“The surgeon said I actually died on the operating table”: Thin Lizzy’s Scott Gorham recovering after suffering near-fatal health scare last year

Thin Lizzy’s resident electric guitar hero Scott Gorham has revealed he came close to dying last year when he developed sepsis following surgery.

As Gorham explains in a new interview on the Paltrocast podcast, he went to hospital for a kidney removal operation and ended up with sepsis, a condition that sees the body's immune system mistakenly attack its own organs in the wake of an infection.

Sepsis is serious and potentially life-threatening – a fact that Gorham is now all too aware of. He technically died while on the operating table.

“I had a health issue scare about a year ago with a kidney that had to be removed and I got sepsis from it,” Gorham reveals. “And the second surgeon said I actually died on the operating table and all that. And I was, like, 'Really, man? What the hell is all that about?'

“And now I had a third operation, and he said, 'Maybe you should take some time out and just kind of rehabilitate and all that, get your strength back and all that.' So that's what I'm doing.”

Despite the fact he’s still currently recovering from the episode, Gorham is eager to get back on the road as soon as possible.

“Hopefully soon-ish down the road, I can get my buns back out on the road,” he says.

While he takes a break from all things Thin Lizzy, Gorham is focusing on another creative outlet, one that doesn't involve the guitar: drawing.

“Playing guitar in bands, I've been doing this for 50 years now, so sitting at Heathrow Airport waiting for the next flight isn't really a new thing for me anymore,” he says. “But the drawing, to do this constantly right now, that kind of is the new thing for me.

“It's something that I thought I'd never really do as a constant thing. So I'm kind of enjoying this kind of break from the music right now and going into this little bit of a different direction.”

Last year was an eventful one for Gorham, and not just for health reasons. Across a number of interviews conducted across 2024, Gorham reflected on the development that changed his amp game forever, the time he lost his ‘Holy Grail’ Les Paul to a customs officer, and his cold Thin Lizzy audition.