Paul Ryan (ex-Damascus): Tales of a Rock and Roll Mercenary

Damascus, the NWOBHM act from Liverpool, is mostly known for their EP “Open Your Eyes”. In 2012 the EP was reissued by High Roller Records (under the moniker “Cold Horizon”) with the addition of some archival stuff. Matthias Mader provided an awesome article about the band’s history from the years of formation up to 1984. But the band carried on after 1984 and recorded a great demo which hasn’t been officially reissued yet. “Axe Crazy” got in touch with drummer Paul Ryan who provided a lot of interesting stories about his time with Damascus, the rock scene of Liverpool in the first half of the 80’s as well as about his very successful career with The Muffin Men (a tribute band to Frank Zappa) and Bullyrag.

RUSSIAN VERSION

What was the rock scene in Liverpool like back in the day? Which clubs outside Eric’s supported rock bands?

There were quite a few gigs for rock bands around Liverpool, many of the punk clubs were still open but the scene had all but disappeared. Eric’s shut down in 1980 so I was just a bit too young to play the original club. Brady’s opened on the same site but it only lasted a year. Mathew Street was a bit of a dump back in those days, The Cavern closed in ’73 and the new club, wouldn’t reopen until ’84, on a slightly different site about 20 yards further up Mathew Street. The only other pub there was The Grapes, a tiny little place that for some reason wasn’t allowed to play music at all, it didn’t even have a Juke box. The other side of town had a couple of clubs, The Warehouse and Night Riders. These were dedicated rock venues, many bands played their first gig at The Masonic on Berry Street.  Damascus would play all the Liverpool venues, as well as The Lion in Warrington, The Cherry Tree in Runcorn and Stairways in Birkenhead. Stairways was well named; all the equipment had to be lugged up a fire escape three storeys high. For some reason, every time we played there it pissed down with rain.

Was Damascus your first professional band or were you already experienced musician?

My dad was a drummer as were three of my brothers. The eldest of these, (John) was manager of legendary music shop, Hessys, the shop where The Beatles bought their first guitars, and he was well in with all the bands around Liverpool. If a band needed a dep drummer the first call was always to our house and it was whichever brother got to the phone first who got the gig.

I started off playing with mates in original bands when I was 14—15, heavily influenced by post punk bands like Joy Division, A Certain Ratio and The Bunnymen etc. but I soon got dragged into playing with covers bands where I could get paid for playing. I played with loads of covers bands, usually gigging seven nights a week. The music was usually pretty crap but it gave me a great chance to get my chops together. These gigs were more about getting paid and laid and nothing to do with musical integrity whatsoever.

When and how did you hear of Damascus for the first time? Why did you decide to join this band? What were your thoughts of their EP “Open Your Eyes”?

Domestos (as they became known across Liverpool, after Britain’s favourite brand of bleach) had a few hundred posters printed up of the single’s front cover, a fluorescent green picture of Billy Downes’ face with the eyes filled in white, looked like something from a horror movie. These were plastered all over town. Great publicity, everyone knew who they were.

In the early 80’s I was a bit of a mercenary, playing with any band who’d pay me. I’d never refuse a gig as I’d always prefer to be working that not. As I was playing with so many bands doing lots of different stuff I got a bit of a reputation as a half decent player. I was playing regular gigs with some mates in a band called The Munchies, doing some pretty obscure Floyd and Zappa songs in the set. One of the guys in the band Roddie was a graduate of the local music college, Mabel Fletcher’s. Dave Bridge studied there around the same time and I think Roddie may have put my name forward for Damascus. I loved the E.P. and I was well up for the gig. I wasn’t really into rock, I was more into soul, particularly Prince in the days before he was famous. I did enjoy playing rock though, and I had the rock long hair and an insolent pouting rictus. Damascus had some really good tunes. I felt they were old school in their approach, I couldn’t be doing with the new crop of 80’s rock poodles with hairdos and funny shaped guitars, and I hated any band with the new digital keyboards like DX7s or M1s. I’ve always been a lover of analogue sounds, and as few effects as possible.

I still think that early Sabbath, Purple and Zep stuff is a short step away from early Funkadelic. Zep stole mercilessly from Blues and Soul, only ever crediting Otis Redding on “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”, even though their version is nothing like his. I love Paul Rogers’ voice and Andy Fraser’s bass playing, again, more soul than rock. Funny, Damascus wouldn’t allow me to take part in interviews in case I let slip that I was really into Prince!! They’d tell everyone I was heavily into Dio and kept rats in my bedroom!

