Ringing The Changes

On ‘Whiskey In The Jar’:
“The way it came about was very strange. We were rehearsing upstairs in this pub and we couldn’t get any inspiration. I was actually reading a book I was so bored. Then Phil picked up a Fender Telecaster and started singing all these Irish songs. He was doing, ‘Wild Rover’ and stuff like that, just for a laugh. I’m just thinking, ‘When are we going home?’. Then Phil started on ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ and I picked up my guitar and played along. Our manager, Ted Carroll, who had come in with a new amp for me to try out, asked what was that song we were playing. Phil said we were only messing about, but it was ‘Whiskey In The Jar’. Ted then said, ‘Have you got a single yet?’ and we said, ‘Yeah, ‘Black Boys On The Corner’ So he said, ‘Why not put ‘Whiskey…’ on the B-side?’
“Anyway, we recorded it – that was the biggest challenge of my life – I didn’t know how to approach it as it was an Irish ballad. We were used to doing rock and blues, not Irish ballads. Myself and Philip played acoustic guitars on it and after that was finished they all looked at me and said, ‘What are you going to do?’ I tried a few things that were really corny, so I took a cassette home and worked on it and came up with the solo. We recorded it and released it as a double A-side, so the DJs got the choice of which side to play. It had been out for about two months and we never heard anything about it. We were saying, ‘We told you it was a load of bollocks’. Then we did this horrendous tour of Germany, doing wine bars and clubs. We got this telegram to our German hotel. One of our roadies Frank Murray came in and said ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ is No. 22 in the UK charts. We thought, ‘We’ve got to get back to England’, so we cancelled the rest of the tour, went back and ended up on Top of The Pops.”

On ‘Randolph’s Tango’:
“That one sort of disappeared without trace after it was released. We weren’t playing the game at that point. Philip and Brian and myself looked upon ourselves as serious musicians, but as soon as ‘Whiskey…’ became a big hit, the record company took more of an interest in us. They said, ‘Hopefully your next record will be another Irish song’. But we thought, ‘No chance’. We went off and recorded ‘Randolph’s Tango’, and it went nowhere. We thought, ‘Fuck me, maybe they were right after all’ (laughs).”

On Why He Left Thin Lizzy:
“I don’t know what happened, but there were a lot of personal issues going on in my life. We were all very young, and I suppose the lifestyle got to me. I was slowly leaving the planet at that point. I tried to clean up my act, tried to stop drinking and taking this and that. But I just couldn’t do it in that band environment. Every day was a party. It was endless.
“One night, everything came to a head. I remember we did a press launch for the Vagabonds album in this pub in London. I was just standing there in a daze, too out of it, thinking, ‘I’m not getting off on this, it’s not happening for me’. When Lizzy started, we were into jamming and experimenting but when you got more famous – for want of a better word – it was all about putting on a show: wear this, say that, do this. It became about how I looked rather than how I played. I can see the sense of it now, but I rebelled against it back then. I didn’t regret leaving at the time. I had to leave, otherwise I’d be either dead, an alcoholic, or a junkie.”