Bring Me The Horizon lawyer Pete Bott on his move back North and getting bands to think like businesses

“I realised my passion for music and my experience of being a performer and a writer could be really useful to people,” he tells The Yorkshire Post. "Having come through it I have been able to pass advice and information back to a newer generation of artists and hopefully navigate their way through it.”

Following seven years in London at specialist firm Sound Advice (Legal) LLP, he has recently returned to Yorkshire as a partner at Leeds-based Blacks Solicitors, where he is heading its new music law arm.

It is the latest chapter in a career that has been driven by his lifelong love of music. Originally from Scotland, Bott came to Yorkshire in 2001 to study Music at the University of Leeds. While in Yorkshire, he became lead singer and guitarist in Heads We Dance, a band whose line up also included his future wife Becky.

They got signed to 679, an arm of Warner Music Group whose other performers included well-established alternative acts like The Streets, The Futureheads and Mystery Jets. But the band’s hopes of following in those footsteps did not come to pass.

Bott explains: "We were on a development deal, recorded some demos, did lots of shows and put out some single releases. The first one sold out and everything seemed quite promising but as is so often the case, the person signed us left the label and the person who came in wasn’t into what we were doing so we just got dropped.

"I think that was was of the most important experiences I’ve had, realising how fragile a career in music can be. You can go from thinking we might have made it to feeling the rug has been pulled from under you.

"It coincided with us all having plans to do different things and we just decided we wanted to call it a day.”

In his late 20s at the time, Bott decided it was time to pursue an entirely different career path. He went back to Leeds University to do a Masters in Law followed by a Legal Practice Course and then joined Blacks Solicitors as a trainee.

Bott initially steered away from work linked to the music and creative worlds but encouraged by senior colleagues came to realise his past experiences gave him some unique insights.

"I realised the experiences I had as a musician were not unique. A career can have many ups and downs and you could make decisions without fully understanding their impact. In the industry, it is quite complex in terms of rights and various different stakeholders.”

He began to do work for Yorkshire rock band Bring Me The Horizon, who were in the middle of an upward trajectory that would see them go on to top British album charts, sell millions of records around the world and headline the famous Reading and Leeds music festivals.

Bott explains: "Probably a year or so after I qualified I started working for Bring Me The Horizon, who were a fairly well-known band at the time but not what they are now.

"That was really the opportunity for me to put everything behind it and that ultimately led me to leave Leeds and move down to London to work for a specialist music law firms and be at the coalface.”

Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes is famously entrepreneurial –with a Drop Dead Clothing fashion brand and his arcade bar Church in Sheffield among his business interests.

While not disclosing the nature of his work with Bring Me The Horizon and other acts, Bott says the band are among many that understand external help is required to make a long-term success of their operations.

"It goes against the grain of what bands might think of themselves but ultimately bands are owner-managed businesses. It gets to a stage where professional support is required whether that is lawyers or accountants or whatever.”

Bott says he loved his time in London and learnt a great deal from it.

"I worked with some very experienced lawyers on some very exciting projects. I did work for some household names assisting their long-standing lawyers, I did work in-house for publishers and worked on big deals for brand-new artists.”

But having started back at Blacks last autumn, Bott says he is enjoying building the firm’s presence in the area of music law. He says musicians are generally open to seeing their bands in business terms.

"Increasingly because of the various issues of making income from music and more traditional sources, people are branching off into brand partnerships and all sorts of different things.

"I think it helps with my background because I’m a music person through and through. I know how it feels to write a song and release a song and stand on a stage and be on a tour bus and be talking to record labels. Ultimately, you are never going to have any type of career if the music is poor.

"When I have my initial chats with clients, I will always ask them, what is it you want to get out of this? There are some artists who will say I want to be a stadium-level global superstar but others will say I want to make incredible art and so long as it pays the bills, that works for me.”

He adds of his return to Blacks: "I’m very much looking to grow the offering here. I hope to come back to the North and continue what I’m doing for existing clients but also to be someone based in the North who can help artists in the North.”