It was hard going. With his band Fast Buck he was playing in tiny venues and earning next to nothing. So when a friend tipped him off about this Irish band looking for a guitarist, he jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n
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As Gorham recalled in a previously unpublished interview from 2010: \u201cI was broke. Playing in the pubs I was making \u00a311 a week. And then this guy told me about the audition and said, \u2018I think they\u2019re gonna pay \u00a330 a week.\u2019 I said, \u2018I\u2019m in!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
This was all the information he had when he walked into the band\u2019s rehearsal space.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI was thinking, \u2018Irish rock?! What the hell is that?\u2019 I wasn\u2019t even really aware of Irish music at that point. I\u2019m half Irish, my mother\u2019s full Irish, but we never had any of that playing in the house.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019m expecting a red-haired white guy, and I get a tap on the shoulder from this big black guy with a massive afro and a little moustache and an Irish accent. \u2018Hey, I\u2019m Phil!\u2019 I thought, \u2018Shit, this is gonna be interesting\u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Phil Lynott was the charismatic bassist, lead vocalist and primary songwriter in Thin Lizzy.<\/p>\n
The band had previously been a trio with Lynott alongside drummer Brian Downey and guitarist Eric Bell. When Gorham and a young Scottish guitarist named Brian Robertson both impressed at audition, Lynott chose to expand the band\u2019s line-up to a quartet \u2013 and as a result, a new signature twin lead guitar sound was created.<\/p>\n
In 1972, as a trio, Thin Lizzy had scored a hit in with their version of the traditional Irish song Whiskey In The Jar.<\/p>\n
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But they had failed to build on that success, and by 1974 the situation was dire.<\/p>\n
Gorham explained: \u201cThe band was seriously in debt, which I didn\u2019t know. I was blissfully na\u00efve about the whole thing. I was just thinking, \u2018Isn\u2019t it great to be in a band?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cUnknown to me, when we played at [London club] the Marquee the feeling was, \u2018We\u2019d better get a record deal from that show or it\u2019s done.\u2019 So thank God we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thin Lizzy\u2019s first album with Gorham and Robertson was Nightlife, released on 8 November 1974. The album\u2019s opening track, She Knows, was co-written by Gorham and Lynott. On the following album, 1975\u2019s Fighting, Gorham had two co-writes with Lynott (King\u2019s Vengeance and Freedom Song) and one solo credit for Ballad Of A Hard Man.<\/p>\n
Looking back in 2010, Gorham remained highly critical of those albums. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have a clue,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were so fucking green we didn\u2019t have a hope in hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
But with the album that followed, everything changed. That album was Jailbreak, released in 1976. Gorham co-wrote two tracks on the album, Warriors and Emerald. But it was Lynott alone who wrote the game-changer track. The Boys Are Back In Town was Thin Lizzy\u2019s breakthrough hit, No 1 in Ireland, No 8 in the UK and No 12 in the US. It lives on as a classic rock anthem.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crazy thing is, that song wasn\u2019t even planned to be on the album,\u201d Gorham said. \u201cBefore it was a single the album was doing nothing in England at this point \u2013 or the same amount as the last two. But one day the manager said, \u2019It looks like we\u2019re starting to get big radio play on The Boys Are Back In Town.\u2019 We got this domino effect, a ton of radio stations picked it up, and then it just took off like a rocket.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Thin Lizzy\u2019s profile rose, there were various benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hotels got better,\u201d Gorham said. \u201cYou got your own room. I didn\u2019t have to look at Phil\u2019s naked ass any more! Every so often I\u2019d say to him, \u2018I want you to take this party down the road, to somebody else\u2019s room.\u2019 He was the original 24-hour guy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we actually started to see women at the shows! We\u2019d written love songs. It wasn\u2019t all thrash and leather and heavy riffs and all that. We went out of our way to write love songs and more lyrical, medium-tempo kind of things. We started to see a lot of women at the shows, which was nice. It had its perks.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Phil was in his element. He had a real charming thing about him. He loved women, absolutely loved them. And he really respected them, so he treated them well.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was, however, a tougher side to Phil Lynott.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were that kind of band that didn\u2019t go out looking for trouble but we always got it,\u201d Gorham shrugged. \u201cAnd it would always end up in a huge fucking mess, fighting like you wouldn\u2019t believe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you fucked with Phil, he\u2019d go for you. He wouldn\u2019t back down. There were a fair few occasions when somebody would be fucking with me and Phil would go, \u2018Let me take care of this guy for you.\u2019 Boom! \u2018Thanks, Phil!\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing around a guy like Phil, you toughen up real quick. I never hung around with someone like that before. Back home all my buddies were like surf guys, stoned on weed, just, \u2018Cool, man!\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBut not Phil \u2013 not even if he was stoned. He could be real aggressive if you fucked with him, especially if you fucked with his country \u2013 he was so nationalistic \u2013 or if you fucked with his women. And if you fucked with Thin Lizzy, he was really gonna go for you!\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, drugs were Phil Lynott\u2019s undoing, and it was on the Jailbreak tour that the first signs of trouble became evident. Lynott was hospitalised with hepatitis, forcing the cancellation of shows in the US.<\/p>\n
The band had another album out by the end of 1976 \u2013 Johnny The Fox, featuring the classic track Don\u2019t Believe A Word.<\/p>\n
But on the 1977 album Bad Reputation, Brian Robertson played on only three tracks and was not featured in the band photo on the cover. Robertson had missed a US tour after sustaining an injury to his hand in a brawl in a London club. His replacement on that tour was Gary Moore.<\/p>\n
Robertson was reinstated for the Bad Reputation tour, and in 1978 the band\u2019s live album Live And Dangerous reached No 2 in the UK chart, held off the top spot by the Grease movie soundtrack.<\/p>\n
Live And Dangerous is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest live albums of all time.<\/p>\n
Robertson quit Thin Lizzy during the 1978 tour, with Gary Moore again stepping in to replace him. Moore remained as a full band member for the recording of the 1979 album Black Rose. But it was during the sessions for that album in Paris that Lynott and Gorham fell into the heroin addiction that would eventually contribute to Lynott\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
As Gorham recalled in 2010: \u201cIn the beginning it was booze and weed. The class A stuff started to come in after a few years. Whether it was mental inspiration or physical inspiration, you were looking for help. It was a sign of the times. You wanted to get loaded.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut going to Paris to make Black Rose was a big mistake. At that point, we\u2019d done morphine in New York City. No big deal. But in Paris \u2013 and I\u2019m still not sure to this day why or how it happened \u2013 all of a sudden we were just inundated with dealers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like an open door. You\u2019d get to the studio and every other night there\u2019d be a new dealer chopping out a line of smack or whatever.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first night I remember it happening, Phil gave me a call at my hotel room. \u2018Hey, why don\u2019t you come down to my room, I got something I wanna show you.\u2019 I had no idea what he was talking about. I go in, he whips open some packets and says, \u2018Hey, man, you ever seen any of that?\u2019 I knew exactly what it was. I\u2019d already tried it out in LA. He says, \u2018You wanna try some?\u2019 \u2018Uh, yeah!\u2019 And that was me and him gone for the next six years.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the Black Rose album, one song was sung by Lynott as a kind of confessional. Its title: Got To Give It Up.<\/p>\n
As Scott Gorham sadly recalled: \u201cNobody thought we were gonna get strung out. This was not gonna last forever. You are going to give it up after a while \u2013 we will come to our senses. But of course we never did.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The young American guitarist had no idea what he was getting into when he went to audition for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-782271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}