In late 2006, Classic Rock told the story of Man, the much-loved Welsh jam band who formed in 1968 and whose 14th studio album Diamonds And Coal had just been released. In the feature, founding member Roger ‘Deke’ Leonard and Martin Ace (who joined in 1969 and still leads the band today) looked back on the career of a band who brought the sound of Haight-Asbury to the South Wales Valleys.
“The story of the Man band is full of nepotism, dysfunction and intrigue,” Roger ‘Deke’ Leonard casually tells Classic Rock. The guitar, keyboard and harmonica-playing vocalist quit the enduring and much-travelled Welsh group back in April 2004 to reactivate his solo band Iceberg. Today, on the eve of a new Man studio album called Diamonds And Coal, he and the band’s current bassist, guitarist, vocalist and tuba player Martin Ace are reminiscing a while about the legacy of an idiosyncratic group that began life in 1968 and still stubbornly refuses to give up the ghost.
