Are You Ready To Rock?

Preston in early March. Not, on the face of it an enticing proposition but on this particular Monday it really did seem as if the town had done its best to roll out the welcome mats for the Thin Lizzy roadshow as it romped through Preston for the very last time.
The announcement had been well and truly made and there was no going back on it now, no matter how sold out the tour was and no matter how impassioned the reactions each night at the sight of Phil and the boys up there doin' it, playing their hearts out, like they always have and yet like they never have done before, the feedback gradually rising through each gig as the realisation finally sinks in that they will never see this band again.
But no, the horse had well and truly bolted by now and nothing could be changed by closing the stable door at this juncture...
But Preston at least was determined to make the most of things and save the commiserations 'till later. The sun shone so convincingly you almost believed there was warmth in it as it splashed over the anonymous jumble of redeveloped concrete precincts, bus stations and ringways that have replaced (most of) the dark satanic mills of this solid northern burgh, and a military band with full regiment in tow huffed and puffed ostentatiously through the streets and past the new Guild Hall where the evening's proceedings were to take place. Flashy posters for Cannon and Ball and Barbara Windsor vied for attention with the sedate blue ones announcing Thin Lizzy on many a wall- ultimately of necessary content to wait their turn however, for tonight the Boys were Back in Town and nothing else mattered.
Several levels up and closeted well away from the possibility of any untoward intrusion by brusque Lancastrians, Thin Lizzy were draped around the backstage bar- still it transpired, trying to rid themselves of the effects of the 24-hour party that had followed the last of their four triumphant gigs down at Hammersmith Odeon two nights before and thanking any and every star that came to mind, lucky or not, that the intervening day had been a Day Off.
"Giv's another of them", demands an elegantly haggard looking Philip Lynott benignly of a perturbed barman who hesistantly proffers another dimpled bottle of Dacquiri to add to the small collection on the bar, already bereft of their contents. Lynott half-turns to me, settles himself anew into the contours of the corner into which he is propped and informs me with a dignified pedantry that brooks no riposte, "That's rum".
And rum it is indeed that just when they appear to be riding the crest of a new wave (sic) Thin Lizzy have decided to bow out gracefully. Doubtless the announcement of their impending demise has fuelled interest in both the tour and their current 'Thunder and Lightning" album but both Phil and Scott Gorham at least are adamant that the tour would have sold out anyway as all their tours do and that the album would have registered more strongly than its immediate predecessors- simply, they say, because it is better than them.
It's both ironic and frustrating then, that what would have been a sensible and courageous decision six months ago is looking increasingly unfortunate right now. The injection of ex-Tygers of Pan Tang man John Sykes into the volatile lead guitar slot has given the band a new creative lease of life and a genuine new energy that had they realised in time and held fire for just that crucial month or two more, the decision to split would probably never have been made.
"It is very frustrating", admits Scott. "Quite apart from the fact that we're doing so well right now, tour stuffed out and so on, the unit is just so fucking tight right now, we're playing so well together, it really does seem like superbad timing to decide to break up".
The impact of John Sykes is all the more dramatic in contrast to the relatively restrained bluesy style of his predecessor Snowy White, his youthful exuberance proving just the elixir the band had needed.
Paradoxically, despite the positive effect he has had in infusing a new drive and sense of purpose into the band, he is undoubtedly the most regressive member by far, a third generation out-and-out metaller revelling in all the most grating characteristics of the genre from the flowing mane and studded leather to the classic heroic posturing and the fretboard pyrotechnics.
Yet prior to his arrival the feeling within the band was definitely that things had run their course and it would be wiser to quit while they were still ahead.
"It had been in the back of everyone's mind for some time before John joined" recalls Scott. "Everyone was getting ...unbelieving. Things had started to become mechanical".
"We'd been at one level for a long time, never dipped but not getting any bigger either and that's frustrating for any artist. It was the management who eventually voiced what everyone had been thinking, that it would be better for us to go out on our own terms".
And no matter how strong the pressures to retract the declaration, the band regretfully accept that the decision is irrevocable. As Phil ruefully puts it, "Now if we said we're gonna stay together it would just look like it was some publicity thing which isn't on, so I think we'll break up.
"I definitely think we should go through with it. In any case it's gonna take a year to wind the thing down and no matter what way you look at it its the end of something. It's the end of me goin' on there goin' 'Baby Baby Baby', and the drum solo and 'The Boys Are Back In Town'.
