"As Soon As I Heard Thin Lizzy I Was Hooked"

Despite a refusal to swap his winklepickers for open-toed sandles, Midge Urge has a deep appreciation of traditional music stemming from an early entounter with Thin Lizzy.
“I discovered them through Skid Row, who were probably the first band I ever felt passionately about as a teenager. I saw them in the early 70’s in Glasgow, Gary Moore was only 16 or 17 at the time but already a fearsome guitarist and you had Brush running riot dressed as a leprechaun. It was great! Phil sang with them briefly before forming Lizzy and as soon as I heard the group, that was it, I was hooked.

“We didn’t meet properly until a while later when I bumped into him at a gig. He looked like a typical impoverished musician, which he was then, living off £15 a week and travelling in the back of a Transit van. He wasn’t doing anything so I dragged him back for a meal and introduced him to my Mum and all that. Our paths didn’t cross again until 1978, when we found ourselves at the same party in London. I was with The Rich Kids, Lizzy were huge at the time and to my amazement he remembered who I was, joined me for a natter and the friendship developed from there.”
The two drinking buddies soon became colleagues when Gary Moore departed the Thin Lizzy ranks half-way through a crucial American tour.
“I’d just joined Ultravox and was in the studio recording the first Visage LP with Steve Strange. Phil phoned in a blind panic from Arkansas, asked me to drop everything and get my butt over to the States as quickly as possible. 24 hours later I was sitting on Concorde with a pair of earphones superglued to my ears and a huge big Ghettoblaster on my lap trying to learn the songs. The chords were simple enough but I had to wait until I got to New Orleans for Scott Graham to teach me the harmonies.The next night I was on the stage with Lizzy for 40 to 45 minutes and honestly, I’ve never been so petrified!”
After a fortnight of wearing brown trousers to hide his nerves, Midge settled down and started enjoying the Spinal Tap-style antics which in those days were part and parcel of touring with Thin Lizzy. Was he ever tempted to make the arrangement permanent?
“Phil stressed from the outset that it was only a temporary measure and, even if he has asked me to join, I was too excited at the prospect of working with Ultravox to have accepted. Don’t get me wrong, it was a dream come true and I loved acting the ‘guitar hero’ but I was never much good at the twiddly diddly stuff Gary and the others churn out in their sleep. ‘Jailbreak’ and ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, were my two favorites and the only song I couldn’t handle was ‘Black Rose’, which was unfortunate because that was the album they were promoting at the time!”
‘Ass kicking’ isn’t a term I’d normally associate with Midge Ure but alongside Phil he was apparently a veritable six-string sharpshooter from hell. Unfortunately, the partnership wasn’t to last.
“By the time we got to Ireland, Snowy White had been brought in and I’d been relegated to keyboards. You could actually feel the hatred from the crowd, they didn’t have a clue who this short-haired bastard at the back was and it was quite intimidating. There was a magical moment in Cork though, everyone was screaming for ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ and Phil turns round and says to the audience, ‘We’ve got a problem. Scott doesn’t know it, Snowy’s new, what about Midge?’ That was my cue to stroll out front, strap my guitar and let it rip. I thought, ‘Woooarrgh’, next stop Motorhead!”
There was more excitement en route to Belfast, Lizzy’s growing reputation for excess no doubt preceding them.
“We were crossing the boarder from North to South. Two unmarked cars almost ran us off the road, the drivers jumped out and we thought, ‘Right, this is it. The IRA are here, they’re going to ask for a donation and then shoot us’. It was the bastard Drug Squad, they took us to a heavily armed police station and systematically searched all our orifices. Afterwards they had the audacity to ask for backstage passes to the gig. Phil composed himself and in his best Dublin accent said, ‘Go fuck yourselves!’”
Were there any indications then that Philip’s drug dependency was eventually going to prove fatal?
“We knew he was in serious trouble but there was no telling him. Like anyone who was on that stuff, he was prepared to lie and cheat to get his next fix and damn the consequences. It was a very sad and tragic ending for a very warm and talented man. At one point I hadn’t seen him for six months and I couldn’t believe how bloated and ill he was looking. We shared the same manager and Chris tried to get him into a clinic, but he just insisted, ‘There’s no need, I’m clean’. The irony is, where Thin Lizzy are concerned, Phil was an incredibly together character. 99% of the group’s success was down to him. He masterminded the project, yet he still fell victim to that crap. What a waste.”