Mark 1 of Sliced Bread

What are your best memories about other bands from Liverpool like Rage, Marseille and others? Would you say that Damascus were the best one among them?

Before I joined Damascus, as a bit of a kid playing in bands round Liverpool I thought I was much better than I was in reality. Playing in town one night me and my mates stumbled into a pub called The Cumberland Tavern in the city centre. There was a band on called Sliced Bread and I was completely blown away by them. This was a proper band, made up of Dave Lloyd and Keith Mulholland from Nutz and Rage, and Steve Morris and Lou Rosenthal from Export. (The original lineup featured Nutz drummer John Mylett and bass guitarist Dave Dover who played with Eric Burdon.) The beauty of these fellas was that they encouraged young players to get up and have a go. They knew my brother John from Hessys so I was well in with them from the start. These were great players and I ended up playing with them for many years in several different bands. I still gig regularly with Keith and Dave Dover, and I’m good mates with all the other guys. Steve Morris, Lloydo and Mull toured with Garth Rocket and The Moonshiners. Thanks to Steve I got to do some recording with Gillan in the mid 90’s. There was talk of Gillan going out on a solo tour around that time, and my name was in the frame for the drummer’s job, but instead Purple got back together, and are still on the road.

Nutz were running a club in town called Nightriders, and they always encouraged young bands to play there. They later ran a club called The Warehouse which had loads of top notch bands play, including Damascus.

I remember some great bands around that time, Gran Torino and Quest were always on at the same venues as Damascus. Brian Dixon, drummer for Torino now plays with Cathedral.

How come that on the second pressing of the EP you an Kevin Duncalf were credited as members instead of Mike Booth and Bill Campion? Wasn’t there any bad blood between the band and the ex-members about that matter?

There was never any ill feeling from either Billy or Dave towards Bill C and Mike as far as I was aware. I think the feeling was that the rhythm section just didn’t feel right at that time and they wanted new blood. I remember one of the guys had a really good job with the BBC and would have been unwilling to quit if the band really took off — which they always expected and really believed would happen!

You recorded three songs with the band: “Fight Or Flight”, “This Is It” and “Predator”. Where and how were they recorded? Was it a one-day affair or did you hit the studio once you had time to record the tracks?

We did several demos in a little studio on the Dock Road in Liverpool. We were always rehearsing and gigged quite regularly, so we were able to hit the studio and play the majority of tracks live, with vocal overdubs later. They were very much demos though. As time’s gone on bands seemed to want to produce stuff that was ready for release, bit pointless in my eyes. It’s a demo for a reason – it demonstrates what the band is capable of. Whichever record company picks the band up would likely want a producer to get the songs to sound a certain way anyway, so being overly precious about what goes on in the studio is a waste of time and money, I always thought.

Damascus were a great live band but I don’t think that sound has ever been caught on the releases or any of the demos I was involved in. I think, as we were all showmen the lack of an audience may have been a factor. We all like to show off a little bit and it’s no good if there’s no one to impress other than three hairy arse musos and a sound engineer!

Can you recall anything about the songwriting process in the band? Were the songs mentioned above already written when you joined Damascus? I’m especially interested in the song “This Is It”. It’s so great and well-written! So was it written by someone from the band alone or did you work on the songs during rehearsals adding new pieces here and there?

Dave was very much the musical director in the band and Billy was the lyricist. They’d take suggestions from me and Kev, but I don’t think we could claim to have had a great deal of influence or input into the songwriting process.

Dave is classically trained — he had a guitar shop and gave classical lessons for many years, so he knows his craft inside and out. He’d orchestrate some really clever arrangements for the songs. Billy would write lyrics at the drop of a hat. He’d come up with stuff during rehearsal or in the van on the way to gigs, he’s one of these guys who always seems to be singing whatever he was doing. He’s got a great voice that can fill any room.

How can you describe your relationships with Billy Downs, Dave Bridge and Kevin Duncalf back in the day? Was it “we against the world” mentality?

As a band we always got along really well, usually a load of banter going on between us all, slagging each other off. We didn’t really care about what other bands were doing, we just got on with doing our own thing and really enjoyed it.

