Ireland, with a combined population – North and South – of only seven million, has punched way above its weight when it comes to delivering bona fide guitar heroes, whether they be from the blues, rock or alt fields.

Thankfully, Ireland’s troubled history and sectarian divide has never crossed over into music; bands from the North and South have always enjoyed equal success and respect on their respective opposite sides of the border, and religious differences have rarely played any part in the makeup of the most successful bands from the Emerald Isle.

The guitarists on this list hail from all corners of the musical spectrum, but, inevitably perhaps, there is one towering name that crops up, time and time again – Rory Gallagher.

Although he seems somewhat overlooked these days, his influence is everywhere; the caliber of guests at the annual Rory Gallagher festival, in his hometown of Cork, is testament to the enduring respect his name commands. Fittingly, he opens up our celebration of Irish greats, past and present.

1. Rory Gallagher

Without doubt the single most influential Irish guitarist or in fact musician, period, must be Rory Gallagher. In a long career, from his first, self-titled, album as a member of Taste in 1969, through to his final album, Fresh Evidence (1990), Gallagher maintained a level of quality control that meant every album was a treasure trove of inventive and uniquely expressive playing.

Whilst Gallagher was a superb acoustic stylist, often reintroducing lost Delta blues classics to a new audience – the electric guitar was what he used to build his unrivaled reputation.

Brandishing the most battered Strat in rock, Gallagher was a true master of everything the instrument had to offer, utilizing every option at his disposal to create the broadest of tonal palettes with which to convey his unique vision.

A typical Gallagher solo could include wah-simulating tone knob swells, violin-like volume swells, pinched harmonics, simulated whammy bar dive bombs, bent harmonics and even occasional bouts of right-hand tapping – long before Eddie unleashed the technique on the world.

Gallagher’s influence was immense – from Slash to Johnny Marr, to Alex Lifeson to Brian May and all points in between.

Gallagher started out playing at nine, and quickly improved to the point where he was winning local talent shows by the age of twelve. When he was 15, he’d managed to save enough money to buy the Strat which he used for the rest of his career, a 1961 sunburst model, which he bought for £100 ($125) in 1963.

That was the year he joined the Fontana Showband, playing hits of the era. Gallagher was a huge blues and rock ’n’ roll fan – his biggest inspirations being Muddy Waters, Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran. Knowing there was no future for him playing the music he loved, he left the Showband to front a number of beat and R’n’B combos before forming Taste in 1966.

Finally able to realize his dream to play the music that he lived and breathed, without compromise, Gallagher’s ambitions rapidly outgrew the limitations of the Irish music scene.

He moved to London in 1968, where his skills finally found the audience they deserved. Gallagher’s rapid ascent through the ranks of London clubland bands saw him score a record deal with Polydor, release three albums and appear at the Isle Of Wight Festival within the space of two years.

Taste reached the end of their life in 1970, and Gallagher embarked on his solo career, releasing fourteen albums before his untimely death in 1995 at only 47, due to complications associated with liver failure.

Amongst one of the richest of back catalogs, one album crops up constantly whenever artists discuss Gallagher – Irish Tour ’74, which serves as the perfect introduction for anyone looking for a point of entry into the Irish wizard’s work.

2. Gary Moore

The other Irish colossus of blues guitar. Gary Moore started out as a left-hander who taught himself to play right-handed and served a short apprenticeship in a number of bands on the burgeoning beat scene in Belfast in the mid ‘60s. Moore actually knew Rory Gallagher, striking up a friendship before Gallagher moved to London in 1968.

That same year, Moore moved to Dublin to join Skid Row, a blues/rock band fronted by Phil Lynott, who left soon after Moore joined. Moore made two albums with Skid Row, Skid (1970) and 34 Hours (1971), before he left, frustrated with their musical direction. Moore made his first solo album, Grinding Stone, in 1973.

Lynott had formed Thin Lizzy in 1969 after his departure from Skid Row, scoring a run of hit singles and albums, until guitarist Eric Bell departed in 1974. Casting around for someone to fill the gap, Moore was the obvious choice, though he only stayed with Lizzy for a few months.

Moore’s next step was to join jazz-rock band, Colosseum II, putting in a spell of three years. Again, dissatisfied with where his career was going - a common theme through Moore’s life – he returned to Thin Lizzy in 1978 for another couple of years, before finally deciding to commit to a solo career.

Moore’s metal-oriented albums, kicking off with Back On The Streets (1978), through to After The War, (1989), saw him achieve notable successes both in Europe and America. His incendiary, balls-to-the-wall technique, was a perfect match for the bombastic rock he was playing; every song was awash with jaw dropping, explosive soloing.

Moore was apparently feeling disillusioned with his career, and had frequently expressed a yearning to get back to the blues that had inspired him when he first started to play. Having voiced this dissatisfaction to bandmates, it was suggested to him that he should just go ahead and make a blues album. Still Got The Blues (1990) saw Moore fully embrace his first love.

He had long cited the legendary Bluesbreakers album, featuring Eric Clapton, as one of his major influences. Moore took Clapton’s blueprint of Les Paul and Marshall fueled blues grit and ramped it up to a whole new level of intensity. The fire and venom in Moore’s soloing was the perfect way to pull rock fans into the world of blues, with Moore channeling both sides of the line.

Later Moore albums saw him tone down the rampant, blazing solos, for a more traditional blues approved tone, but with no less ferocity in the playing.

Moore was often seen to be wielding Greeny, the famed Les Paul that he bought off one of his other heroes – Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac. Moore was still recording and touring, and enjoying great success when he died suddenly of a heart attack at only 58 years old in 2011.

3. The Edge

Born David Evans in England, in 1961, The Edge moved to Dublin one year later and is included in this overview as an honorary Irishman, given his contribution to Irish music alongside his bandmates in U2, all of whom he met at school in 1976.

Stylistically, The Edge is poles apart from the raw, bare-knuckled blues approach of Gallagher and Moore, instead opting to explore and exploit the world of signal processing to the max. His ingeniously creative use of delay pedals in particular, marked him out as a unique sonic stylist, all the more unusual given that U2 were coming from much the same creative hotbed as the Irish punk movement.

Near contemporaries of The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers and The Boomtown Rats, U2 eschewed their ragged, aggressive vibe for a more mainstream approach that rapidly saw them blast through the restraints and limitations of the new wave audience to become global, stadium-filling superstars, and the biggest Irish band of all time.

Stylistically, the Edge utilizes a technically simple and direct approach, using minimal voicings, harmonics and droning open strings to leave room in the aural spectrum for his chained signal processors to work their magic.

One of those guitarists whose entire modus operandum is to serve the song, The Edge never wastes a note – everything he plays is delivered with precision and deft economy. The influence of those who inspired him, guitarists on the artier side of the new wave movement such as Tom Verlaine and John McGeogh is apparent – less so that of fellow countryman Rory Gallagher, for whom the Edge has often stated his admiration.

4. Vivian Campbell

Vivian Campbell has been a member of Def Leppard for over 30 years now, but prior to that he built a name as a guitarist to watch out for in his band Sweet Savage from 1979 to 1983, parlaying that rising profile into the opportunity to carve out a stellar rep as the new shredder on the block, thanks to his work in Dio.

Citing the twin giants of Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore as primary influences, alongside the likes of Marc Bolan and Mick Ronson, Campbell’s work with Dio seemed to be informed more by the era of excess and virtuosity that was the signature of the ‘80s hair metal age.

Joining Dio in 1983, Campbell recorded three albums before jumping ship under an acrimonious cloud. Campbell has often aired his dissatisfaction with his time in Dio, though according to Campbell, that was more about business decisions than musical differences.

“I was forced into signing over publishing rights when I first joined, so I never saw any of that money. I did get my dues for Last In Line (1984) though, as I had signed a separate publishing deal by then. I enjoyed the musical side of things, though at times I’d be a little jealous of the likes of Van Halen and Ratt, who always looked like they were having fun – everything in Dio was just way too serious.”

After Dio, Campbell spent a year with Whitesnake before parting due to the time honored ‘musical differences.’ Campbell spent a few years working with other artists and had started to enjoy some success with his band, Riverdogs, when the opportunity to join Leppard arose in 1992, due to the untimely death of Steve Clark the year before.

For Campbell, this was everything he was looking for in a band. “It was amazing to be in a band with a bunch of guys I really liked, playing these fantastic, anthemic rockers and actually getting paid properly.”

5. Bernie Tormé

Inspired by Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore (sound familiar?) plus the classic rock stylings of Hendrix and Beck, Bernie Tormé spent his early years gaining valuable experience in a number of minor bands in Ireland before following the well-trodden path across the Irish sea, as had his heroes before him, to London.

Arriving in England in 1974, it took a couple of years for Tormé to find his feet before forming The Bernie Tormé Band. With the punk explosion in full flight, Tormé adapted to the prevailing trend, aligning his band with the new wave acts of the era.

In truth, they always seemed an unlikely fit for the scene, and Tormé’s next move, joining former Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan’s band, Gillan, in 1979, seemed like a far happier alliance. Gillan was riding high at that time, enjoying a string of hit singles and albums.

Tormé’s playing was strongly to the fore, demonstrating killer chops, matched to a flamboyant visual style which saw him become a key figure on the UK rock scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. If proof were needed of Tormé’s rising stock, shortly after departing Gillan (citing frustration with financial arrangements), he spent a short period of time as Randy Rhoads’ replacement with Ozzy, completing a run of tour dates.

After a few months with Osbourne, Tormé went on to form various solo bands, most notably, Tormé, featuring L.A. Guns’ singer, Phil Lewis, on vocals. Sadly, his career seemed to be on a downward trajectory for the latter period of his life, for reasons that seem hard to fathom, as he clearly had the chops to fill the guitar seat in any band of the day.

Like so many of the entrants on this list, he passed away before his time in 2019, at 66, after a bout of illness.

6. Eric Bell

Eric Bell grew up in the same scene as Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore – no surprise there – and was actually a member of Van Morrison’s band, Them, for a short period in 1966. Bell formed Thin Lizzy with Phil Lynott in 1969 – though the band had to move to London to get a deal with Decca Records at the start of the ’70s.

They became a huge live draw, released three albums and a string of Lizzy classic singles, including The Rocker which was co-written by Bell, and, of course, their take on the traditional Irish song, Whisky In The Jar, of which they took ownership, due to Bell’s work on the intro and the solos.

According to Bell, it took countless hours and approaches before he finally settled on what to play for the distinctive introduction. Bell was forced to leave Lizzy in 1973, due to frustrations with his reliability. According to Bell, the pressure of the workload the band was enduring, and the variety of temptations that life in a successful rock band offered, were too much to cope with.

He maintained a low profile for many decades but did release The Acoustic Sessions, an acoustic reworking of early Thin Lizzy music, retaining Phil Lynott’s vocals, in 2024.

7. Kevin Shields

Kevin Shields’ work with My Bloody Valentine, who formed in 1983, releasing their first EP, Geek!, in 1985, saw him explore a strongly avant-garde, explorative approach to the guitar. His use of radically altered tunings and extreme sonic processing, torturing his Jazzmaster through endless chains of stompboxes, saw him carve out his own niche in the world of alt-guitar heroes.

His unique right hand technique, using the long whammy bar on the Jazzmaster to subtly manipulate his strumming, causing the pitch of his chords to constantly shift, only added to the disorienting wall of sound that he created.

In contrast, the vocal melodies that rode above Shield’s massed banks of delay and distortion were conventionally melodic enough to score the band prolonged success.

8/9. Carlos O’Connell & Conor Curley

The forerunners of the current crop of Irish bands, Fontaines D.C., features the twin guitar tag team of Carlos O’Connell and Conor Curley. Ironically, vocalist Grian Chatten is also a skilled guitarist.

Though Chatten doesn’t play much guitar live, he actually contributed the best solo on the band’s last album, Romance, (2024) as O’Connell recalls, “Conor and I were wondering what to do for Death Kink when Grian said he had an idea, and he fucking nailed it in one take.”

O’Connell and Curley favor textured, layered interweaving guitar lines in place of obvious guitar heroics, but their love of the traditional tools of the trade is obvious from the breadth of warm tones they deliver. Amongst O’Connell’s go-to guitars is a signature Rory Gallagher Strat.

“I wasn’t a fan of Rory when I bought the guitar – I didn’t really listen to much blues – I just thought it looked cool. Since then I checked him out and I can see he was a genius.”

10. Josh Jenkinson

Inhaler, like Fontaines D.C., are forerunners of the new generation of Irish rock bands, enjoying huge commercial success with their indie/pop flavored rock with a hint of classic U2, perhaps unsurprisingly, as vocalist Eli Hewson is Bono’s son.

Josh Jenkinson favors a textured, arpeggio-driven approach to his guitar lines, prioritizing taut, economical hooks over showboating. Jenkinson took inspiration from one of Irish rock’s immortal figures, Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott.

“Just to see someone there who was mixed race, like me, was inspirational in itself. It helped give me the belief that I could achieve something in music.”

11. Dom Martin

Amongst the new era of Irish blues guitarists, Dom Martin has marked himself out as the one most likely to assume the mantle of Rory Gallagher. A fantastically adept acoustic and electric stylist, Martin is quick to acknowledge the giant footsteps he’s following in.

“My main influence would be Rory Gallagher. Unfortunately, I was only 4 years old when he passed but his music and the way in which he played left a lifelong impression on me. I spent all my young years in my bedroom listening and playing along to his records.

“He definitely played from the heart and soul and that’s all that really matters when it comes to self-expression. I have been decorating my silence with Rory for as long as I can remember, and I owe him a lot.”

12. Simon McBride

Simon McBride took on the unenviable task of following the legacies of Ritchie Blackmore and Steve Morse as the latest guitarist in all-time rock legends, Deep Purple, becoming a full-time member in 2022. He has a connection with fellow Irishman, Viv Campbell, as he was a member of the reformed line-up of Sweet Savage, Campbell’s first band of note.

McBride caused heads to turn when he won Guitarist magazine’s Young Guitarist of The Year competition in 1993 at the age of 15.

As you would expect, given his achievements at such a young age, McBride has chops to spare, not only can he replicate the classic solos of the band’s history, but he also carves out his own unique signature statements on the band’s newer material. He also continues to front his own band between Purple commitments.

13. Muireann Bradley

Muireann Bradley came to prominence in the UK in 2021, at 15 years old, having posted videos on YouTube, showcasing her ability to recreate, to the finest detail, the work of the great American acoustic blues stylists of the early 20th century.

On top of her fantastic technical ability, she possesses a convincing, warm vocal tone that saw her achieve exposure on UK TV and become a surprise entrant on the British album charts with I Kept These Old Blues in 2023 – achieving an unlikely success in the era of homogenized, digitized and processed artificial pseudo music.

She is planning to play shows in America later this year, hoping to build on her European success.

14. Jake Burns

Jake Burns continues to front Stiff Little Fingers, who emerged from the hotbed of dynamism that was the Irish punk scene in 1977/78. Unafraid to touch on raw subject matter at a time when there was tremendous religious conflict in Northern Ireland, their song titles spoke volumes – Wasted Life, Suspect Device and Alternative Ulster, which featured one of the most iconic guitar intros in punk history.

Burns brought as much fire to his playing as to his excoriating vocals. His primary influence is a familiar name on this list. “I saw Taste on TV when I was 11 – this noise just transfixed me. I decided there and then that I wanted to be Rory Gallagher.”

15. Damian O’Neill

The Undertones emerged from the same scene in Northern Ireland as Stiff Little Fingers, bringing a keen pop sensibility to their take on the prevailing punk winds. Damian O’Neill’s simple, effective guitar breaks are an integral part of the band’s songs, never more than on their seminal hit of 1978, Teenage Kicks.

One of O’Neill’s primary influences is the work of Billy Harrison, the lead guitarist in Them.

“Just listen to his slick, choppy and jagged blues licks on Baby Please Don’t Go, his strange and unnerving slide guitar playing on One, Two, Brown Eyes and his simple, but oh so effective solo on the anthemic Gloria, and you can see why his playing made such an impression on a 15-year-old novice guitarist such as myself. It sounds like Billy was improvising as the tape was rolling and the feel and attitude in his playing is so exciting.”

16. Billy Harrison

Billy Harrison was a member of Them – Ireland’s answer to the Rolling Stones in the mid-’60’s UK R’n’B explosion, which saw the Chess songbook liberally raided by beat combos across the UK.

Fronted by Van Morrison, besides the usual covers, Them had a couple of aces up their sleeves in Here Comes The Night and Gloria – two proto-punk/garage classics.

Harrison is often overlooked in the annals of Irish music, but he contributed some of the most interesting guitar work at a time when many of his contemporaries were happy to endlessly recycle Chuck Berry licks.

17. Andy Cairns 

Andy Cairns is the singer and guitarist in Therapy?, who combine classic rock sensibilities with an ear for a commercial tune mixed with a dash of post-punk urgency to create a unique sound, described by Andy Cairns as ‘The Undertones meets Metallica.’

Troublegum (1994), and Infernal Love (1995), saw the band score big around the world, although America remained resistant to their charms.

Influenced by the bands of the punk explosion, particularly The Clash and the Buzzcocks, as well as Irish punk legends Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones, Cairns’ playing remains laser-focused on taking the band’s anthemic rockers to another level - rarely indulging in the standard pyrotechnics of the rock arena.

18. Henry McCullough

Henry McCullough cut his teeth in Eire Apparent, moving to London in 1967 and sharing a manager with a certain Jimi Hendrix, namely Chas Chandler. By 1970, he’d become a member of Joe Cocker’s Grease Band, played on a Spooky Tooth album, The Last Puff, and had appeared at Woodstock with Cocker.

Moving onwards and upwards, he spent eighteen months in Wings, hooking up with them in 1972. Although he played on Red Rose Speedway and a bunch of singles, differences with Paul McCartney saw him leave in 1973, just before they recorded Band On The Run. McCullough’s career seemed to go into freefall after that, with only intermittent session work keeping things going up to the end of the ‘70s.

