The Bernard Doherty Story who started as Alan Day (with IDEA)
by Alan Lawrie
The headline news was brought to the press by Bernhard Doherty, Press Officer and Publicist for the Stones, Tina Turner and Paul McCartney. You don’t get bigger in the music industry than Bernhard. But did you know his career started with IDEA as Alan Day?
I remember Bernard as ALAN DAY, and this was the first picture he presented me with. He was one of the very first DJ’s I booked in the early days of my IDEA agency back in 1969. He was tall, always cheerful and bristled with confidence and humour. He was great fun to work with and I recall the legendary rock club CUE CLUB.in Gothenburg, Sweden where I had contracted him loved him and wanted more DJs like him. He worked Circle Club in Copenhagen and then toured for the best part of a year in Scandinavia and then disappeared to London where he took up new challenges.
Bernard writes
I arrived in Copers for the first time (booked into Tivoli gardens by Neils Wenkens ) ... very soon after that you took me on. I remember your office in Nyhaven ... you had a Danish partner at that time can’t recall his name but he was very funny. Names of DJs around then: . Micky Lee mad person , Andy Rose ,who went on to be a big wig in Satelite TV in the UK ..we became good pals sadly died 6 years ago. Another long term pal local lad who worked at Bristol Music record shop Kent Munch who went on to be top record company man in London ..his son lived in my first flat in Greenwich around 1981
I lost touch with him until recently, but here is his story told by a journalist, Chris Scott. (I quote, with Bernhard’s permission)
Described by business partner Claire Singers as ‘6’4” of great fun’, there’s something of the entertainer about LD Publicity CEO Bernhard Doherty. A self-confessed music obsessive, he speaks with a dulcet southern tone reminiscent of a generation of rock legends, many of whom he has worked with, and many more of whom are competently impersonated in his repertoire of anecdotes.
Growing up in a musical environment (his parents taught ballroom dancing, his brother played guitar in a band), Doherty devoted hours of his youth to hanging around clubs and record shops, building up a huge and diverse musical knowledge. However, on leaving school with one O level, he found himself, ‘like everyone else in Chelmsford’, working at the Essex country town’s Marconi factory.
At the age of 18, an application for a job as a DJ in Copenhagen, advertised in Melody Maker, presented Doherty with the opportunity to foresake a life of making nuts and bolts.Working the club circuit in Scandinavia, he became associated with the overseas tours of a variety of progressive rock bands: ‘I was the guy who used to show them the best clubs and places to go.’
On his return to London, he brought with him a huge address book of managers and promoters, as well as an ‘obsession’ with working in the music industry. A spell of odd-jobbing and work as a roadie led to a job as a runner with Island Records. It was from there he graduated to working as a tour publicist, travelling the world trying to break bands in different territories.
After a stint at Hannibal Records, Doherty made the leap into agency work when a vacancy arose with Rogers and Cowan. Enlisted to set up the firm’s music department, the move from Indie label to transatlantic agency came as something of a culture shock: ‘they were like Rolls Royce. They had suits, they had expense accounts, they had an office! People in there actually had assistants, and cake on Fridays!’
Starting with David Bowie as a client, Paul McCartney and Tina Turner were soon added to the roster. ‘I went from doing obscure world music and little punk bands to - OMG - world dominating bands and selling out stadia. It was a huge learning curve.’
The romance ended in 1988, when Shandwick bought up the agency, and Doherty found the new owners not to his liking. ‘Rogers and Cowan had been lots of departments having a great time, but then we had to start form filling if we spent ten minutes working on Tina Turner and so on. I couldn’t deal with it. I was completely disillusioned.’
It was when he met Singers that the ‘idea in his head’ began to become something more tangible. The duo teamed up with Wendy Laister, using Doherty’s profile in the music industry to expand her five-year-old Laister-Dixon PR firm. In a period of six months following his arrival, the agency signed Guns ’n’ Roses and Aerosmith, before ‘Mick Jagger and Keith Richards phoned me up and said ‘We’re with you Bernard.’ (The impersonation of the frazzled rock stars is impeccable). Tina Turner soon Followed, before the firm got taken on to handle the BRIT AWARDS.
BRITs executive producer Lisa Anderson first encountered Doherty in her role as MD of RCA records in the 1980s. when she moved to handle the Brit Awards, LD was her first choice to handle the event: ‘Bernard has been a key player in reinventing the perception of the show. I trust his judgement on all PR on the show, whether in fair weather or foul! If something is going awry, Bernard is my first call!’
The rebranding of the ceremony from the ‘in joke’ of the slapstick early ceremonies into the slick event of today is cited as one of his proudest achievements, including nurturing Oasis versus Blur battle of the mid-1990s.
Perhaps one of the most ambitious projects undertaken by the agency occurred towards the end of last year (article written 2001) when LD undertook a mammoth promotional tour for the Back Street Boy’s Black and Blue album involving a private jet, a film crew, and four continents.
The agency’s roster is admirably diverse, ranging from Limp Bizkit to Elvia. Yet Doherty does not believe it necessary to to be a fan of an artist to publicise them. ‘If you love Italian food worked in an Italian restaurant and it was all you saw all day, you’d soon develop a taste for Chinese or Thai. It’s the same sort of thing with music.’
Career highlights include 1983 Joining Rogers and Cowan, 1985 Working on Live Aid, 1989 Joining LLaister-Dixon (now LD Publicity) and 1991 winning BRITs account.
Alan Lawrie writes
After a fifty year break, I finally reconnected with Bernhard with a long, fascinating phone call just a few months ago (Dec 21). He had just returned from L.A. having done the publicity on the latest Rolling Stones tour of USA. When Charlie Watts died, the news , of course, was headline his picture in every newspaper and the Rolling Stones publicist - Bernhard Doherty announcing the sad news. I thought then I must get in touch. Today, Bernard has retired as CEO for LD Publicity and can be heard on Planet Rock Radio every Friday night.