For Phil in particular the responsibility of the decision weighs heavily on his mind.
"I feel I've let the supporters down- I'm the leader of the band and I feel I should have been able to lead them through this. I mean in an interview with Kerrang! I did before the band broke up over Christmas, I'd said that I really admire Paul Weller's courage, that if we don't really pull it out this time we're goin to knock it on the head".
The thing is Lizzy really have pulled it it out this time, as the present band is perhaps slicker and more sharply honed than it has ever been. John's arrival has roused them from the relative lethargy of the Snowy era and added a new dynamic to complement a return to form in the songwriting. For Thin Lizzy the bite has always been there, but now the bark is back as well.
And yet ironically John is as much the damnation of the band as its salvation, his image the strongest evidence of the band's redundancy from the detractors' point of view.
"Not fashionable, yeah.
"But that's it, let's face it, Thin Lizzy have become unfashionable anyway- that was one of the main reasons we were driven to make the announcement", stresses Phil.
"The record company was getting tired of putting the right push into this dated sort of image when they could be working on Soft Cell or some kid who'll change his image every day of the week, and the management were getting tired of the Lizzy organisation. The media were having a field day- the only people who stuck with us were the Thin Lizzy supporters. Note the use of the word 'supporters', because they do have the choice of not buying the LP's etc.
"One of the main reasons Snowy left or got bumped was that while he was great as a delicate blues player, like Peter Green I thought, I thought he'd pick up some aggresion from joining Thin Lizzy which wasn't happening. The interaction was one way only- we were becoming lethargic.
"Whereas John had only just come out of Hard Rock, being the fastest, biggest- when he joined I thought hopefully he's gonna do a year of being the whizz-kid and then say 'hold on a minute'...I mean it's him that says do 'Still In Love With You'."
And now, unfortunately, Phil will never know if his expectations of John would have been realised...
"But that's what I think is one of the beauties of HM- with punk and new romantic there's almost an emphasis on not knowing how to play, like the Eno approach, 'My ignorance is my genius'- because I don't know what I'm doing, I'm not influenced.
"Ok, HM may be unfashionable but they do have that attitude of wanting to be the best in their town and then in their country and then in the world, there's constant competition. The emphasis is on musicianship.
"In so far as 'Thunder and Lightning' being better than 'Renegade' or 'Chinatown', I think the aggresion is genuine. There may be a couple of filler tracks but there is a pure energy since John came along- I'd got the solo stuff out of me system, so I wanted to rock."
John of course is only the latest (and now the last) in a long line of people who have filled the Lizzy lead guitar role through the years; from the the original 3-piece Eric Bell line-up to the current 5-man outfit a succession of maestros have come and gone, each providing the impetus for a new lease of life and each stamping the band with his own touch. Do Phil or Scott have any particular favourite line-up or has the impermanence of the past been a source of irritation over the years?
"Whenever we lose a guy I say to myself 'Fuck it man, I've had it with this', Scott admits.
"I mean there I am, I've just spent x years meshing in with this guy and teaching him 'Jailbreak' and the little ins and outs of 'Boys' or 'Suicide' and getting him to recognise my eyeball contact etc., and then it's 'here we go again', are the audience gonna take it one more time- which I must say they always seem to."
"We took the 3-piece as far as we could- like all 3-pieces, Hendrix, Police, you name it, get so far as they are and then they have to do something, and strings, brass, rhythm guitar", Lynott adds. "So that was great, the early 3-piece with Eric but it did eventually become constricting.
"So then there was the formative thing of the dual guitar, partly because of the Allman Bros. thing and partly because we were doing so much in the studio with a rhythm guitar...plus the songwriting began to get really good, the culmination of which was the "Jailbreak" and "Live and Dangerous" LP's. And that was really good, a growing experience.
"I think when the band matured most was with Gary Moore. We'd grown up in school together and I'd always rated Gary the best lead player that I'd ever seen that I knew on a one-to-one basis. I always wanted to play with him and every time we worked together something would happen.
"I've always argued with my best friends- the better the friend the more the argument. When he left us in America I was so hurt- I could see from the business side of it how we'd lose by it, but also on the friendship side.
"But time heals and when I think of Gary now, I think of good things not bad things.