Perhaps the most surprising move in his career was when he substituted for the recently departed Wilko Johnson at a handful of Dr Feelgood shows in 1977 – a highly unlikely combination. McCullough died in 2016 after a period of illness.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

When Eric Bell left Thin Lizzy, the group overhauled their guitar department, bringing in both Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham for a soon-to-be-legendary guitar tandem. But Robertson admits that he wasn’t all the convinced by Gorham at the start.

Gary Moore had stepped into the picture after Bell’s departure, with vocalist Phil Lynott later dramatically bolstering the band line-up with twice as much electric guitar firepower.

Robertson was first through the door, then he watched Gorham’s entrance into the band in real time.

“It was Phil’s decision because he liked his look, and he was American,” Robertson says in the new issue of Guitarist. “Brian [Downey, drums] and I didn’t think he was up to it, to be honest. He was perfectly capable of playing the major and minor chords in the right place, but not the lead.

“You’re playing a minor blues, and you’d say, ‘Take a solo,’ but he played it [in] major. That’s what jarred with Brian and I.”

There was also the small matter of Gorham’s Japanese Les Paul copy falling to pieces during his audition. Speaking previously to Guitar World about his audition, Gorham admitted it was a “chaotic” trial by fire. But he did enough to get the gig – something 25 players before him couldn’t manage.

Regardless, Robertson had his reservations.

“He was more of a rhythm player in the beginning,” he says of Gorham. “The solos he did take were meticulously worked out. They weren’t solos, as I understand solos. Even from the early days, I would just say, ‘Run the track, and I’ll just jam.’ We’d do it three or four times, and then edit them, so there’s some spontaneity.”

Gorham preferred the more exacting approach, a contrast to Robertson’s casual flair. Still, their guitar harmonies – which Robertson said he led on – became their trademark, with The Boys are Back in Town quickly becoming a staple hit when it was released in 1976.

In related news, Robertson also detailed how a guitar swap with Jeff Beck led him to bring a new instrument into the band.

He would eventually leave Lizzy behind, with Gorham partnering with Gary Moore on the 1979 LP, Black Rose: A Rock Legend. He says he knows what the band lost when he stepped down.

Robertson’s full interview features in the new issue of Guitarist. Print and digital copies can be ordered from Magazines Direct.

Kirk Hammett certainly didn’t benefit from the luck of the Irish over the weekend as he slipped and fell into the audience while playing in Dublin.

Metallica’s wah pedal enthusiast laughed off the incident as the band, touring with Gojira, Pantera and Knocked Loose in tow, headlined the 40,000-capacity Aviva Stadium on Friday, June 19.

He’d just launched into Seek & Destroy, from the band's 1983 debut album, Kill ‘Em All, with the roar from the crowd still audible as he failed to keep his footing and went tumbling in the gap between the band’s massive center stage and the front row of a surprised and slightly amused crowd.

Thankfully, Hammett and his Ouija Board ESP came away from the incident unscathed, with the band closing the show with Master of Puppets.

On the whole, Metallica’s latest trip to Ireland wasn’t a banana skin, with the band playing a snippet of Thin Lizzy’s Black Rose during a jam between Hammett and Trujillo. The pair visited the Phil Lynott statue the following day.

Trujillo assumed vocal duties for the spot as they paid homage to Irish rock icons, with Greeny the obvious guitar for the job. The Irish Examiner, though, called it “ropey at best,” which likely hurt Hammett more than the fall.

Metallica will next play shows in Glasgow, Scotland; Cardiff, Wales; and London, England, as they move across the British Isles before returning to the US for their Sphere residency in October.

Those who had Nuno Bettencourt and Rick Beato playing Thin Lizzy on their bingo card for 2026 can stamp with pride this morning, as the pair have unexpectedly done exactly that.

The showcase, as part of Bettencourt’s debut guitar camp, Six-String Sanctuary, saw them doing their best Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson impressions back in January. At long last, footage of the performance has now been uploaded to YouTube.

The Las Vegas camp welcomed an impressive cast list, including Steve Vai, Eric Gales, and Mateus Asato, alongside YouTuber and guitar educator Rick Beato, who made an excellent foil for Bettencourt here.

Bettencourt had, unsurprisingly, used the opportunity to play one of his new Nuno Guitars, er, guitars – we’re guessing one of the high-end Thoroughbred models – with Baeto donning his namesake Gibson Rick Beato Les Paul Special Double Cut. Excellent plugs for both models.

As impressive as Bettencourt’s vocals are here, it’s the guitar playing we care about, and the harmonies are as sweet as a chocolate milkshake with a few personalized tweaks to the song’s iconic twin harmonies. Astute viewers will also note that’s Joe Satriani and Steven Wilson drummer, Marco Minnemann, behind the kit.

For those used to seeing Beato interview famous stars in his studio, rather than playing on stage in a live setting alongside them, it's certainly a change of pace. But it didn't faze him one bit.

As one user comments, “Seeing Rick play live with Nuno is like seeing your teacher after school playing with a garage band,” with another replying: “...if the garage band was Metallica.”

Bettencourt has used the guitar camp as an opportunity to get his new guitars in the hands of players, and he’s been championing up-and-coming stars, too, with one genre-bending guitarist getting heaps of praise from the virtuoso recently.

Brian Robertson has been reflecting on his short stint in Motörhead and admits that the signs were there from the beginning that he was not the right man for the job.

Robertson was well acquainted with Motörhead frontman and bassist, the late Lemmy Kilmister. They moved in the same circles. They both enjoyed a good boozer.

“I’d known them for years, hanging out at the same clubs,” says Robertson, speaking to Classic Rock. “Lemmy was always on the one-armed bandits at The Embassy.”

Robertson might have known Lemmy but he didn’t know Motörhead. If he had, he might not have taken the gig. This was always going to be a poisoned chalice. Iron Fist was received with mix reception. Lemmy would go on record as saying it was a mistake to have let the soon-to-exiting guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke produce the album.

Also, Clarke leaving Motörhead in 1982 was officially a big deal. The Three Amigos was a much-loved lineup – and who could replace Fast Eddie Clarke?

Robertson admitted that it was a culture shock. He had to fly out and join them mid-tour, and you get the impression he would have asked the pilot to turn the plane around if he could.

“I wasn’t aware of it, because I wasn’t a fan,” says Robertson. “The only thing I knew was Ace Of Spades. I knew it was going to be rough when I started trying to listen to the material on the flight, because I couldn’t distinguish one track from another.”

That panic would later manifest itself onstage. When you can’t distinguish one track from another, it puts you at a disadvantage. But what is it about Thin Lizzy guitarists and in-flight epiphanies? Midge Ure, recruited at the last minute to replace Gary Moore, tried to learn the set during a three-hour Transatlantic flight on Concorde.

“[I had] A ghetto blaster and big headphones,” Ure told MusicRadar. “It was pre-Walkman. I sat on Concorde, sipping vintage Dom Perignon – which I’d never had before in my life – trying to get the structures in my head.”

Ure’s fellow Scotsman might have needed something stronger than Champagne. It would have prepared him for the madness ahead. Motörhead were the “total opposite” of Thin Lizzy.

“They didn’t like rehearsing, didn’t like soundcheck, didn’t like being in the studio much,” says Robertson. “We liked to party [in Lizzy], but Motörhead was non-stop.”

Motörhead also had their own internal logic. It was a well run ship. They had ways of doing things that didn’t always make logistical sense – as Robertson found out when he arrived in the States for the tour.

“I went to Toronto first, trying to sort out the visas,” recalls Robertson. “When I eventually got to [New York], I was met at the airport, straight into the rehearsal place, with Lemmy going into his bag of speed. After the rehearsal, they said: ‘We’re getting on the bus.’ We went back into Canada, all the way to Calgary, for the first gig.”

But those gigs went okay, to a point. No, Robertson couldn’t work out which song was which. He’d ask drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor what to do, but Taylor was in his own world.

They didn’t tell Robertson there was pyro onstage – “I ran to the front of the stage, hit the first chord, and I was standing over a fucking flash bomb!” – and by the time the set was finished Robertson had the suspicion that he had just played the same song the whole time.

He only recorded one studio album, Another Perfect Day, during his time in the band. But even if it wasn’t a good fit, Robertson says all wasn’t lost. He argues that Another Perfect Day was a strong album and opened Lemmy’s mind to more melodic material. He also remembers Lemmy living up to his reputation.

“I didn’t really clash with Lemmy. I enjoyed my time with Motörhead,” says Robertons. “He was such a great lyricist. He’d just do it on the fly.”

When the time came to leave the band, Robertson had no complaints. The band was struggling. Ticket sales were down. And they had allegedly cooked up a scheme to cancel the tour on health grounds and claim the insurance. Robertson, it was agreed, was to be the fall guy, and that was okay by him.

“I stayed up for two nights with the road crew in my room,” says Robertson. “They got this doctor – who the promoter had in his pocket – to come in and sign a certificate for the insurance company. I was obviously fucked up at that point. We came back to London, and [Lemmy and Philthy] came down and said: ‘We should part company.’ I was totally okay with it, because I was looking out for other things. We never really fell out.”

It's not the first time this year Robertson has looked back on one of his departures. In February, he set the record straight on his Thin Lizzy exit.

As Scottish rock greats, Celtic rock luminaries, and two-time Grammy nominees, Big Country can be called many things. Just don't call them blues.

Formed by Skids guitarist Stuart Adamson and his foil, Bruce Watson, in 1981 after Adamson's punk outfit had, err, hit the skids, the pair didn't have much of a vision at first.

One thing they did do, however, was look at Thin Lizzy’s marriage of traditional Celtic music with rock and draw huge inspiration from it. But not every facet.

“If you were to pick a song, it would be Whiskey In The Jar,” says Watson in the new issue of Guitarist. “That one would fit alongside [Big Country’s own] Fields Of Fire or something. But it’s more of a sound thing – the reverb on the guitars and a melody. There’s a lot of melody in what [Thin Lizzy guitarist] Eric Bell's doing, but there’s a bit of string bending, and we didn't want to do that.”

Consequently, the pair established one golden rule that they’ve sworn by ever since.

“Instead of bending, we’ll just play the note,” Watson affirms. “We’ll slide up to the note, play that note, and we’ll not bend up to it, 'cos automatically you go into blues when you do that.”

It was a musical territory they were keen not to find themselves steering into. That also meant avoiding the more free-flowing elements of the genre, too.

“Guitar solos are meant to be almost free-form – you wouldn't play the same thing twice – and we wanted to keep everything exactly the same, so that when you played it live, it would be the same as how you recorded it,” Watson underscores. “There was none of this, ‘I’ll just do a solo and busk it...’”

Their playing ethos, then, was a world away from what Buddy Guy just did at NPR’s famous Tiny Desk – but what they created was wholly unique. Sure, there are echoes of Thin Lizzy’s twin-harmony guitars throughout their discography, but there were strange effects galore, too, including the use of a harmonizer pedal to replicate the sound of bagpipes as they doubled down on their roots.

Their 1983 debut album, The Crossing, went platinum as the band skyrocketed to success; the golden rule worked.

The band is featured in the new issue of Guitarist alongside a 75th birthday celebration of the Fender Telecaster and a new interview with Eric Johnson.

Head over to Magazines Direct to order a physical or digital copy today.

Original Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell had occasionally overdubbed harmonies on the band’s albums. But with the 1974 arrival of Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham – after a brief stint with Gary Moore and a short-lived lineup featuring Andy Gee and John Du Cann – the sound of two Les Pauls blazing away in unison became synonymous with Phil Lynott’s outfit.

In addition to being a prodigiously talented lead guitarist, 18-year-old Glaswegian Robertson was responsible for writing the hookline harmonies which came to define his partnership with Gorham.

Today the combination of Lynott, Robertson, Gorham, and drummer Brian Downey is regarded as Lizzy’s definitive aggregation. After reaching an incendiary peak with 1978’s Live and Dangerous, the dream team fragmented, with Robertson replaced by the returning Moore.

Robertson’s status had been in flux since November 1976 after he sustained a hand injury on the eve of an American tour. He’d been defending his friend, blues rock singer Frankie Miller, from an assailant with a broken bottle at London’s Speakeasy Club. Assuming he’d been fired, Robertson began assembling Wild Horses with former Rainbow bassist Jimmy Bain.

Robertson was recalled to Lizzy as a session guitarist for 1977’s Bad Reputation, but recently told this writer there was never a discussion about him returning permanently. After two albums with Wild Horses (remixed for box set Standing Our Ground – Complete Recordings 1978-1981), and a brief run with Motörhead, he began a long stint in Miller’s band, which continued until the singer’s aneurysm in 1994.

Robertson spent the '90s and 00s working predominantly as a session musician and producer, before releasing the solo album Diamonds and Dirt in 2011. Today he’s happily retired and relaxes by customizing Les Pauls in his workshop.

In the wake of the recent Lizzy box set 74-75 and the Wild Horses collection, his solo record is to be reissued as Diamonds and Dirt Redux, with a previously unreleased instrumental set showcasing his style across a range of genres.

You were a fan of Lizzy’s Vagabonds of the Western World, and could play the songs before you auditioned. What did you like about Eric Bell’s guitar playing?

There was a bit of Hendrix about it, but there was that Celtic lilt to it as well. He gave a direction to Phil’s writing at that point. Phil would bring very basic things to you; the end product was always influenced by whoever was playing with him. In the case of Vagabonds it’s very much Eric.

Peter Green is one of your main influences. What appealed to you?

Widdlers were never for me. It was to do with the spacing and the feel – what a gap of nothing can mean to the next note you're going to play. Filling up the spaces takes away from the dynamic of the next note.

For a lot of guitar players, the minute somebody says “solo,” that’s what it is – solo. Everybody else disappears. But Peter’s listening to the vocals, the drums, taking in all of the song. Fleetwood Mac’s Blues Jam at Chess is my favorite album. It’s improvisation. That’s what really sets me off.

Did you work out any of his licks?

There's some stuff I can play you note for note! Watch Out on Blues Jam at Chess and Greeny (from John Mayall’s Thru the Years). I play those two live now. I flutter around the way Peter did them; but then, because it’s blues, you can carry it on on your own.

Like Peter, you’re well known for playing Les Pauls. Did he inspire you to try them?

Totally, because of Blues Jam at Chess and that specific guitar. It’s become ingrained in my psyche! There’s so many photographs on the inside of the album with the Les Paul. I’ve used those photographs to recreate my own Les Pauls now – even down to the little chips on the headstock.

That’s what I’m doing with the Robertson Resto mods: taking it back to ‘69, when that album came out. I’m resto-modding the Kirk Hammett Les Pauls and calling my versions “Peter’s Greeny!”

Did you ever meet Peter?

Yes – I got invited to a gig in Hackney and I met him backstage. I met him later as well, when I was living in Richmond. I went up to his house a couple of times. Lovely man; a real gentleman. It was a big thing for me. It was sad to see his cognizance was not 100 percent, but the soul of the man was still there.

Gary Moore famously bought Greeny from Peter. Did you ever get to try it?

Yeah – we did a lot of shows with Coliseum II in Europe and Gary was using that Les Paul, so I got to play it. It was quite difficult because Gary liked a high action and strings like telegraph poles. It was unplayable to me! Gary had big, big fingers.

You were introduced to Thin Lizzy by their roadie Big Charlie McLennan. You joined after Charlie tipped you off about auditions. Last year Scott Gorham recalled his own audition, saying: “Phil goes, ‘Everybody, this is Scott,’ and Robbo and Brian Downey just go, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I didn’t know they’d already auditioned 24 guitarists, and here comes number 25. I guess they didn’t want to get too friendly.”

What do you remember about those other guitarists and Scott’s audition?

They were all unsuitable. I think Scott's recollection of it would be tainted by the fact that he was nervous. He was made perfectly welcome. Neither Brian nor I would treat anybody like that.

We probably showed him The Rocker, because it’s fairly simple. That was the only Lizzy song we used. When you audition a guitar player, you haven’t got time to teach songs. You play some stock stuff – slow blues in minor, shuffle blues in major. His rhythm playing was on the case. But you’re playing a minor blues and say, “Take a solo,” and he played it in major. He was perfectly capable of playing the major and minor chords in the right place, but not the lead.

In certain situations, it would work. Sha-La-La, on our first album, is minor, but he played the solo in major. It sounded great to me because it’s so off the wall – Beck-ish. He didn’t like it, but I said, “No, man, leave that. It sounds great!” In certain situations it would work.

Scott said you had the knowledge of scales used for Lizzy’s signature guitar harmonies as a result of your musical background. Did that knowledge come from playing classical piano as a child?

No! Nobody taught me how to play the guitar. My classical teacher used to get pissed off because I wouldn’t read the notes on the paper. I’d ask him to run through the piece I had to learn for the next week, watch his fingers, and listen.

The minute he left I went, “Right!” [Mimes playing piano] And then I didn’t have to practice for the rest of the week. The next week, he would slap me on the wrist with a ruler because I’d got all the notes right, but the fingering was all wrong. I was playing by ear! I wouldn’t go, “That’s a fifth or a seventh or a ninth.” I’d just go, “That sounds right,” and instinctively go to the fret. The technical side of classical music had no value.

You were responsible for writing the guitar harmonies during your time with Lizzy.

Yeah. I’d write the parts, the basic melody. I’d show Scott the easiest part or the part that suited him best, then I’d put the other part on top.

Some of the band’s biggest hits would have been significantly different without you.

Don’t Believe a Word wouldn't have had that riff. The Boys are Back in Town wouldn’t have had those guitar harmonies and augmented chords. Those chords appear on other songs like Dancing in the Moonlight, and it's all my playing.

Scott said he wanted you back in the band for Bad Reputation and he’d left space for you to play solos. You made it clear you only went back on a session basis. But your input on the was far greater than anyone realized.

I went out as a session player because I’d already put wheels in motion for Wild Horses. When I got there, there was a basic structure to everything – it was all very rough but there were sparks. There were no harmonies; it was all just Scott’s guitar. It wasn’t, “We’ll leave this for Robbo.” Nobody had bothered to fill the space.

Was it more difficult to add the harmonies at a later stage like that?

Not really; I knew how to go about it. A lot of those riffs were written before. I went out with the mindset of just getting the work done. I was pretty focused on that one, and a bit pissed off about the way it was handled – the album cover and all that nonsense.