Why did you decide to use some of the older songs on the demo which were recorded with Mike Booth and Bill Campion?

I thought that was a strange decision as well. Considering that Kev and I played pretty much what Mike and Bill played on the original, and we had a lot less time in a less well equipped studio (I think the originals were recorded at Amazon studios, which was used by all the major acts) Given more time we could have put our own stamp on the tracks but they ended up pretty much as facsimiles of the originals.

What was the response on the demo from fans? Did you shop the demo to labels?

The demos were only really give away at gigs, maybe we gave some to Penny Lane Records, I’m not too sure. Their purpose was to attract record and publishing companies in the hope that we could get signed and maybe get on a tour with a big name.

Were Damascus even close to sign a deal with any label? How do you think why didn’t the band make it to a full-length album?

We convinced ourselves that we weren’t getting signed because the record industry was run, (we believed) predominantly, by Jewish guys. At that time in the 1980s Israel was at war with Syria. There may be a grain of truth in this as record companies may not have wished to piss off any faction involved in the middle east conflict.

Damascus were a great live act and we did have some record company interest, though it never amounted to anything. I think we were a bit too old school for that time, brightly coloured Spandex and big hair were the order of the day in the mid 80s. We were very much still into black leather jackets. We didn’t jump onto the digital bandwagon, we were very much a four piece rock band, I think if we introduced one of those horrible first generation of digital keyboards it would have sounded awful.

Would you agree that with the new songs the band moved to a slightly heavier direction but still had very strong Bad Company vibe? Were there other songs which weren’t recorded but which you worked on and rehearsed at the time?

He’ll probably deny it but Billy Downes was a fan of soul music too, as well as the old school rock sound. I think Paul Rogers has a classic soul voice, which Billy was capable of matching. I think his favourite vocalist at that time was Ronny James Dio, The Poison Dwarf!!

We were always working on new material and I’m sure Dave has got a load more stuff ready to be arranged and recorded.

There is almost no info about the band’s activity from 1984 to 1986. Tell us please everything you can recall from that era! Did you play live that much? Did you get a chance to support any bigger band brian dixon in Liverpool or during national tour?

We did pretty much all the gigs on the UK circuit around that time, with a particularly memorable visit to South Wales for a couple of days. We used to have two girls who danced with the band – dead fit! We convinced the guy that did our lighting, Lee Forde, to take us in his van on the 400 mile round trip with the promise of sex and drug riddled debauchery. We didn’t tell him that the girls weren’t going, and the closest we ever got to any form of substance abuse was overdosing on strawberry flavoured Chewits!

I can’t recall Damascus playing support to anyone, though I could be wrong on that. I’m pretty sure Kev Duncalf would give you chapter and verse on where we played, who with and when. I’m afraid I was normally too busy trying to chat up the local girlies!

Why did you quit Damascus eventually? Was it because the whole band split-up or did you decide to pursue some other things? What did you do between 1986 and 1992 when you joined Bullyrag?

I think we just ran out of steam in the end and I went back to gigging with pub bands around Liverpool. There was never any animosity or acrimony between us, and I still enjoy the too rare occasions when I bump into any of the boys.

In 1990 I was part of a project to play a one off gig to celebrate Frank Zappa’s 50^th birthday. The Muffin Men were made up of a group of local musos who’d played together around the city throughout the 80s. Tribute bands were almost unheard of back then, I think there was us, The Bootleg Beatles and Aussie Floyd. The Australian Doors came along a bit later. The gig was a great success and we were asked to do a few gigs in Holland and Germany. 28 years on, this “one off gig” has turned into several thousand.

We’ve been lucky to work with many Zappa alumni; The Mothers’ original drummer Jimmy Carl Black was with the band for many years, he played with The Muffinz longer than he did with The Mothers. Jim became a very close friend. Jim died in 2008, we hope to do something special to commemorate his life this year on his tenth anniversary. Ike Willis, who was Zappa’s guitarist and lead vocalist on several abums and tours toured with the band soon after Frank’s death. Over the past seven years we’ve toured Europe and Scandinavia with Denny Walley, who played with Captain Beefheart as well as FZ. Others who’ve played with us — Ray White, Robert Martin, Ed Mann, Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, Mike Keneally, Craig Steward. We also played with Candy Zappa and her husband Nolan Porter at Zappanale, an annual Zappa festival held in Bad Doberan in Germany. 

