With a new lineup currently on the road (led by Scott Gorham and featuring Def Leppard’s Vivian Campbell on second guitar), it seems the perfect time to jump on the Lizzy bandwagon. Such was the strange genius of Thin Lizzy.
True to form, this rockin’ record is balanced with softer gems like “Borderline,” “Sweet Marie,” and “Fool’s Gold,” the latter two featuring melodic, picture-perfect leads from Gorham, who displays his wide, Claptoninspired wrist vibrato. One irony about Johnny the Fox is what might be termed the “Lynott paradox” – the contradictory image of an Irish hard rocker who simultaneously wrote heart-tugging ballads and soulful pop tunes. Hard rock from the middle ’70s was rarely better. Johnny the Fox also features two of Thin Lizzy’s heaviest tracks, “Massacre” (with Gorham on lead) and “Don’t Believe a Word,” a two-minute stomper featuring Robertson in blazing form. The disc kicks off with two absolutely brutish rockers, “Johnny” and “Rocky,” both sporting tandem harmonies and right-hook wah solos from Robertson. Released a mere seven months later, in October, Johnny the Fox is not as well-known as Jailbreak, but is arguably the more consistent album. As for the remixes, it’s great to hear vivid, fully fleshed out versions of several of these electrifying anthems. Bonus material on the reissue includes an early version of “Cowboy Song” called “Derby Blues,” the unreleased “Blues Boy,” and alternate studio takes recorded for the BBC in ’76 – a fairly common practice back then. And together, their harmonies on “The Boys Are Back in Town” and other tracks are wonders of melody and style. If you’re a Lizzy follower, this is big news.įor sheer macho-guitar glory, cue up “Warrior,” “Emerald” and the explosive “Cowboy Song” to hear Lizzy’s guitarists in action – the L.A.-born Gorham making a name for himself as a supremely soulful player, while the Glasgowbred Robertson was the speedy wah specialist. Fortunately, these reissues – co-produced by Gorham and Def Leppard singer (and longtime Lizzy fan) Joe Elliot – begin to redress history by cleaning up the original masters, adding bonus tracks, and remixing a number of cuts to restore Lynott’s long-lost bass tracks. Jailbreak contained Lizzy’s mega-hit “The Boys are Back in Town,” but sadly, the LP was so poorly mixed that guitarist Scott Gorham once told me it “…sounded like it was recorded in a shoebox.” Despite the lame original mixes, Jailbreak became a classic, owing to Phil Lynott’s impassioned songwriting and the twinguitar attack of Gorham and Brian Robertson.
∙ During the late-’70s UK punk explosion, members of Thin Lizzy and Sex Pistols joined forces (under the band moniker The Greedies) to release the 1979 holiday hit “A Merry Jingle.These two Thin Lizzy albums were originally released in 1976 and set the stage for the band’s astonishing run of hardrock masterpieces through the rest of the decade. ∙ As a testament to their reputation as an explosive live act, the band’s most commercially successful LP was 1978’s Live and Dangerous, which ended up going double Platinum in the UK. ∙ In 1977, “Dancing in the Moonlight (It’s Caught Me in Its Spotlight)” was a Top 5 single, driven by the saxophone-fueled groove provided by John Helliwell of fellow ’70s rockers Supertramp.
∙ Their signature song, “The Boys Are Back In Town,” was awarded Best Single by NME in 1976 and was later named one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone. 1 in Ireland and making the Top 10 in the UK and Germany. ∙ The band’s twin-guitar take on the traditional Irish folk song “Whiskey In the Jar” was their breakout single in 1972, hitting No. Irish outfit Thin Lizzy was one of the most influential hard rock bands of the 1970s, thanks to their iconic frontman-bassist Phil Lynott and their riff-heavy, multi-guitar grooves.
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