Scott and Phil were a bit taken aback that I wouldn’t party with them. I stayed in my room at the hotel. I got to the studio on time when I was asked to do something. I was trying to make a point. I played everything straight.

You stayed with the band for the Bad Reputation tour and subsequent Live and Dangerous dates, then left in July 1978. Scott told Guitar World he thought your departure came as a result of conflict with Phil.

There was no big blow-up. It might have been a build-up of little things! It just fizzled out and it was time to go back to Wild Horses. It was never arguments for argument’s sake with Phil – it was always to do with the music. He had definite ideas about how he wanted to do certain songs, and I’m similar, so we clashed.

Gary Moore replaced you for the Black Rose album. But you’d played Waiting for an Alibi and S&M live, and there’s video of you playing the title track with the band in March 1978, complete with the medley of traditional folk songs.

Yeah – it was already in place. Gary put the fast bit in at the end. I probably put the harmony to Waiting for an Alibi.

You maintained a close friendship with Phil until the end of his life. He and Gary guested with Wild Horses, and Phil and Scott had writing credits on the band's first album. So things remained amicable?

Yeah, exactly.

Fans consider your partnership with Scott to be the definitive Lizzy guitar team. What do you think the combination of you and Scott had that made it so distinctive?

My sound was a fat, clean sound – clean, but it cuts. Scott had a phaser on everything, and consequently the sound is very thin. The two sounds together is the sound of Lizzy. It was a happy accident. I think that’s what went missing when I left. The sound was smaller.

• Wild Horses’ Standing Our Ground box set is on sale now.

Brian Robertson has opened up on his Thin Lizzy departure, setting the record straight on why he really left the band.

Robertson, who joined the band with Scott Gorham in 1974, became one of Thin Lizzy’s foundational electric guitar players, helping to co-pioneer the twin Les Paul attack and two-part guitar harmonies that became such a cornerstone of the Irish rockers' style and sound.

Forming a formidable partnership with his guitar foil, Robertson was responsible for writing some of Thin Lizzy’s most notable hooks and riffs, and contributed to what is widely regarded today as the band’s premier lineup.

Despite leaving the band in 1976, he remained closely connected to the group, serving as a session hand on 1977’s Bad Reputation. But a permanent return to Thin Lizzy was never on the cards, and a year later he was out again.

Gorham recently told Guitar World this was because of Robertson’s well-documented conflict with frontman Phil Lynott, and in a new interview with Guitar World, Robertson himself had his say on the matter.

“There was no big blow-up. It might have been a build-up of little things,” he admits with a laugh. “It just fizzled out. It was time to go back to [Robertson’s post-Lizzy outfit] Wild Horses. It was never arguments for argument’s sake. It was always to do with the music. He had definite ideas about how he wanted to do certain songs, and I'm similar, so we clashed.”

Gorham wanted his old co-guitarist back in the group. But Robertson – who had sustained a hand injury that sped up his Thin Lizzy departure – had his heart set on other projects. He was putting together Wild Horses with Jimmy Bain and Jimmy McCulloch.

“I went out there as a session [player], because I'd already put wheels in motion to put Wild Horses together,” Robertson adds. “When I got there, there was a basic structure to everything. It was all very rough, but there were sparks. There were no harmonies, it was all just Scott's guitar. Not, 'We'll leave this for Robbo' – nobody had bothered to fill the space.”

Robertson’s full interview with Guitar World will be published in the coming weeks.

Footage of the all-star tribute to late Thin Lizzy linchpin Phil Lynott has emerged online, documenting a one-night-only union of a stellar cast of musicians.

The show, described as “a once-in-a-lifetime celebration of the life, music, and legacy of one of Ireland’s most iconic musicians,” took place at the 3Arena in the country's capital city, Dublin, on Sunday, January 4. Featuring Thin Lizzy and Guns N' Roses members, it marked the 40th anniversary of the bass player and vocalist's death at 36.

Ricky Warwick, who fronted Lizzy-adjacent band Black Star Riders, and GNR riffer Richard Fortus, were amongst the guitar-playing cast, with former Journey and Whitesnake bassist Marco Mendoza also playing a key role.

The 45-piece RTÉ Orchestra also featured, as did keyboardist Darren Wharton's band, Renegade, which he fronts. Wharton joined a new-look Thin Lizzy for 1980's Chinatown, and would be part of the band's final two records, Renegade and the John Sykes-powered Thunder and Lightning. He also featured on Lynott’s second solo album.

Highlights from the night include a stirring, orchestra-lavished rendition of The Sun Goes Down, while a Warwick-fronted Cowboy Song found the crowd in full voice, and featured a killer guitar solo from Fortus, who swapped his go-to Gretsch Falcon for a Gibson Les Paul for the show.

Wharton also welcomed founding guitarist Eric Bell, responsible for those iconic lead lines in Whiskey in the Jar, on as a special guest for the song.

Bell, armed with a time-worn HSH Stratocaster, led the band through Lizzy's revamped Irish folk song – a track he said he hated playing with Metallica at the turn of the century.

Phil Lynott worked with a glut of great guitarists across his Thin Lizzy career, including Gary Moore, Brian Robertson, who later joined Motörhead in 1982, and Scott Gorham. It was the latter pairing, brought in after Bell’s departure, that went on to define the band’s iconic twin-guitar harmony sound.

Gorham passed his audition, but his cheap LP copy didn’t, and he recently told Guitar World how the pair had to put their egos on the line to make the reprised band work.

The American guitarist, who briefly died on the operating table last year, credited the “sledgehammer” John Sykes for saving the band in their later years, and isn't ruling out a future for Thin Lizzy. But he'll need to find the perfect marksman to play with first.

Although Whiskey in the Jar originated as a traditional Irish folk tune, once founding Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell got ahold of it in 1973 – transforming it into a rocker with an iconic guitar solo – it took on a life of its own.

Since then, the song has been covered by numerous artists, the most notable of whom is Metallica, who released their version of Whiskey on 1998’s Garage Inc. And while Metallica’s version is great, there’s just something inescapably cool about Thin Lizzy’s version and – of course – its one-of-a-kind Eric Bell guitar solo.

“I think a solo should complement the song, rather than just jerking off,” Bell says. “I still play that solo. I suppose people expect it. But it took a long time. It wasn’t blues and it wasn’t rock. I was used to playing blues and rock, but when Whiskey came along, there was this huge question mark over my head, going, ‘What the fuck am I going to play?’”

How did you come up with the solo?

I remember humming it, you know? That’s the way I made most of my solos. I’ll play the chords, and I’ll sing or hum it over and over again. It might take quite a long time to get the solo I want to hear, but it seems to work.

So it took a long time?

I was trying to get the phrase, that little hook, for about two or three weeks. I was going everywhere – on the toilet, the bath, the taxi and walking down the street – going, “What do I hear coming in there after those chords?” It took forever, but it’s stood the test of time.

Did you need multiple passes to get the solo down in the studio?

No, because Phil [Lynott, Thin Lizzy vocalist/bassist] did a rough vocal, and then we went to listen to it and I hadn’t a clue. I had no idea whatsoever. I just didn’t know anything about it.

At first it took me a long time, so they gave me a cassette of the rough song, and I worked on it day and night.

Eventually, I came up with the whole song – the intro, the little phrase and the solo. So when they put me in to play in the studio, I had every single note worked out. I knew it was going to work.

Your tone throughout the song is noteworthy. How did you craft it?

I used an HH Electronics transistor amp. Thin Lizzy’s manager went out, got it and brought it to the rehearsal space to let me try it. I liked the tone, but there was no volume, which I needed. So I went out and got a [WEM Watkins Copicat] echo chamber, and I used the volume on that. Then I used the volume on a [Sola Sound] Tone Bender fuzz as well. So I was getting quite a loud sound.

What portion of the Whiskey in the Jar solo was the toughest to master?

I find the phrase to be a real challenge. Even today, more than the solo, the phrase has a skip-over part that I find quite hard. But the solo works because I spent such a long time on it.

Metallica covered Whiskey in 1998. Did you like how they approached it?

I didn’t know anything about Metallica. I’m not into that kind of music, really. But it was funny; they got in touch with me. Someone from their setup phoned me and said, “I work with Metallica. We’re doing a world tour. Would love to have you come along to play with us in Dublin and do Whiskey in the Jar.”

Were you open to the idea?

I said, “Can you email me what’s going on?” He said, “Have you heard Metallica’s version of Whiskey in the Jar?” I said, “No.” He said, “What planet are you living on?” I said, “Jupiter.” [Laughs] Anyway, this courier arrived on a motorbike about two days later, and he had quite a few records, cassettes and DVDs of Metallica doing Whiskey in the Jar.

Did you like what you heard?

“It was okay. But once we got to Dublin, the thing that threw me was, I was trying out this Marshall amp, and Metallica walked in sort of like cartoons. They said, “Hey, man, when we do this, we tune our guitars a whole tone down.” I thought, “A whole tone? The guitar is going to sound like a fucking banjo…” But I don’t know; I didn’t really know them.

Did you enjoy performing with Metallica?

No. I mean, it was okay. I just felt a bit out of place, especially as my guitar was in standard tuning and I was playing along in F instead of G. That’s the only thing that was in my head because I didn’t tune my guitar a whole tone down. If I had the chance again, I’d tune it down because it was tricky playing it in F!

Phil Lynott often said none of Thin Lizzy’s guitarists could play Whiskey in the Jar quite like you. Why do you think that is?

I think that’d apply to anybody, to be honest. You could get Ringo Starr’s drums off the record and get some other guy to come in, and no matter how hard he tried, I don’t think he could get the same feel.

There are these little subtleties when I play Whiskey in the Jar, because I made it up – it’s my original idea. If anyone else plays it, even if they get very close, it’s not exactly the same. I see people who get very close, but there’s just little things I do that they don’t.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

“Stripe? Oh, my God, was that something else!” Steve Clarke chuckles, referring to Gary’s well-played and honey-toned ’59 Les Paul Standard, which does not form part of the Bonhams auction of Gary’s gear per se but is being offered for private sale POA via Bonhams instead, at the behest of the estate.

The origins of its nickname ‘Stripe’ remain obscure, but, thankfully, the rest of its particulars were easier to pin down.

“Well, firstly I can give you some pickup measurements,” Steve says. “The bridge is 7.74k and the neck is 7.36k. That’s what they come out at,” he observes, agreeing that this is incidentally similar to how manufacturers would balance the windings of a pickup set today; typically, if you have a neck and bridge pickup of equal output, the neck will sound louder due to the greater stridency of string vibration near the end of the fretboard as opposed to closer in to the bridge.

“Thus, modern balanced sets of pickups often feature a bridge pickup that’s wound slightly hotter to compensate and avoid a volume mismatch with the neck.

Steve’s measurements also shed light on a lesser known feature of some ’Bursts of the era. The headstocks often taper longitudinally, being slightly thicker at the nut than at the ‘logo’ end to add a little extra strength to the notorious weak spot where the neck transitions into the headstock.

“I took a measurement from the headstock thickness on the low E tuner side, and it was 16.56mm, tapering to around 15.9mm by the D tuner on the same side,” Steve explains.

“It’s got Grovers on it, obviously, and it’s got a later-type ABR-1 bridge on it [post-1962], the one with the retaining wire over the saddles. So that had been changed from the original. But it’s clearly been a long time [since the update] as it’s quite worn out.”

Steve adds that, like many guitars that have been played hard in a professional context, some of the electronics have been swapped out for replacement parts, presumably due to component failure on the road or in the studio.

“The neck volume and tone [pots] have been replaced. But the bridge volume and tone are original; they’re the ones.”

Steve adds that preparing such historic and valuable guitars for auction often involves sympathetically (and very carefully) attending to minor faults that prevent the guitar being used and enjoyed – always providing its provenance or originality isn’t adversely affected by any remedial work.

Such was the case with Stripe’s neck pickup. But while completing minor repairs, he does get the chance to further record subtle idiosyncrasies of the guitar’s construction.

“When I picked it up, the neck pickup wasn’t working – very intermittent, it just wouldn’t come on. So I took it apart and looked, checked all the parts. There was a lot of gunk in there, the usual thing. But I got it working in the end, after cleaning it up.

“But in the process I made a note that the neck pickup has got the early brass bobbin attachment screws, whereas the bridge pickup has got the steel screws on the plate at the bottom. So two different [screw types] and, again, that was a transitional thing.”

Some guitarists are remarkable for making their name with one guitar that is synonymous with their whole identity as a musician. Brian May, or perhaps Hank Marvin and his Red Strat come to mind.

Other players loom larger than individual instruments they own, or even genres. By turns taciturn and ablaze with feeling, Gary Moore shifted stylistic gears with remarkable ease.

From his roots in Belfast blues with Skid Row to barbed Celtic rock in Thin Lizzy and a ’90s return to his roots in Peter Green’s sound, Moore’s intensity lit up any track he played on. It was this burning thread that tied together the whole tapestry of his career.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, his guitar collection kept pace with his changing sound. He was a prolific collector, though always to a purpose, and since his passing in 2011 it’s taken three rounds of major auctions, all of which have been handled by Bonhams of London, to come to the final treasures of his guitar collection – and this November sees the most revered and loved of his guitars go under the hammer, including his treasured ‘Red Strat’.

“Bonhams has been privileged to offer the entire Gary Moore collection over the last 10 years,” reflects Claire Tole-Moir, who is Head of Science and Popular Culture at Bonhams.

“I think our first sale was in 2016 so it’s actually quite an honour to be offering the last of it. We’re calling it ‘The Final Encore’. And so the sale has about 30 guitars and 45 to 50 amps. And we’ve also got a large selection of pedals, effects, tape recorders and stage clothing as well, which we’re working through now.

“That part of the collection we haven’t offered before, so it’s nice to give [people] a bit of everything from what’s left in this collection. Prices start at £100, and obviously the top piece is his ‘Red Strat’, and that’s in at £200,000 to £300,000 – so there is something for everyone. It’s really broad,” she says.

Claire agrees that it was the intensity of Gary’s performances that still kindles devotion among fans and collectors, over a decade after his death.

“He’s just revered – and so well respected,” she reflects. “And people really loved his music and the transition, over the years, from Thin Lizzy to his solo career and they’ve been quite loyal to him. Obviously, there’s a blues foundation through everything.

“But then there’s this rock side to him, and you’ve got the Northern Irish inspiration coming into a few tracks. But even as he changes style or look, people have stood by him – they just love his playing and the fact that when he performs, he loses himself. He’s really in the music and you go through it with him.”

Former Guitarist editor Neville Marten was fortunate enough to know Gary personally, and he says the instruments Gary acquired over his lifetime reflected his musical priorities and the curious mix of reverence and unsentimental pragmatism with which he approached guitars.

Neville recalls how a difficult first meeting with Gary thawed into a warm friendship after Gary discovered that Nev was a fellow student of the blues – and of guitar tone.

“I had to go and interview him about his After The War album,” Nev recalls. “It was one of those rock albums back in the ’80s, quite early on in Guitarist history, really. I had my questions prepped and everything, but, initially, Gary was very frosty, very spiky, which he could be with people he hadn’t met before.

“And so I was asking my questions and he was answering them perfunctorily well but really just going through the motions. But I’d noticed that on one of the tracks there was this little lick with an out-of-phase Les Paul sound on it. So I said, ‘On this track, you used the ‘Greeny’ Les Paul, didn’t you? Because I love that little out-of-phase sound.’ And his eyes lit up – he suddenly realised that I knew a little bit about what I was talking about. And from that point on, we were kind of all right.”

“We were a very similar age and we often discussed what it had been like hearing blues music for the first time,” Nev continues. “Our mutual introduction to blues had been the Blues Breakers [‘Beano’] album. And he said, ‘I remember that my friend put it on and [I was hooked from] that ‘jank’ sound when Clapton slides the first note up the neck on All Your Love,’ which is the first track. And I was the same: a friend of mine put it on and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, what was that?’ That was kind of it – we just hit it off.

“He later invited me on stage to play with him in Bath,” Nev recalls. “It was bloody great – Bernie Marsden and Gary and David Mead from the mag got up and played together. He was always complimentary about stuff and I think he treated me, in a way, as an ally in a world where he might not have allies. As you know, the press can be a bit hostile to certain types of people, certain types of music, but he knew that Guitarist was an ally to him, completely.”

Musical Pragmatist

Although Gary is perhaps best known for his work with Gibson Les Pauls, Nev says Moore wasn’t wedded to any particular approach, make, model or style of guitar – and although he loved vintage Gibsons and Fenders, he wasn’t afraid of modernity, either.

“I think Gary very much chose the instrument for the type of music he was playing. For instance, when he got into the rock stuff. I went to see him rehearsing in Sheffield once and he was just playing a huge white Gibson Explorer – it was a modern one, not even a posh one, just one off the shelf.

“It wasn’t an overly special guitar, but it suited his purpose visually and sonically. But then when he wanted to do the blues albums, in deference to Eric and Peter and the others, he got out the Les Paul,” Nev says.

With such a pragmatic outlook – plus the means, motive and opportunity – it’s unsurprising, says Claire Tole-Moir of Bonhams, that Gary amassed a huge collection of gear during his 43‑year career.

“I think Gary was one of these guitarists who had an absolute love for collecting,” she says, “and there’s not that many who could do it. Because I think when he started collecting, it was a pivotal time in the vintage guitar market when you could [because vintage classics were more affordable earlier on], although he collected right up until 2010, [the year before] he passed away.

“And that is a luxury nowadays. If we look at how many of his guitars we’ve offered over 10 years, it’s amazing that we still have 30 guitars in this last tranche… It’s actually really rare that you get a collection this sizable and this varied. He was a proper collector and he loved it.”

A mixed portrait of the man emerges from his relationship with guitars – pragmatic about the tool value of guitars yet in love with the musical heritage they represented. Did Gary simply regard guitars as a means to get a job done or was he sentimental about some of them, we ask Neville Marten.

“Absolutely both: he loved and was totally sentimental about the ‘Greeny’ guitar and about the other Les Paul that he had [‘Stripe’, a ’59 Standard currently being offered for private sale POA via Bonhams]. Likewise, his ’63 335.

