David Stopps

David Richard Stopps (born 23 May 1948) is Managing Director of FML International Artist Management, promoter of music club Friars Aylesbury, Director of PPL (Phonographic Performance Ltd), and a music business consultant, author and educator. He was also responsible for co-producing Earthly Messenger, the world’s first statue of David Bowie.

Early life

Stopps was born in Oxford and grew up in Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, England. He was educated at High Wycombe Technical School and High Wycombe College of Technology and Art (now Bucks New University). This was followed by an Honours Degree course in mechanical engineering at City University London where, in 1969, he dropped out to start the now legendary music club Friars Aylesbury. As a teenager, David Stopps had always been obsessed with music and was a lead singer, guitarist and keyboard player in bands in the Aylesbury area before moving into the business side of music. In the mid-sixties he played Vox Continental organ in a soul band called Gearbox who were voted Bucks Group of the Year 1966. Many years later he performed at Madison Square Garden in New York on vocals/acoustic guitar which, by chance, was videoed and can be seen on YouTube. Stopps has one son, Joseph, from his first marriage. Joseph is also his business partner. David is now married to Sue and currently resides in Aylesbury, his adopted hometown.

Promoting career

Stopps started Friars club in June 1969 and from then until 1984 presented pretty much everyone who was anyone, but most notably David Bowie (who chose Friars as the venue to launch both his Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars albums), Genesis, U2, Blondie, The Ramones, The Clash, The Kinks, The Police, Queen, and Lou Reed, amongst many others.

Stopps had a reputation for being in tune with the times and finding and helping break many artists who readily acknowledge his role in their careers. Tony Banks of Genesis:"We played a lot at Friars Aylesbury which was a great venue for us throughout this early period, and we were friendly with Dave Stopps who ran it"

Mott the Hoople were hand-picked to play Aylesbury in 1969 and they went on to play many further gigs despite their burgeoning profile and success. Ian Hunter was quoted in the now defunct Aylesbury Roxette from a BBC Radio One interview in 1976:"Aylesbury is like a little San Francisco. It's one of those places where everything seems to start...I don't know what it is, but the people there seem to sense what's going to happen. I know Mott the Hoople happened in Aylesbury long before anywhere else, and it was the same for David Bowie. Everybody seems to be friendly, and they make you feel good - and whenever I played there, I felt like an old friend being welcomed home" "I was a big mate of Pete Frame’s, who said to come with him to the club. I always liked Stoppsy, in those days of strange promoters he was one of the good ones at that time"

The Friars Aylesbury website, which is regarded by music journalists as a global music resource, shows the complete history. In 2009 Stopps successfully re-launched Friars club and continues to promote bands at Aylesbury Waterside Theatre. With more than 93,000 members, Friars Aylesbury is the largest music club in Europe. 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of Friars Aylesbury and was celebrated with a series of events and gigs in Aylesbury, including The Vaccines, Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets, Stiff Little Fingers, Eddie & The Hot Rods, The Dung Beatles, Steve Hackett and Steve Hillage. There was also a special event to celebrate the first anniversary of the unveiling of the Earthly Messenger David Bowie statue in Aylesbury Market Square. In 2010 a permanent art mural depicting the history of Friars Aylesbury was commissioned and installed by Cottesloe School in Aylesbury's Friars Square.

Management career

In 1982 Stopps went into artist management. He originally managed Marillion, then Howard Jones and later The Fat Lady Sings. Marillion continue to go from strength to strength, having recorded 18 albums and have sold over 15 million copies, to date. Stopps managed Howard Jones for 33 years from 1982 to 2015 with album sales in excess of 8 million worldwide. A committed vegan, in 1987 Stopps and Jones opened a vegetarian restaurant, named Nowhere, in New York’s East Village. Although celebrities such as Madonna, Michael J Fox, Lou Reed and Moby were regulars and it converted many New Yorkers to vegetarianism, the restaurant closed two years later, with losses of over a million dollars. In 2014, along with son and business partner, Joseph, Stopps became worldwide manager for Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey who returned to touring for the first time in twenty-seven years. From June to November 2018 Stopps managed the biggest tour of his career, a highly successful 80-date tour of the UK, Canada and the USA with Tom Bailey. Playing to between 3,000 and 20,000 per night, most of the dates were with The B-52’s and Culture Club. David and Joseph Stopps also manage Tribe Of Good, The Young Punx and Italian multi-genre dance producer and DJ, Phonat. They provide management consultancy for Miriam Stockley who, as featured singer with Adiemus, has sold over 3 million albums, and also for drum and bass producer and DJ, John B.

