Phil Ryan (musician)
Encyclopedia
Phil Ryan is a Welsh
Welsh people
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...

 keyboardist
Keyboardist
A keyboardist is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical instruments with keyboards have come into common usage, requiring a more...

 and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, best known for his work with Man
Man (band)
Man are a rock band from South Wales whose style is a mixture of West Coast psychedelia, progressive rock, blues and country-rock. Formed in 1968 as a reincarnation of Welsh rock harmony group ‘’The Bystanders’’, Man are renowned for the extended jams in their live performances, and having had...

 and Pete Brown
Pete Brown
Peter Ronald Brown is an English performance poet and lyricist.Best known for his collaborations with Jack Bruce, Brown also worked with The Battered Ornaments, formed his own group Pete Brown & Piblokto!, and worked with Graham Bond and Phil Ryan. Brown also writes film scores and formed a film...


Early career

Born in Port Talbot
Port Talbot
Port Talbot is a town in Neath Port Talbot, Wales. It had a population of 35,633 in 2001.-History:Port Talbot grew out of the original small port and market town of Aberafan , which belonged to the medieval Lords of Afan. The area of the parish of Margam lying on the west bank of the lower Afan...

, Ryan played trombone in the National Youth Orchestra, but his rock career started in 1964 when he joined Neath
Neath
Neath is a town and community situated in the principal area of Neath Port Talbot, Wales, UK with a population of approximately 45,898 in 2001...

 band The Smokestacks, which also featured vocalist Gary Pickford-Hopkins

Eyes of Blue

In 1966 Ryan and Hopkins joined with John Weathers
John Weathers
John Patrick 'Pugwash' Weathers is a drummer, best known for playing with the innovative progressive rock band Gentle Giant.-Early life:...

, Ray "Taff" Williams and other members of another Neath band, The Mustangs, to form The Eyes of Blue, who turned professional. They won the 1966 Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...

 Beat Contest, winning a one-year record contract, but had to record songs chosen for them, rather than their own material and neither of their singles, "Heart Trouble" / "Up And Down" and "Supermarket Full Of Cans" / "Don't Ask Me To Mend Your Broken Heart", sold well.

The Eyes moved from Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....

 to Mercury Records
Mercury Records
Mercury Records is a record label operating as a standalone company in the UK and as part of the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group in the US; both are subsidiaries of Universal Music Group. There is also a Mercury Records in Australia, which is a local artist and repertoire division of Universal...

 and recorded their first album Crossroads of Time in 1968, which was produced by Lou Reizner
Lou Reizner
Lou Reizner was a record producer, A&R executive and head of Mercury Records European operations. As a producer, he is perhaps best known for Rod Stewart's first two solo albums, for the orchestral version of The Who's rock opera Tommy, and Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Centre of the Earth...

. Reizner then used The Eyes as the backing band for American singer-songwriter Buzzy Linhart
Buzzy Linhart
Buzzy Linhart is an American rock performer and musician.Born William Linhart in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he began honing his craft playing percussion for symphony at the age of seven, switching to vibraphone at ten...

's album Buzzy. They collaborated with Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...

 on the score of the movie Toy Grabbers, some tracks of which appear on their second album In Fields of Ardath (1969) and they also appeared in the movie Connecting Rooms
Connecting Rooms
Connecting Rooms is a 1970 British drama film written and directed by Franklin Gollings. The screenplay is based on the play The Cellist by Marion Hart....

.

The band Strawberry Dust supported The Eyes; Weathers produced and co-wrote their album, Women & Children First (1970), on which Ryan played, although Reizner renamed the band Ancient Grease. Ryan also arranged the strings for Reizner on the Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...

's third self-titled album called either his 1971 album
Caetano Veloso (1971 album)
Caetano Veloso is the third self-titled album by Caetano Veloso. It was recorded in England, when the artist was in an exile imposed by the Brazilian government of the time for being subversive...

or A Little More Blue.

The Eyes of Blue’s third and final album, Bluebell Wood, was released under the pseudonym Big Sleep, and the band broke up shortly afterwards.