“He was very, very sentimental about things like that. But then he would go and buy a brand-new Les Paul off the shelf because he wanted to put Bare Knuckle PG Blues pickups in it to get to the out-of-phase sound in a modern guitar. So, again, he used what he needed at the time and what he felt suited the image that he was trying to create.”

In The Footsteps Of Heroes

One thing that unites Gary’s guitars with his recorded output is a love of ’60s blues. The electrifying sound of the ’60s blues boom was where he started and it was a touchstone he returned to for his celebrated 1990 album, Still Got The Blues.

Few guitarists are immune to the magnetic pull of emulating their heroes and Gary was no exception. Nev says this inevitably influenced his go-to instrument choices.

“Everyone wants the guitar that your first heroes played,” Nev argues. “And, you know, he got the Les Paul because of Eric and Peter. He also got the 335 because of Eric – who in turn had got the 335 because of Chuck Berry and B.B. King and Freddie King. So I think that’s kind of it. But Gary was also great on a 335 – he really pulled the expression out of that guitar.

“He used the controls so well, he would turn the Les Paul down to 2 and coax the sweetest tone out of it. Then he’d whack it up to 10, and flip the pickup from the neck to the bridge, or bridge to the neck, to get this vast change in character that he wanted. And he was very clever at that.”

Despite the preponderance of Les Pauls in Gary’s guitar collection, the star of the November auction is undoubtedly his red 1960 Strat.

“The Fender Strat stands out because it’s only one of two Fenders in the collection of 30 that we have and, again, he is photographed extensively with it,” Claire Tole-Moir says. “It was a go-to, after ‘Greeny’ and ‘Stripe’.”

The Strat has remained a lodestar for fans, many of whom associate it with an absolutely incandescent performance of Hendrix’s Red House that Gary put in for Fender’s 50th Anniversary gig at Wembley Stadium in 2005.

“He played it at Fender’s 50th anniversary [gig] and did a version of Red House that actually tore the house down – it was staggeringly good,” Nev Marten recalls.

“What was remarkable was he told me he’d just come back from a hand injury. He’d had something wrong in his hand, and it’d been operated on, and he’d got what he described to me as a kind of topical form of MRSA, like a local infection of the hand. It was very bad and he had to cancel the summer’s worth of work.

“I think he used nines on the Strat and Gary was a 10s player, mostly – so the nines on a Strat, for Gary, was pretty light. But he absolutely smashed that version of Red House.

“Obviously, he was a big Jimi fan. And he always told me, ‘I can do a Jimi, you know? I can actually pull out the Jimi licks, but I don’t do it because it’s not for me to do that – but I can do it.’ And I fully believe that. But he used a modern Strat on the rocky stuff; he wouldn’t bring the old ‘Red Strat’ out for that so much. He’d use a modern white Strat because it was a brighter, modern, more forceful sound.”

However, Nev adds that when it came to amps, Gary was much more settled in his preferences.

“He was very much a Marshall guy. He had a Soldano phase, but he always went back to the Marshalls,” Nev explains.

“He had a particularly bashed-up 50-watt combo that he went back to time and time again. You often find that a certain guitar will gel with a certain amp and he had that with his Les Paul and Marshall combination, especially the 50-watt. But, again, Gary probably got the 50-watt combo because of the ‘Beano’ album.”

Though Marshalls may have been the sonic lens through which Moore most often focused his talents, they didn’t restrict him and, as mentioned, his work was stylistically wide-ranging. So what period of Gary’s work does Neville think showed Gary’s truest colours?

“Blimey, that’s so hard because he had all these phases, all the eras,” Nev reflects. “He did the rock thing, which I wasn’t the hugest fan of, but he did do it very, very well. I did like it when he did the blues albums – Still Got The Blues followed by After Hours. It was him going back to his formative influences – and he was very, very deft as a blues player. He did overplay sometimes and he admitted it.

“He said to me, ‘B.B. King told me to play every other note,’ which is quite nice, but he had that ability to absolutely milk a few slow notes. Played them beautifully. He once said to me, about playing fast: ‘People try to play fast before they can play slowly. If you don’t learn to play slowly, your fast licks will be badly played.’

“So the thing about Gary, for me, was the way that he could milk the sounds out of the guitar. You know, it wasn’t just a neck pickup, bridge pickup, it was, ‘What can I get out of what can I make this guitar do?’ For me, that’s what it was all about.”

• The Gary Moore Collection: The Final Encore auction takes place on November 20. See Bonhams for more information.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Writing a guitar solo – and one which stands the test of time – is definitely one of those lightning-in-a-bottle moments. Once an Irish traditional song, Whiskey in the Jar found new life – and a new audience – when Thin Lizzy transformed it into a rock song with a one-of-a-kind solo, expertly delivered by Eric Bell.

“I think a solo should complement the song, rather than just jerking off,” Bell summarizes his philosophy in the latest edition of Guitar World.

“I still play that solo. I suppose people expect it. But it took a long time. It wasn’t blues, and it wasn’t rock. I was used to playing blues and rock, but when Whiskey came along, there was this huge question mark over my head, going, ‘What the fuck am I going to play?’”

Bell remembers that he got over that initial hump by humming the solo, which he admits is “the way I made most of my solos”.

“I’ll play the chords, and I’ll sing or hum it over and over again,” he explains. “It might take quite a long time to get the solo I want to hear, but it seems to work.”

The whole process took around two or three weeks – “I was trying to get the phrase, that little hook,” he explains – which took him to various, erm, places. Literally.

“I was going everywhere – on the toilet, the bath, the taxi, and walking down the street – going, ‘What do I hear coming in there after those chords?’ It took forever, but it’s stood the test of time.”

When asked whether nailing that solo took a couple of passes in the studio, Bell replies, “No. Because Phil [Lynott, Thin Lizzy vocalist/bassist] did a rough vocal, and then we went to listen to it, and I hadn’t a clue.

“I had no idea whatsoever. I just didn’t know anything about it. At first, it took me a long time, so they gave me a cassette of the rough song, and I worked on it day and night.

“Eventually, I came up with the whole song – the intro, the little phrase, and the solo. So when they put me in to play in the studio, I had every single note worked out. I knew it was going to work.”

Metallica would eventually breathe new life into the song by putting their own spin on it for their 1998 record, Garage Inc.

While the band invited Bell to perform the song with them in Dublin, he revealed in an extensive interview with GW last year that it was an experience he didn’t particularly enjoy.

For more from Bell, plus new interviews with fast-rising shred virtuoso Spiro Dussias and Jim Root, pick up issue 598 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

Bassist Phil Lynott was one of a kind. If you're old enough to remember rock music in the 1970s and early ’80s, you might recall seeing him on TV or playing live, knocking out riff after riff – often on an iconic black Fender Precision Bass with a mirrored scratchplate.

“Phil was a big entertainer onstage,” said Thin Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham. “He used to joke around and call himself the worst bass player in the business, but he knew that wasn’t true.

“I’ve played with several Class A bass players and each one was amazed at what Phil could do, in terms of the notes he picked out, the strength with which he hit the strings and how he kept the groove going, while singing all of the time.”

Whether or not you're familiar with Lynott's work, you'll have benefited from his career – because the music he made influenced many of today's rockers and, perhaps more importantly, demonstrated that if he could make it, anyone could.

Lynott's background was straight from the school of hard knocks. He was born in 1949 in West Bromwich, the son of a black Brazilian father, Cecil Parris, and a white Irish mother, Philomena Lynott.

His father scarpered back to Brazil when Lynott was only three weeks old, leaving the boy with his mother's surname and an upbringing in a variety of deprived areas, including Moss Side in Manchester and then Crumlin in Dublin.

Lynott began singing in a band called The Black Eagles in the middle of the 1960s: as he later recalled, “There were two ways of making it back in Crumlin. You were either a tough guy who thumped everybody around and pulled the chicks that way, or you played in a band.

“Not wanting the bruises, and being a bit of a coward at heart, I decided to sing in a band. It's the ultimate ego trip to jump up on a stage in front of thousands of people and say, ‘Listen to what I have to say.’”

Moving to Skid Row and taking up the bass guitar, Lynott began to establish a stage persona. Growing a large Afro, dressing in a range of stage gear that varied from military to piratical and all stages in between, he played his Precision at waist height and evolved an instantly recognisable look.

As a bass player Lynott developed fast. Always more extravagant as a songwriter and singer than a bassist – his basslines were solid and heavy rather than flashy – he specialised in a warm, middle-heavy tone that perfectly anchored his fellow guitarists’ playing.

This came to the fore with Thin Lizzy, which he formed with drummer Brian Downey and Eric Bell (the first of a succession of guitarists) in 1970. Three albums were released by this lineup before a spectacular, and wholly unexpected, hit with a version of the old Irish jig Whiskey In The Jar. Gallingly for us, it featured no bass – but this didn't stop it becoming an enormous hit.

After Bell was dismissed through ill-health and his successor Gary Moore – who went on to serious fame and fortune himself – left after a few months to join Colosseum II, Lizzy maintained a fantastic level of success until the end of the 1970s, when the wheel of musical fashion began to change at a perceptible rate.

Before any of that, the band's best-known album Jailbreak became one of the must-have albums from the last days of rock, released just before punk exploded into the public consciousness.

On the album’s quintessential track The Boys Are Back In Town, Lynott confines himself to root notes, driving the song through the verses and providing an expert, almost funky bassline.

Oh, and while we're talking late-’70s Thin Lizzy, you'll probably be familiar with the sleeve of 1978's Live And Dangerous, too – with its still-gobsmacking close-up of Lynott, down on his knees on stage in ecstasy, Fender Precision raised as if in supplication to the gods of rock.

Another much-loved Lizzy tune, Jailbreak, opened the Live and Dangerous album, and with good reason. Lynott’s bass is mixed high enough for his grasp of the role of the bass in the onstage dynamic to reveal itself perfectly.

Although Thin Lizzy had always functioned alongside new music rather than in conflict with it – Lynott and other members of the band played in a one-off act called The Greedies in 1978 alongside Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, for example – by the 1980s the post-punk, electro and new wave scenes were dominating the charts, and the balls-out rock which had typified so much of the previous decade was beginning to seem a little outdated.

Had they but known it, rock of this style was destined to remain relatively uncommercial until the late 1990s, when it was rebranded ‘classic rock’ and found a whole new fanbase. Perhaps this was a factor in Lynott's decision to embark on a solo career in parallel with Lizzy, releasing Solo In Soho in 1980.

The highlight of the album for many was King's Call, a tribute to the recently deceased Elvis Presley which featured Mark Knopfler on guitar.

Thin Lizzy finally split in September 1983 and Lynott was free to embark on a full-time solo career, but unfortunately he had developed a powerful drug and alcohol habit, which began to affect his health.

Despite this, he still guested on three successful singles before his substance problems went too far: Out In The Fields and Parisienne Walkways with his old sparring partner Gary Moore, and another with Roy Wood called We Are The Boys (Who Make All The Noise).

In 1984 Lynott formed a new band, Grand Slam, but faced some scepticism from the British press about how well it could be expected to perform in the wake of the unmatchable Thin Lizzy.

Before he could prove his detractors wrong, however, his struggle with stimulants caught up with him and he was admitted to hospital on Christmas Day, 1985. He died of heart failure and pneumonia 10 days later, aged only 36.

The legacy of Lynott is effectively synonymous with that of Thin Lizzy, as it was so often a vehicle for the songs he wrote: he often said that the job of the guitarists who passed through the band was to ‘interpret’ his songs in their own way.

Lynott paved the way for the singer/bassist in rock music, with perhaps Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney and Jack Bruce his only real predecessors in that sense.

He also, of course, did much to establish the legitimacy in the eyes of the white rock audience of Black musicians, delivering a set of songs that have endured for five decades and counting.

The regular pilgrimages made by Lizzy fans to Lynott's grave at St. Fintan's cemetery in Sutton, and to the statue of him which was unveiled on Harry Street, next to Grafton Street in Dublin, in 2005, are testimonies to his popularity.

As for we bassists, who worshipped him for his songs and his bass playing in equal measure, remember his famous words: “I only want to be successful for what we are, rather than for what people want us to be.”

Wise words for bass players – as for everyone else.

If Fleetwood Mac can offer the ultimate in progressive rock ’n’ roll soap operas thanks to a turbulent history of personnel changes, casualties and group crises, the saga of Thin Lizzy would have run them a close second.

In their early ’70s heyday, no band had more potential to make the world their own than Lizzy. They were old-fashioned grafters who toured constantly, worked hard and played hard, learning fast in the process, but somehow never managing to get all the pieces of the jigsaw to fit quite at the same time.

Bestriding the stage like a leather-clad rock god, bassist Phil Lynott was the heart of Thin Lizzy and its songs, but in late 1972 he was poised to take a step back from his role as the band's frontman – with Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore and drummer Ian Paice offering him a chance to form a truly supreme supergroup.

“Ritchie was getting fed up with Deep Purple, and he and lan were getting set to leave,” said Lynott in an interview from the Bass Player archives.

“He came down to see us, and then asked me to come round and have a go. We just went into the studio and played a couple of things as a trio, but he was thinking of adding Paul Rodgers on vocals as well.”

Settling on the name Baby Face, the mental image of Blackmore and Lynott on stage together is awe-inspiring, although it was never to be, unfortunately.

“Phil’s voice was staggering, wonderful,” Ian Paice told Classic Rock. “But he couldn’t play, at least not to the standard that we needed.”

“He was quite often out of tune and out of time. And although he became really, really good at everything he did, at that point he wasn’t. The bass playing had to be on a par with someone like Jack Bruce. And Phil wasn’t there yet.”

Phil Lynott was a poet, and he wore his heart on his sleeve as a lyricist. As a bassist, he wasn’t a technician, but with Thin Lizzy he didn’t need to be; his basslines always sat perfectly between the drums and the duelling guitars.

“Phil was a big entertainer onstage, but you can’t be Jaco Pastorius while you’re trying to talk to the audience and pull them into the music,” said guitarist Scott Gorham. “You’ve got to keep things level in order to bring an arena-sized crowd into a ‘club’ kind of feel, which is a real art in itself. And he was able to do that.”

Lynott used several basses throughout his career, but for fans, his black Fender Precision with a mirrored scratchplate was the favoured instrument. He used the scratchplate to highlight crowd members from his vantage point on the stage.

Thin Lizzy would end up using Baby Face as a song title on the band’s next album, Shades of a Blue Orphanage. Several members of the band would also record a Deep Purple tribute album in 1972 under the name Funky Junction.

Former members of Thin Lizzy, alongside Guns N' Roses guitarist Richard Fortus and the 45-piece RTÉ Concert Orchestra, are set to mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott at Dublin's 3Arena on January 4, 2026.

The roster of musicians performing on the night includes Grand Slam – the band Lynott formed in 1984 – Richard Fortus, as well as Thin Lizzy's Ricky Warwick and Marco Mendoza. There will also be a performance from Moonlight – The Phil Lynott Enigma star Peter Smith, who plays Lynott in the rock/theater production.

To end the night, Thin Lizzy's Eric Bell and Darren Wharton will deliver a selection of the band's greatest hits.

“Fans from across the globe are expected to gather for this once-in-a-lifetime celebration of the life, music, and enduring legacy of one of Ireland’s most iconic musicians,” reads an official statement.

As the co-founder, lead vocalist, bassist, and primary songwriter for Thin Lizzy, Lynott, also known as “The Ace with the Bass,” cemented his legacy not only with his band's repertoire and ensuing success but also with his distinctive pick-based playing style.

During his final years, he was heavily affected by substance dependency, and on January 4, 1986, he died of pneumonia and heart failure due to septicemia.

In a recent interview with Guitarist, Thin Lizzy's Scott Gorham revealed Lynott was responsible for recruiting the late John Sykes, who arguably helped save Thin Lizzy for one final studio album.

Thin Lizzy rolled with the punches on 1980’s Chinatown and 1981’s Renegade (both featuring the bluesier Snowy White on guitar). But in 1982, Gorham called a crisis meeting.

“I told Phil we had to stop this whole thing. The drug addictions. Phil losing his voice. The mistakes we were now making on stage: that really hurt because we were a band that just did not make mistakes, then you hear a recording and you go, ‘What the hell was that?’ So I said, ‘Let’s wrap this thing up. Let’s get our shit together and when we both get healthy, we’ll hit everybody over the head with a fucking sledgehammer.’”

Instead, the bandleader made a counter-offer. “Phil says, ‘Let’s do one more album and world tour. I know this kid. He’s really good. He’s with Tygers Of Pan Tang.’ I’d heard the name in magazines but never heard anything they’d recorded. Phil says, ‘I promise you, you’re gonna like him, and if you don’t, we’ll look for somebody else.’

“So John Sykes comes down and I couldn’t fault him in any way. I really wanted to say, ‘See, there’s nobody out there, so we gotta walk away from this.’ But I couldn’t. He was a great player. He was a one-guitar guy: never, ever did I see him play anything but his black Les Paul. And he looked great on stage, too. So what was not to like?”

While the songs for 1983’s Thunder And Lightning were complete (barring the Sykes co-write Cold Sweat), the new boy quickly asserted himself with a fierce vibrato and shrieking harmonics that pushed Lizzy in a new direction.

“We were not a metal band,” reflects Gorham. “But John brought in that metal edge. He had a fiery style, and I stepped up my sound to match his. Really, his strength was the quickness. He wasn’t about subtleties.

“Every track he wanted faster. He’d turn around to Brian Downey and say, ‘Hey man, can you kick it up a couple?’ And I’d have to say, ‘John, it’s getting out of control.’ He wanted to show everybody just how fast he was. But he was an excellent player, no doubt about that. Our best track together was Cold Sweat. But there was no middle ground with Thunder And Lightning. Lizzy fans loved it or hated it.”

Either way, Lynott’s death meant that 12th album became Lizzy’s studio swansong (a status it holds to this day). As far as Gorham was concerned, without their talismanic frontman, Lizzy was over as a touring outfit, too. But in the mid-90s, Sykes pitched his former wingman an initially jarring idea.

