MBW’s World’s Greatest Managers series profiles the best artist managers in the global business. Here we talk to Ryan Richards, a rock drummer turned major manager currently guiding the career of one of the biggest breakout bands of the last few years, Sleep Token. World’s Greatest Managers is supported by Centtrip, a specialist in intelligent treasury, payments and foreign exchange – created with the music industry and its needs in mind.
Ryan Richards looked like he was on top of the world. He was the drummer/scream vocalist in Welsh post-hardcore legends Funeral For A Friend, one of the most successful UK rock bands of their generation, touring the world and playing to thousands of adoring fans.
After five albums and hundreds of gigs, however, in 2011 Richards found himself getting his thrills elsewhere. No, not in the sex-and-drugs-and-rock’n’roll lifestyle that has distracted so many drummers over the years, but in the little wins achieved by the local bands back in his native South Wales that he was advising and helping out.
It was that, combined with a desire to spend more time with his young family back in the Valleys, that saw him sit down for a chat with the band’s manager, Craig Jennings of Raw Power Management.
“I said, ‘I think my touring days are numbered’,” Richards recalls. “‘This management thing is where my passion is and where I see my future going forward’.
“A few days later, Craig rang me up and said, ‘If you’ve made up your mind to do that, why not come and work with us at Raw Power and learn there?’ It was a massive learning experience, and so helpful to my development as a manager. It was the perfect next step.”
Fourteen years on, Richards has his own management company, Future History, and is himself one of the most successful rock managers on the planet. In a UK industry starved of breakthroughs, the huge success of Sleep Token – one of three bands he had on his roster when he left Raw Power to set up Future History in 2018 – has been remarkable.
The mysterious, masked UK rockers have headlined Download Festival, signed to RCA in America and scored a No.1 record with their fourth album, Even In Arcadia, on both sides of the Atlantic. More to the point, their pop sensibilities, hyper-engaged fanbase and savvy use of online marketing have taken them to places other rock and metal bands can no longer reach: Hot 100 hits, late-night TV appearances and the biggest US streaming week for a hard rock band ever. That’s ever.
This is uncharted territory for a rock band in 2025, but Richards is taking it all in his stride.
“Not to self-aggrandise, but I always thought from the start that this is where it would end up,” he chuckles. “I was always a true believer.”
Nor is it likely to be a one-off. Richards has cultivated a roster of fast-rising rock acts, including the likes of Those Damn Crows, Holding Absence, Bambie Thug, President, Zetra and Dead Pony.
They’re the sort of bands Richards would have loved in his own South Wales youth, when he was encouraged in his musical abilities by his family, at first playing piano/keyboards before settling on the drums when his musical tastes – initially shaped by a babysitter who would play him Bon Jovi and Guns N’Roses – became too heavy for tickling the ivories to be involved.
He played in a number of local bands before joining Funeral For A Friend. He realised the band was going places when they scored a Kerrang! feature that tagged them, ‘The most exciting new band on the planet’.
“Then it was like, ‘Right, I guess we’d better get serious’,” he chuckles. The band signed to Atlantic Records UK and Sanctuary Artist Management (after Rod Smallwood saw them play at the Kerrang! Weekender in Camber Sands) and Richards settled into the unofficial role of liaison between band and industry advisors on their unstoppable rise to rock stardom, marking him out as a future exec in the making.
When Sanctuary dissolved, Funeral stayed under Craig Jennings’ wing at Raw Power (“I still consider Craig a mentor,” he says), while Richards started helping out local bands by passing on contacts and helping them secure gigs.
He joined Raw Power when he went full-time with such management concerns, working his way up before leaving when he found himself again spending too much time away from Bridgend (“Wales keeps drawing me back: the green, green grass of home that Tom Jones sang about really is that magnetic,” he laughs).
Initially, he worked alone from his home office, meaning he and his artists could weather the Covid shutdown due to his low overheads, but Future History is now expanding rapidly, with Download Festival boss Andy Copping joining as a director.
“with rock being such a growing genre, I’d like to think it might empower the scene to have more leverage or influence.”
