Stevo Pearce

Stephen John Pearce, commonly known as Stevo (born 26 December 1962), is a British record producer and music industry executive, best known as the owner of indie record label Some Bizzare Records.

Biography He was born in Haverhill, Suffolk. He left school at sixteen with no qualifications and entered a work training placement with sub contracted distribution company distributing Phonogram Records. His mother purchased a mobile disco unit on hire purchase and Stevo began a Monday-night residency at the Chelsea Drugstore in London's King's Road. Around this time he was banned from playing certain clubs due to his eccentricities. He was chased out of one club for just repeating "Yes hello, hello yes, it's highly psychological", and after mixing Mickey Mouse into Cabaret Voltaire at half speed. Other things that the public were not used to included playing six different records at the same time, causing a very intense sound.

After the residency at the Drugstore, Stevo moved on to working a regular night at the Clarendon Hotel, Hammersmith. The nights at the Clarendon were known as "Stevo's Electro Tunes" where bands like DAF, Fad Gadget, Last Dance, Naked Lunch and Boyd Rice played. At this time Stevo regarded himself as a music anarchist in the music scene and felt it important for musical barriers to be broken down. After a bad first meeting with Daniel Miller of Mute Records (Miller was in a bad mood due to a problem with some Fad Gadget artwork) the door was left open for Stevo to include Depeche Mode on his Some Bizzare Album. Johnson was being offered to support the band in Retford, Nottingham. At first he declined due to there being no payment; Stevo insisted it would be good for Johnson's career.

After the success of Soft Cell, in particular, Stevo began to have immense clout with the major record companies.