Barry Diamond
 Barry Diamond is a very successful vocalist who has performed on the Cabaret and Club circuits nationally from the mid sixties up to the present. He has an expressive voice with a good vocal range honed over years of live performance. This gives him a versatility capable of interpreting a wide range of musical styles. That versatility was well defined on his debut album, although he also featured on the Diamond Jack live recording.
Last year he released a long-overdue second solo album ‘I’ll Get By (with a little help from my friends)’ which is an exploration of music taken from every decade since the sixties. The album is also a tribute to friends, family and his personal role models over the years, as can be seen from the cover art work. It contains material varying in style from swing through rock’n’roll, classic rock standards and ballads to modern indie. He turns his hand to all of them with panache.
Barry is now due to start on his third solo album, and studio time has been booked.
Barry’s early career band, Big Tony Laurie and the Original Classics (Barry was Big Tony) was a peer of the ‘Mersey explosion’ of the mid-late sixties alongside groups like the Beatles, Gerry and The Pacemakers etc. They often appeared on the same bill as those groups. Barry was always fixed on the idea of being a working semi-pro musician. He did not relish the idea of becoming a starving, itinerant professional (like so many of his peer group) and so continued on through various semi-pro groups over the years, including the well known Midnight Hour Band and Diamond Jack. Following the break-up of Diamond Jack he worked on in a duo with guitarist Pete Childs (as in ‘Pete York and the Pontiacs’) for a number of years and has latterly continued to perform as a solo artist. However, he still insists on using live musicians as backing artists rather than resorting to the typical backing tapes. “You get a better vibe form the performance and the audience prefer it as well.”
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