The beginning of a great adventure

For over 35 years, Trend Studios boss John D’Ardis has kept a reel of one-inch tape under lock and key, not allowing anyone but his closest associates access to it.

Containing five songs, recorded by Thin Lizzy in the original Trend Studios in Dublin sometime between late 1969 and early 1970, these tracks were eagerly sought after by academics and fans alike, who got wind on the music industry grapevine of the treasure trove that D’Ardis guarded. But he was not to be drawn: the aficionados could wait. The tapes stayed in the drawer. Until now, that is.
The recordings are among the earliest by Thin Lizzy. They feature classic vintage songs by the band’s mainman, singer and songwriter Philip Lynott, considered by many to be the ultimate Irish rock star – and one of the most charismatic frontmen to emerge in the 1970s.
Unreleased at the time, they reflect a very different aspect to the musical personality of Philip Lynott. Largely acoustic and featuring at times intricate piano work, these Lost Recordings include fascinating early versions of ‘The Friendly Ranger At Clontarf Castle’, ‘Saga Of The Ageing Orphan’, ‘Dublin’, and, most remarkably, two otherwise unrecorded songs – ‘It’s Really Worthwhile’ and ‘Mama And Papa’.
“I’ve been very careful not to let these recordings out of my sight over the years,” D’Ardis says of his prize possessions. “You have to be especially wary with the way the internet is these days. But I ran into Phil’s mother, Philomena, a few years ago and casually mentioned that I had these tapes. She asked to hear them so I obliged – and it was only when she said that she really liked the songs that we decided to do something with them.”
The release of previously unheard Thin Lizzy recordings is a remarkable enough event in itself and is sure to arouse huge interest among fans worldwide – in truth, Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy's popularity has shown little sign of waning in the 20 years since his death. Indeed, if anything, the band have achieved a wider popular acceptance now than at the height of their fame.
But these historically important early recordings are extraordinary for several reasons. They display the fledgling Thin Lizzy in the first phase of their existence, playing original songs, working out arrangements and generally finding their sound. And while the performances themselves are raw, they exhibit a confidence in the material and in the musicianship that even today would be unusual in a young band. They also hint strongly at what might have been – at the different musical direction Thin Lizzy could have taken if the stars had been aligned differently or if events had tilted them down a slightly different route.
It’s easy to forget – but the fact is that the original incarnation of Thin Lizzy, with Philip Lynott on bass and vocals, Eric Bell on guitar and Brian Downey on drums, was a world away from the more familiar dual-guitar hard rock outfit the band would later evolve into on hits like ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, ‘Don’t Believe A Word’ and ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’. There was a mellower aspect to their collective personality, and they were an integral part of a Dublin scene that embraced blues, jug band music, psychedelic folk and poetry in equal measure. D’Ardis explains the background to how these recordings came about.
“I'd been working in Eamonn Andrews Studios for a while when I decided to start up my own studio,” he recalls. “I started out doing some recording at home in my parents’ garage but we eventually moved into a place in Hagan Court, off Baggot Street. I was trying to find a way into the market, but there was a general feeling that if you wanted to get played on RTÉ, you had to record in Eamonn Andrews Studios. I could see that we weren’t going to get very far, so we used the downtime that we had in abundance as an opportunity for everyone to learn together. I wouldn’t have charged Thin Lizzy for the session.
“As I recall, I first met Phil when he was in Skid Row, so I’d known him for a while. He wanted to put down some songs after he had done ‘The Farmer’, which EMI were interested in releasing. As a sort of quid pro quo for using the studio, I asked him to put a vocal on a song I’d written, ‘I Need You’, which was a kind of a Blood, Sweat & Tears pastiche. He was happy to do it and, in fact, that track ended up on the B-side of ‘The Farmer’ – so I got my few minutes of fame.”
Three of the five songs included in the sessions will already be familiar to fans of the early Lizzy line-up (although they obviously appear here in a very different form). Both ‘The Friendly Ranger At Clontarf Castle’ and ‘The Saga Of The Ageing Orphan’ were included on the band’s eponymously-titled debut album, which was released in April of 1971. The plaintive, evocative ballad, ‘Dublin’ (now included on the CD version of that first album) was one of four tracks that appeared on the New Day EP, released the following August. Which leaves the two rarest songs on the tape, ‘It’s Really Worthwhile’ and ‘Mama And Papa’, previously unheard in any form.
“I think ‘It’s Really Worthwhile’ has a kind of a ‘Rocky Racoon’ feel to it,” proffers D’Ardis. “I clearly remember Eric Bell playing guitar on those sessions. I’d never seen anyone so young play so well. I don’t know who is on piano but it was probably Eric Wrixon. I think Gary Moore might have been in on the sessions as well – I seem to remember giving him a lift home to a house out in Sutton. But it’s an awfully long time ago, so it’s hard to be certain about anything (laughs).
“I like the performances we got from the band at the time. It wasn’t that formal or organised in the way things are today, it was very casual. I wouldn’t want to overstate my own involvement. I’m listed as the producer on the sessions, but it was more about making the occasional suggestion or giving some advice here and there. It was done quite quickly – typically you’d do two or three takes of each song, but that was about it.”
While the recording set-up was primitive by contemporary standards, it was relatively sophisticated for the beginning of the ‘70s.
“The songs were probably recorded on a Scully eight-track tape machine, which we had just brought in,” John says. “It was quite advanced at the time; I’m almost certain we were the first studio in Ireland to put in an eight-track. For this release, we’ve put them through our no-noise system to remove some of the tape hiss, but they’re presented now pretty much as they were originally recorded.”
For his part, original Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell was astonished to discover that these recordings still existed. He was even more impressed when he finally heard the tapes.
“Considering how long ago they were recorded, I was surprised at how good they sound,” he says on the phone from his London home. “When I heard the song ‘It’s Really Worthwhile’, it brought back fond memories of singing harmony on it with Philip. One or two of the other songs are a bit vague, but it is me playing guitar on them, I’m certain of that!
“We did a lot of stuff in those days,” he adds. “We sort of stroked some studio time from John [D’Ardis]. Knowing Philip, who was always on the stroke back then, he probably organised it. Anything we got free we took, and once we were in the studio we lashed stuff out pretty quickly.”
Terry O’Neill was Thin Lizzy’s manager at the time of the recordings and clearly recalls the band recording at Trend.
“These recordings could date anytime from late 1969 to late 1970,” he surmises. “They were in and out of Trend a good few times back then. I’ve actually got Thin Lizzy diaries which have the exact dates of the sessions, but unfortunately everything's stashed up in the attic! It’s hard to say exactly when they were recorded. They played their first date (as Thin Lizzy) in March 1970 – that’s definite. I think ‘The Farmer’ (the band’s debut Irish-only single) was recorded just before that. When I met with Decca in the summer of 1970 to discuss doing a deal, I know that I had more than the single to show them, so it’s possible that these recordings were what I had at the time.”