In 1970 Ryan and Weathers joined Pete Brown & Piblokto!
Pete Brown & Piblokto!
Pete Brown & Piblokto! were a British progressive rock band, active between 1969 and 1971, and formed by the former Cream lyricist Pete Brown, after he had been thrown out of his own band, Pete Brown and his Battered Ornaments, the day before they were due to support The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park...

 playing on one single, "Flying Hero Sandwich" / "My Last Band". When bassist Steve Glover broke his wrist, he was replaced bty Michael "Will" Youatt, and when Piblokto disbanded Ryan and Youatt joined Clive John, who had just left Man
Man (band)
Man are a rock band from South Wales whose style is a mixture of West Coast psychedelia, progressive rock, blues and country-rock. Formed in 1968 as a reincarnation of Welsh rock harmony group ‘’The Bystanders’’, Man are renowned for the extended jams in their live performances, and having had...

, in a short-lived venture called Iorworth Pritchard and the Neutrons.

Man

In April 1972 Ryan and Youatt joined Man, Clive John re-joined at the same time. The band recorded Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day
Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day
Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day is the seventh album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man.Issued just one month after the previous album, Live at the Padget Rooms, Penarth, it features a radically different line up...

which received good reviews. A party on 19 December 1972, with Dave Edmunds
Dave Edmunds
David 'Dave' Edmunds is a Welsh singer, guitarist and record producer. Although he is primarily associated with Pub rock and New Wave, and had numerous hits in the 1970s and early 1980s, his natural leaning has always been towards 1950s style rock and roll.-Early bands:As a teenager Edmunds first...

, Help Yourself
Help Yourself (band)
Help Yourself, known to their fans as "The Helps", were an English rock band of the early 1970s whose style developed from “American-flavoured country-rock… …to acid-drenched psych.”.-History:...

 and others, was issued as Christmas at the Patti
Christmas at the Patti
Christmas at the Patti is a live album, recorded at Man's Christmas party, held at the Patti Pavilion, Swansea, on 19 December 1972. 'The album features Man and Help Yourself with guests Deke Leonard, Dave Edmunds and B J Cole, together with appearances by Ducks Deluxe, The Jets, The Flying Aces...

, a double 10” album, which topped the “budget” album chart. Man then recorded the double album Back Into The Future
Back Into The Future
Back Into The Future is the ninth album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man. It was released in September 1973.It was originally issued as a double LP and was the first album recorded since the departure of Clive John...

, half in the studio, and half live at The Roundhouse
The Roundhouse
The Roundhouse is a Grade II* listed former railway engine shed in Chalk Farm, London, England, which has been converted into a performing arts and concert venue. It was originally built in 1847 as a roundhouse , a circular building containing a railway turntable, but was only used for railway...

. The album initially sold well, rising to No 23, and was tipped to be album that would make the band, but pressing was restricted by a lack of plastic during the oil crisis.

In November 1973 Ryan and Youatt tried a test recording with John Weathers
John Weathers
John Patrick 'Pugwash' Weathers is a drummer, best known for playing with the innovative progressive rock band Gentle Giant.-Early life:...

, which interested United Artists A&R
A&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...

 man, Andrew Lauder
Andrew Lauder (music executive)
Andrew Lauder is a record company executive and former A&R manager. Initially noted for his adventurous signings of bands as diverse as Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Can, Hawkwind and Brinsley Schwarz to Liberty Records and United Artists Records in the 1960s and 70s, he went on to form numerous...

. Ryan and Youatt left Man in December 1973.

Neutrons

To record the Neutrons first album Black Hole Star, Ryan and Youatt assembled several friends and former band-mates, including drummers John "Pugwash" Weathers
John Weathers
John Patrick 'Pugwash' Weathers is a drummer, best known for playing with the innovative progressive rock band Gentle Giant.-Early life:...

 (then with Gentle Giant
Gentle Giant
Gentle Giant were a British progressive rock band active between 1970 and 1980. The band was known for the complexity and sophistication of its music and for the varied musical skills of its members. All of the band members, except the first two drummers, were multi-instrumentalists...