“We both sang background, but I’d never heard John sing solo. I had no idea he had three solo albums. I listened to them and I thought, ‘Hey, where’s he been keeping this?’ So I said, ‘Okay, I think we can give this a shot. I’m still not sure if this is the right thing to do, but let’s see what happens.’”

Even with considerable pedigree in the line-up, remembers Gorham, the first day felt off.

“I remember being in that studio and nobody wanted to pick up a guitar, in case this was not going to work out. I finally said, ‘Fuck it, I’ve flown 6,000 miles, let’s get into this. We’ll start out with Jailbreak, okay? If it’s shit, then we’ll just pack up. So we played Jailbreak and at the end, we looked at each other and said, ‘Actually, that sounded pretty damn good.’ Before we knew it, we had a full set that everybody felt confident in.”

While some fans never accepted the switch, the Sykes-fronted Lizzy lasted until July 2009 – when this career journeyman rolled on for a stuttering solo career, while the band drafted gunslingers like Viv Campbell, Richard Fortus, and Damon Johnson. When Sykes died of cancer in December 2024, Gorham felt a terrible sense of déjà vu.

“I got so many requests: ‘Hey, Scott, let’s do an interview.’ ‘No thanks, it’s too soon.’ The same thing happened when Phil died. I didn’t want to go through all that again. I kinda wish I hadn’t been such a prick about it and done some of these interviews, for John’s sake.”

Where does that leave Lizzy in 2025? Four decades since the last studio material – and with no live dates in the diary – a betting man would say the fabled Irish band is all over. Don’t be so sure, smiles Gorham.

“I’m waiting for the right caliber of player. I can’t just pick somebody off the line. For me, there’s gotta be something special about them. I don’t want to break the chain of great guitar players coming through Thin Lizzy. I know they’re out there. So hopefully, it’s not gonna take too long for something to happen…”

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Gary Moore’s on/off relationship with Lizzy is one of the great flirtations in rock ’n’ roll, the storied Belfast guitarist passing by like a meteor for three blink-and-miss-it shifts in the ’70s.

Moore was a master technician who pre-dated Gorham’s tenure (and played on the sublime Still In Love With You from 74’s Nightlife), so did the Californian ever feel threatened by his return? It’s the only time he shows a flicker of irritation.

“Y’know, I’ve been asked that before and actually I don’t get that question. I was thrilled that this guy was gonna come into the band – because I knew what he could do. I knew that, once again, here was a guy I could feed off and learn some really great shit off of him, right? Gary was one of those absolute natural-born guitar players.”

Just as important, as the band embarked on 1977’s US tour supporting Queen, was that Moore had two functioning hands – Robertson having ruled himself out after a brawl at The Marquee.

“Because Gary had played with Lizzy before, he knew the songs,” reasons Gorham, “and if you threw something new at him, he was gonna get it really quickly. Which is what we needed. Because Robbo had busted his hand, we were on the plane and we were like, ‘Gary, we gotta get this shit done, man!’ And he did.”

Live shots from the period show both players jousting on Les Pauls in front of a wall of Marshall amps.

“Yeah, Gary was already playing his Peter Green Les Paul, and I’d finally got my 1957 Les Paul, which I bought in Boston,” says Gorham. “Every once in a while, he had an SG he would pull out. But 90 per cent of the time, it was the two Les Pauls.

“You have to remember, with the Queen tour, we only had 45 minutes, so there’s not a lot of switching guitars, detunings and all that crap. It was just like, ‘Boom – let’s go!’

“Pairing Les Pauls works because they both have similar sounds,” he continues. “The difference comes from the way the player attacks the strings.

“Gary was great with that. He’d attack the guitar with different velocities to bring out different tones. He was so inventive. I remember, he came up to me one day and said, ‘Check this out – doesn’t this sound like bagpipes?’ I was like, ‘Goddamn, it does! What are you gonna use that for?’

“And he said, ‘Nothing, I just wanted to see if I could do it.’ I don’t think Gary really liked repeating himself every night on tour, but you kind of have to in those situations.”

Without guitars in their hands, however, Gorham says it was harder to bond with the Irishman. “I can see why people would say Gary was a hard guy to get to know. If Phil and I were going to a club and Gary came out with us, he’d sit on his own and wouldn’t engage. After a while, he stopped coming out. He just stayed in the hotel. It was always me and Phil hanging out and he might have felt a little excluded.”

In the studio, Moore made his defining mark on 1979’s Black Rose: A Rock Legend.

“My favourite track has gotta be Black Rose,” says Gorham. “Gary came up with that whole middle section. I’ve played it with other guitar players and they just couldn’t handle it, John Sykes being one of them. There’s a whole ton of harmony work going on. You’ve gotta be on your game to pull that song off. There’s no resting point. Once you hear the ‘1-2-3-4’, you’re in it, man!

“Waiting For An Alibi is another one. I took the solo on that, but it was Gary who came up with the little melody at the end. I’ll admit, when I first heard it, I went, ‘Goddammit Gary, we’re gonna have to pull that off every night!’”

Plainly, there was gas in the tank. But Moore’s third and final exit left a sour taste, the Irishman quitting midway through a US tour in July 1979. Lizzy never regained their Stateside momentum and Gorham was justifiably furious.

“I think, towards the end there, Gary really did want to play all the guitars,” he reflects. “He just wanted it to be him and him alone. And y’know, that would have been fine [for him to leave for a solo career]. Both Phil and I would have been, ‘Okay, cool. This is not a jail sentence. No band is.’

“But you gotta quit at the right moment, and Gary did the worst thing any band member can do. I was angry, man. You just don’t do that. All the work we’d put in and you just stepped out the back door? Like, what the fuck, man?”

It took the 1986 death of Lynott to mend fences between the two guitarists, and when Moore himself passed in 2011, they parted as friends.

“In the ensuing years, Gary kept trying to apologise to me. When we did the tribute to Phil in Dublin, he pointedly asked me to come over, and he just couldn’t apologise enough for quitting the tour.

“So I said, ‘Well, it was a dick move. But hey, you’ve apologised and I forgive you – let’s just walk away from that one.’ And we were friends after that, y’know?”

• “Robbo had grown a beard. Phil says, ‘I’m the only one with facial hair, man – you gotta shave that thing off’”: Scott Gorham on his partnership with Brian Robertson – a golden era for Thin Lizzy even if they nearly split up over facial hair

It’s easy to get the impression that Ricky Warwick has lived many lives. The Northern Irish guitarist got his break playing rhythm in New Model Army before fronting Scottish hard rock group the Almighty, who reformed last year.

Then there’s his work alongside Scott Gorham in the latest incarnation of Thin Lizzy and its splinter group, Black Star Riders; one album with supergroup Circus Diablo; plus a whole host of solo releases including this year’s Blood Ties, which begins with an ensemble of overdriven guitars that feel loud enough to rattle your teeth.

“I knew straight away that’s how I wanted to start the album,” he says. “This is a very diverse record, but the first riff is something all my fans will be familiar with. And when you’re working with [producer] Keith Nelson, you’re in a land of great guitars. He’s got such a beautiful collection of vintage instruments. I didn’t even take anything to the studio.”

Favorites included a Les Paul with P-90s, a Telecaster and a Rickenbacker 12-string, which were all fed into vintage Marshall amps. You won’t hear any plugins on this album, Warwick says, before explaining how his ears always gravitate to sounds that feel more organic and lively.

This latest release also features a handful of famous friends, from Lita Ford – who was kind enough to bring her original 1976 Hamer to the Don’t Leave Me in the Dark video shoot – to Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr and Billy Duffy of the Cult.

“Even though Lita only sang on the track, I begged her to bring that guitar along,” Warwick says with a laugh. “And Billy’s brilliant. He would rock up to the studio on a Triumph looking cool as fuck. He didn’t bring a guitar or amp. I don’t even think he had a pick. He just heard the tracks once and was ready to go.”

Thin Lizzy diehards may very well single out Rise and Grind and Don’t Sell Your Soul to Fall in Love as favorites, thanks to their usage of rich and fuller-sounding seventh chords. It’s a nostalgic sound that has a special place in Warwick’s heart, which he describes as a great way of adding more emotional depth to the music.

“From Bob Mould in Hüsker Dü to Gerry Rafferty in Stealers Wheel, there’s a magic to those voicings,” Warwick says. “And yeah, they’re in a lot of classic Lizzy songs.

“There’s a warm feeling I get when I hear seventh chords. I’ll use a capo to play them in different positions because they open so many doors for me as a songwriter. You can use them to take listeners somewhere they might not expect.”

• Blood Ties is out now via Earache.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Wind back the clock to ’74, then, and imagine yourself a fly on the wall at the London supper club where the Irish band had set up auditions for a second guitarist to partner their latest recruit, the fiery, soulful Scottish gunslinger, Brian Robertson.

Born a world away in California, and moving to England in 1973 with vague hopes of joining his brother-in-law in the Supertramp line-up, Gorham was now flailing on the pub circuit.

He knew nothing of Lizzy, except that they’d had a minor hit two years earlier with the old Irish traditional Whiskey in the Jar. But it was either: take the audition or crawl home with his rock ’n’ roll dreams dashed.

“I had 30 days left on my visa or they’re gonna throw me out of the country,” he remembers. “I was late and the first guy I meet is [frontman] Phil Lynott, who goes, ‘Let me introduce you to the guys.’

“So we walk in and Phil goes, ‘Hey, everybody, this is Scott’ – and Robbo and Brian Downey [drums] just go, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I didn’t know they’d already auditioned 24 guitarists, and here comes number 25. I guess they thought, ‘Well, here’s another one we’re going to reject.’ So they didn’t want to get too friendly.”

Likewise, Robertson had no patience to walk yet another hopeful through the set.

“Robbo showed me the first song really quickly and said, ‘You got that?’” explains Gorham.

“Then we’re off and running and I’m watching Robbo’s hand on the neck, trying to follow every move, barely making the changes in time. But I’m realising, as I’m struggling with these chord patterns, that these guys are really good. And it was probably after the third song, I said to myself, ‘I gotta be in this band.’”

Robertson was arguably the strongest link in the chain: a startlingly mature player whose fluid phrasing and ear for harmonic extensions was a product of his upbringing.

“This guy was younger than me, but he had so much more musical knowledge,” says Gorham. “Brian’s father played saxophone in Art Blakey’s jazz band, so he grew up in this atmosphere of scales, tones, all that. He was absolutely more technical than me and our styles were different, but we had to put our egos aside and toe the line.”

So began the duelling harmony guitars of Lizzy MkII. “We were all 5ths and 3rds, that was our whole thing,” explains Gorham. “The metal way of playing harmonies is 7ths and 9ths, but that tweaks my ear. We always tried to hit the sweet spot, and the 5ths and 3rds are the most pleasing to the ear. You can crank it up, or go to the middle setting on a Les Paul at low volume, and those harmonies are still sweet as hell.”

Beyond note choice, even the minutiae of Gorham and Robertson’s touch needed dialling in. “You’re not only trying to get the notation right; you’re trying to get the vibrato in time. Because if one guy has a slow vibrato and the other guy is fast, that’s not gonna work. A lot of people don’t even think about that. But to get a tight sound, those vibratos really have to be together.”

That quest for synergy also led the pair to twin Les Pauls. “I had a really cheap-ass, no-name Japanese Les Paul copy,” says Gorham. “That’s one of the first things Phil said to me: ‘Okay, you’re in, but we gotta change that guitar.’

“So we went to Edgware Road and I bought my sunburst Les Paul. But even before he had the stompboxes and all that, Robbo had some great tones coming out of that guitar.”

Many fans would argue Lizzy’s best output came in that period. Nightlife (1974), Fighting (1975), Jailbreak (1976), Johnny the Fox (1976): all are showcases for the pair’s fist-tight interplay. But Gorham believes the partnership kicked hardest on the boards.

“The album takes, they’re a little slower and more pedestrian, whereas on Live and Dangerous [1978], we kicked it up a gear. The song that Robbo really stamped his personality on was Rosalie. It’s one of his simpler solos, but he really got his point across. While he was playing that, I was playing all the high parts – and the most bitching chords you can ever imagine in your life [laughs]!”

Yet the musical harmony didn’t extend to band relations. While Gorham deferred to Lynott, Robertson never accepted the hierarchy.

“Brian didn’t like to take orders,” sighs Gorham, clashing his fists together. “It was the masculine struggle of who’s gonna be the dominant person. Well, we all knew who the dominant person was. It was Phil!

“‘Dude, he was the guy who hired your ass! He’s already got three albums under his belt. This is your first album, so why are you coming out with the attitude? Come on, settle down.’ Well, he did for a while, then he kicked off again.”

Anything could set Robertson off. “I remember our first radio show. We’d just had two weeks off and Robbo had grown a beard. Phil says, ‘I’m the only one with facial hair, man – you gotta shave that thing off.’ Of course, Brian’s going, ‘Fuck you, man!’ ‘Well, if you don’t, you’re out of the band!’ How trivial can you get?

“So Robbo says, ‘All right, I’m quitting the band!’ And I’m going, ‘Whoa, I just quit my band, put all my eggs in this Thin Lizzy basket, and now we’re breaking up over a fucking beard…?!’”

By 1978, even Robertson’s sublime playing couldn’t stop the axe dropping.

“He got back into the band for Bad Reputation [1977],” recalls Gorham of the Scotsman’s last stand. “I had left a whole load of parts for him. He did most of it. But then he said something to Phil, and that was it. Phil had had enough.

“It was like, ‘Scott, I told you he was gonna do this – he’s out.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, man.’ I couldn’t say anything at that point. I’d already got Robbo back into the band and now he’d done it again. It was a real shame.”

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Scott Gorham has reflected on how the late John Sykes helped saved Thin Lizzy for one final studio album – and brought a little heavy metal guitar thunder to Thunder and Lightning.

In the early ’80s, Gorham recognized Thin Lizzy was a band in decline. After two bluesy albums with Snowy White – China Town (1980) and Renegade (1981) – and some unfavorable off-stage habits, the guitarist told vocalist Phil Lynott something needed to change.

His plan was for them to go away, get their act together, get clean and come back revitalized to “hit everybody over the head with a fucking sledgehammer”. Lynott, though, had a different idea.

“Phil says, ‘Let’s do one more album and world tour. I know this kid, he’s really good,’” Gorham recalls in the new print issue of Guitarist.

The kid in question was John Sykes, who was making a name for himself in a new-look Tygers of Pan Tang. The two albums he’d featured on, Spellbound and Crazy Nights, were full of standout, shrieking shredding that put him firmly in Lynott’s crosshairs.

“So John Sykes comes down, and I couldn’t fault him in any way,” Gorham continues. “I really wanted to say, ‘See, there’s nobody out there, so we gotta walk away from this.’ But I couldn’t. He was a great player. He was a one-guitar guy: never, ever did I see him play anything but his black Les Paul. And he looked great on stage, too. So what was not to like?”

Thin Lizzy were a one-guitarist group before Gorham came in for the outgoing Eric Bell, forming a tandem with Brian Robertson after a less-than-ideal audition. The American guitarist was willing to return to that set up go it alone, but the fire and fury that Sykes could bring to the band were too good to turn down.

“We were not a metal band,” Gorham underscores. “But John brought in that metal edge, and I stepped up my sound to match his.”

Their one album together, 1983’s Thunder and Lightning, more than lived up to its name. Lizzy’s fastest, heaviest, and most unapologetic album, it signs off the band’s studio catalog with one hell of a bang. At times during its creation, his new bandmates couldn’t keep up with Sykes’ gung-ho enthusiasm.

“Really, his strength was the quickness,” Gorham continues. “He wasn’t about subtleties. Every track he wanted faster. He’d turn around to [drummer] Brian Downey and say, ‘Hey man, can you kick it up a couple?’ And I’d have to say, ‘John, it’s getting out of control.’

“He wanted to show everybody how fast he was. But he was an excellent player, no doubt about that.”

The album’s muscularity didn’t appease everyone in the fanbase, Gorham admits. He says they either loved it or hated it – it was as divisive as it got.

Sykes passed away last year, with countless guitar greats paying tribute to his talents. Earlier this year, Guns N’ Roses covered Thunder and Lightning as a nod to his legacy.

Readers can pick up the latest issue of Gutiarist from Magazines Direct to read the full interview with Scott Gorham.

Brush Shiels was in Skid Row with Gary Moore – not that Skid Row (i.e., the one with Scotti Hill and Dave Sabo) – but the Irish blues rock band that operated between the late ’60s and early ’70s and featured not one but two Irish rock legends.

“Phil Lynott was the original lead vocalist, and then he went on to form Thin Lizzy,” Shiels tells Bass Player, in a forthcoming interview. “So, in 1968, we found Gary Moore. He was just 15 at the time. And I remember that his father, Robert, was just 36, and he asked me to look after Gary!

“He was great at that age; it was unbelievable. I couldn’t believe it. When we asked him about the gig, he took it and never looked back. As soon as he came in, that was it.”

The band, featuring both Lynott and Moore, would record New Places, Old Faces / Misdemeanour Dream Felicity, released as a 7-inch in 1969. When Lynott later dropped from the line-up, the outfit transformed into a power trio – with Shiels on vocals/bass and Moore leading the pack on guitars.

Speaking about the vision they had for Skid Row, Shiels reminisces, “We were looking for a cross between Cream and Jimi Hendrix. That was the whole thing.

“But some of the first songs that Gary and I wrote were actually based on Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, the whole semi-jazz-blues thing, I think. But after that, it was all riffs.”

The band signed with CBS Records International and would go on to release their debut album Skid in 1970, which managed to clinch the number 30 spot on the UK Albums Chart – followed by 34 Hours in 1971, with prestigious tours supporting The Allman Brothers Band and Mountain to boot.

However, despite these successes, Moore decided it was time for him to move on to greener pastures.

“We were all ready to become millionaires after a couple of years,” jokes Shiels. “And then, he left, and I had to come home and go on the dole [unemployment].”

“The reason that he left the band is that he thought we were getting too simple,” explains Shiels. “He was playing great, and doing some incredible stuff, but he said, ‘We’re getting too far away from what we should be doing.’ So, he left after those two albums.”

