The day Mick Jagger was left bleeding on stage at Stockton Globe

To commemorate the reopening, photographer Ian Wright has published a history of the theatre back to 1935.

Ian was 15 and straight out of school when he joined the dark room at the Darlington & Stockton Times and The Northern Echo as a trainee in 1960.

The times were changing. The first teenagers were beginning to appear, and the first bands of the Beat generation were going out on tour – five or six big names a night appeared, playing 20 minute sets to audiences of screaming youngsters.

Ian, as the youngest, and perhaps hippest, member of the photographic staff, was despatched to the Globe, the venue favoured by the tours, to capture the scenes both on stage and back stage.

His book contains some extraordinary shots of the stars – the Beatles, the Stones, Cliff Richard, Tom Jones etc – starting out.

Tom Jones back stage at the Globe on February 13, 1965, as he was about to make his big time debut on February 13, 1965. PJ Proby had been sacked from a tour headlined by Cilla Black for disgracefully, and deliberately, sliding across the stage so that

Because they were coming through so regularly, and because he was darting in and out of their dressing rooms, Ian struck up a close relationship with them.

For instance, in the book, he tells how on October 8, 1965, he photographed the Stones for the third time. After taking a couple of back stage pictures, he sat chatting with Mick Jagger about cricket – Jagger wanted Colin Cowdrey of Kent to captain England whereas Wrighty favoured Yorkshire’s Brian Close.

A roadie interrupted them, telling Jagger he was on in ten minutes.

Ian went to the orchestra pit to get his pictures.

“It was a wild, more menacing atmosphere than I had experienced before,” writes Ian.

“In the centre of the stalls was a group of 20 Teddy Boys, unusual for a Stones’ concert, as it was always girls.

“As soon as Jagger appeared, there was loud booing and hissing – these yobs were turning up the ante. Security could not get to them as they were in the middle, things were getting out of hand, and many of the girls looked terrified.

“Next thing, a nine inch spanner whirred above my head, bounced off the metal covering the floodlights and clattered into Charlie Watts’ drum kit.

The Rolling Stones at the Globe on September 20, 1964

“Then I saw Jagger in a spin-like jump. He finished with his back to the audience, carrying on singing while fumbling in his trouser pocket.

“Eventually he pulled out a handkerchief which he put over the side of his face.

“He turned. Facing the audience, I could see he was bleeding profusely from a cut over his right eye, blood was dripping onto his shirt and pants. No one, least of all Jagger, knew what had happened.

“At the end of the number, management closed the curtains. I’d managed just one photograph of the incident.

“Then I was backstage. Jagger was being attended by a member of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. I tried for another photograph, but, alas, my flash failed.

“George Skelton, the Globe manager, arrived holding a collection of coins recovered from the stage. Each had been filed down to produce a razor-sharp edge.

“One of the ushers said he had seen a Teddy Boy, standing and screaming and throwing something.

Ian Wright

“It was one of these coins which had miraculously missed blinding Jagger by half an inch.

“A doctor arrived and administered stitches.”

Ian dashed back to his Darlington dark room to develop his pictures, and next day, the Echo’s legendary editor, Sir Harold Evans, used the one of Jagger with the handkerchief to his brow beneath what Ian regards as the best headline of his career: “Blood from a Stone”.

Curtain Up: The Globe, 1935-1975 by Ian & Lauren Wright, costs £25 and is available from The Globe at Stockton.