The promoter, PR and manager Stuart Lyon, who has died aged 77 of sepsis and pneumonia, helped to transform the live music scene in London with the wide range of new artists he took a risk on booking.
At a concert in his honour at Nell’s Jazz and Blues in June 2018, celebrating his first 50 years in the business, he was hailed as a “legend” and “the saviour of live music”. An entertaining, easy-going figure, widely known as Uncle Stuart or Uncle Stu, he was an avid music fan, always willing to take a gamble, particularly when promoting the African and Latin music he loved.
His career started in 1968 when Stuart visited the Hampstead Country Club, the recreational area of the north London tennis club behind Belsize Park tube station that was then being hired out to help the club’s finances. Noting the small audience at a lunchtime jazz session, he decided “I can do this better”, and began promoting all-night shows there. According to Stuart, his first booking there was Spooky Tooth, followed by everyone from Elton John to the young David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, Black Sabbath and African stars Osibisa and Johnny Clegg.
He went on to promote hundreds of shows at other venues across London, from the 100 Club to Equinox, Tatty Bogles and Ronnie Scott’s, where his Sunday night Upstairs sessions became a showcase for African and Latin artists.
In 1983 he booked the Nigerian star Fela Kuti to play his biggest London show to date, at the Brixton Academy. This is a hall that holds 5,000 people, but 10 days before the show a mere 500 tickets had been sold, according to Fela’s manager Rikki Stein. The venue decided to cancel the event, but Stuart furiously refused, despite the risk of making a considerable loss. In the event, this now celebrated show was sold out and several hundred fans had to be turned away.
Even unsuccessful shows became part of his legend. When the Puerto Rican band Gran Combo played at Equinox, Lyon planned to pay them from cash sales at the door. The band refused to go on unless they were paid in advance, and the show was cancelled.
“There was almost a riot, the fans were so angry,” the DJ and lawyer John Armstrong, who played at many of his shows, said, “but Stuart calmly faced them all, explaining what had gone on.”
His many later shows included an anti-apartheid festival featuring Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba, and the epic Salsa 2000 concert, for which he persuaded the Latin superstars Celia Cruz, Oscar D’León and Rubén Blades to all appear in a chilly field on Three Mills island, on the edge of the River Lea in the East End of London. It seemed a bizarre setting for such an event, but crowds flocked out to see them, and the show was a success.
Stuart was born in Harrow, Middlesex, the son of Peggy (nee Heath) and Lesley Lyon, who both worked as railway clerks for the British Transport Police. From 1955 until 1962 he attended Harrow county school for boys, where he played in a school band that also included Geoff Weedon, son of the guitar hero Bert. Stuart left to work in advertising, initially with Masius & Ferguson, and in 1967 spent the summer playing the double bass with a band at an American base in Turkey. He later said: “I couldn’t really play – but I got by.”
On his return he briefly continued his advertising career before switching to music promotion, and then also PR and management. He master-minded the early solo career of the American singer Viola Wills, who had been working as backing vocalist for Joe Cocker, and helped to promote her unsuccessful debut album Soft Centers in 1974.
They were married two years later, but divorced by the time Wills became a star, later in the decade.
In the early 80s he lived on a houseboat on Chelsea Reach with his friend, the promoter John Curd, with whom he was working, and toured Yugoslavia with the punk band Anti-Nowhere League. Curd described him as “a party animal and a happy-go-lucky trailblazer”.
Always smartly dressed, Stuart became a well-known figure in Soho, where he loved to hold court in the French, where he would tell stories about musicians and concerts, and enthuse about new music. At the time of his death he was already planning his post-lockdown promotions.
He is survived by his elder brother, Nicholas, and nieces, Niamh and Aisling.
• Stuart Lyon, music promoter, born 22 January 1944; died 9 August 2021