Accordingly, Richards – who spent the summer back in the reformed Funeral For A Friend, playing the band’s biggest ever gigs, including a headline at Cardiff Castle – fizzes with plans for the likes of Bambie Thug (who just signed a publishing deal with Universal), President (“Out of any band I’ve ever worked with, that’s been the quickest out of the traps,” he declares) and the reviving rock genre in general.
“It’s hard work being a rock band,” he says in his mellifluous Welsh tones. “Climbing up that hill can be a slippery and steep slope. But, with rock being such a growing genre, I’d like to think it might empower the scene to have more leverage or influence. We’ll certainly keep trying…”
Before that, however, he sits down with MBW in his Bridgend home office on a classically rainy South Wales morning to talk streaming, mystique and why Sleep Token aren’t actually a metal band…
Unusually for a band in 2025, Sleep Token have mystique. How big a part has that played in their rise?
I love that stuff. I was listening to a music industry podcast recently and the topic of conversation was social media and how it’s changed the dynamic between band and fans, and how it’s a shame you can’t do things in the way you used to, when you had
that mystique.
And I was thinking to myself, ‘Well, surely you can if you choose to?’ And that’s what it’s been. It’s about wanting to find that magic again, that deeper connection between fan and artist, which, conversely, comes from that separation, it engenders that deeper connection.
Because the band is operating the way it does, in terms of the anonymity and not connecting in the conventional ways with social media, interviews and press, it’s about putting everything around that and giving more substance to the whole story.
You go to a Sleep Token show and, even though the band doesn’t speak in words, there is that unspoken connection and dialogue between the band and the fanbase which is really special, quite unique and very powerful.
Will you be able to keep all that up, or will there be a ‘Kiss without the make-up’ moment?
The difference there is, it doesn’t feel like anyone – certainly not the fanbase – wants that. They’re not trying to peek behind the curtain, dissect it and invade upon what the band is doing, or to break that fourth wall.
It’s not just about respecting it, but really indulging in it, buying into it and enjoying it for what it is. It was different back in the day with Kiss, and maybe even Slipknot, where it was like, ‘Oh, I wonder what they look like and who they are?’ Now, maybe because the dawn of the internet means information is always at your fingertips, people value having that mystique and separation.
With any movie or TV show that comes out, before you watch it, you can go online and find out the ending. You can spoil it for yourself – but why would you do that? I don’t see anything positive or helpful in that and it seems like people feel the same.
Conventional industry wisdom suggests rock music doesn’t work on streaming. How have you bucked that trend?
One of the big things is the understanding of where rock is now. A lot of the listening public have had a skewed vision or perception of what rock/metal/hard rock is and sounds like, informed by music from the past or what they define in their heads as rock
or metal.
If you’re a person that never listens to metal, but you’ve heard Metallica, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest or any of the big, heritage metal acts and you don’t like any of those bands, and you’re seeing a band like Sleep Token described as metal, you’re probably not going to go and check it out.
“It’s like, ‘I don’t like Iron Maiden, I probably won’t like Sleep Token’ – which is to completely miss the point. When Sleep Token get put into the metal genre, it’s because that’s the most extreme touchpoint of what the band does.”
It’s like, ‘I don’t like Iron Maiden, I probably won’t like Sleep Token’ – which is to completely miss the point. When Sleep Token get put into the metal genre, it’s because that’s the most extreme touchpoint of what the band does. But there’s as much pop, R&B, electronic and piano-led music as there is heavy guitar; there’s perhaps even more of those
other things.
But now the band has had more mainstream exposure and people have heard it by accident or been recommended it, they’re like, ‘That’s not metal’.
There are elements of it throughout the record, but it’s not a metal band: it’s just an artist painting with many colours to portray many different feelings and emotions, and that’s just one of them.
We keep hearing about how few British breakthroughs there are these days. Are Sleep Token getting the industry respect they deserve for their success?
There’s been this wave of optimism and positivity at the place that rock is in, where it’s going and the trajectory it’s on, so it’ll be interesting to see if that’s just in our little circle, or if it permeates into the outer reaches of the industry.