Moore would go on to release Grinding Stone with The Gary Moore Band – comprising John Curtis on bass and Pearse Kelly on drums, with guest performances by bassist Frank Boylan, guitarist Philip Donnelly, and keyboardist Jan Schelhaas.

The album epitomizes a guitarist who’s finding his feet – and just a year after its release, he would go on to make history with Thin Lizzy.

Bass Player's full interview with Brush Shiels will be published in the coming weeks.

When Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac in 1970 and disappeared into obscurity, many guitarists – including Snowy White – felt his recording days were over. However, White, best known for his work with Thin Lizzy and Pink Floyd, eventually played a key role in bringing the blues rock electric guitar hero out from the dark.

In a new interview with Guitar World, White discusses how their surprise guitar tandem came about on Green’s comeback album, In the Skies. At the time, it was Green’s first record in eight years and one that lifted him out of obscurity and back into the limelight.

White says work began in 1977, two years prior to the album’s release, with White fresh off the Animals sessions with Pink Floyd. The record may not have been possible without him.

“Peter rang me one day and said, ‘I'm doing an album for a small record company that my brother is involved in, can I use you and your band?’ So, we went into a studio and basically just jammed.”

Green founded Fleetwood Mac in 1967, and his slick, timeless, blues-y playing is evident in their earliest releases, including tracks such as Oh Well and the seductive Albatross.

But his exit wasn’t all that amicable and in 1970, against a backdrop of drug use and mental health issues, Green left the group. Almost a decade later, he would re-emerge professionally, with his passion for jams and connecting with other musicians returning.

“Peter was in a good mood and it was a fun session,” White continues. “He started playing rhythm stuff and asked me to play lead. I said, ‘Pete, it’s your album, you play some lead.’ In the end, we both did a bit of each.”

Despite his deep-rooted connection to the Les Paul, Green wielded an unassuming 1965 Fender Duo-Sonic on In The Skies, which was the sound of Green finding himself again. It had been a turbulent period, and Snowy White was there to help him find his musical feet again.

“Of course, I was very happy to be recording with Peter,” White reflects. “I’d known him for a few years and didn’t think he would ever record again. Then he took away the tracks and worked on them, put some lyrics on.”

Green and White returned to the studio, setting up at The Who’s Battersea, London, location. The album would prove a success, but White does have one niggling regret about the experience.

“Unfortunately, I’d put in some of my ideas but in the end, I wasn’t credited with any songwriting,” he explains. “That was a pity but I didn’t make a fuss about it, as I figured that Peter was still pretty fragile and unsure about dealing with the business side of things, so I let it pass.”

Elsewhere in his Guitar World interview, White reveals how both Moore and David Gilmour would come to feature on his 1994 solo album, Highway to the Sun.

Scott Gorham had stiff competition in his bid to partner Brian Robertson in a new-look Thin Lizzy. Indeed, before the electric guitar hero had earned his spot, 24 auditionees had tried out for the spot.

However, while Gorham may have made a lasting impression on the band during his own audition, his budget Les Paul copy certainly didn’t – and he was swiftly instructed to replace it after getting the nod.

In 1974, Thin Lizzy were looking to establish a steady line-up after a period of upheaval. Original guitarist Eric Bell had departed in late 1973, with Gary Moore briefly forming a power trio alongside Lynott and drummer Brian Downey. Not long after, the 18-year-old Les Paul-wielding Robertson entered the picture – but he needed a partner.

Discussing his early Thin Lizzy days in the new issue of Guitarist, Gorham says he only had 30 days left on his visa when his audition took place. Thin Lizzy knew they had finally found their man when Gorham turned up, but here was a guitar-shaped elephant in the room that Lynott was quick to address.

“I had a really cheap-ass, no name Japanese Les Paul copy,” Gorham reflects to Guitarist. “That’s one of the first things Phil said to me: ‘Okay, you’re in, but we gotta change that guitar.’”

Gorham had reason to celebrate. He was eager to splash the cash to cement his place in a band he’d go on to produce nine albums with, while partnering with Robertson and a future cohort of Thin Lizzy stars.

“We went to Edgware Road [in London] and I bought my sunburst Les Paul,” Gorham continues. “But even before he had the stompboxes and all that, Robbo had some great tones coming out of that guitar.”

Gorham recapped his Thin Lizzy audition during an interview with Guitar Player last year, and judging by his recollection, it's easy to see why Lynott was so against the budget LP making its way into the Lizzy lineup.

“It started to fall apart, right in front of everybody's eyes,” he says. “Which was very embarrassing!”

No moment was more embarrassing than when the guitar began shedding screws.

“Both Phil and I, we were both on our knees trying to find this damn screw,” he adds, “And I said, ‘Ah, forget it,’ and I just ripped the scratchplate off.”

Despite such embarrassment, he got the gig. Bolstered by the fruitful tandem of Gorham-Robertson, Thin Lizzy produced what is widely considered their strongest three-album run with Nightlife (1974), Fighting (1975), and Jailbreak (1976).

Gorham is currently recovering from quite the health scare, and he's had to undergo three surgeries to counter his issues.

“I had a health issue scare about a year ago with a kidney that had to be removed,” he details. “I got sepsis from it. 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?'”

Alongside its feature on Thin Lizzy's history told through the guitarists who made it, the new issue of Guitarist features interviews with Bob Mould, and Larry DiMarzio, and an in-depth look at Fender's pre-CBS Stratocasters.

Pick up a copy from Magazines Direct.

Snowy White is best known for the two albums he made with Thin Lizzy in the early ‘80s, Chinatown and Renegade. He also wrote himself into Pink Floyd folklore by participating in an Animals sessions – and the band’s live album, Is There Anybody Out There?

A host of solo albums soon followed, and by 1994 he was readying his sixth LP, Highway to the Sun. It's notable for its impressive cast of co-guitarists, with David Gilmour and Thin Lizzy alumni Gary Moore taking guest spots.

One could easily look at White’s resume and draw the conclusion that this was a case of him creating a fantasy line-up with some old friends for the thrill of it. Discussing the album in a new career-spanning interview with Guitar World, he paints a slightly different picture.

“I only asked them to play on my album because the record company thought a few well-known names would be a good selling point,” he confesses. “I didn't really mind either way. It was very nice of them to agree to appear.”

Slide guitar maestro Chris Rae also starred on the record alongside then Mike + the Mechanics frontman Paul Carrack. But it was Gilmour and Moore's spots that stole the spotlight.

Moore offers bags of flair during the latter stages of the nine-minuter Keep On Working, and Gilmour delivers his signature, slow but lyrical sensibilities on Love, Pain & Sorrow. From the first note, it's clear who is icing White's slinking groove there.

“Gary came to the studio where I was working to do his part,” White explains. “I just asked him to blow over the end of a slow blues.

“With Dave's contribution, I took the tapes to his boat studio, on the Thames near Hampton Court, and just said, 'It's a really simple track, just do a few takes and I'll sort it out later'.

“He used his whammy pedal, which I hadn't heard before. I chose the best bits when I mixed it. It was all pretty simple really. I guess the obvious difference is that I was telling them what I wanted as opposed to the other way around.”

Throughout his career, White has been in and out of bands, weaving solo records around stints with Pink Floyd, as well as in Phil Lynott and Roger Waters’ respective solo bands, and featuring on Peter Green's In The Skies among others.

“Both situations have their plusses and minuses,” he says, diplomatically, of the differences between being a solo artist and a band guy.

“For instance, the nicest thing about being in Roger’s band, apart from being involved in all those great shows, was that all I had to do was walk on stage, pick up my already-tuned guitar, and start playing...

“In contrast, when I was touring Europe with my own three-piece band, The White Flames, I was doing almost everything at first: driving, booking the hotels, sorting out the travel, collecting the money... But, the reward for doing that was that I was up on stage doing my own thing with musicians who were really loyal.”

White released his latest solo venture, Unfinished Business last year, and as the name attests, he's got plenty more music yet to write.

Throughout the decades, Thin Lizzy has, somehow, managed to survive – and even thrive – when times got tough, with the band reinventing itself amid a rotating roster of guitarists and band members.

However, it's been four decades since their last studio material, and, with no live dates in sight, one might safely assume that Thin Lizzy's days are over... but not just yet. In a recent interview with Guitarist, Gorham foreshadows a potential resurrection of Lizzy, claiming he’s waiting for the right calibre of player.

“I can’t just pick somebody off the line. For me, there’s gotta be something special about them. I don’t want to break the chain of great guitar players coming through Thin Lizzy. I know they’re out there. So hopefully, it’s not gonna take too long for something to happen.”

His comments come amid ongoing speculation about Lizzy’s future, following Gorham’s departure from Black Star Riders in 2021 – a hard rock, “twin-guitar attack” band formed in memory of Lizzy’s legacy.

After a nerve-racking audition in 1974 that cemented his role in Thin Lizzy, Gorham went on to share the stage with a number of guitar greats. During Lizzy’s reign, he paired with the likes of John Sykes, Snowy White, Brian Robertson and blues virtuoso, Gary Moore, to name a few – so it's no surprise Gorham faces uncertainty about relighting Lizzy’s flame.

Moreover, the death of Lizzy guitarist John Sykes, in December 2024 continues to spark bouts of déjà vu within Gorham.

“I got so many requests: ‘Hey, Scott, let’s do an interview.’ ‘No thanks, it’s too soon.’ The same thing happened when Phil died. I didn’t want to go through all that again. I kinda wish I hadn’t been such a prick about it and done some of these interviews, for John’s sake.”

After all, it was Sykes who, after the tragic death of Irish pioneer Phil Lynott in early 1986, pitched the idea of sparking up Lizzy once more to Gorham.

He recalls: “We both sang background, but I’d never heard John sing solo. I had no idea he had three solo albums. I listened to them and I thought, ‘Hey, where’s he been keeping this?’ So I said, ‘Okay, I think we can give this a shot. I’m still not sure if this is the right thing to do, but let’s see what happens.’

“I remember being in that studio and nobody wanted to pick up a guitar, in case this was not going to work out. I finally said, ‘Fuck it, I’ve flown 6,000 miles, let’s get into this. We’ll start out with Jailbreak, okay?

“If it’s shit, then we’ll just pack up,” Gorham continues. “So we played Jailbreak and at the end, we looked at each other and said, ‘Actually, that sounded pretty damn good.’ Before we knew it, we had a full set that everybody felt confident in.”

The Sykes-fronted outfit lasted until 2009, despite some fans never accepting the switch.

As for the band's future, Gorham is keeping his standards high and options open for the next pioneer to play alongside him.

Be sure to check out a guide to each Lizzy guitarist as well as the first unheard Thin Lizzy tracks in over 40 years – and, for the ultimate Lizzy content, pick up the latest copy of Guitarist from Magazines Direct.

After Eric Bell famously left Thin Lizzy (paving the way for the band’s Gary Moore era) he was thrown something of a lifeline when he received a call from Noel Redding – the Jimi Hendrix Experience bass guitar player, who was putting together a new band.

As the story goes, Redding called Bell when the latter was in a liminal position – however, it's safe to say that joining Redding's group came with... well, certain terms and conditions.

“I remember that I was using one of Noel’s amps,” he recalls in a new interview with Guitar World. “I had programmed the amp, and we’re playing away, and Noel looked over, and said, ‘Wait a minute… what’s that fucking tone?’

“I looked down and said, ‘What?’ He started fiddling about with the controls on the amp, and I thought, ‘Will I tell him to stuff his fucking band now, or will I stick around?’” he chuckles. “I stuck around.”

It was a shaky start, but things would eventually get better: “It was very strange,” Bell recalls of those early days with the Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist.

“It was this house in the middle of nowhere. One day, I’m lying in bed reading a book, and Noel comes in with the drummer, and the keyboard player, and says, ‘Right, we’re going down to the pub. Come on.’ I said, ‘I think I’ll just take it easy.’ He went, ‘Fuck me, he’s reading a book...’

“I just looked at him, and thought, ‘What the fuck have I let myself in here for?’ I thought, ‘This guy’s fucking mad.’ I said, ‘Right, I’ve had enough. Fuck this.’ I got a lift back to the train station with this farmer and got on the train from Cork to Dublin.”

He continues, “A few days later, Noel phoned me and said, ‘Right, mate. We’re having another rehearsal next week…’ I said, ‘Fuck it. I’m not. I’m gone.’ So, the two managers, who turned out to be crooks, though we didn’t know at the time, phoned me and said, ‘Eric, what’s this all about?’

“I said, ‘I can’t figure this guy out. That guy’s a fucking nut. I’ve been through this with Lizzy, I’m not gonna do it again.’ So, they said, ‘If I fly you out, will you have a meeting with us and Noel at a hotel?’ So, I went to the meeting, we had a long discussion, and Noel shook my hand.”

Under the moniker The Noel Redding Band – also known as The Clonakilty Cowboys – the folk rock supergroup, which comprised vocalist and keyboard player Dave Clarke and drummer Les Sampson (later replaced by Dave Donovan), alongside Redding and Bell, released two albums in ’75 and ’76, before disbanding in ’78.

Speaking to Bass Player in 1993, Redding spoke about why he left the Jimi Hendrix Experience – and revealed that he received no royalty money from the Hendrix estate for his contribution to Jimi's lucrative catalog.

Guitar World's full interview with Eric Bell will be published in the coming weeks.

Thin Lizzy's rotating roster of electric guitar players has included big-name players like Eric Bell, John Sykes, and, of course, Gary Moore. However, some of the band's biggest hits – and its signature sound – came by way of the dynamic duo of Scott Gorham (the longest-serving member of the band) and Brian Robertson, who both joined Thin Lizzy in 1974 and helped pioneer what many call the “twin guitar attack”.

Gorham, the enduring spine of the band, has shared stage and studio with a number of players. However, it was his initial partnership with Robertson that provided the Thin Lizzy blueprint.

Back in June 1974, at a London supper club, Thin Lizzy was auditioning for a second guitarist to accompany Scottish Les Paul-wielder Brian Robertson. Gorham, who had moved to England from California in 1973, walked into the audition knowing nothing about Lizzy – except that they’d had a minor hit, Whiskey in the Jar, two years earlier.

“I had 30 days left on my visa or they’re gonna throw me out of the country,” he tells Guitarist. “I was late and the first guy I meet is [frontman] Phil Lynott, who goes, ‘Let me introduce you to the guys.’ So we walk in and Phil goes, ‘Hey, everybody, this is Scott,’ – and Robbo and Brian Downey [drums] just go, ‘Yeah, yeah.’”

The band’s hostility was, perhaps, understandable. “I didn’t know they’d already auditioned 24 guitarists, and here comes number 25,” he explains. “I guess they thought, ‘Well, here’s another one we’re going to reject.’ So they didn’t want to get too friendly.’” From his end, Robertson had no patience to show the ropes to yet another hopeful.

“Robbo showed me the first song really quickly and said, ‘You got that?’” Gorham recalls. “Then we’re off and running and I’m watching Robbo’s hand on the neck, trying to follow every move, barely making the changes in time.

“But I’m realizing, as I’m struggling with these chord patterns, that these guys are really good. And it was probably after the third song, I said to myself, ‘I gotta be in this band.’”

Despite being younger than Gorham, Robertson had, according to Gorham, “so much more musical knowledge”. His father had played saxophone in Art Blakey's jazz band, so 'Robbo' was raised surrounded by “scales, tones, all that”.

“He was absolutely more technical than me and our styles were different, but we had to put our egos aside and toe the line,” Gorham reflects. And that was the beginning of a partnership whose legacy permeated the rest of Thin Lizzy's catalog.

For more Scott Gorham, plus new interviews with Bob Mould and LA LOM, pick up issue 525 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

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.

Guns N’ Roses are back out on the road and have continued a heartfelt tradition by bolstering their setlist with a Thin Lizzy classic – which has seemingly been included as a tribute to the late John Sykes.

Slash and co. are currently out in Asia, and during their show at the K-Arena Yokohama in Yokohama, Japan, on May 5, bass player Duff McKagan assumed vocal duties for a cover of Thunder and Lightning.

The song is taken from Thin Lizzy's 1983 album of the same name, which proved to be the band's last LP following Phil Lynott's passing in 1986. It was the only Thin Lizzy record to feature guitarist John Sykes, who was brought in to replace Snowy White. The record was one Lizzy's heaviest outings, boasting a heavy metal panache with Brian Downey on drums and Sykes' union with Scott Gorham proving fruitful.

Sykes, who passed away aged 65 in December last year, would go on to join Whitesnake for a two-album spell afterward, and it seems Guns are using the song as a way to pay tribute to the underrated guitarist.

Going off fan-filmed footage, the song gets no introduction, but it does see Slash swap his trusty Les Paul for a black Gibson SG, which is a rare sight.

The bassist's voice helps give the song a strong punk flavor – it already had the snarling attitude – but it is Slash and Richard Fortus’ interweaving lead lines around the 2:30 mark that really steal the show. They have no right to make countering guitar solos work as well as that. Slash solos a handful of other times across the song, his wah pedal seeing plenty of action throughout.

“Mr. Duff McKagan,” Axl Rose can be heard bellowing above the applause once the final notes had rung out. “A little thunder and lightning.”

Tributes poured in for Sykes after news of his passing broke. Elsewhere, Steve Vai – who had to follow in his wake in Whitesnake – recently spoke about the challenge he faced when it came to following in his footsteps.

It's not the first time GNR have paid tribute to late guitar heroes during their sets. In the wake of Chris Cornell's untimely passing in 2017, Soundgarden's set list staple Black Hole Sun was weaved into their live shows as a mark of respect.

McKagan would go on to front the surviving members of Soundgarden during a charity show late last year, and it’s been confirmed the band will get together again for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction later this year.

Guns’ latest tour run, which began at South Korea’s Songdo Moonlight Festival Park on May 1st, is the first tour to feature new drummer Isaac Carpenter who was announced just 24 hours after the departure of long-serving stickman Frank Ferrer.

In April, Slash made a surprise appearance at former Hannoi Rocks singer Michael Monroe’s show at the Whisky A-Go-Go, Les Paul, top hat and all.