"And then of course there's right now, I feel John is very right for the band, he's exciting, he's pushing me and Brian Downey much more than any other lead guitarist. We were always ahead of Robbo and we were with Eric and Gary used to push us and we laid back for Snowy- now John is pushing us and it's good".
And at that last celebratory night at the Odeon, for once and once only, each and every guitarist who had filled that rotating lead slot in the band was onstage together- Eric, Gary, Robbo, Snowy and John, all busting loose in the ultimate tribute to a long-lasting band. How did that occasion feel for you personally, Phil?
"Just great- the feeling was I'm some chancer, there I am standing back looking at all these great guitar players and I can't even play bass, not like say Jaco Pastorius or Stanley Clarke can play bass, like those guys play guitar. Everyone from the management down to the kids was getting a lump in their throat, they didn't know whether to laugh or cry- it was something they'd always wanted to see but by seeing it it meant the end."
Eric had been heard to remark after the gig that he was actually dead glad he was in a blues band these days rather than a rock band- given the broad base of Lizzy's appeal, what sort of a band does Phil feel it is he has been leading this past decade and more?
"There's always been an emphasis on the music, the melody and the song, but essentially I would see us as hard rock", he asserts. "The image is hard, aggressive music comin' at you".
So what differentiates hard rock from heavy metal in your book?
"In HM the song is made around the riff, in hard rock the sound can be equally as tough but its based around the song, with the riffs added", he summarises neatly.
The set that night in Preston vindicates totally the band's chagrin at their premature decision to disband, tight as a Scottish Jew on the dole and with a gritty edge that never descended into filibuster.
Lynott could well have been the man the cliche 'mean, moody and magnificent' was first conjured up for, his voice richer and stronger than ever before without becoming strident. His onstage bonhomie as he trades 'Bu-bu-bu-bu-baby's' with the delighted audience shows no trace of the serious personal worry he was suffering as a result of some disquieting news he had received just before the gig- his daughter Caitlin in Dublin had been hospitalised following a domestic accident and he would have been fully justified in pulling the gig.
But Philip Lynott is nothing if not professional, and so there he was, virtually unchanged from the awkward gawky teenager of some thirteen years before. "I don't believe you get given a gold watch when you turn thirty", is his sardonic challenge.
And where with Snowy, Scott had had to leap to around the stage more than was his wont to compensate for Snowy's relatively static presence, now he is content to let John take most of the front-man limelight, a role which John obviously revels in.
"Snowy wasn't climbing up my back the way Gary did", Scott recalls. "He wasn't giving me the kick I needed, whereas John is really good to play against because of his youth, and where he's come from, all that million notes a second stuff."
And Brian Downey is as unrepossessing as ever, rattling it out in thunderous style and with punishing force. Thin Lizzy 1983 justify their continuing existence with ease and only succeed in making their decision all the more poignant.
Afterwards the mood is low-key, the band content with their showing but still pacing themselves after the Odeon mega-bash and catching their breath before the next rant which is to take place three days hence in Edinburgh. The occasion is Scott's birthday, but more important to this particular band, it is also St. Patrick's Day...
And in between lies Carlisle, a slower, still quaint market town snug up against the Scottish border. Wry faces are the order of the day as the advance guard survey the functional bleakness of Carlisle's Market Hall next day, the contrast all the more stark compared with the almost extravagant opulence of Preston's Guild Hall.
The size and facilities of the dressing room would make even died-in-the-wool Baggot Inn-ers stifle a smile, but as it turns out the gig is, if anything, even more enjoyable than the previous night's, at least to judge by the length to which Phil extends the 'Bu-bu-bu-baby' routine.
A well-used device maybe, but like everything in the set, which ranges wide over Lizzy's repertoire, it still sounds fresh and it still works.
Nobody could accuse Phil Lynott of complacency, however- he remains a stern critic of his own work.
Indeed, in blanketing the last few albums as having been generally sub-standard, Phil is selling himself short in the case of "Renegade" and the earlier "Black Rose" because that album encompassed an attempt, for the first time, since 'Whiskey' to introduce something specific to his Irish heritage into Lizzy's repertoire. Phil is quick to assert that Lizzy are still most definitely an Irish band and proffers 'The Holy War' off the new album as evidence of continuing Irishness in his work. "That song has totally Catholic church lyrics, it couldn't have been written unless I was Irish". he says.
