It’s hard to believe that Stacey Walton is only 19 years old. It seems as though she’s been around the music industry for years. Maybe this is because she’s managed to do so much in such a short space of time, maybe it’s because she’s quickly became comfortable with everything that comes with being a recording artist.
At the beginning of 2010 Stacey was unsigned, performing in whichever pubs and clubs that would take her, sometimes without requiring a fee for the performance, she just always wanted to play music and money and fame was definitely not what she was aiming for.
This young London girl was born and raised in South London to “Sort of Hippie Parents.” in her earliest memories of childhood she remembers returning home from school to a house with a distinct smell and not a pleasant one at that, but it was just the norm for her, she had to get used to it, “It’s not like I had terrible parents, they always looked after me and stuff. But maybe parenthood wasn’t for them, they tried and they did an ok job at the basics but they weren’t ready for a kid in my opinion, they used to live like travellers, they never had a proper home, they’d always go from field to field with various other travellers and they’d sleep in tents and they’d spend evenings smoking weed and sitting by a campfire. But I guess when they found out they were gonna be parents they decided that they needed something stable, they got a council flat in London and my dad got a gig as a roadie for The Stone Roses. So they tried to create a good environment.” Stacey explains.
But her parent’s would never fully leave behind their travelling roots, “Every summer holiday we’d leave home for 4 weeks and spend it living that travellers lifestyle. Crashing down in the nearest fields and it was definitely a learning experience for me.”
A young Stacey wasn’t exactly comfortable with it though, “Nah not at all. I was an 8 year old girl and when I’d get back to school all of my classmates would talk about playing outside until like 10:00pm, having water fights and going to the beach and all of these great things and I was forced to live like a gypsy during the summer. I wasn‘t particularly happy about that back then but I didn‘t really have a choice.”
And when she got to 12 years old she finally got her own way, “It changed from the age of 12 definitely. I now had a choice in the matter and I could start to dictate where we’d go for the summer and although money was tight we always managed to have a summer vacation, although a holiday in a different country wasn’t an option. From the ages of 12 to 14 we spent two weeks of the summer holidays in Butlins, looking back it was a terrible choice but at the time it was great.”
At the age of 14 she started to become almost obsessed with music, it wasn’t normal though, “At that time it was 2005 and all my classmates were listening to Britney, Mariah and that kinda thing. I was at home discovering my parents old records.” It was at this time when a 14 year old Stacey found her calling, “I found two records that I instantly fell in love with, The Clash’s London Calling and Guns N Roses Appetite For Destruction. It wasn’t normal for a 14 year old girl to be listening to that kinda thing but my dad encouraged it and I fell in love with those records in particular and I soon decided that I wanted to play guitar and write music.”
After her parents saved and saved money for a Gibson Les Paul for Stacey she was finally given a guitar for her 15th birthday. “I couldn’t be separated from it for like two weeks and then it just sat in the corner of my room gathering dust after that. I had discovered something just as influential on me as music, Boys.”
She became friends with some local boys and soon it appeared that all of her friends were boys. “It wasn’t like I wanted to fuck them all. I was only 15 at the time, I just loved hanging around with them, and I became a bit of a tom-boy I wasn’t very girly and I was fine with it. I had quickly forgot about that guitar in my room until one day a guy friend said something about having a band but he didn’t know anyone with a guitar and so this is where it all began for me.”
Her love of music started to ignite hotter than ever before, “I’d meet up with my friend after school and we’d sit in his room and just spend hours making noise with our guitars, eventually we started to figure out how to play and within a year I was kinda capable of recreating some of my favourite songs.”
And at 16, she dropped out of high school and began spending almost every second of every day crafting her musical ability’s until she was as good as possible, “I guess leaving school at 16 was a good thing for me. Because of course I didn’t go and try to get a job or anything and it meant that I had literally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to play my guitar and I started writing music at this time and it was an absolute blessing. I think over a 3 week period I had managed to finish 3 songs and I started performing in Oxford Street in London, I wasn’t performing for money I just wanted to perform in front of people and then I tried to make the step up to actual paid gigs which was tough.”
She continued to play on the streets of London during the day and during night she’d performing in small clubs without getting paid, “I guess it was kinda tough financially but it didn’t matter, I didn’t have the kinda needs that most 16 year old girls have. I didn’t need to buy make-up and hair accessories or expensive clothes. I just needed food and water and I’d be fine.”
She then crafted her performances in as many clubs as possible, “It was almost every night performing in different clubs, sometimes to 6 people sometimes to 60 people and I did that until I was 18 years old.”
And things quickly changed in 2010, she was 18 years old and she had a small but supportive fanbase from clubs and was gaining some sort of interest from one or two local indie labels, “I didn’t get any offers but I got some label people showing interest in me which was good I guess.”
But in April 2010, she was spotted performing in a comedy club in London, she wasn’t doing stand up but she managed to tempt the owner to let her play a couple of songs, “I played the Hyena comedy club in South London and Danny Allen was in the audience, He saw me perform and met me backstage and he seemed a little bit too enthusiastic but he was great for me. He got me an audition with Junction Records which I failed, I turned up 20 minutes late and did a god awful cover of the Clash’s The Guns Of Brixton. I didn’t get signed to them but it created some interest, and there was this label, GrungeScornRecords and I think they signed Brittany Knox but then she decided to leave the label because the guy was like in prison or something, I got an offer to sign with his label, bare in mind that I didn’t really have anyone to advise me so I just signed the deal.”
But it didn’t really work out at GrungeScornRecords, “Once I signed I started work on my debut album, they backed me to the hill, they were great in that respect and everything was going fine, I released A Tender Kiss and it went to Number 2 and then I released the second single English Girls which went to number 4, I released the album which went to number 7 in the UK and I had become kinda succesfull. But the guy who signed me and the guy who ran the label was sent to prison and I didn’t know what to do, I spoke to a lawyer and it turns out that the contract wasn’t legit. So once the record went platinum I gave the money that the label had invested in me back to the guys in charge and I left. Luckily at that time the album had gone platinum and I could afford to do that otherwise it could have got pretty tricky for me.”
And then she wasn’t short of offers when it became apparent she was looking for a new record deal, “I had about 4 offers and I chose Hot Eye Records. They seemed more interested in the future rather than making a quick buck.”
And with a new record deal and a now a multi platinum debut album, Stacey seemed to be one of the stars of 2010, praised for her live performances and praised even more for her carefree nature and her attitude on the record industry, “I’m just as surprised as anyone that I’m actually liked, I’m not complaining though.”
Only last week her debut album The Sun Always Rises re-charted at number 1 and it was confirmed by her label that it has now sold over three and a half million copies worldwide.
And finally posed with one question, Is it good being Stacey Walton right now?, she responded pretty quickly, “Oh, it’s so fucking good.”
