Ed Sheeran manager leaves Elton John’s Rocket Music, becomes fully independent operator

Stuart Camp, long time manager of Ed Sheeran, has become an independent operator after ten years as part of Sir Elton John’s Rocket Music team.

The parting of ways is thought to be totally amicable, and sees Camp’s company Grumpy Old Management continue to look after Sheeran.

Camp said: “Rocket was a great home to me for 10 years. With invaluable support and care from Elton and everyone there, which I will always be grateful for.”

Sir Elton, an early mentor of Sheeran added,“ After many incredible years of working together I would like to wish a heartfelt and fond farewell to Ed, Stuart and his team, with whom we have shared some amazing moments over nearly a decade long relationship.

“It has been a very rewarding and exciting experience supporting them through their fantastic journey.

“We are immensely proud of all our achievements together and look forward to seeing Stu’s company and Ed’s success go from strength to strength.”

The Camp/Sheeran association began in 2010, and he built the singer songwriter from small pub gigs to the world’s largest stadiums in the world, and selling 20 million albums worldwide.

The upcoming Australian/New Zealand tour has broken two records, according to Michael Gudinski’s Frontier Touring.

One is for most amount of stadium shows in a single tour.

The second is with ticket sales exceeding 950,000, according to Frontier, it has broken the long-standing Dire Strait’s 1986 record for the most tickets sold on one tour of Australia and New Zealand.

In fact, it was Gudinski who first put the soft spoken and likeable Camp on his road to success.

After graduating from the University of Leeds, Camp wrote to a number of record companies looking for employment.

One was to Infectious Mushroom, the UK arm of Gudinski’s label.

It hired him as a teaboy at £100 (A$$175) a week, and its manager Korda Marshall and the company’s Pat Carr became Camp’s first mentors.

When Mushroom was absorbed into Warner Music Group, Camp followed Marshall to East West (which later became Atlantic), working with Funeral For a Friend, The Darkness and Muse.

Camp was one of Marshall’s people who pushed for the release of James Blunt’s first album Back to Bedlam which the Warner hierarchy was dubious about. The record sold 11 million worldwide.

Blunt’s management Twenty First encouraged Camp to get into the day-to-day managing of the new star.

Camp first heard of Sheeran when one of Twenty First’s acts, Jus Jack, told him that this unknown 18-year old kid from Suffolk who just had an acoustic guitar and a pedal offered to tour with him for free.

Camp travelled up to check out Sheeran, was impressed with his songs and his endearing personality.

When they started working officially in September 2010, Sheeran was so ambitious that he was playing three shows in one night.

Camp got him signed to Atlantic, before joining Rocket Man’s management division.

Elton, who became a major adviser to Sheeran on his career, earlier told Rolling Stone why he immediately wanted the young singer-songwriter on Rocket.

“He’s just got that inevitability of stardom written about him. He doesn’t look like [a star] and that’s what I love about him.

“He doesn’t conform to stardom. He doesn’t dress sharply.

“He just loves his fans. He loves his music. And what you see with him is what you get. And you get 100% honesty and 100% niceness, which I love about him.

“And also I do like the competitive streak in him because when you’re an artist, you have to be competitive when you’re going through this phase in your career.”