John Reid

John Reid (born 9 September 1949) is a Scottish retired music manager. He was the manager and former partner of singer Elton John, and the manager of British rock band Queen.

Early life Reid was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, the son of John Reid, a welder, and Betty, a shop worker. Apart from three years in New Zealand, he was brought up in the Gallowhill district of Paisley. He attended St Mirin's Academy, where he was a fellow pupil with singers Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan. After leaving school he attended Stow College in Glasgow where he studied marine engineering, but dropped out to move to London in 1969. Their personal relationship ended after five years, but he remained John's manager until 1998. Reid was John's best man at his 1984 wedding.

Reid and John's professional relationship ended over a leaked letter detailing John's spending, which was found by Benjamin Pell and published in the Daily Mirror. The ending of their business relationship in 1998 led to a legal action in 2000. Reid settled out of court by paying John £3.4 million.

Between 1975 and 1978, Reid was the manager of British rock group Queen. Reid's first instruction for the band was "I'll take care of the business; you make the best record you can". Reid parted ways with Queen in 1978 by handing the role to Jim Beach in what he calls "the gentlest parting of the ways of anyone I have ever worked with"; in the 2018 Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, it was portrayed that he was fired by Mercury after Reid tried to convince him to ditch the band and go solo.

In 1994, he was the manager for Irish dancer Michael Flatley. After Flatley left Riverdance and ended his relationship with Reid, Flatley paid Reid approximately £1 million to settle a wrongful termination lawsuit.

Reid retired from management in 1999.

Personal life In 1974, in New Zealand, in a widely reported incident, Reid threw champagne in the face of a party host and punched the Auckland model and journalist Judith Baragwanath in the face when she came to the man's defence, sending her to the floor. Later the same night, he was involved in an altercation with a second journalist at a nightclub. He was convicted and sentenced to a month in prison for assault,

In 1998, Reid sold his art collection, estimated to have been worth £2 million.

In media Reid was portrayed by Aidan Gillen in the 2018 Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, and by Richard Madden in the 2019 Elton John biopic Rocketman, both of whom worked on the HBO fantasy tv series, Game of Thrones Reid made no comment on either portrayal. Mike Batt attacked the Rocketman portrayal, in which Reid is emotionally abusive towards Elton John, as a "weapons-grade character assassination".