Rollin' back the years

Jan 22 2003 By The Evening Chronicle

Geoff Docherty has mixed with some of rock's biggest ever names. His biography, telling the story of how a working class lad from the North East became one of the biggest players in rock, is in shops now and his life story could soon be made into a movie.

Sex, drugs and rock and roll - Geoff Docherty has seen it all, and then some!

Groupies used to knock on his door (and he didn't always knock them back) - and he's seen some of rock's biggest names get off their heads and even die on hard drugs.

Temptation was always just around the corner when Geoff, a working class lad from the North East, became one of the biggest players on the region's music scene.

But unlike many of those star names whom he promoted and brought to Tyne and Wear, he's still around to tell the tale.

Geoff, who refuses to give his age away, was the man responsible for first bringing the likes of The Who, Rod Stewart, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin to the region.

His story is the stuff of movies - and a blockbuster film of his life could soon be in the making. A book, A Promoter's Tale: Rock At The Sharp End, is already in the shops.

Meeting Geoff Docherty, and realising just who this man has met and the situations he's found himself in, you can't help but feel just a little taken aback by how normal he is.

He's nondescript, softly-spoken and a gentleman. There are no remnants of the rock and roll lifestyle of which he was very much a part in the late 1960s and 1970s.

"I stayed clear of the drugs," he is quick to point out. "I enjoyed the lifestyle, who wouldn't? All those lovely women. Yes, there were groupies. They were heady days. Usually they only wanted to know me to get to the rock star I was promoting.

"But I never, ever indulged in drugs. I was accused of not being `with it'. I would be in the same room as people getting off on coke, cannabis, speed, you name it, but I was never tempted. I won't name names, but I saw a lot of it.

"People used to tease me. But it didn't bother me. I was used to being something of an outsider." Geoff, in fact, had been an "outsider" since infancy. So how did this loner go from humble beginnings to one of rock's biggest promoters?

"My uncle used to be an organist at the church. My dad said I must have got my love of music from him. But, really, I just like music like everybody else," says Geoff diplomatically. "Most sensible people have an inherent love of music."

Born in Sunderland, his mother died when he was a baby and he was sent to a convent orphanage in Aldershot with two of his brothers. His dad, a miner, could not look after the sons on his own. It was at the orphanage where Geoff learned to fend for himself - and defend himself.

His father remarried several years later, and Geoff returned to the North East. He never got on with his stepmother, but remained very close to his father. "I was very unhappy at home, and I knew I had to leave," he recalls.

"I ended up in the forces. In fact, I was in all three forces at some time or another. Eventually I went into the Fleet Air Arm. I think I was looking for a lot of adventure. I was from a working class family in a working class town. I wanted more.

"I spent time on the Ark Royal," he says. I bought myself out after six and a half years. I was a qualified aircraft mechanic. I wanted to become a professional footballer, but that didn't happen. Although I did play for the Ark Royal football team against Western Australia. We lost.

"I did a six month precision miller course and started work at Cole's Crane Factory. "I was bored to tears. The fellow on my left had been there four years, the one on my right 17. They were like death warmed up and I didn't want to become like that."

In the meantime, Geoff made the most of the North East nightlife. He often drank alone, but always looked dapper in his suit. It was a style that more often than not got him noticed - not always for the right reasons.

Hardmen often picked fights with him and he got involved in "a number of scraps around town".

He was in good shape, and had been in the forces' gymnastic display team.

One day two hardmen approached him. They weren't looking for trouble - but they changed Geoff's life for good.

Jimmy and Dickie Laws were strong-arm men for notorious slot machine king Vince Landa. They offered him the job of doorman at Sunderland's Bay Hotel - £2 a night and two free drinks to boot. "I turned it down at first. I wasn't interested in being a bouncer, but I was in lodgings and the landlady wanted rent. So I accepted the job," says Geoff. "The manager realised I had a love of music and asked me to start booking local bands, but they mustn't be paid more than £50."

Among the first acts Geoff booked into the Bay was The Gas Board, featuring a young Bryan Ferry. A few years later he would be booking Roxy Music into their first Newcastle City Hall gig.

