50 years ago today: Thin Lizzy released Jailbreak

With Jailbreak, their sixth album, there’s an unmistakable sense of a band whose time had come, and Thin Lizzy seized the day with a swaggering aplomb.

The gritty title-track and the ubiquitous and exuberant ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ are classics, backed up by the fist-pumping ‘Warriors’ a shit-kicking hard rock tour de force, and ‘Fight Or Fall’ – one of the best “us against the world” rock songs ever.

‘Romeo And the Lonely Girl’ is Lynott as his most rogueishly romantic, while ‘Cowboy Song’ could be both scenario and soundtrack for a John Ford western. Philo is at his self-assured vocal best throughout.

Meanwhile the sparkling twin leads of Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham deliver a masterclass, underpinned by the precision drumming of Brian Downey.

There were dark days ahead, but this album is a joyous celebration of the defiant outlaw rocker.

Originally published in Hot Press in 2020:

June 1974. Scott Gorham’s planned six-month stay in London is coming to an end. He has been busy playing clubs with his band Fast Buck and making musical contacts. One, by the name of Ruan O Lochlainn (who was in the Irish pub-rock band Bees Make Honey with Gorham’s future brother-in-law Bob Siebenberg) knew Phil Lynott and informed the young American guitar-slinger about auditions that were taking place. A gig as guitarist with an Irish rock band called Thin Lizzy was the prize.

“I knew absolutely nothing about them,” grins Gorham. “But Phil was great from the very beginning, really warm, and he had that big flashy smile of his. We shook hands and he said, ‘I’ll introduce you to the other guys’. So, from the start I felt really welcome.”

Of course the Lizzy that Gorham joined had three albums under their belt and a chart hit in the form of the Celtic rocker, ‘Whiskey In The Jar’. All these years on, the activities of the previous three-piece incarnation of the band are dealt with deftly in the film [Phil Lynott: Songs For While I'm Away], the always amusing Eric Bell providing revealing and humourous insights. But was there a determination that the twin-guitar model – which emerged in 1974 – would be ground zero for the new group?

“Yes, absolutely. It was obvious that it was going to be a different band,” Gorham affirms. “The sound was going to be totally different anyway: there’s so much more you can accomplish musically with two guitars. I personally didn’t want to have anything to do with those first three albums – in my mind, this was a different group. Obviously, we had a leg-up, because of ‘Whiskey In The Jar’, but we were trying to make our way as a brand-new, revised Thin Lizzy. I had a few conversations with Phil about that, because worldwide Thin Lizzy really meant nothing. In fact, outside of England and Ireland they were either not heard of or not played. So, really, we were starting from scratch.”

Gorham had his own ideas about how this transition should be handled.

“I remember saying to Phil,” he recalls, “that we need to stand on our own two feet, so we ought to drop old numbers and just head out on our own – and that included ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ and ‘The Rocker’. And Phil agreed!”

He laughs. “If roles were reversed and another guitar player came into a band that I was in with Phil, and said ‘I think we ought to drop ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ and ‘Emerald’, I think we would have thrown his ass straight out the door and got somebody else in! Years later, I think ‘How did I have the nuts to say that?’ In the end it worked out: people saw that we didn’t have to rely on the older songs.”

Aspirations for world domination aside, the new Lizzy could always rely on a devout Irish fanbase. Although he was warmly welcomed into the band by Phil, as an American, Gorham did have reservations about how he would go down with the loyal home crowd.

“I remember our first Irish tour culminated in a show in the National Stadium,” he states. “I was really nervous and I had confided to Brian Downey that I was afraid that if the audience didn’t like me, Phil might say, ‘Well this isn’t working out’. I know now that Brian told Phil, because at the end of the night when Phil introduced the band he gave me a huge build up, saying where I was from, what I was wearing… it went on forever! I’m thinking ‘For God’s sake Phil just get on with it, put me out of my misery’!

“So eventually, he said, ‘C’mon let’s hear it for – and he always pronounced my name Gurrum (laughs) – SCOTT GURRUM!’ Of course, because he had built it up so much, they went wild. I don’t think it was anything to do with liking me, I think it was because they knew Phil wanted me to feel extra welcome. It made me feel really accepted. I’ve never forgotten the Dublin audience for that.”

Thin Lizzy by Liam Quigley. [email protected]

On that first Irish tour, Scott Gorham remembers being struck by Lynott’s fervour for his homeland, finding himself frequently the recipient of Phil’s latent tour guide tendencies.

“Phil was such a proud Irishman,” he asserts. “He would take me on walks around different cities and towns we played in Ireland. He’d be like, ‘See that statue over there… that guy’s name was so-and-so and the reason they have that statue there’ – and he’d give me the entire history of these people or a certain landmark! He knew Ireland inside out. He was this encyclopedic kind of guy when it came to Ireland.

“And the really bad thing is on our first tour in America, we landed in New York and as soon as the wheels touched down Phil claps his hand together, ‘Ok Scott, right, you’re the American here, what’s up with New York?’ And I just looked at him and said sheepishly, ‘I don’t know Phil, I’ve never been here.’ I felt really terrible!!”

Despite the optimism of the new four-piece and determination to make their mark, the first and second albums (Nightlife and Fighting) sold poorly. The pressure was on for their third release, Jailbreak.

“Historically you were always given three albums,” explains Scott. “You were never really meant to make it on the first; by the second you were meant to have honed your craft; and by the third you needed a big hit record or you got dropped. So here we are on the third album, record companies were saying you really need that hit, management were saying it, everybody knew it. So we doubled our efforts. We rented a farmhouse, brought out the eight-track recording machine and sat there for two or three weeks just really concentrating on the writing, hoping that something was going to hit. It was a concerted effort to really make the best album we possibly could.”

Luckily ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ and its parent album delivered the required chart success. Now a classic rock anthem, the song is beloved around the globe. Apparently, the track was originally called ‘GI Joe Is Back’.

Gorham laughs.

“It sounds really dumb now, doesn’t it?” he chuckles. “I think the remnants of the Vietnam War were still there and it had really stirred up an anti-war feeling. But, finally, Phil said ‘Nah, that idea has been overdone, so many people have written anti-war songs’. He turned it into more of a gang song. He looked at all of us: what do we do on a Saturday night? We go out, we have a lot of drinks, try to pull the chicks and have a great time. And that is what that song is: it’s Saturday night with all your buddies. That’s what the song is all about, nothing more.

“Actually, I did an interview with this German guy, years and years ago, and he said, ‘Yeah, I want to talk about ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ – I think I really understand the meaning of that song. The undercurrent is all about the IRA’,” says Gorham. “So I went, ‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! No, it is not. It’s nothing to do with politics or divided sides. It’s a good-time party song!’ After that this guy had nothing to talk to me about! He thought he had uncovered the secret meaning of the song. He was totally shattered: he’d thought he had broken a hidden code!”

Revisit Jailbreak below: