3:51pm Wednesday 31st March 2010

An article about Matt Davis !!! Thank you Anne Marie to find it !!!!!!

FOLLOWERS of local politics will know Matt Davis as the outspoken leader of the Conservatives on Waltham Forest Council.

But many are not aware that the 47-year-old politician has toured music venues all over the world with some of the biggest names in rock and his current day job is managing singer Bonnie Tyler, who is best known for her 80s hits Holding Out for A Hero and Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Mr Davis grew up in Ilford and attended Bancroft's School in Woodford Green, and as a teenager developed a fondness for live music and politics which has stayed with him throughout his life.

He said: “I loved the energy and urgency of gigs, there is nothing else quite like it.”

Although Mr Davis played guitar in a briefly-signed punk outfit called The Alsatians, it was his organisational abilities and technical know-how which were to stand him in good stead.

Mr Davis was a left-winger in his youth and organised concerts for the Trades Union Congress as well as putting on concerts in parks for East London Rock Against Racism.

At the age of just 21, he put together and promoted a compilation of music by well-known artists including George Harrison, Queen and Depeche Mode for Greenpeace, who he was working for at the time.

He said: “We made £1m from the sales of the compilation and Greenpeace put a monument to me in the Antarctic.”

Mr Davis later joined a company which transports and sets up music equipment, with keyboards being his speciality.

He toured with the likes of Aerosmith, Lulu and Frankie Goes to Hollywood and was the stage production manager for the MTV Europe awards before working for Alison Moyet.

He and the rest of the crew then started working for Bonnie Tyler, shortly before she became the first western artist to tour the Soviet Union.

Bonnie and the crew toured Moscow, Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and Vilnius in Lithuania on a six-week tour, during which he met his one-time wife Mascha.

Mr Davis said: “The Soviet Union was a drab, depressing place and the hotel we stayed in was awful. Russia is better now.”

He is now Bonnie's manager and a close friend of the Welsh singer and her husband Robert.

He said: “She is still the same down to earth welsh housewife that she was when she had her first hit, despite making £80m. "

"She is very personable and cares about people, including her fans. "

"Her music is popular all across Europe, especially in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Scandinavia."

“I was in to music and politics at an early age and I still am, and now I work in both, I am very lucky really.”

Souces : this is local London