"It was around this time I started listening to John Peel, and I found him a breath of fresh air, playing the likes of Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart and T-Rex," recalls Geoff. "Places in London were putting on the likes of the Floyd, and I realised that if up here we didn't want to be left behind, we needed to be more adventurous in our booking policy."

The manager of The Bay was having none of it, as the fees asked by the bands would be more than the stipulated £50. So Geoff offered to take the risk on himself, and do the bookings himself - turning himself into a promoter. It took him months to save up enough money to secure his first booking - progressive rock outfit Family.

It was a huge success. Despite costing Geoff £150, he made a canny sum from it. "It was better than earning £2 a night," he recalls. With the money made from Family, he booked up the little-heard-of Free. Unfortunately few saw them perform - the gig was a flop. But Geoff had an ear for recognising potential and Free were later to play at the Bay again, this time as one of the biggest acts in the country.

Within weeks of his first booking, he had secured Pink Floyd at the Bay.

Reading through the list of gigs booked into the venue for the first few months of 1969, it is like a Who's Who of rock acts from that era. The Who, Jethro Tull, T-Rex, Country Joe and the Fish, Yes and Plastic Penny - just a handful of the acts who travelled to the North East thanks to Geoff.

News of Geoff's achievements soon reached London, with John Peel plugging his shows and making personal appearances at the gigs. The pair became firm friends, a friendship that has lasted to this day.

It soon became clear that the Bay was too small for the crowds it was attracting - about 1,500 came to see Jethro Tull - and Geoff relocated to the nearby Locarno. For his gigs he called it the Fillmore North - a cheeky jab at the Fillmore East and West venues which were big news in New York and San Francisco. And the names just got bigger and bigger - including David Bowie, whom he booked for just £150. But a run-in with the bouncers put paid to Geoff's time at Locarno, and he moved on to Newcastle Mayfair, securing the likes of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Procul Harum, Derek and the Dominoes and Rod Stewart and The Faces. Newcastle City Hall then beckoned, and, among others, that Roxy Music gig.

He recalls those days with great fondness - and sometimes sadness. He can't listen to Free's All Right Now even today without getting emotional over the death of the band's guitarist Paul Kossoff.

"Paul missed quite a lot of the gigs I was promoting," he says.

"But everyone had a great affection for him. I remember going round to his flat one day and he was lying comatose. There was a knock on the door and he crawled across the floor, got a chequebook out of a drawer, wrote a cheque for some drugs and swallowed them in front of me.

"It was then that I rang his family and asked him if I could take him back to my home in Sunderland, where I tried to get him on a healthy diet of fruit and brown bread.

"Eventually Paul went back into music - and into drugs - and I left him to his own devices." He died at the age of 26.

He remembers Led Zeppelin being refused entry into their own gig. "Because the band didn't have tickets and the bouncers didn't recognise them, they wouldn't let them in. A huge argument erupted. On another occasion Deep Purple came to play at the Mayfair and the venue was jam-packed.

"But the crowds outside were so keen to see them that they got some steel beer barrels and battered the front door down, and hundreds of people ran in."

Not many wanted to see Rod Stewart and The Faces when they first played the Mayfair in 1971, before they'd even had a hit single. "I took a gamble with that one," admits Geoff. "They were a young band with a hell of a lot of energy, but it was by no means a sell-out. They gave a fantastic show. Afterwards Rod said to me, "`I'll be back, and it will be full next time.' He was right. And he's been selling out venues ever since." In fact, Geoff is credited with booking the all-time favourite gig of Radio One DJ John Peel ... Rod Stewart and the Faces at the Locarno in 1973.

Despite his success as a promoter, he wanted to branch out, and had a stab at management.

None of the acts he did business for actually did the business themselves, and he returned to promoting acts, this time for the likes of leisure camps.

The past few years have been spent writing his book, already a North East best seller, and top TV and film producer Malcolm Gerrie, a long-time friend of Geoff's, is keen to take his tale to the screen.

Not bad going for an outsider with a love of music.

Chance to meet author

Geoff Docherty is doing a booksigning for A Promoter's Tale at Waterstone's in Grey Street, Newcastle, at 2pm on Saturday.

The book - a terrific read - has already been a best seller in the region.

It has been published by Omnibus Press and retails at £7.95.

Anyone wishing to contact Geoff can do so by emailing him at geoffrey@docherty7545.freeserve.co.uk