Copyright career

Stopps is Advisor on Copyright and Related Rights for the Music Managers Forum UK. In May 2008 he received the MMF Roll of Honour award in London. From 2002 to 2011 he was a member of the British Copyright Council and was the United Nations’ representative for The International Music Managers Forum at WIPO (World International Property Organisation) in Geneva. At WIPO he represented all featured artists worldwide, concerning new international treaty negotiation in the field of copyright and related rights. Stopps is a director of UK related rights collective management organisation PPL (Phonographic Performance Ltd), which, with revenue of £250 million per annum, is the second largest related rights collective management organisation in the world. He is elected by, and represents, featured and non-featured performers on both the PPL Board and the PPL Performer Board. He is a member of the PPL Distribution Committee and the PPL Finance Committee. In November 2019 Stopps would stand for re-election as a Performer Director of PPL. In 2011 Stopps was centrally involved in setting up the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) in the UK. In March 2013 he gave a speech at the European Parliament in Brussels concerning the EU’s Collective Rights Management Directive and in July 2013 gave a speech at the WTO (World Trade Organisation) Aid for Trade Global Review in Geneva. In 2017 he was appointed by the European Union (via ARCA) to be the UK Copyright Expert on their review of the implementation of the EU Term Directive, which extended copyright protection in sound recordings in EU member states from 50 to 70 years.

Writing career

Commissioned by WIPO, Stopps is author of the book ‘How To Make A Living From Music’, which is mainly targeted at the developing world but is equally useful in developed countries. Published by the United Nations, the second edition of this book was published in 2014 and was subsequently translated into French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese. He is currently writing the third edition which will be published in 2020.

The second edition of the book is available from the WIPO website but is also available as a free PDF download:

Educator

Stopps is a consultant and educator and has presented a series of international workshops, based around his book ‘How To Make A Living From Music’, mainly for musical authors, performers, managers, governments and collective management organisations, but also for telecoms, brands and any organisation interested in expanding their business using music. He has presented workshops in Antigua, Argentina, Belgium, Barbados, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Cote D’Ivoire, Ecuador, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, the UK and the USA. In January 2017 Stopps made two presentations on ‘How To Make A Living From Streaming’ and ‘Branding A Music City’ at the NAMM show in California.

Earthly Messenger, David Bowie statue

On 25 September 1971 David Bowie performed the world debut of Hunky Dory at Friars Aylesbury. Stopps was in the Friars dressing room with him that night when Bowie decided to form the Spiders From Mars. Four months later, on 29 January 1972, Bowie returned to Friars and performed the world debut of ‘The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars’ to an astonished Friars audience. In July of that year and with the Ziggy character fully developed, he played Friars again and flew in fifty American journalists, just for the Aylesbury gig. That really put Friars and Aylesbury on the world map.

In 2016 David and Sue Stopps campaigned for a statue of David Bowie to be erected in Aylesbury Market Square, following the artist’s untimely death on 10 January that year. They organised a special 11-hour celebration of Bowie’s art and music on 16 January 2016 and appealed to all Bowie fans around the world to play ‘Starman’ at 12 noon that day. Radio stations and individuals all over the world participated.

A forty-day Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign was launched in October 2016, to raise £100,000 towards the creation of the Bowie statue, the final cost of which was £185,000. The campaign was successful with pledges reaching £115,000 when the Kickstarter campaign ended on 6 December 2016. Over 35 percent of the pledges came from outside the UK.

The bronze statue, entitled ‘Earthly Messenger’, features two principal figures, Bowie as Ziggy Stardust circa 1973 and Bowie in his suited Heathen period, circa 2002. Behind these two figures is a montage of his many personas from 1969 to his final incarnation for his final album Black Star, which was released on 8 January 2016, just two days before his death. Earthly Messenger was designed and created by sculptor Andrew Sinclair and was unveiled in Aylesbury Market Square on 25 March 2018. The unveiling received worldwide media coverage on television, radio and in print. Thirty-six hours after the unveiling, Earthly Messenger was vandalised with spray-paint, which created even more publicity resulting in coverage on national TV in the UK, USA, Russia, Australia, Canada, India, France, Germany and many other countries. A sound system above the statue plays a Bowie track at random on the hour every hour from 9.00am to 9.00pm every day. Earthly Messenger, which is under the arches at the bottom of Aylesbury Market Square, attracts thousands of people to Aylesbury each year and has contributed to boosting the local economy.

Other achievements

Since 2014, Stopps has conducted Graham Norton-style interviews with leading music business figures at the annual Live UK Summit conference in London. Recent interviews have included John Giddings, Neil Warnock, Alan Edwards and Ed Bicknell.

From 2010 to 2012 Stopps was Director of 3DiCD Media Ltd, which was an innovative digital start-up, which aimed to revolutionise the way digital music is packaged and purchased.

Entitled ‘The Local Music Club That Rocked The World’, in March 2014, David and Sue Stopps were central to the creation of a major exhibition at the Buckinghamshire County Museum about Friars Aylesbury, the music club he has run since 1969. In May 2014 David Stopps was made an Honorary Freeman of Aylesbury (England) in recognition of his services to music in the local community. This was the first Honorary Freeman appointment in Aylesbury for 42 years.

External links

• official website

This article "David Stopps" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:David Stopps. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

📰 Article(s) of the same category(ies)

• List of tallest buildings in Aylesbury
• Silver Rider (bus route)

---