Former local radio presenter Mark Gregory goes back to the Eighties to relive the music scene on Teesside in his new book. The former milkman tells Steve Pratt how not to be successful as a rock concert promoter and music magazine publisher

MARK GREGORY had the first clue that he might be “destined to spend a chaotic time on the periphery of the local music and broadcasting scene” on Teesside the day he appeared before magistrates at Guisborough. Losing his licence – the result of a drink-driving charge – and his job as a milkman as a result opened up new career opportunities for him.

It led him to becoming the sole writer, designer and publisher of “the world’s least successful music magazine” (his words, not mine) followed by the equally unfortunate time as “the world’s least successful concert promoter”.

He did eventually find his niche with his own rock show on Radio Tees, championing the cause of North-East bands, and now works successfully in the voiceover world.

Writing about the two-year period at the start of the Eighties when his ambitions outstripped his achievements is either a very brave or very foolish thing to do. Hopefully, the endlessly entertaining book, No Sleep Till Saltburn, won’t earn him another entry in “the world’s least successful” charts.

“It was a story I thought wasn’t going to be told about the Tees music scene,” says Gregory.

“There’s been a lot about Newcastle-based bands but the Tees scene was relatively unrecognised.

I just wanted to tell that story, so it was all a bit of a labour of love.”

He’d left Teesside College of Art mid-1981 with a diploma in applied graphic design and set off to London to work in a Charing Cross Road bookshop after his mother saw the job advertisement in The Daily Telegraph.

He didn’t stay long down South, but long enough to learn how to share a bedsit for the first time, to suffer his first burglary (of his ghettoblaster, along with his prize Crimes of Passion tape by Pat Benetar), and how to put a “reverse forecast” on a greyhound race at Hackney Stadium Young Mark had also seen Kiss live on their Unmasked tour at Wembley Empire Pool. That, he gives the impression, was more of a highlight than everything else put together as he’d always been a keen music man. “It was always pretty much the first love of my life,” he admits.

Reliving those days for the book proved easy enough. He dug out tickets, programmes and photographs from his time publishing his own magazine, Cleveland Rocks, and promoting bands around the region.

“I found footage on bands at the old Swan pub in Billingham in 1984 on YouTube, so it was very easy to literally go back in time,” he explains.

His memoirs of the Teesside music scene are dedicated to “everyone who helped make Cleveland Rock”. This is the world of the Rock Garden club in the shadow of Newport Bridge and his mate getting Chrissie Hynde’s autograph when The Pretenders appeared at Redcar’s Coatham Bowl.

HEAR about bands such as Blitzkrieg Bop and White Spirit, a five-piece called Satan and North-East band Battleaxe.

And Philmores Country Club, a down-at-heel nightclub by the sea at Saltburn where Cleveland Rocks, Gregory’s less than successful magazine, organised concerts.

Things didn’t always go to plan. Like the night nearly 300 heavy metal rockers found the place had been double booked with a 21st birthday party for red-haired Cheryl from the nearby village of Brotton.

“A group of smartly dressed, though nevertheless quite thuggish looking lads from the party contingent, had taken upon themselves to begin a mock air guitar dance by the bar,”

he writes. “In response, a group of our metalheads had taken up a stance midway down the hall, their backs now to the stage, vigorously flashing V-signs at those mocking them.”

After ventures into publishing and concerts, Gregory had a successful career with Radio Tees, a station with which he’d first had contact after bidding for the outfit worn by Lee Kerslake in Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Oz concert at Middlesbrough Town Hall – only to receive as his prize what looked like a pair of old pyjamas.

His first solo mission for the local commercial radio station, during his time as a parttime rock show presenter, ended badly. He got hammered with the band after going to London to interview them, fell in a swimming pool and woke up on a train at Berwick after failing to wake up and get off at Darlington.

He’s particularly fond of the period covered in the book because “it was the most innocent and the most fun”, he says. “Obviously broadcasting has paid my mortgage for the past 25 years and, not that I’m complaining, but in a way that became a job.

“Although we lost a lot of money on staging concerts and lot of it was haphazard with the magazine, it was fun.”

If successful, this could be the first of a series of books, including a prequel going back to his schooldays.

“I’d like for the people involved to read it and if it brings back few happy memories, all the better. From the reaction so far, it seems to being doing that.”

As for the Teesside music scene now, it’s still very much there but “very much diluted”, Gregory feels.

“Unfortunately now the music scene in the pubs and clubs is so dominated by tribute bands and cover bands. There doesn’t seem to be as much of a local scene wherever you are – Tees, Morpeth or Chipping Camden.”

He’s unlikely to be in a band again. “I still have the drums in the garage and go in every now and then and eye them up and think I should have another bash at them. But I was so poor I’ll leave them there for now,” he says.

■ No Sleep Till Saltburn is available in paperback online at lulu.com