Brian Downey on Live And Dangerous (No.2/100)

"In one sense, this album came from an era when the band was at a peak. We were touring all over the world and attracting really massive crowds. But we’d had a couple of studio albums, like Bad Reputation, that had a few critics saying that they weren’t as good as Thin Lizzy live, so we decided it was time we recorded a live one. Then again, I don’t think we had any studio time left! Even back to when Gary Moore was with us I’d always thought we could make a great live album.

"For Live And Dangerous we considered recordings from all over the world, although some venues might have been left out of the final selection. It was hard trying to pick one version of a song from maybe ten others equally as good, but that’s where our producer Tony Visconti came in. He sifted through all of the tapes, listened to all our arguments and came up with a running order that made it sound like one continuous gig.

"When I heard the finished job for the first time I thought it was really good. I last heard the album about three years ago at a party and I thought it had stood up well after all the years."