Still a very overlooked bassist. I'm surprised that nobody else knows/cares about Gary especially considering the many obscure bassists talked about here that never made a big splash or sold any records.
I'm collecting all the live bootlegs I can find from those early days with the Blackhearts.
Check him out if you get the chance. Gary on the far left.
Link Removed
Here's a short bio on Gary from the press release for their third record "ALBUM"
Gary Ryan (Bass)
When Gary Ryan ran away to Hollywood at age fourteen, it was his love for rock and roll that led him to leave home. "I just wanted to be part of it all," says Gary, "not even in a band. I just love the people, the scene and the music."
A self-described "army brat," Ryan grew up "everywhere--Montana, Okinawa, Texas, and finally in Riverside, California." He studied cello at age nine, played upright bass in the school orchestra and jazz bass in the school jazz ensemble, but when he started listening to such emerging new bands as The Runaways, The Sex Pistols and The Ramones, he was ostracized by his junior high friends.
In his bedroom at home Gary would play bass along with his David Bowie records. He had started sneaking out the house at age ten to go to Hollywood and see the bands he loved. "I must have run away from home three or four times," recalls Gary. "Then, in 1978, I left for good." Now, at 18, he plays bass with his favorite Runaway--Joan Jett.
He landed in the burgeoning L.A. punk scene, and was befriended by members of such bands as X, The Germs, and a gang of girls who would later become The Go-Go's. "I lived from friend to friend," he says. "You name it, I slept on it. For a year-and-a-half I existed on nineteen-cent boxes of macaroni and cheese." For six months Gary lived in a shuttered Hollywood basement rock club that is now a rehearsal space for bands, and for another seven months he lived in a Santa Monica Boulevard apartment with the band X.
Gary also started playing bass with some local groups like Rick L. Rick and Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs (Top Jimmy being a hefty R&B singer who took his name from the taco stand at LaBrea and Highland where he and Gary worked, Top Taco). One of the rock and rollers who "was part of the same turf" was Joan Jett, who had by then left The Runaways. "I was a big fan of Joan's," says Gary. "When I used to see The Runaways, I thought she was one of the best rockers I'd ever seen."
Jett was putting together a group, and at the recommendation of the late Darby Crash of The Germs (the band Gary's girlfriend Lorna played in--and whose first album Joan produces,) Gary auditioned and landed the slot as Joan's bassist. Unsure whether or not they would hire a 15-year-old, Gary "lied and told Joan I was 18." The original Blackhearts were born. The band started off playing a month of Monday nights at the Whisky A-Go-Go, and was soon off to Europe on a tour. The Blackhearts have been touring almost non-stop ever since, and, as Gary tells it, "I grew up on the road." Gary now looks back at his runaway days with a certain fondness. "I was going to show them," he says of the kids who ostracized him in high school. A lot of people might think he already has.