Speaking to Guitar World back in 1989, the late John Sykes – a guitar hero who lent his ferocious tone and songwriting chops to Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy, Blue Murder, and Tygers of Pan Tang – said he wasn't the world's biggest gear-head.

Though he didn't go all the way to the “they're just tools of the trade” end of things, he told GW that he didn't have much of an emotional attachment to any of his guitars. With one exception.

That exception was a black 1976 Gibson Les Paul, which Sykes – he told us at the time – had used for every gig he'd played with Whitesnake and Thin Lizzy before them.

Such was his bond with the guitar that it was the subject of his first thought after a terrifying near-death experience.

At some time during the mid-'80s, Sykes was involved in a terrible car crash, in which his vehicle was broadsided by a truck.

Luckily, the guitarist survived the initial impact, but his totaled car was soon engulfed in flames. In a further stroke of luck, fast-acting first responders were able to pull Sykes unconscious from the driver's-side window.

Soon after, though, Sykes came to. Seeing his car in flames, he had only one thought – his beloved Les Paul in the back seat.

Sykes attempted to run back to his car, much to the displeasure of one of the on-site first responders, who had to restrain the guitarist from sprinting back to the scene of the accident.

Fortunately, though, firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze before it swallowed the guitar.

“I was in a frantic frenzy about my guitar being trapped and burnt up,” Sykes explained to Guitar World. “I knew I'd never be able to replace it.

“It's amazing, the feelings you get about these things. It's like a child. You've done so much with it and you know just how to get what you want from it.”

That's a hell of a comparison. So, what exactly was so magical about this particular Les Paul?

“I have maybe 30 other guitars, but they don't mean that much to me,” Sykes told Guitar World. “But this one... I don't know what it is. It's clear, it's sweet, it's got a good sustain. I don't like guitars that sound scratchy and messy.”

Modded only with a thick brass nut for peghead harmonics, and a Dirty Fingers pickup at the neck – the bridge remained stock – for more bite, the black '76 model stood out even over other Les Pauls to which Sykes made the same tweaks.

“I've tried different configurations of guitars and pickups and the same pickups, but none of them sounds like this one,” he explained. “Sometimes you just get a dead guitar.

“I got a '67 Les Paul Custom like this and it didn't matter what I did to it. The wood was dead as a doornail.”

Interestingly, Sykes even made a point of highlighting how his #1 six-string took away an obvious target of blame for a bad show.

“If it's not happening at a gig, you know it's not the guitar, it's just you having an off night,” he explained. “These feelings aren't good because if something did happen to it, it would be devastating.”

It's no secret that Gary Moore's relationship with Thin Lizzy was troubled, to say the least – with the band's well-documented substance abuse and its impact on their performances being one of the main points of contention.

In July 1979, Moore famously stormed off stage mid-tour after the band's set in front of 63,000 people at San Francisco's Day On The Green Festival. While the departure may have come as a surprise to many, Moore had already decided that, frankly, he had had enough.

“It got to the point where the party after the show was more important than the show itself,” Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell tells Classic Rock in a new interview. And, when vocalist Phil Lynott became so wasted that he couldn’t remember the lyrics, Moore decided it was time to jump ship.

As Bell puts it, “There was never any half-measures with Gary. Such a nice guy on our own, laughing and joking. But if he didn’t like something he’d soon tell you to fuck off.” Beyond the substance abuse, drummer Brian Downey notes another key factor that strained the band’s internal dynamics.

“Gary always hogged the stage,” he says. “Even in Thin Lizzy. Phil was the leader – except when Gary joined. Now it was like we had two leaders, which wasn’t very clever.”

Following Moore's sudden departure, the band was left without a guitarist – in the middle of a very crucial US tour – and, in dire need of another six-stringer, gave an unlikely contender a call: Midge Ure.

“[Lynott] said, ‘Gary Moore is out of the band. We’re doing this tour; could you come over tomorrow?’” Ure recalls in a recent Guitar World interview. “My initial reaction was, ‘You’ve got the wrong number. I’m not the guy you should be asking.’

“I went back to my little flat and there was a plane ticket, a bunch of cassettes, a setlist, and an itinerary saying, ‘A car will pick you up in the morning and take you to Heathrow.’ I found out they’d put me on Concorde, so I had no time to learn any of the songs!”

Ure wasn't the last guitarist to join Thin Lizzy's revolving-door lineup. In fact, the band has had 15 guitarists in total – from co-founder Eric Bell to the most recent addition, Damon Johnson.

In July 1979, Thin Lizzy were riding high following the release of ninth studio album Black Rose: A Rock Legend, and taking what many felt was their best shot at breaking the US. Gary Moore’s brutal mid-tour departure was not in the script.

When he walked out for the third and final time – reportedly in protest over Phil Lynott and Scott Gorham’s growing heroin habits – they needed to find a rapid replacement to complete their dates with Journey. They turned to a guitarist who, today, might seem an unlikely choice.

Midge Ure was at work in his London studio when Lizzy leader Lynott called from Arkansas. “He said, ‘Gary Moore is out the band. We’re doing this tour; could you come over tomorrow?’ My initial reaction was, ‘You’ve got the wrong number. I’m not the guy you should be asking.’

“I went back to my little flat and there was a plane ticket, a bunch of cassettes, a setlist and an itinerary saying, ‘A car will pick you up in the morning and take you to Heathrow.’ I found out they’d put me on Concorde, so I had no time to learn any of the songs!”

In the summer of 1979, Ure was still two years away from releasing game-changing Ultravox hit Vienna. His studio project, Visage, wouldn’t drop club classic Fade to Grey until November 1980. The concept of a synth-pop star hadn’t been invented. Instead, Ure had gained attention as guitarist for the post-Sex Pistols group Rich Kids.

He’d met Lynott a number of times, and the connection had resulted in the Scotsman’s co-writing credit on Get Out of Here and a production credit on the Irishman’s solo hit Yellow Pearl.

“I had read about Lizzy, and Philip’s association with Skid Row – weirdly enough with a very young Gary Moore playing guitar,” Ure recalls. “Then I saw Lizzy at The Picasso Club in Glasgow, with Brian Downey on drums and Eric Bell on guitar, before Whiskey in the Jar. Later I bumped into Philip walking around the streets of Glasgow.

“He remembered that in 1978 when I moved to London and bumped into him in the Underground. We just started hanging out. I was in the Rich Kids and he was just about to release Live and Dangerous. Never in a million years would I have though: ‘I’ll be touring America with them in a year’s time!’”

What were your first steps to learning the Thin Lizzy tracks?

“A ghetto blaster and big headphones. It was pre-Walkman. I sat on Concorde, sipping vintage Dom Perignon – which I’d never had before in my life – trying to get the structures in my head.

“The first time I touched a guitar to learn the chord sequences was in the hotel room with Scott Gorham. Every song had a guitar harmony to go with it. There was no rehearsal – we ran through some songs at soundcheck the next day: ‘You’ve got that; it’ll be fine. Get changed, get on and do your set.’ It was petrifying. Utterly petrifying. Thin Lizzy were a big band and I’d never been to America before.

“Musically my first impression was, ‘God, they’re loud!’ We had two massive Marshall stacks each. When you stood in front of your stack you couldn’t hear anybody else. I had to keep going over to Brian to check I was in time. It was an emotional turmoil of fear and excitement – just bizarre.”

How was the atmosphere within Thin Lizzy when you stepped in?

“Panic, more than anything. Black Rose was a really important record. It was dreadful timing for Gary to be removed from the band. It’s very difficult to promote an album that’s just covered in Gary Moore when you’re a three-piece without him.

“From talking to Scott, they were a bit worried about what was going to turn up after Philip called me. As it transpires, they were more worried about my trousers than my guitar skills!

“It was interesting being there as a member and an observer. Lizzy were opening for Journey, meaning the usual tricks were used against them – withholding the full PA and having the volume halfway down. It’s what big bands do to perceived smaller bands.

“I had turned up with a Yamaha SG-2000. I did the first few shows with that until, unbeknownst to me, it was deemed not cool enough for a band like Thin Lizzy to have a Japanese guitar. They were fantastic guitars, and still are, but it was suggested I use a very old Les Paul Junior, which obviously looked the part.

“I looked like I’d been beamed down from Star Trek, standing on stage with these guys with their studs and armbands, flicking their hair – and there I was, with my pointy sideburns, sucking my cheeks in!”

Why do you think Phil chose you to replace Gary Moore?

“I found out many years later from Scott that Philip had convinced the guys I knew all the songs. Well, I knew how they went, but I didn’t know them! My ability to learn things fairly quickly and quite possibly the friendship element had something to do with it.

“Scott said he’d never seen anyone thrown so deep into the deep end, having to learn an hour’s worth of material on the plane, and learning it well enough to get on stage in front of 30,000 people and play all these harmony guitar parts.

“Black Rose was the only track we couldn’t play live; we spent three weeks trying to learn it, but nobody was fast enough to do those Irish jig-type licks – which was a real skill.”

How did playing in Lizzy shape you?

“It gave me confidence as a guitarist; but it was odd because it wasn’t my music. My heart laid in Ultravox. We all took turns playing cassettes in the limo. They’d be playing ZZ Top and Bob Seger – very American stuff – and I’m saying, ‘Have you heard Kraftwerk?’

“Poor Scott would be sitting there pulling his hair out. But Philip would go, ‘Hold on a second, what’s this?’ He was a magpie; he always wanted to be associated with what was happening at the time.

“It made me more money than I’d ever seen in my entire life, and that gave me the wherewithal to get Ultravox up and running. I think I was better as a fan – I felt more comfortable watching Lizzy rather than being up there doing it. My head was full of electronic synthesizers and combinations of guitars; that wasn’t really gonna happen with Lizzy.”

Lizzy went on to tour Japan, and you stepped over to keyboards, as Dave Flett came in on guitar.

“They were always a guitar band. I never understood the keyboard thing.”

Do any particular memories of Phil stick out?

“He was like a big brother. When he saw kids offering me drugs, he would separate them from me… probably to have more for himself! He put his arm around me and kept me to one side. I’ve never done drugs in my life.

“The other thing was he used to drag me along to radio interviews during the tour. I’d sit there with not a lot to say, and he’d announce: ‘Right, Midge, tell them about Ultravox.’ It was very gracious and very generous of him.

“Lizzy were an incredibly important band, still cited as major influences. Whether you’re a rock musician or not, you cannot deny that Philip had a unique voice, he was a great songwriter, and that Lizzy live were one of the best things you could ever possibly see.

“He’s much missed. A big regret that both Bob Geldof and I have is that we didn’t ask Philip to get Lizzy back together for Live Aid. He wasn’t in a good way at the time, but we should have asked. It could have changed the outcome somewhat. It would have been great to have seen them up there doing it, just to remind people of how important they were.”

You were approached in 1975 to join the Sex Pistols. How long did you consider it before refusing?

“It was an immediate ‘no’ because they hadn’t asked what I did. They asked me because of how I looked – when everyone had long feather-cut hair, flares and black-heeled boots, I looked like James Dean with my quiff and straight tight jeans.

“Malcom McLaren and Bernard Rhodes stopped me coming out a music shop in Glasgow. I think they presumed I was a musician. They asked me if I wanted to join a band – they didn’t asked if I actually played. They were looking for the look, rather than the bones of talent. They found the best people they could find; I would have ruined it somewhat.

“The real reason they were in Glasgow was because they had a car full of stolen equipment they were trying to sell. Steve Jones used to see bands loading out at the end of the night at Hammersmith Odeon, and he’d pick up a guitar or a few mics. So I didn’t join the Pistols – but I bought an amplifier from them!”

Did you get a good deal?

“Yeah! I think I paid 40 pounds for it. It was a Fender or something, so it was a good deal… although not for the guy who initially paid for it…”

The Edge was meant to play on Band Aid’s 1984 charity track Do They Know It’s Christmas?, but he was sick and couldn’t make the session. Do you think he’d have altered the sound of the track?

“I think that might be a ‘poodle in the microwave’ story. I’m not sure anyone was geared up to play guitar on it. We tried some stuff with Paul Weller at my studio but it just didn’t fit because it was such an electronic track. The Edge is multiple echoes and jangling guitars, so he could have possibly done it.

“I’ve never thought of that before! He could have added another layer of something. But straightforward guitar – crash chords and stuff – seemed to work very well. John Taylor from Duran Duran took some bass guitar on it. I think it might still be on there, but incredibly quiet because the synthesizer thing seemed to drive along quite nicely.

“I’m not convinced… I don’t want to burst the Edge’s bubble; it would have been welcome had it happened. But I think that’s maybe one of those stories that’s just going to grow over the years.”

• Midge Ure tours the UK and Europe throughout 2025. Head to MidgeUre.co.uk for full dates.

Everybody loves Thin Lizzy. They’re tough enough for punks, heavy enough for metalheads, poetic enough for romantics, and melodic enough for pop fans.

The Boys Are Back in Town is at least as memorable for its guitar breaks as for its chorus, and Lizzy’s supremely catchy guitar themes have been played by some of the finest guitarists on earth.

After Phil Lynott’s untimely death in 1986, many assumed Thin Lizzy were finished for good. In 1996, however, John Sykes resurrected the band, installing himself as lead vocalist, alongside Darren Wharton (keys), Scott Gorham (guitar), and Brian Downey (drums), all of whom had toured and recorded with Phil Lynott, plus bassist Marco Mendoza.

Since then, the lineup has regularly changed, with only Gorham and Wharton as constants. Opinion remains divided over whether this new band is truly Thin Lizzy, but there is no doubting the depth of guitar talent that has travelled under the Lizzy flag.

Phil Lynott – (1970–1983)

Although he is of course best known as the band’s singer, main songwriter, and bass player, Phil Lynott played a credible amount of guitar in Thin Lizzy. He is credited with playing acoustic guitar on albums from 1971 to 1976, and supplied additional electric guitars on 1972’s Shades of a Blue Orphanage.

He certainly had an ear for the guitar, discovering some of the finest rock musicians of all time to complete his band’s lineup. When Lynott died in 1986, he had been talking about reforming Thin Lizzy and had even booked studio time for the band.

Eric Bell – (1970–1974)

Even if he had done nothing else, Eric Bell’s place in rock history would be assured by his performance on Whiskey in the Jar.

That seminal twin-guitar harmony directly inspired Iron Maiden and Metallica and set the template for Thin Lizzy’s greatness to come. Bell’s three albums with Thin Lizzy suffer from the fact that the band were still finding their direction, and Lynott still developing his songwriting chops, but Bell still shone.

Check out the excellent slide work on Mama Nature Said, and his blazing solo in The Rocker. His 2016 solo album features Song for Gary, a tribute to his friend and fellow Thin Lizzy alumnus Gary Moore.

Speaking to Guitar World in 2024 about how the Whiskey in the Jar solo came together, Bell recalled, “One night we played in Wales, and while driving home I was sitting in the back seat. I went into this dreamlike state and started thinking about Irish pipes. I said, ‘Right, forget about the guitar. Let’s run with this.’

“I heard Irish pipes in my brain, and the solo started forming in my mind. I’d never thought that way before,” he continued. “Once I’d gotten into the song and the solo was underway, I hit it hard as it was happening. It was just one of those special moments where every note worked. It was very unusual.”

John Du Cann and Andy Gee – (1974)

For a brief period in 1974, Eric Bell was gone, Gary Moore was unavailable, and Thin Lizzy were just the duo of Phil Lynott and drummer Brian Downey. Englishman John Du Cann and German Andy Gee were hastily drafted for touring duties.

Du Cann was best known as guitarist for Atomic Rooster, who achieved a UK top 5 single with Devil’s Answer just before he left the band. Andy Gee had played alongside Peter Green on Pete Barden’s The Answer (1969).

This lineup of Thin Lizzy dissolved without recording any music, but it did make one contribution to Lizzy’s recorded history. Gee and Lynott rewrote the unreleased Eric Bell-era track, Suicide, into a dual guitar arrangement, solidifying the importance of guitar harmonies to Lizzy’s sound. This version of the track was later recorded for the Fighting album, with Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson playing the parts.

Scott Gorham – (1974–1983, 1996–present)

Thin Lizzy’s longest serving member and the spine of the band, Scott Gorham is for many the sound of Thin Lizzy.

With Brian Robertson he formed what many consider the band’s defining guitar partnership, but his co-lead performances with every Lizzy guitarist have been exceptional.

He and Robertson made the Les Paul the only acceptable Thin Lizzy guitar, and refined the harmony guitar sound Eric Bell had pioneered.

Gorham formed Black Star Riders in 2012 with the current members of Thin Lizzy as a vehicle for new music, but he left in 2022, preferring to concentrate only on Thin Lizzy. There hasn’t been a Lizzy tour since 2019, but Gorham has been making noises about getting back on the road.

Speaking to Guitar World in 2024 about his audition for the band, Gorham said, “Phil took my number, on this tiny little piece of paper. And I thought, ‘Great, he’s not gonna lose that, is he?’

“I’m thinking, ‘I probably did pretty shitty.’ But that night, Phil gave me a call and said, ‘We’ve all been sitting around listening to the tapes.’ I went, ‘Tapes? What tapes?’ They’d been recording [my audition] the whole time. I had no idea. Probably pretty good that they didn’t say anything.

“Phil said, ‘We all agree that you’re the guy. What do you say?’” Gorham continued. “I couldn’t get the word ‘yes’ out quick enough. Hearing how talented all these guys were, you’d be crazy not to want to get in this thing called Thin Lizzy.”

Brian Robertson – (1974–1978)

The Boys Are Back in Town. Jailbreak. Don’t Believe a Word. Thin Lizzy’s biggest hits – and their most recognizable sound – are the work of Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham. The fat Les Paul-and-Marshall tone, the immaculately executed harmonies, and Robertson’s masterful use of wah all are all Lizzy trademarks.

This was the lineup that released Live and Dangerous, which stands as one of the mightiest double live albums of all time, regardless of how much of it was recorded in a studio. Fans still argue over whether Gary Moore or Brian Robertson’s take on Still in Love With You was the better.

