Barry Ryan
Voice of Eloise BORN 1948
Leeds-born Barry Ryan’s mother was pop singer Marion Ryan, whose Love Me Forever was a UK Number 1 in 1958. In turn, Barry and his twin brother Paul, both ex-trainee hairdressers, would form a teenage duo and score five Top 30 hits between 1965 and 1967. When Paul bowed out due to stage fright, he continued to write songs for his brother, and in 1968 they struck gold with the towering, baroque Eloise, a Europe-wide chart topper and UK Number 2 in October 1968 (the song was a favourite of Freddie Mercury and would be successfully covered by The Damned in 1986). Barry’s self-penned Love Is Love would also be a huge seller in Germany, but in 1977 he largely withdrew from music and became a fashion photographer, though the pre-internet age furnished rumours of hideous facial burns after a 1968 publicity stunt involved an exploding “hot-line” telephone and photos of Ryan wrapped in bandages. He returned to singing in the ’90s, still in demand across Europe for his biggest and most memorable hit. His friend Yusuf/Cat Stevens remembered his “good old buddy… we’ll miss him.”