"I've always wanted to write contemporary Irish songs", he adds, "That's why the paradox of 'Whiskey' has lived to haunt me because I never wanted to be known as a Horslips where we rocked up traditional songs or a Moving Hearts where it went from Irish traditional to jazz. I want it so that when you look back and ask 'What was Irish music in the '70's and '80s? the answer will be 'Well there was this geezer Phil Lynott'...
"'The Boys Are Back In Town' to me is as much an Irish song as 'Emerald'".
Precisely- that one song has always epitomised the Dublin rock milieu better than any other by any other band, and yet there is nothing specifically Irish in its ingredients.
And after all, when it comes down to it, any Irishman dealing with rock is essentially expressing himself through an entirely alien and imported art-form anyway, so that the triumph of 'Boys' is that everything about it, the whole sound, the mood, the chord progressions, the familiarity of the lyrics, captures perfectly the flavour of mid-70's Dublin without ever resorting to stage-trickery with bodhran, uilleann pipes or tin whistle.
Phil feels though that it is precisely his Irishness combined with his skin colour that has enabled him and him alone to straddle the great New vs. Old Wave battle of six years ago and again more recently to transcend the polarisations brought about by the advent of New Romanticism. It says a lot for his personal taste that his natural gypsy style fits as comfortably into a punk or new romantic archetype as it does into more more traditional rock imagery, and Lynott's bridge-building has long been one of Lizzy's greatest assets both in helping avoid the music ossifying and is assisting the band keep at least one foot in the contemporary camp where others of its vintage had long since been consigned to the museum, frantically riffing and churning out guitar solos to an ever-dwindling and ageing audience.
"The media has fucked up the kids out there so much", Lynott says vehemently. "So that they can only identify with and buy one uniform. All this 'I hate Steve Strange, Steve Strange hates Thin Lizzy, Midge Ure hates Thin Lizzy, the Sex Pistols hate Midge Ure, the media feed that stance.
"No OK, I broke that down, broke through that, but that only happened because of the Irish thing where if you go into the Bailey you can meet a showband head doing it commercially for money, a cabaret artist doing it for entertainment, a folk artist doing it out of purity, a poet or rock band doing it out of integrity...but they're all in the same place and can sit down and talk to each other.
"And OK there's areas they mightn't agree on but they can understand there's decisions each man must make for himself.
"So when I went to Engalnd it just seemed natural to continue that approach, and the point of contact I had with the Pistols and Midge from the word go was that they were trying to express themselves and I could understand that and they me".
Thus the typical Lizzy audience is a lot less homogenous than most, which can bring its own problems- "The number of times a guy with a big mohican has come over to me and I've gone 'I'm in for it now' and then he goes 'Hiya Phil, love the last album'..."
Phil sees himself as a catalyst, introducing people to one another who they wouldn't otherwise meet, and thus Brian and Darren now get on well with Steve Strange and of course Scott played with Steve'n'Paul in the Greedies.
Yet apart from a solitary statement some years back to the effect that there can't be many worse handicaps to making your mark in the world than being a black Irishman, Lynott has never traded in any way on the colour of his skin nor crusaded for racial, social or cultural integration beyond simply setting the example. Altough he has absolutely no plans as yet for the post-Lizzy era when it eventually comes, he has said recently that he may choose to investigate the black part of his heritage- soul, reggae etc.- which he has explored tentatively on his solo ventures. But whatever he does it will be from a position where any disadvantages he may have had to contend with in the past have long since been overcome.
"When I said that (about the 'black Irishman') I was speaking objectively from an outsider's point of view, that they would figure it was a hard place to start from.
"But I always thought it made me special, unique. I knew I had something to offer and I had a strong determination to make it. In any case, I thnk of myself as an Irishman first, black second."
And as Thin Lizzy roll out of Carlisle and on Edinburgh, leaving me to head back down to London, it strikes me that there could hardly be a better advertisement either for the Irish or the world's black population than Philip Lynott. As an emissary between opposing factions within rock, as a poet, a songwriter, a singer, a bass player, as leader of Thin Lizzy from the out and above all as a person, Phil Lynott is simply one of the very best and an asset to everybody's camp. Through him, Thin Lizzy have always been more than just another band and so when the end finally does come, the loss will be all the more keenly felt.
But happily, the end is some time away yet; for the moment the Boys are unequivocally Back in Town and it's like they've never been away. You owe it Lynott, and to yourself, not to miss them when it comes to your town, your turn. No two ways.