He Was A Teenage Propshaft aka The Punk Zelig

Stephen Doyle

It’s safe to say that German Shepherd Records and subsequently Half Edge Records would not have existed without the assistance and intervention of Stephen Doyle. Stephen passed away suddenly, at far too young an age, yesterday and I wanted to acknowledge his contribution to the Salford Music Scene and to everything we have done as a label over the years.

I met Stephen at Salford City Radio around fourteen years ago. He started just after I did alongside John “Monty” Montague and together with Tony Thornborough we occupied the nine pm slots at the station on Mondays through Thursdays. Whilst all of our shows were different we did have some crossovers supporting local artists from the Greater Manchester area and together we built a network of contacts in the music industry. Bands like The Words, The Blimp, The Souls, and many many others all got exposure via Stephen’s seal of approval for airplay.

Stephen was a generous, funny and kind colleague with an abiding love for the punk rock era, especially The Clash, and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of bands, with associated anecdotes from across the musical spectrum. He was also an avid gig goer and notably was famous on the local scene for his rallying cry “I Was A Teenage Propshaft” at gigs. He also was keen to have his photograph taken with the great and the good of the punk era and beyond and developed a reputation as the Punk Zelig. Hopefully we can collate those photographs together at some point by way of a memorial.

Stephen with The Distractions

Stephen introduced me to Ian Moss at a gig Tony had organised in 2010 at Salford Arts Theatre. Without that introduction Ian and myself would have never met and not have not gone on to develop and launch German Shepherd and Half Edge Records.

Aside from his radio work Stephen DJed at a wide range of live events including Strummercamp and many of the German Shepherd gigs that we organised between 2014-2019. He also got involved in promoting a series of gigs at Fred’s Ale House in Levenshulme. He was often the main compere for many of the gigs introducing the bands with his characteristic humour and effervescent love of music. His annual visit to the Blackpool Punk Festival became the stuff of legend.

Stephen introducing Elastikbande

Stephen was also a contributor to a number of releases on German Shepherd Records bringing his unique conversational skills to play in some fascinating pieces of work quite unlike anything else we put out on the label. He also guested on The Junta’s album “Network”. His life-long love of Manchester United was best memorialised with his unique tribute to Cristiano Renaldo.

Salford is sadly a lot quieter today without the presence of one of the cities finest sons. RIP big man.