All these years on, Terry O’Neill is clearly proud of the band that he helped launch onto the international stage. The recordings reveal the diverse influences that were at work in rock ‘n’ roll at the time – and they re-emphasise just how much both his hometown of Dublin, and the idea of family, meant to the young Lynott. In doing so, a different side of Philip Lynott, songwriter and musician, comes to the fore, offering us a wonderful and unforgettable portrait of the artist as a young man.
“I’m pleasantly surprised at how good these recordings are,” O’Neill enthuses. “They’re much better than I'd remembered them. They’re quite radio-friendly too, which is amazing, and they fit into the singer-songwriter mode, which in fact is what Philip was, when you think about it. They were good performances. Philo’s voice went through lots of changes around then. I think he had problems with his throat at the end of Skid Row. They were doing a lot of covers – even in the early Thin Lizzy there were a lot of covers, maybe about 60% of the set.”
Roy Esmonde, who also managed Thin Lizzy for a while, and took the beautiful portrait of Lynott that features on the cover of The Lost Recordings, has similar memories.
“He was having difficulty singing in key,” he recalls, “which was why he was forced out of Skid Row. But I remember, a little while later, Brush saying to me ‘You won’t believe this!’ Phil had got his tonsils out and – I’m sure there’s no medical basis for it – but his voice had changed and he had no problem singing in key from there on. It was remarkable.”
Eamonn Carr, who later drummed with Horslips, was a leading light on the Dublin beat poetry scene at the time and a member of Tara Telephone. He remembers Lynott as someone who was hungry to hear, and to play, whatever new music was around.
“I think that the period from the end of Skid Row through Orphanage into the first six months of Thin Lizzy was a very important one for him,” he avers. “He was finding his feet and own artistic voice. He was well into the folk thing. He was hanging around with the likes of Tim Booth, who was in Dr. Strangely Strange, and would have been aware of Pink Floyd and Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band. It's particularly interesting in that there’s nothing here of the heavy rock thing that the band would later become. While other musicians were quite clearly defined in their musical direction, Philip was hip to experimenting and was always consciously anxious to take in whatever stuff he could. It was something I admired in him. Not an awful lot of musicians in Ireland were like that at the time.
“At that stage he was very much a mover and a shaker around town, always trying to get things going. I think at one point he'd got some sort of agreement or encouragement from somebody to put together a compilation of the Irish underground. I remember him saying to myself and Peter Fallon one day that he was doing some stuff in the studio and would we like to come down. I brought my bongos to a studio – Philip was overseeing or masterminding what appeared to be a compilation of bands that were very left-field. I remember being there for a couple of hours, but I can’t remember any of the tracks and as far as I know nothing ever came out of it. But these recordings obviously came sometime after that.”
“It’s strange to think that these songs have been waiting for over 35 years to see the light of day,” concludes John D’Ardis. “It was an innocent era, but there was the beginning of something great going on in Irish music at the time, as these sessions confirm. Prompted by the fact that I'd been approached by a lot of people who wanted to hear the recordings, I thought Hot Press was the perfect vehicle to get them out, as a one-off, to that huge audience of people who love Irish music and along the way fell in love with Philip Lynott – both as a musician and a great Irish character. We won’t be pressing any more copies, so I imagine it’ll become an instant collectors’ item and no doubt some of them will end up on Ebay in the future. But that’s life.”
Terry O’Neill has the last word: “I think anyone associated with these recordings would be happy to have them heard, so it’s very worthwhile putting them out. It’s the sound of the original band as they were when they started out. It’s Thin Lizzy – unplugged!”