971, Baxter Dury is a musician and author of the memoir Chaise Longue. The son of the Blockheads’ frontman Ian Dury and artist Betty Rathmell, Baxter released his first EP in 2002, 25 years after appearing on the cover of his father’s hit debut solo album, New Boots and Panties!! He has since put out seven albums of sharply observed experimental indie, including I Thought I Was Better Than You, released on 2 June. He plays at the Roundhouse in London on 18 October.

I have a ghostly, tunnel-visioned impression of the moment this photograph was taken for the album cover. I was quite a curious kid with hybrid interests, so I’m in flares and what look like football boots. There’s a fair bit of mythology generated around the shot because Dad was a bullshitter, and consequently so am I, but the recollection I have of that day is that he said: “I’m getting my picture taken. Come along with me.” Being bored, I went. I walked into the shot and said: “Can we go now?” There were four frames taken, and he decided it would become the album cover. That was that. It’s my only memory of being five, which is weird. (The images shown here feature the original album cover photograph retouched to include a portrait by Sir Peter Blake for a tribute album released in 2001 after Ian Dury’s death.)