Barry Ryan: The Albums 1969-1979

‘Barry Ryan: The Albums 1969-1979’ presents a definitive anthology of Barry Ryan’s music. This comprehensive compilation includes his five Polydor studio albums, as well as rare non-LP recordings and late ’70s tracks from other labels. Overseen by St. Etienne’s Bob Stanley, over half of the tracks are now available on CD for the first time.

After stepping away from the limelight of their brotherly duo, Paul Ryan shifted his focus to songwriting for Barry. Remarkably, the second song he penned during this transition became a chart-topping sensation: ‘Eloise’. This opulent orchestral pop masterpiece not only conquered the charts but also found a place on his equally opulent debut solo album, ‘Barry Ryan Sings Paul Ryan’. In Barry’s April 2017 Strange Brew interview he explained:

“Well, he didn’t have any rules to break. That was the lovely thing. He was not academically musical. It was not a craft he learnt. He just sat at a piano, painted the keys different colours so he could remember them and got writing. That’s what I loved about it.

I remember, before ‘Eloise’ we went to Richard Harris’ house to one of his mad parties and he played ‘MacArthur Park’ to me and Paul. He’d got a rough mix of it. I always remember Paul listening to it, Jason. I can always remember seeing his face. I could see something on his face and he was thinking “I’ve got to do something like this.” He just loved it. He actually locked himself away and wrote ‘Eloise’.“

This streak of success extended to his self-titled follow-up album, which prominently featured Barry’s favorite song of Paul’s, ‘The Hunt’:

“If I sat down for a hundred years I’d never write anything as original or wonderful as that. It’s a great song.”

‘Barry Ryan 3′ brought in some outside writers, of note being the first release of Cat Stevens’ ‘Wild World’. But it was Paul’s ‘Kitsch’ which repeated the succesful formula of his previous albums hits. Barry:

“That’s another big song. Bit mad as well. Great lyrics. Anyone that can write about steak and lovely wine and prawn cocktails in a song…. If you can get that in a song can’t be bad. I thought ‘Kitsch’ was good fun.”

By the time of 1971’s ‘Red Man’ LP, chart success in his homeland was waning but he retained a strong following in the European continent. Paul’s ‘All Thoughts Of Time’ would have fitted neatly on a Bond soundtrack, indicating the beauty crafted in this brotherly partnership.

The following year, ‘Sanctus, Sanctus Hallelujah’ only saw a release in the German album racks. By now Scottish group The Verge backed him with the material written with them showcasing a heavy 1970s rock sound typified by ‘Storm is Brewing’. This led to differences with Polydor. Barry:

“I had total rows with them. Eventually they did release them in dribs and drabs. It was a direction that I wanted to go in musically and I was very happy with that but the record company, as usual, didn’t really want to know.”

From the mid-70s Paul was restricted to singles, with a self-penned album on the Private Stock label unjustly laying on the shelves until this collection. The Brothers Gibb echoing ‘Give It All’ emphasises Barry’s blossoming talent as a songwriter. But by 1978 Barry exited the music industry:

“The hits weren’t coming any more. I was drinking a lot. I was a bit sort of bonkers at the time, I was slightly off the rails and I thought I’d had enough of this and I discovered photography and I just loved it and, being an addictive kind of person, I just put everything into my photography and let the music drift by, which is a bit sad really. I didn’t sing for years…”

By the late 1980s Barry made limited returns but in 1992, Paul died aged just 44. When I spoke to Barry in 2017, four years before he passed away, he was rightly proud to speak about the material that is collected in this superb box set:

“It’s never been a chore for me to talk about the stuff I’ve done with our kid because some of it I’ve loved and it’s my life… it’s been my life to do that. It’s always been a pleasure.”