Derek Ryan

Derek Ryan went from playing huge stadiums with D-Side to starting over, gigging at his local pub – here the singer-songwriter shares his highs and lows.

I stuck to my guns with the original music and slowly but surely got a reputation for writing songs and performing and eventually got my own crowd. I didn’t want to record it and for it to seem like I was using my mother’s death for a song. The older I get, the more I realise how lucky I am to get the opportunity to perform with my family and to have Dad on the stage. I sat down with her and just asked her, ‘What do you want this song to say?’ She gave me four or five lines and I went away and asked myself if I was Philomena Begley, what would I want to sing and what melody would I like. I wrote Philomena’s My Life, My Music, My Memories, which was a big hit for her in the last few years. I went back to the university in London and I was able to be myself for the first time in years. The thing is, a gig is a gig and once you decide you want to stay in the business you have to start somewhere. I thought that was it, but I remembered it by heart and months later I told my producer that I wasn’t sure whether to record it or not. I was too ashamed to ring Daddy so I rang my brother Adrian and he sent over a couple of hundred quid. I was gigging in the pubs again and learning my craft. I had no money but I had a friend who used to produce some of our pop records and he did the demo of it free of charge. Then when I was about 12 or 13 I got a proper guitar and I got Garth Brooks and Oasis chord books.