* En anglais uniquement
As a musician,
Andy Pyle has never been far from people who went on to stardom, though he may not ever have achieved quite that level of recognition himself. He's played with star-level bands and one superstar ensemble, plus done session work on one album that was practically required listening for male teenagers in the early 1970s. A bassist who career goes back to the mid-'60s,
Pyle was born in London in 1945, and reached his teens just as rock & roll was supplanting skiffle as the music of choice for British youth. As a young aspiring musician, however, he gravitated more toward the blues than to rock & roll, as demonstrated by his earliest professional gig, with
Victor Brox's Blues Train, led by the future member of the
Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation. Next, it was on to Jensen's Moods, a band featuring British bluesman
Mick Abrahams on lead guitar and vocals, and
Clive Bunker on drums, which subsequently changed its name to McGregor's Engine. The latter group fell apart in late 1967 when
Abrahams and
Bunker went off to join
Jethro Tull, but following
Abrahams' departure from
Tull in late 1968, he and
Pyle were back together, the latter recruited by
Abrahams into a new band,
Blodwyn Pig.
Abrahams exited after a pair of albums to form yet another new band, and eventually their sax player,
Jack Lancaster, pulled together
Pyle and the other survivors into what was known as
Lancaster's Bombers (a play on the name of a famed WWII British plane), and then simply
Lancaster.
He also did some session work during this period, including playing bass on
Rod Stewart's
Every Picture Tells a Story (1971), one of the biggest selling (and most critically acclaimed) R&B-flavored rock albums of the early 1970s, and probably the recording of his work that is most widely known (other than his recordings with
the Kinks). For that album,
Pyle was part of what was virtually an all-star ensemble, including various members of
Stewart's band
the Faces, plus
Long John Baldry and a brace of other big names. The single "Maggie May" alone was a fixture on American radio for months at the time and a heavy-rotation "oldie" for decades after that, while the album was as ubiquitous in record collections -- especially those belonging to males under the age of 35 -- as the work of
the Beatles and
the Rolling Stones.
Following the breakup of
Lancaster,
Pyle moved through the lineup of
Savoy Brown for a few months before landing in
Juicy Lucy, which led to his first of several stints working with guitarist
Bernie Marsden. Across the years that followed, he also worked with
Gerry Lockran and
the Sutherland Brothers, among other session work.
Pyle was later back in
Savoy Brown for a longer stint, and then into a re-formed
Blodwyn Pig (this time with
Clive Bunker on drums), and then a gig with
Alvin Lee.
In late 1976,
Pyle auditioned for the bassist spot in
the Kinks, which had just been vacated by
John Dalton after seven years. The Kinks were easily the most pop-oriented band he ever worked with, and his tenure was successful, as
Pyle participated on Sleepwalker and Misfits before departing with keyboard player
John Gosling. The two formed a short-lived band, initially called United (featuring future
Iron Maiden guitarist
Dennis Stratton) and then Network. His work with them was short-lived, but then he was called by old friend
Gary Moore, with whom he'd previously worked as a session musician, to join his band for a series of live dates, which yielded a concert album,
Live at the Marquee.
Pyle then moved into the orbit of
Stan Webb, initially in a re-formed version of
Chicken Shack (with whose keyboard player he had previously worked in
Savoy Brown), and then in
Stan Webb's Speedway. During the mid-'80s, he joined
Wishbone Ash, and then it was back with
Mick Abrahams (and
Clive Bunker, plus saxophone legend
Dick Heckstall-Smith) for another go-around with
Blodwyn Pig. With
Bernie Marsden, he was part of the Green & Blue All-Stars, and then he was back with
Gary Moore, this time in the Midnight Blues Band. He spent most of the early and mid-'90s working with
Moore, and then was back in
Wishbone Ash and
Juicy Lucy. Although he's played everything from folk-based rock to hard rock, his preference is for the blues, and he even managed to turn up in sessions for
Carey Bell and
Nappy Brown in the 1980s. ~ Bruce Eder