John’s 30 year career in the music industry began aged 19 working in the warehouse at Stiff Records. During a 13 year stint at the UK’s best known independent label, Beggar’s Banquet, John worked variously as a plugger, a PR and in International with bands such as The Prodigy, The Cult, The Charlatans and The Ramones before switching to A&R and heading up his own label Mantra. In 2001 John set up the Eden Sessions at Cornwall’s Eden Project, bringing world class acts such as Oasis, Muse, Kasabian, Florence & the Machine, The XX, Blink 182, Mumford & Sons, Elton John to the County for the first time. Today this 6000 capacity venue goes from strength to strength, staging 8 sell out shows year on year with Tom Jones, Lionel Ritchie, PJ Harvey and Jess Glynne all playing in 2016 and Foals, Bastille,Van Morrison, Bryan Adams, Royal Blood, Madness all booked for 2017. Eden Sessions has been called ‘the number one venue in Europe’ (The Independent) and like ‘watching a gig on the moon” (Q Magazine) and filming of the shows has brought partnerships with the BBC, Sky, MTV and Youtube. In 2014 John set-up Somersault Festival in North Devon in partnership with the Mama Group. The lifestyle festival sold out in year one with Jack Johnson and Ben Howard headlining in front of 20,000 outward bound, surf and music fans. The partnership with the Mama Group led to John programming both Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire (30K) and Citadel Festival on London’s Victoria park (40K). Bjork, Sigur Ros, Ben Howard, The Flaming Lips, Bombay Bicycle Club, Kurt Vile, Nathaniel Rateliff, George Clinton, Caravan Palace, Benjamin Clementine, Foals, Bonobo, Grace Jones, 2 Door Cinema Club, First Aid Kit, Michael Kiwanuka and Caribou all engaged. John also curates the ground-breaking Asian Lifestyle festival Wonderfruit now in it’s third year and taking place in Thailand and manages the careers of several recording artists. We’ve known him since 1980, which is a long time in any event…he’s not as scary as he looks.