In 2001 the band recorded and played several special performances with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s 10:10 Ensemble, including Glastonbury Festival. We’ve released over 20 CDs and four DVDs featuring our versions of Zappa tunes, as well as one album of original material. I left for a couple of years to do Bullyrag in 1992…

The Muffin Men, 2017

Tell me about your time with Bullyrag. What was the idea of this band? Was it your response to grunge?

Bullyrag was something of a rollercoaster ride that could fill several pages. Another of my brothers had worked with their bass guitarist in the 80s and my name was put forward for the gig. The singer Robert was a black guy, Mike, the bass guitarist was Chinese and me and the guitarist, Stuart, were white. The material was drawn from all our musical influences, rock, funk, soul, punk, reggae. It was really powerful and a great live show. This was the early nineties and most of the bands around at that time were either miserable shoe gazers or trippy acid house nonsense. We had massive interest from record companies, but we didn’t want to go through the usual rigmarole of setting up gigs that A&R reps might or might not grace us with their presence. We made all the companies come up to Liverpool and pay us for the privilege of hearing us play at our rehearsal rooms. They all went for it and there was a queue wanting to sign us up. Chris Blackwell of Island Records wanted to hear us but was busy recording with Grace Jones at his studio in Miami Beach. He couldn’t come to England so he flew us over to play for him. Fine times! Unfortunately, the guitarist got himself a bit of a habit and became a total tool. We were constantly fighting and arguing. I quit in ’94 and went back to The Muffin Men. Four years later they signed to Mercury Records and Sony Music publishing, but their stuff was no longer as fresh as it was. They made one album and disappeared without trace.

What you are up to these days? What kind of music do you listen to? Do you still play with any band?

I still play with a couple of bands in pubs & clubs around Liverpool. I’ve also worked with Mike McCartney, Paul’s brother in The Scaffold.

My main gig is still with Zappa tribute band The Muffin Men. As well as a couple of years off to do the Bullyrag thing, I left for a few years to start a family and go to university in 1999. I came back in 2005 and I’m still doing it

We’ve got a Youtube channel if you’d like to have a look at some of our work, and please come and say hello on our Facebook page.

High Roller Records re-released the EP and some of the early records of Damascus but not those songs which were recorded with you and Kevin. Don’t you want to release that stuff officially with some live recording of Damascus or whatever you and others have in boxes?

If I ever win big on the lottery I’d like to spend some quality time in a nice studio with the boys and get the songs we did recorded properly, really do them some justice. I think there were some great songs there, but, as I said earlier, they were never really captured on tape. The live performances always had something extra about them.

As far as I understand you weren’t in the line-up when Damascus played at Brofest-2 in 2014. Were you even asked to join the band? Do you still stay in touch with others?

I see Billy and Dave very rarely these days, but when I do we get along fine, there’s no animosity between us. Kevin the bass guitarist comes to some of my gigs when I’m close to his home. Kev’s a great guy who lived for playing rock bass and riding his motorbike. He had an awful accident at work which resulted in him losing four fingers on his left hand, so that was the end of his career really, though he still manages to play a bit.

Please say a few words to the fans and readers.

I’ve really enjoyed reminiscing about a great time in my life, back when all I had to worry about was where my next pint was coming from and who was going home with me that night.

Back then was a great time to be a musician. My main job now is teaching, and I genuinely feel sorry for the kids that I teach. The music they have now is really terrible, there’s much too much of it, it’s too easy to make and too easy to get hold of. The thought of going to an actual gig is totally beyond their comprehension. They’d rather watch it on Youtube.

All I wanted to do when I was at school was be a drummer in a band. Somehow, I’ve managed to get away with it for nigh on 40 years. I’ve had the best times and met and worked with the most amazing people. I didn’t make a million quid but I wouldn’t swap it for anything.

P.S. Just as I’m returning to the questions I receive a message informing me that Howard Croft, Damascus’ manager has died. Howard was a great guy, not the archetypal thug which one associates with the profession. He was passionate about music and wanted nothing more than to give aspiring rock musos a chance. He transformed The Krazy House in Liverpool from a flea ridden dive to a three storey night club, among the most successful in Liverpool. He also reopened The Tivoli in Buckley, turning into a great rock venue. He will be sadly missed by all who knew him. Rest in peace mate.