), Dave Charles
Dave Charles
Dave Charles, also known as David Charles is a British drummer, recording engineer & record producer. He often appears under both names on the same album, e.g. Help Yourself's The Return of Ken Whaley, where Dave Charles is credited with drums and vocals and David Charles as producer.Charles'...

 and Pique Withers (later known as Pick Withers
Pick Withers
David "Pick" Withers was the original drummer for the rock band Dire Straits and played on their first four albums, which included hit singles such as "Sultans of Swing," "Romeo and Juliet" and "Private Investigations."...

); guitarists Martin Wallace and Ray "Taff" Williams, who had been in Eyes of Blue and Piblokto!, violinist Stuart Gordon (ex Incredible String Band
Incredible String Band
The Incredible String Band were a psychedelic folk band formed in Scotland in 1966. The band built a considerable following, especially within British counterculture, before splitting up in 1974...

) and vocalist Caromay Dixon.

Most of the album was recorded in April 1974 at Chipping Norton Studios, supplemented by the test tracks recorded the previous November. Released in September, 1974 Black Hole Star featured Neutrons’ logo, designed by Rick Griffin
Rick Griffin
Richard Alden Griffin was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters in the 1960s. As a contributor to the underground comix movement, his work appeared regularly in Zap Comix. Griffin was closely identified with the Grateful Dead, designing some of their best known...

, whilst the track "Mermaid And Chips" written when Ryan was with Piblokto! credits Pete Brown. The album spawned one single "Dance Of The Psychedelic Lounge Lizard"/"Suzy And The Wonder Boy", The A-side being dedicated to Graham Bond
Graham Bond
Graham John Clifton Bond was an English musician, considered a founding father of the English rhythm and blues boom of the 1960s....

, whilst the B side was not on the album, although it features Dave Edmunds
Dave Edmunds
David 'Dave' Edmunds is a Welsh singer, guitarist and record producer. Although he is primarily associated with Pub rock and New Wave, and had numerous hits in the 1970s and early 1980s, his natural leaning has always been towards 1950s style rock and roll.-Early bands:As a teenager Edmunds first...

 on slide guitar.

The second album Tales From The Blue Cocoons was released in April 1975. The performers were similar to the first album, except Weathers was replaced by Stuart Halliday and Stuart Gordon did not play. The title was a parody of those used by other Prog Rock bands, notably Yes
Yes (band)
Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets...

’s Tales From Topographic Oceans
Tales from Topographic Oceans
-2003 CD re-issue:A remastered edition was released in 2003, which restored a two-minute ambient section at the beginning of the album's first song. This section was deleted at the last minute before the album was originally pressed...

, and was chosen by Ryan as he liked the aerial photos of Woodstock, showing the fans in blue cocoon-like sleeping-bags.

Ryan and Youatt were having musical differences, so, unlike the first album, none of the tracks on the second were jointly written by the pair, whilst the uncredited “Welsh R Blunt” dates from when Ryan was in Piblokto! and had also been played, but not recorded, by Man
Man (band)
Man are a rock band from South Wales whose style is a mixture of West Coast psychedelia, progressive rock, blues and country-rock. Formed in 1968 as a reincarnation of Welsh rock harmony group ‘’The Bystanders’’, Man are renowned for the extended jams in their live performances, and having had...

.

Neutrons toured to promote the album, but Taff Williams left shortly after the start of the tour, so former Help Yourself
Help Yourself (band)
Help Yourself, known to their fans as "The Helps", were an English rock band of the early 1970s whose style developed from “American-flavoured country-rock… …to acid-drenched psych.”.-History:...

 guitarist Richard Treece stood in, but Neutrons had disbanded by July 1975.

