The music industry is renowned for dashing the hopes of bright young things. One man who survived to establish a recording studio is Graham Robinson. Tony Kearney visited Circulation Recordings to find out the secret of his success.

FRAMED on the wall above the DJ decks at Circulation Recordings is a yellowing poster which is still treasured by studio owner Graham Robinson.

The 20-year-old poster is for a gig by his band, Verba, Verba, performing at a long-forgotten venue in Leeds with support from an up-and-coming act who were just grateful to get the gig - Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

"Well, that's rock 'n' roll," he laughs.

Indeed it is. Rock 'n' roll has broken a million hearts and destroyed a million dreams. So cut-throat it would make a property developer blanche, the music industry is notorious for taking in wide-eyed young things, chewing them up and spitting out the pieces.

It is enough to make any survivor cynical, but not so Graham Robinson. As he tours his new empire in shorts and flip-flops on quite possibly the hottest day in history, the 39-year-old retains the enthusiasm which, as an innocent teenager, propelled him so close to the top of the industry.

In the far-off days when the mullet was king and King were cool, Graham - a talented 16-year-old drummer - set up Verba, Verba while still at school.

They gained some success and supported Tears For Fears on a UK tour, but after three years together it became apparent that Verba, Verba were not going to rule the world. However, in true rock 'n' roll style, on the very last night of the tour, Graham was talent spotted by Peter Henderson, the producer who had worked with Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd's Roger Waters and Supertramp.

Days later, he was working for Henderson as a session drummer at George Martin's Air Studios, in London. Over the next few years, he was very much in demand, working for Nigel Gray - producer for The Police - and the legendary Trevor Horn, by now steering the aforementioned Frankie Goes To Hollywood, temporarily at least, to mega-stardom.

During those heady times, Graham lived out of a suitcase in The Columbia - a west London hotel popular with the music industry, where his fellow guests included members of Frankie, Simple Minds and The Associates.

"We would all meet in the bar and sit until the early hours of the morning, nattering. It was the friendliest place - if you met people in a club or after a gig they were always giving each other sideways glances to see who was doing what, but the hotel was really good.

"I remember being overawed by it, but they were great times and it was something that spurred me on because I discovered that things are possible."

By 1985, Graham was touring the US with his latest employers, a band called Vicious Pink. In New York, he decided to turn his back on life as a session drummer and get into producing. He was 21.

London and New York may have been glamorous in the mid-1980s but County Durham certainly was not. His dad had recently been made redundant from Shildon Wagon Works and loaned his son £1,000 from his redundancy money to set up his first studio.

For six years, Graham ran a small studio at Darlington Arts Centre. "I did commercial recordings of bands," he said, "but my bread and butter was folk music, brass bands, choirs and club organists, even relaxation tapes. It paid the bills but by the time I had duplicated the 400th cassette tape of a brass band it was starting to do my head in."

Squeezed by the growth of publicly-funded recording studios - a development which almost forced the young entrepreneur under and clearly still rankles - Graham was forced into the toughest business decision of his life - to turn down those bread and butter commercial recordings and develop his major projects.

From premises above a curry house, in Northgate, Darlington, he threw himself into the world of promotion and management - and scored fairly instant success. Two of the acts he plucked from North-East obscurity signed with EMI, on a roster alongside Blur, Shampoo and Jesus Jones: Planet Clare, featuring Clare Worrall, from Richmond - who now earns a crust as Robbie Williams' keyboard player - and Dubstar, from Newcastle, went on to have five Top 40 hits.

Unfortunately, this being the music business, things didn't quite work out. "I got a fax from Dubstar's lawyers just as they went into the Top 20 saying I was sacked," he recalls. "The same happened with Planet Clare." It would be enough to make anyone bitter, but Graham remains philosophical. "Whatever happened, I am still proud of what I did. I am delighted I backed the right horses and the people I brought through went on to considerable success."

In 1996, Graham changed tack once more, setting up his current ventures, Circulation Recordings and GDR Publishing. Now based at Lingfield Point in Darlington, the main sound studio is housed in a former health and safety executive training building. "It's fantastic, the same acoustics which meant they could deliver lectures to hundreds of people without a microphone mean we can get superb sound. It's 1930s technology, but it works."

It is probably the only sign of 1930s technology in the place. Marshall amplifiers and Pearl drum kits are scattered liberally about the complex, but today's music is largely made, or at least modified, on computer. A new generation of musician is busy at the studio's work stations, there are banks of midi equipment in the programming suite and the latest DJ decks are on hand. The studio also boasts a more traditional recording studio and live sound room, which doubles as a photographic and video studio.

Most of Circulation Recording's £200,000 annual turnover is generated by the New Deal For Musicians programme - last year the studio agreed its second three-year contract with JobCentre Plus to provide training for unemployed musicians to help them find permanent work in the industry - to date, about 400 people have completed the 26-week programme.

But the six-strong team at the studios has recently been working on a new deal which Graham sees as critical to the success of the business.

Definition Television, the open access arm of Sky TV, has approached Circulation to provide material for a series of 12 half-hour music shows, called Virtual Venue, to be broadcast later this year into the homes of seven million Sky viewers.

New Deal For Musicians agreed to pick up the tab if the studios included acts from across the country. Therefore, as part of their training, musicians from around the UK will direct, shoot and star in their own videos - made in Darlington - which will then receive widespread exposure via Sky TV. As part of the project, Circulation is applying for a licence to turn part of the studio into a live weekly venue, where the sessions will be recorded and music fans from Darlington will be the audience.

In addition to the exposure and the experience of television work for the students, the process will generate hundreds of hours of potentially valuable footage of up-and-coming acts which may contain that elusive "next big thing".

Graham is also trying to develop his dream of a network of specialist creative industries - both public and private - working in harmony to ensure that a region-wide infrastructure is in place to nurture future talent.

For all his time spent with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Graham Robinson is a man who clearly does not understand the word Relax.