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And Finally Artist News Management & Funding
Ed Sheeran dropped by former management company for being ginger and using a loop pedal
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 6 October 2020
Ed Sheeran’s first management company dropped him for being ginger and using a loop pedal, his now manager Stuart Camp has said.
“The other management actually resigned from him because they said he wasn’t going anywhere”, Camp tells the Straight Up podcast of how he came to work with Sheeran, initially at Elton John’s Rocket Management. “[They told him] he had to dye his hair black, give up the loop pedal and give up the rapping, which I kind of see their point there”.
As for whether that company is now kicking itself, he says: “For a long time their website said they discovered Ed Sheeran, which was a cause of hilarity – you didn’t mention the bit where you said he was shit and he went away. But I’ve spoken to the [former] manager a few times and it’s fine. It’s one of those things. Everyone’s got acts [where it] doesn’t happen or [they] run away”.
Camp also gives a vague update on Sheeran’s plans for his next album on the podcast, saying: “We’ve started recording now. We’ll probably put a record out this time next year.
But, he adds, Sheeran is already thinking beyond that: “I’m looking at a piece of paper here, which I can’t show you, that actually has the tracklisting for the album after the next one written on it. Which is just, in his head he thinks that it’s done and it’s fine, and that’s definitely the tracklisting. But I’ve crossed out most of the names on it”.
“I don’t know if that’s a writing thing for him, and he thinks that one day he’s just going to wake up and it’s all going to have gone, and he won’t be able to do it anymore”, he goes on. “Because he’s always one or two albums ahead. So we did know what we were doing up to about 2024, but obviously that’s all somewhat up in the air now”.
Either way, with plenty of plans for what’s ahead, that’s not at all bad for someone who was told more than a decade ago that they’d never make it.
