Phil Joel Urry

Phil of doom

Dancing in the moonlight. Oh yeah feelling all right. The stars are shining bright!

Phil

Hi Phil. How's the family......that's sad i'm pretending to talk to him..he's a photo.

I can see that I would have hung out with him at school (i'm not joking i LOVE nerds! lol j/k Phil)

Phil Joel- the GUY with the long hair.yes that is often true. But he is often thought of as the ADDED Child of the Newsboys that just never quite lost his hyper personality.
Phil was adopted by the New Zealander family, the Urrys. His 'real' name is Philip Joel Urry. He grew up loving his family very much, but having lots of questions as to why he was so different from them. His father and brothers were very much into the mechanics of cars, but Phil just didn't seem to fit. He went through the usual "I'm going to be a [insert profession here]," - until age thirteen, when he first picked up a guitar, he thought "This makes sense; this is it." until, his dad thought it best that Phil "get some experience under his belt," so he took up an apprenticeship in hairdressing. Phil's boss thought it might attract and customers if he grew his hair out long and curly, and blond.. That explains the hair. So while training for a career in hairdressing, Phil fronted a three-man band called Drinkwater. After a while, his band became successful enough for Phil to quit his job, and go touring around NZ. The band opened for Newsboys when they visited the small nation, and Phil and Peter hit it off. When bass player Kevin Mills quit right after the Going Public tour, and Peter heard that Phil's band Drinkwater was also breaking up, he called up Phil and asked him "Hey, do you play bass?" Phil stuck his foot in his mouth and said "Yeah, I play bass!", really not knowing anything about it. He just thought, "How hard could it be?"So the next day, he flew over to America to meet up with the Newsboys, and on that very day, he met his future wife, Heather. He was very interested in her, so he "immediately turned on the charm full blast," but she didn't seem to share the same feelings - she tried to set him up with her other friend because "they had the same hair."
Back to the bass thing, Phil discovered that playing the bass wasn't as easy as he thought it would be... He remembers being in the rehearsal room, and was "trying to play bass the way a real bass player would. I was trying my hardest, and I could see everyone thinking 'What have we done? We've put this guy on a plane from New Zealand, here he is and he can't play!'
"I finally just threw up my hands and said, 'Do you guys mind if I play with a pick?' So I grabbed a pick and started playing and the guys started smiling so I thought, 'Well, I must be doing something right.'" He'd always thought that playing a bass with a pick was a bad or evil thing, but ironically it was the best thing he could have done! At least he figured it out in time for the Take Me To Your Leader album. haha.
In the last few years that he's been with the newsboys, he's developed a close relationship with these Newsboy brothers, and is no longer a terrible bass player. ;) In June 2000, he released a solo album on bandmate Peter Furler's new international label, Inpop, and became the proud father of a beautiful baby girl - Phynley Elizabeth Joel on October 15th (2000). Now he's going to have a baby any time soon. And the baby's a boy!!!!