Darren Wharton: "Phil Lynott was great at utilising people’s talent and bringing the best out of you"

Darren Wharton is in the Old Town seeing an old friend. He’s on Harry Street, to be exact, facing the flashing cameras with a mile-wide smile and his arm around the bronze immortalisation of Phil Lynott.

A half-hour earlier, the ex-Thin Lizzy keyboardist is sitting in the bar of the nearby Brooks hotel. He’s in nostalgic mood, hunched over a pot of tea and chatting with Hot Press about the Phil Lynott dedication concert taking place at the 3Arena in January.

He’s no stranger to paying homage. Beyond slipping in the occasional cover with his band Dare, he’s traversed the globe with his own tribute act, Renegade, named after the first Thin Lizzy album he was fully involved in.

“There’s certainly a lot of joy and nostalgia,” Wharton says. “And a little bit of sadness, because Phil was an amazing guy. It is emotional to play those songs. It’s a little surreal sometimes, but the energy of that set when you go out and play ‘Are You Ready’, ‘Jailbreak’, ‘Suicide’ and ‘Massacre’... Ask any musician who’s ever played a Lizzy set, it’s one of the best in the world. It’s just like a runaway train. It’s brilliant.”

The gig, marking 40 years since Lynott’s death, sees Renegade, as well as guests like guitarist Eric Bell and the 45-strong RTÉ Orchestra, perform a repertoire of Thin Lizzy hits. Wharton’s own story with the band began 45 years ago, when he was still a teenager in Manchester.

“I was playing in a club called Deno’s, one of the first bars in Manchester that had an all-night licence, where you could go and have a drink after 1 o’clock in the morning,” he begins. “I was playing the grand piano with a singer called Bill Tarmey, who played a character called Jack Duckworth in Coronation Street. Anyway, a guy called Joe Leach came in and said, ‘Thin Lizzy are looking for a keyboard player. Would you be interested?’

“I said ‘absolutely’. So he took me down for an audition and I met the guys in London. We got on like a house on fire. It was pretty frightening and nerve-wracking. I was obviously very young and naive, I just remember thinking, ‘God, I could be a part of this if it all goes right’. And it did. It was a wonderful feeling.”

Initially getting the job on a temporary basis, Wharton contributed keyboards on 1980’s Chinatown album when he was 18-years-old. He soon became an official member. He also worked on 1982’s The Philip Lynott Album, recorded at the Compass Point studios in the Bahamas, as well as Windmill Lane in Dublin.

“I forgot about that, yeah,” he laughs. “It was a lot of fun. We started recording it in the Bahamas with Huey Lewis. We didn’t get a lot of work done, really. It was like a busman’s holiday.”

Darren Wharton on October 2nd, 2025. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

Was there a side to Lynott in his solo work that didn’t come out in Thin Lizzy?

“Phil would always like to think out of the box musically,” Wharton says. “He was always trying to incorporate new sounds. That comes across with his Thin Lizzy writing too. If Phil wouldn’t have been the writer he was, he would never have come up with songs like ‘Sarah’ and ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’. So he did think out of the box to a certain extent, as much as he possibly could.But with his solo stuff, he could relax. He wasn’t pigeonholed into a certain sound.

“Whether it’s Lizzy, Metallica or U2 – people expect a certain style of song. That’s what the fans expect. Phil with his solo stuff, he could just be completely free. He didn’t like constraints as far as music was concerned and he could just spread his wings with his solo stuff.”

Wharton’s been asked about ‘Old Town’ six times already today, so I shift the focus to another Phil Lynott Album cut, ‘Ode To Liberty (The Protest Song)’ – one of the more explicitly political songs from Lynott’s catalogue. What does Wharton feel his bandmate would think of the state of the world today?

“I don’t think he’d be very happy,” he says. “I think Phil would have some very strong thoughts on what’s going on today. I spent four years with him, and we never really sat down and talked politics. It probably was in his heart, but it’s not something that we ever sat down and argued or discussed. I mean, politics was pretty mild compared to what we’re going through now.”

Seeing as he’s in Dublin, Wharton is keen to point out Thin Lizzy’s Celtic flair.

“Dare has always had a Celtic influence,” he says. “People used to ask where that came from. Are you kidding me? I live in Wales. I was in Thin Lizzy. Where do you think the Celtic influence comes from? I love Ireland, I’ve worked with Phil Lynott. Phil loved legends and history and that type of thing. If you listen to stuff like ‘Emerald’, there’s a lot of history in that. Same with ‘Massacre.’

“He’s drawing on things from the past that he has strong feelings about. That’s a very clever way of writing. They’ve got an inner message, if you like. And the way Phil can put that into a music environment is really genius. He was a genius really. And he never had that attitude. He was a very humble guy. I don’t think Phil knew how good he was.”

Many others do. What has always remained fervent across eras is an obsession with Lynott and his music.

“There’s a whole new generation of kids, anybody who wants to play guitar, they’re gonna come across Thin Lizzy,” Wharton explains. “It’s such an iconic sound that they make – Scott Gorham, Brian Roberston and Brian Downey, and obviously Phil.

“That magical line-up that they had was really remarkable really. There have been different line-ups since, but I think most people would agree that was the sort of iconic line-up, which was amazing.Gary Moore added a great deal to the band. John Sykes brought some great stuff as well.

“I think Phil was great at utilising people’s talent and bringing the best out of you really. And he was generous as a writer. A lot of writers these days, in Phil’s position, could quite easily turn around to someone and go, ‘I only write on my own, you know. I’m not going to let you co-write.’ But Phil was always very generous with that. It was a really creative environment.”

• The Dedication To Phil Lynott takes place at 3Arena on January 4.