One particular kind of pop star flourished in the early 1980s and, for some reason, continued to do so for forty more years without anyone really keeping an eye on their finances. Among them is Nick Heyward. Ask the internet what he’s worth and you’ll get a shrug dressed up as a number somewhere between one and three million dollars, depending on which aggregator site you trust, and frankly none of them seem to be working from real documents. The reality might be more complex and fascinating than any of those numbers indicate.
Since the company filing is the only tangible document in the entire narrative, start with it. His registered business entity, NICK HEYWARD LIMITED, has at different times displayed a net worth in the negative minus £4,425 in one summary, with approximately £14,000 in cash against approximately £15,600 in current liabilities. A man sitting on a fortune would not have that balance sheet. It’s not the whole picture, and anyone who has examined how musicians set up their businesses knows that the limited company is frequently merely a minor administrative tool rather than the actual location of a career’s worth. The songs themselves, the catalog, and publishing are where the real money in music is found.
| Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Nicholas Heyward |
| Date of Birth | 20 May 1961 |
| Birthplace | Beckenham, Kent, England |
| Profession | Singer-songwriter, guitarist |
| Known For | Lead singer of Haircut 100; solo career |
| Active Since | 1980 |
| Notable Albums | Pelican West (1982), North of a Miracle (1983), Woodland Echoes (2017) |
| Record Labels | Arista, Warner, Sony, Creation, independent |
| Estimated Net Worth | Roughly $1–3 million |
It’s all about the songs. In 1981 and 1982, Haircut 100’s four UK Top 10 singles “Favourite Shirts”, “Love Plus One”, “Nobody’s Fool”, “Fantastic Day”, and *Pelican West* went platinum, peaked at number two domestically, and crept onto the US chart at number thirty-one. In particular, “Love Plus One” never truly disappeared. It continues to appear in movies, advertisements, and supermarket backgrounds. Each placement is a tiny check. Even if it never makes the news, you can get something genuine by stacking forty years’ worth of tiny checks.
This is what makes the math more difficult. After that debut album, Heyward left Haircut 100. Those arrangements tend to haunt people, as do the publishing splits from that era and the way young bands carved up credits before anyone had a lawyer worthy of the name. Unlike the other members of the band or the labels, it’s still unclear how much of the Haircut 100’s success actually went to him over the years. He was only twenty years old. Twenty-year-olds sign documents.
A different financial story quieter but perhaps more stable is told by a solo career. Produced by Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, *North of a Miracle* in 1983 received the kind of critical acclaim that keeps a name alive but doesn’t pay rent. After that, there was a lengthy run through the 1990s *From Monday to Sunday* *Tangled*, with “Kite” peaking at number four on the US Billboard Modern Rock chart. He went back and forth between Arista, Warner, Sony, and finally Creation, where Alan McGee signed him practically as a fan’s indulgence thanks to his wealth from Oasis. Heyward would likely concur that he was always a little out of step with the machinery of the industry.
It’s remarkable how blatantly he’s abandoned the pursuit. His seventh solo album, *Woodland Echoes*, was partially crowdfunded in 2017, and he has stated that he would gladly do it again. Instead of pursuing the big breakthrough, that man has come to terms with a modest, sustainable model. He now releases his own music. No meetings for A&R. There was no suit dictating what he should become. It’s difficult to interpret that as less of an artistic choice and more of a financial one.
The rest is filled in by the personal information. He divides his time between his family in the UK, where he stays with his daughter in Sheffield and his son works as a recording engineer in Zak Starkey’s studio, and his fiancée Sara’s home in Florida. A man with a mansion and a tax issue wouldn’t have that footprint. It’s a modest, comfortable life for a working musician centered around a band he’s played with for twenty-five years.
What is the true value of Nick Heyward, then? The truth is that, given how those early hits continue to make money, the catalogue suggests much more, the company filing suggests little, and the public figures are guesses. For the past few years, investors in music catalogs have been shelling out huge sums of money for precisely this kind of backlist. Heyward claims he files his own music away rather than hanging it on the wall, so it’s possible that his true wealth lies in songs he doesn’t give much thought to. You get the impression from watching him talk about being “ecstatically happy” that the net worth question would make him laugh a little. In order to avoid precisely this kind of accounting, he quit his job in 1977.
i) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/fame-fortune/nick-heyward-fan-left-10000-will-liked-songs/
ii) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Heyward
iii) https://musicrepublicmagazine.com/2018/05/nick-heyward-tried-everything-not-famous/html