But I’ve been in this industry long enough to know it’s always been this really vibrant and exciting part of music culture and always will be. It never goes away, it never dies, that’s why it circles round to every generation – it remains to be seen if that’s what this is.
It’s not something that I really concern myself with, but it’ll be interesting to see when it comes to the next more mainstream awards. But the response from the fanbase is what it’s all about.
When you joined Funeral For A Friend, did you expect them to become so big?
Well, the difference then was, we measured success as ending up on a covermount CD for an independent music magazine. We were like, ‘We’ve done that, we’ve done a demo and we got to play London – we’ve made it!’ There was no grand plan.
So, we were like, ‘Maybe we could get signed to an indie label or have a booking agent and do some shows with bands we like’, and that was it. But it quickly escalated!
Has going through the ups and downs of being in a band helped you as a manager?
Absolutely. It’s been the biggest contributor to any success I’ve had in management.
It’s important that I make the distinction to the bands I work with. I say to them, ‘If I’m giving you advice on something, or steering you in a particular direction, it’s not because I’m a know-it-all, have this unique perspective, or have all the answers.
I’ve learned as much or more from the wrong steps I’ve taken as a band member or as a manager’. You learn so much from your mistakes. They give you the knowledge.
I always say to them, ‘I’ll never ask you to do something that I haven’t done’ – and that’s pretty accurate really.
Andy Copping has joined Future History – what will he bring to the company?
He’s someone I’ve been close with for many years, and he’s always been a big supporter. When I was coming through with Funeral, he always believed in us, he always gave us really good opportunities through Download or other tours.
And, on a personal level, he’s always been a big supporter of mine. When I left Raw Power to start Future History, he was one of the first people on the phone to say, ‘Hey, if you ever need anything, I’m just a phone call away’.
Just having someone with the level of experience, knowledge, respect, contacts and everything else that Andy has, as well as being such a good friend to me and my family, just felt really right. He’s been a really important addition to the company with everything he brings to the table, it’s been a big factor in the successes
we’ve had.
If you could change one thing about the music industry, right here and now, what would it be?
I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first person hoping for streaming compensation to be a little more attractive! Particularly for artists that are coming through.
It can be a real lifeblood and a real boost for new artists, being able to actually earn a decent income as they start, just to give them that freedom to remain independent as long as they need to, and give them that structure of being able to develop as an artist.
“It’s a shame when you come across a really good artist that has signed away recording or publishing rights on a deal that’s just not good for them, but they’ve been left with almost no choice because they weren’t getting paid any other way.”
It’s a shame when you come across a really good artist that has signed away recording or publishing rights on a deal that’s just not good for them, but they’ve been left with almost no choice because they weren’t getting paid any other way. They needed that cash injection, so they signed whatever was in front of them, just so they wouldn’t have to pack it in.
Then they get stuck in those deals, they get a little further down the line, they’ve spent their advance and they’re back to square one without any commodities to sell and they’re screwed. That’s not all the fault of royalties from DSPs, but that would help.
Is there a difference between Ryan Richards the rock star and Ryan Richards the manager?
[Laughs] No! When it comes to Funeral For A Friend, I’m quite happily back in that position where I’m the one arranging bits and pieces, getting stuff ready, liaising with promoters and booking agents – I don’t think there’s much of a distinction there.
If anything, it’s helped with being able to handle the band side of it in the right way. I certainly appreciate it more; it’s a nice treat to get out there, slip those drumming shoes back on, reconnect with the guys in the band and their families. It’s a nice thing to have on tap when the right opportunities come along, it’s nice that it’s still there.
There are no plans for anything else – perhaps there will be, perhaps there won’t but, if there isn’t, that [Cardiff Castle headline show] would a good one to sign off on.
And how big can Sleep Token get?
I don’t see any ceiling. Fundamentally, across any genre at the moment, you’re looking at one of the best songwriters and one of the most interesting and exciting live acts out there.
And, when you have those two things, then the sky’s the limit.
