‘If I wanted to go to war, I would have joined the army,” says record industry maverick Stevo, reflecting on his life in the music business and his record label Some Bizzare [sic], home to artists including Soft Cell, Cabaret Voltaire, the The, Psychic TV and Einstürzende Neubauten.
However, looking back on Stevo’s journey, it does sometimes look like a war. He has been stabbed and repeatedly headbutted; he terrorised record labels, even threatening to shoot Seymour Stein of Sire Records in the kneecaps; he was banned from the Sony building after trying to strangle someone from the legal department; and he instructed an office intern to plant a fake bomb under a music executive’s car. For decades, he has also been locked in bitter, and public, financial disagreements with artists from his own label.