Man Again

Ryan played on Clive John's solo album You Always Know Where You Stand With a Buzzard, and briefly started a solo project Road Of Cobras, before rejoining Man
Man (band)
Man are a rock band from South Wales whose style is a mixture of West Coast psychedelia, progressive rock, blues and country-rock. Formed in 1968 as a reincarnation of Welsh rock harmony group ‘’The Bystanders’’, Man are renowned for the extended jams in their live performances, and having had...

 in September 1975, along with bassist John McKenzie. One of the Road of Cobras tracks "Something is Happening" ended up on the next Man album The Welsh Connection
The Welsh Connection
The Welsh Connection is the eleventh album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man and was released on the MCA Records label 1976. It was their first MCA release, and the first after a change of line-up that saw John McKenzie take over on bass from Martin Ace, and Phil Ryan rejoin...

which reached No 40 in the UK Album Chart. Differences arose during the US tour to promote the album, and on the subsequent European tour Ryan and McKenzie announced they would be leaving, and the rest of the band agreed to call it a day. The MCA record deal was for 3 albums, but MCA eventually agreed to a live farewell album, All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1604 and 1605, and was originally published in the First Folio in 1623....

recorded at the Roundhouse
Roundhouse
A roundhouse is a building used by railroads for servicing locomotives. Roundhouses are large, circular or semicircular structures that were traditionally located surrounding or adjacent to turntables...

 on 11–13 December, although the final gig was in Slough on 16 December 1976.

Pete Brown

After Man's breakup, Ryan started working with Pete Brown
Pete Brown
Peter Ronald Brown is an English performance poet and lyricist.Best known for his collaborations with Jack Bruce, Brown also worked with The Battered Ornaments, formed his own group Pete Brown & Piblokto!, and worked with Graham Bond and Phil Ryan. Brown also writes film scores and formed a film...

 again and also toured with Gallagher & Lyle, including a 1978 BBC "In Concert" session,

Ryan continued to work with Brown despite moving to Denmark, where his wife Bolette came from. In the 1980s he wrote film scores, including one for the BBC with Pete Brown. They collaborated for 12 years, and Brown formed his own label Interoceter, which issued two Pete Brown/Phil Ryan albums: Ardours of the Lost Rake and Coals to Jerusalem. They began touring in 1993, and a compilation of the two albums was issued on CD as The Land That Cream Forgot.

A new Brown/Ryan album Road of Cobras, including Maggie Bell, Arthur Brown, Mick Taylor and Jim Mullen, is due for release in May 2010, meanwhile Ryan and Brown have been
acting as producers for soul artist Andriah.

Man Yet Again

Ryan rejoined Man
Man (band)
Man are a rock band from South Wales whose style is a mixture of West Coast psychedelia, progressive rock, blues and country-rock. Formed in 1968 as a reincarnation of Welsh rock harmony group ‘’The Bystanders’’, Man are renowned for the extended jams in their live performances, and having had...

 in 1996, playing on the albums 1998 At The Star Club
1998 at the Star Club
1998 At The Star Club is a live album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man recorded 27 March 1998 at the Star Club in Oberhausen in West Germany...

(1998) and Endangered Species
Endangered Species (Man album)
Endangered Species is a studio album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man and was released in September 2000.-Track listing:# "Conflict of Interest" – 7:54# "Stuck Behind the Popemobile" – 7:33...

(2000), before leaving again in 2001, to look after his wife, who was terminally ill.
Ryan rejoined Man in 2007, remaining with the band when it split in 2008 and playing on the Kingdom of Noise
Kingdom of Noise
Kingdom of Noise is a studio album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man and was released 9 June 2009.-Track listing:# "Shadow of the Hand" – 5:53# "Steal the World" – 4:18# "Iceflowers" – 4:46...

album (2009). He remains in the band to date.

