Rod Smallwood

Rod Smallwood is an English music manager from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. He is known for co-managing Iron Maiden with notable Rock & Roll entrepreneur Andy Taylor in a long standing business partnership that formed while they were both studying at Trinity College, Cambridge

Smallwood heard Iron Maiden’s demo, the Soundhouse Tapes in 1979 and the duo where monumentally instrumental in steering the band toward Heavy Metal super stardom. Smallwood and Taylor established the Sanctuary Records Group which was the largest independent record label in the United Kingdom until 2007.

Interestingly, in his early days as a manager in the 1970s, he represented Steve Harley and the Cockney Rebel, but they did not have a pleasant relationship. After his company and Harley had parted ways, withheld that Harley almost caused him leave the management field for good, several years before he would have received the Soundhouse Tapes.

The members of Iron Maiden referred to him affectionately as the “Sheriff of Huddersfield” in the 1986 song by the same name as a dig toward his miserly and curmudgeonly behaviors towards his move to LA, and again in an untitled, unlisted hidden track on UK only versions of the 1992 single Be Quick or Be Dead consisting of an 8 minute long recording of Bruce Dickinson doing an impression of an enraged Smallwood.