Ballymoney man is new Stendhal director

With a career as A&R man (Artists and Repertoire) for Virgin Records to his name, David Boyd has worked with the best of the music world.

David began his career with independent music giant Rough Trade in the late 1980s eventually becoming head of A&R at Virgin, helping to sign new talents such as The Chemical Brothers and Massive Attack while also securing established acts like The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithful and David Bowie.

The Ballymoney man remembers his first glimpse of Bowie as a child.

“Starman on Magpie [children’s TV show] while I was at school was just mind-blowing,” remembered David in an interview with the Irish News.

“I never thought that years later I’d actually get a chance to meet him and work with him. When he died, I cried for days.”

In 1990 he was approached to handle the distribution of Virgin Record’s new label Hut Records and by 1992 he was in charge of the entire label.

He was head of Virgin’s A&R department by 1999 having helped the label secure one of the biggest bands of the pop era, The Spice Girls.

After many years based in England, David moved back to Northern Ireland with his wife Yvette and their children Jimi (12) and Marianne (14) in 2014.

Still maintaining a music business presence thanks to his own label and management company Flock Music, he will soon be dividing his time between building custom cafe racers for his company Petrol Punk Motorcycles and helping out his friends at the Stendhal Festival.

“The potential of that event is so great,” he said.

“The aim will be to get them some bigger acts in and to start building up Stendhal’s reputation to the point where it’s a festival that every band in the world wants to come and play.”

* Stendhal Festival, AUgust 12 and 13, Ballymully Cottage Farm, Limavady. stendahlfestival.com