Discography

With The Eyes of Blue
Crossroads of Time (1968)

In Fields of Ardath (1969)

Bluebell Wood (1971) (issued under the pseudonym Big Sleep)

With Buzzy Linhart
Buzzy (1969)

With Ancient Grease
Women and Children First (1970)

With Pete Brown
Pete Brown
Peter Ronald Brown is an English performance poet and lyricist.Best known for his collaborations with Jack Bruce, Brown also worked with The Battered Ornaments, formed his own group Pete Brown & Piblokto!, and worked with Graham Bond and Phil Ryan. Brown also writes film scores and formed a film...

 and others
"Flying Hero Sandwich" / "My Last Band" Pete Brown & Piblokto!
Pete Brown & Piblokto!
Pete Brown & Piblokto! were a British progressive rock band, active between 1969 and 1971, and formed by the former Cream lyricist Pete Brown, after he had been thrown out of his own band, Pete Brown and his Battered Ornaments, the day before they were due to support The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park...



Things May Come and Things May Go But the Art School Dance Goes on Forever Pete Brown & Piblokto!
Pete Brown & Piblokto!
Pete Brown & Piblokto! were a British progressive rock band, active between 1969 and 1971, and formed by the former Cream lyricist Pete Brown, after he had been thrown out of his own band, Pete Brown and his Battered Ornaments, the day before they were due to support The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park...

 (only on re-release that includes above single)

My Last Band (1977) Pete Brown & Piblokto/Pete Brown & His Battered Ornaments (only on above single)

Party in the Rain (1983) Pete Brown & Ian Lynn

Land That Cream Forgot (1996) Pete Brown & Phil Ryan

Coals to Jerusalem (2003) Pete Brown & Phil Ryan

Ardours of the Lost Rake (2003) Pete Brown & Phil Ryan

With John St. Field (Jackie Leven
Jackie Leven
Jackie Leven was a Scottish songwriter and folk musician. After starting his career as a folk musician in the late 1960s, he first found success with new wave band Doll by Doll...

)
Control (1971)

With Man
Man (band)
Man are a rock band from South Wales whose style is a mixture of West Coast psychedelia, progressive rock, blues and country-rock. Formed in 1968 as a reincarnation of Welsh rock harmony group ‘’The Bystanders’’, Man are renowned for the extended jams in their live performances, and having had...


Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day
Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day
Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day is the seventh album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man.Issued just one month after the previous album, Live at the Padget Rooms, Penarth, it features a radically different line up...

(1972)

Christmas at the Patti
Christmas at the Patti
Christmas at the Patti is a live album, recorded at Man's Christmas party, held at the Patti Pavilion, Swansea, on 19 December 1972. 'The album features Man and Help Yourself with guests Deke Leonard, Dave Edmunds and B J Cole, together with appearances by Ducks Deluxe, The Jets, The Flying Aces...

(1973)

Back Into The Future
Back Into The Future
Back Into The Future is the ninth album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man. It was released in September 1973.It was originally issued as a double LP and was the first album recorded since the departure of Clive John...

(1973)

The Welsh Connection
The Welsh Connection
The Welsh Connection is the eleventh album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man and was released on the MCA Records label 1976. It was their first MCA release, and the first after a change of line-up that saw John McKenzie take over on bass from Martin Ace, and Phil Ryan rejoin...

(1976)

All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1604 and 1605, and was originally published in the First Folio in 1623....

(1977)

Rare Man (1999)

Live at the Rainbow 1972 (1999)

1998 At The Star Club
1998 at the Star Club
1998 At The Star Club is a live album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man recorded 27 March 1998 at the Star Club in Oberhausen in West Germany...

 
(1999)

Endangered Species
Endangered species
An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...

(2000)

Keep on Crinting: The Liberty/UA Years Anthology (2006)

Live at the Keystone Berkeley, 9 August 1976 (2008)

Kingdom of Noise
Kingdom of Noise
Kingdom of Noise is a studio album by the Welsh progressive rock band Man and was released 9 June 2009.-Track listing:# "Shadow of the Hand" – 5:53# "Steal the World" – 4:18# "Iceflowers" – 4:46...

(2009)

With Neutrons
Black Hole Star (1974) (United Artists UAG 29652)

Tales From the Blue Cocoons (1975) (United Artists UAG 29726) (reissued as a pair(BGOCD 598)in 2003)

With Clive John
You Always Know Where You Stand With a Buzzard (1975)

With The Flying Aces
Seashell (2002)
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