In 1982 Robertson joined Motörhead, recording the studio effort Another Perfect Day and no less than three official live releases in just 18 months with the band. Robertson last appeared on stage alongside former members of Thin Lizzy at the August 2005 tribute show immortalized in the DVD One Night in Dublin: A Tribute to Phil Lynott.

Gary Moore – (1974, 1977, 1978–1979)

Moore’s three stints with Thin Lizzy have an outsize influence on the band’s history.

In 1974, Moore joined the band long enough to demo three tracks. He recorded the spectacular guitar showcase Still in Love With You for the Nightlife album before unceremoniously dumping the band. He returned in 1977 to fill in for an injured Brian Robertson on the band’s US tour. In this period, he recorded overdubs for seven songs from Thin Lizzy’s first two records, which were eventually released as bonus tracks with the remastered albums.

When Moore finally stuck around long enough to make an album, 1979’s Black Rose: A Rock Legend, it turned into one of Lizzy’s finest. His Les Paul-fueled takes on traditional Irish melodies for Róisín Dubh will still give you chills. Moore died suddenly in 2011, aged 58.

Midge Ure – (1977, 1979)

Although best remembered now for Ultravox and for co-writing Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas, Midge Ure had a long association with Thin Lizzy.

In 1977, he and Gary Moore contributed guitar overdubs to four songs from Thin Lizzy’s debut album, later released on The Continuing Saga of the Ageing Orphans. When Moore abandoned ship in 1979, Ure joined for the remaining Black Rose tour dates.

He’s appeared with them occasionally since, including the 1996 Vibe for Philo, a Lynott tribute gig which also featured appearances from Eric Bell, Henry Rollins, and two members of Def Leppard.

Dave Flett – (1979)

With Midge Ure moving to keyboards towards the end of the Black Rose tour, former Manfred Mann guitarist Dave Flett rounded out the lineup.

Snowy White – (1980–1982)

Once Gary Moore departed for the third and final time, Lynott and co recruited Pink Floyd backing guitarist Snowy White, who was rehearsing for The Wall tour.

White recorded two albums with the band, Chinatown (1980) and Renegade (1981). Some of White’s live performances also made the group’s 1983 live album, Life.

Though well-regarded by his bandmates, White felt out of place in the boisterous, hard-partying group.

“Musically, we did some great things, but our mindsets were not aligned,” White explained to Guitar World in 2023. “I was quite surprised at how much time was wasted. I wasn't used to that sort of rock and roll thing where it's, ‘Oh, we don't really care about wasting money and not being on time.’ It certainly took me a while to get used to that, because when I'm booked in the studio at a certain time, I'm there.

“I tried to get used to it, and I did alright. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't for me. I put everything into it that I could, but I didn't fit in socially. I was the only former member not in attendance at Thin Lizzy's famed final concert, which shows how well we got on socially.”

John Sykes – (1982–1983, 1996–2010)

After a tumultuous 1982 in which Scott Gorham took a sabbatical and Snowy White left the band, Lynott sought to get Lizzy back on track. Former Tygers of Pan Tang guitarist John Sykes was the man for the job.

With his crushing tone, screaming harmonics, and violent vibrato, Sykes was a proto-Zakk Wylde. He took the band’s sound closer to metal, and the resultant Thunder and Lightning charted higher than the band's two previous albums.

Post-Lizzy, he recorded Whitesnake’s blockbuster 1987 album and formed Blue Murder. Controversially, Sykes reactivated Thin Lizzy in 1996, ten years after Phil Lynott’s death, and fronted the band until 2010. Sykes died in 2025 following a battle with cancer. He was 65.

Ricky Warwick – (2010-present)

Having cut his teeth and found success in the band the Almighty in the '90s, Ricky Warwick took the late John Sykes' place as the resurrected Lizzy's frontman in 2010.

Though a few guitarists would take their place next to Gorham in the coming year and change (more on that in a second), Warwick has also, then and since, provided steady guitar-work to the band himself.

“Everything they wrote was memorable,“ Warwick said of the band's music in a 2021 interview with Guitar World. “It was all built out of great melodies and standalone parts that were instantly recognisable as hooks, from the vocals to even the drums. There were a lot of cool pushes and pulls, or notes you might not hear initially, but it was all special and all vital.

“And Scott Gorham’s vibrato is second to none. I’ve never heard him bend a note flat or sharp – it’s always spot on. Whenever we’ve had changes with the line-up, I know the vibrato of that player is very important for him – the vibratos need to match up for the dual leads. That’s very high up in his list of priorities.“

Vivian Campbell – (2010–2011)

Campbell joined Thin Lizzy for one tour during a hiatus from his day job in Def Leppard, appearing on the band’s Live in London 22.01.2011 release. A Thin Lizzy superfan since his childhood in Belfast, Campbell had already delivered a note-perfect rendition of the Don’t Believe a Word solo for Leppard’s 2005 covers set, Yeah! He credited his stint in Thin Lizzy with reigniting his passion for guitar.

Richard Fortus – (2011)

With Vivian Campbell returning to his Leppard mothership, Scott Gorham invited Guns n’ Roses axeman Richard Fortus to complete Lizzy’s 2011 tour. Fortus performed with the band at High Voltage festival, which was captured for yet another live release.

After Thin Lizzy, Fortus returned to GnR, managed a stint with hard rock supergroup The Dead Daisies, and somehow shoehorned in a pop session career that has seen him play with Rihanna, among other big names.

Damon Johnson – (2011–present)

An extremely well-travelled guitarist, Johnson first hit the radio with mid-'90s rockers Brother Cane. He subsequently played on a Sammy Hagar solo album, a Faith Hill track, and co-wrote songs for Santana and Stevie Nicks, before eventually finding a home with Alice Cooper’s band from 2004 onwards, until Scott Gorham brought him to Thin Lizzy in 2011.

Feeling that it would be disrespectful to record new music under the Thin Lizzy name without Phil Lynott, Johnson co-founded Black Star Riders, an original band made up of the current members of Thin Lizzy. In recent years, he's also performed with Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“I was incredibly flattered that Scott would even ask,” Johnson told Guitar World in 2024 when asked about his invitation to join the band. “When it happened, Alice Cooper was the first person I called. I talked with him about how much I loved Thin Lizzy, and Alice was super supportive. I showed up the first day beyond prepared, knowing the Gary Moore and Brian Robertson versions.

“After the first couple of rehearsals Scott said, ‘Buddy, you’re playing your ass off and we love it. But don’t feel like you have to play those songs note for note. I want you to be Damon Johnson… I want you to bring your style.”

Midge Ure was a staple of '70s and '80s rock, pop and new wave – crash-landing into the UK charts with Slik, Rich Kids, Visage, and Ultravox – but in the guitar world, he's perhaps best known for saving Thin Lizzy after Gary Moore departed mid-U.S. tour, and co-organizing Live Aid alongside Bob Geldof.

However, he could have very well been part of another iconic group, namely The Sex Pistols, if only he had said yes one fateful day in 1975.

As Ure tells it, he was leaving a music store when Malcolm McLaren and Bernard Rhodes – the co-conspirators who played a key role in propelling the Pistols to widespread attention in their early days – approached him.

“It was an immediate no because they hadn’t asked what I did,” Ure says matter-of-factly in a new Guitar World interview.

“They stopped me because of how I looked – a time when everyone had long feather-cut hair, flares, and black-heeled boots. I looked like James Dean with my quiff and straight-tight jeans, and they stopped me coming out of a music shop, so I presumed they presumed I was a musician.

“But after going into the nuts and bolts of what they were trying to put together – a band – they just asked me if I wanted to join, they hadn’t asked if I actually play.

“They were looking for the look, rather than bones of talent. As it transpires, they found the best people they could find to put that band together. I would have ruined it somewhat.”

As to what the pair were doing in Ure's native Glasgow – well, it was for slightly more nefarious reasons than scouting band members…

“They had a boot full of stolen equipment they were trying to sell, which Steve Jones used to steal back in the day,” he reveals.

“He’d go and see bands unloading at the end of the night at Hammersmith Odeon, and then go pick a guitar or a few mics. So, I didn’t join the Pistols, but I bought an amplifier from his boot!”

Speaking of Steve Jones, last year, the guitarist's 1974 Les Paul Custom – which originally belonged to the New York Dolls' Sylvain Sylvain – fetched $390,000 at auction, after which it ended up in the hands of Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, Yungblud, and Sum 41's Deryck Whibley.

Guitar World's full interview with Midge Ure will be published in the next few weeks.

On January 20, 2025, one of my all-time guitar heroes, John Sykes, passed away after a courageous battle with cancer. He was only 65. Like a great many rock guitarists, John’s emotional, chop-laden lead work and well-crafted riffing had a huge influence on me. Ditto his larger-than-life tone.

In my humble opinion, though, outside of guitar playing circles this great man was criminally underrated.

A rock guitarists’ guitarist in the truest sense of the term, John spawned many instantly-memorable riffs, and crafted great songs too. He had one of the widest and most soulful fretboard hand vibratos I’ve ever heard. And he delivered it all with a visceral no-holds-barred gusto.

To my ears he was always going for it; and the resulting excitement was, and always will be, palpable and inspiring – even when heard through puny smart-phone speakers. Don’t Stop By, Gangland and Do It Good by the Tygers of Pan Tang; Crying in the Rain, Give Me All Your Love and Bad Boys by Whitesnake; Riot, Billy and Cry for Love by Blue Murder all have the same effect: they make me want to pick up my guitar and have at it.

He could also sing really, really well. Well, at least he wasn’t good-looking with a striking stage presence – scratch that. John possessed both of those qualities by the truckload, darn him!

I first saw him performing with the Tygers of Pan Tang in 1980 in Manchester, England. To say I was completely blown away by what I saw and heard would be a gross understatement. And he’d only just joined the band! He was the same age as me but he totally left me choking in his dust, darn him again!

I tried to console myself by thinking, “Perhaps he was just having one of those magical, perfect nights we all have once in a blue moon.” Not true. As 1981 Tygers albums Spellbound and Crazy Nights proved in quick succession, what I’d witnessed that night was the norm for John Sykes.

And I wasn’t the only one he inspired at that time. Marty Friedman recently said on Eddie Trunk’s radio show: “When John Sykes came out on the Spellbound album, it was like, ‘This was a game changer for me.’ He was the first guy in that genre that I heard that I was like, ‘Wow – these lead guys can really take an exciting part of the band’s sound.’”

Marty continued: “He was an extremely important influence on myself, and a lot of the people I’ve met over the years. Everybody in the world of heavy metal, hard rock and guitar owes a lot to him.”

John’s time in the Tygers was short; he went on to co-write the glorious single Please Don’t Leave Me with Phil Lynott in 1982. Not surprisingly, he was soon asked to join Thin Lizzy – but sadly, the album Thunder & Lightning and its tour was a last hurrah, as Lynott decided to close the Thin Lizzy book in 1983.

Thunder & Lightning remains one of my favorite Thin Lizzy albums; and I’ve always considered John’s riffing, soloing and tone in Cold Sweat to be the gold standard.

He re-emerged in early 1984 as a member of Whitesnake; and just like he’d done with the Tygers and Lizzy, he breathed new life into David Coverdale’s outfit – which definitely helped their Slide It In album make major headway in America. Once the tour cycle was over, John hunkered down and co-wrote nine new songs with Coverdale for 1987’s Whitesnake album, which has sold over 8 million copies in the US alone.

Unfortunately Coverdale had fired John and the rest of the band by the time it was released. But everyone knew who the bold trailblazer in that music was, and John’s stature as a bona fide guitar hero was written in stone.

While his soloing on Whitesnake is staggering, his rhythm work, songwriting and arranging are all equally impressive. In a recent interview with Cassius Morris, Steve Vai said of John: “He was such a phenomenal rock guitar player. When that album came out we were all just stunned. He really captured that audio real estate with a guitar tone and a playing style that created a fever. He was really a great player and a great guitar orchestrator.”

John’s next move was Blue Murder project – a power-trio supergroup with Tony Franklin of The Firm on bass and the legendary Carmine Appice on drums. Their self-titled 1989 debut album showcased John’s many talents perfectly. Sadly it didn’t become the hit the label had expected, and the band started to fizzle out.

Franklin and Appice both left in the early ‘90s, leaving John to put together a new lineup. In 1993 a second studio album, Nothin’ But Trouble, hit the streets, followed by the excellent live offering Screaming Blue Murder: Dedicated to Phil Lynott a year late. But the label dropped Blue Murder and the group disbanded.

John moved on to sign a new deal in Japan, and released his first solo album, Out of My Tree, in 1995. At the same time he reunited with former Thin Lizzy members Scott Gorham (guitar), Brian Downey (drums) and Darren Wharton (keyboards) as a touring version of the famous band, taking lead vocals himself.

Three more solo albums followed – Loveland (1997), 20th Century (1997) and Nuclear Cowboy (2000) – and a live album too: Bad Boy Live! (2004). A Thin Lizzy live album, One Night Only, was released in 2000, and although the band continued to tour with various lineups, John called it a day in 2009. He said the reason was to work more on his own material; but instead he went quiet… very quiet.

While I never met John, his playing and writing remains a profound influence on me, and he continues to inspire many others too. In my recent YouTube appearances with “Uncle” Ben Eller and Satchel of Steel Panther, John is deservedly mentioned often, with much reverence and respect.

I mean, timeless, hooky riffs and songs; smoking solos; great tone; and that vibrato, wider than a four-lane highway… what’s not to love? Rest in peace, Mr. Sykes. Thank you for all the amazing music, playing and continued influence you blessed us with.

Yesterday (January 20), it was announced that John Sykes – a hugely influential mainstay of '80s hard rock guitar who had stints in Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy, and Tygers of Pan Tang – had died at 65.

Though not quite a household name, Sykes was a true guitar player's guitar player who could more than keep up in a speed-obsessed era, but was most impressive for his unmistakable tone and song-focused playing approach.

The respect Sykes garnered was evident in the outpouring of tributes that came in in the wake of the guitarist's death.

Marty Friedman, for one, wrote on Twitter, “Very sad to hear of John Sykes passing. His work with Tygers of Pan Tang was by far my favorite of the NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal). A wonderful guitarist.”

Zakk Wylde, in all caps, simply said, “God bless John Sykes.”

Guitar World lesson columnist Will Wallner also chimed in on Twitter, posting a particularly smoking Sykes solo with the caption, “Over 40 years later it still doesn’t get any cooler than this! He was such a special guitar player!”

Sykes' comrade in Blue Murder, drummer Carmine Appice, cited him as “one of the best.”

Though Sykes' tenure in Thin Lizzy was short – the band broke up less than a year after he successfully auditioned for them – he was arguably the largest factor in keeping the band going for that one final year.

Moving the band in a heavier direction, Sykes co-wrote one of their last hits, Cold Sweat, which he also highlighted with a sizzling display of his tapping acumen.

Nodding to his late bandmate and former six-string partner in crime, Thin Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham wrote on Instagram, “So sad to hear about the passing of John Sykes. He and I played some sweet music together and he was a great musician. We'll miss him.”

The city of Belfast in Northern Ireland might soon erect a new statue to honor one of its most well-known sons – Gary Moore. Initial plans have been given the go-ahead just weeks after Rory Gallagher's statue was unveiled.

According to Belfast Green Party councilor Brian Smyth, the proposal he filed on behalf of the Wild Frontier Memorial Project was approved at a City Hall committee meeting, indicating that the Gary Moore statue is now more a case of ‘when’ than ‘if.’

“This evening at committee, Belfast City Council agreed to my proposal to carry out a land check of sites in the Cathedral Quarter for a potential Gary Moore statue,” Smyth shares on social media. “As a proud son of our city and East Belfast, he blazed a trail and has left a lasting legacy for rock and blues fans across the world.

The post continues, “Gary was one of the greatest ever guitarists and deserves to be honored in his home city. We have never been great at celebrating our people who have achieved great success. It's time to change that in relation to Gary Moore and tell his story for future generations of aspiring musicians in Belfast.”

In a statement given to The Irish News, Smyth confirmed that if the plans go ahead, the initiative would be “privately funded”, as it's expected to cost around $83,202 (€80,000).

The project is being spearheaded by the Wild Frontier Memorial Project, founded by fans of Moore, with the aim of honoring the virtuoso's immense legacy.

So far, the Project has been raising money via tribute gigs in Dublin and Belfast, and an online crowdfunding campaign that was launched last year. Former Thin Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham, ex-Whitesnake and Dio axeman Doug Aldridge, as well as Moore's son, Jack, and sister, Patricia, have all voiced their support for this campaign.

“This is an exciting time for the campaign to honor the legend Gary Moore with a statue in Belfast,” says Srón Quigley, one of the co-founders.

“We want to celebrate his memorable music, his remarkable talent, and with his legacy, inspire new generations of musicians. Belfast is a city rich with music history and talent and we believe visitors to the city will warmly welcome a statue of Gary Moore as much as the people of Belfast.”

Check out this Total Guitar piece, for more on how Gary Moore's propulsive playing and fiery tone changed the course of blues guitar.

Aerosmith bass guitar player Tom Hamilton has revealed how a trip to see Motörhead play live with his son eventually lead to him joining Thin Lizzy in 2016.

Until that point, Hamilton, who has been part of Aerosmith since their formation, had never played a part in a musical project outside of the band. However, speaking on the Defenders of the Faith podcast, he admits this was an offer too good to miss.

“I went to see Motörhead with my son one night and after the show, we were able to spend a lot of time with Lemmy, who was so great to us,” he reveals. The pair met the rest of the band – guitarist Phil Campbell, and current Scorpions drummer Mikkey Dee – and it unknowingly laid the foundation for what was to come.

“A few months later, [Mikkey Dee] got in touch with me and said he was going to be playing with Thin Lizzy on a tour to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Phil Lynott's death [and 40 years since Jailbreak]. He said they were looking for a bass player and if I wanted the gig, it was mine.”

The Irish rockers had disbanded following Lynott’s passing in 1984, shortly after the release of the heavy metal-tinged Thunder and Lightning LP. Guitarist Scott Gorham announced a new-look line-up for their 2010 return, which featured original drummer Brian Downey, long-standing keyboardist Darren Wharton, Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell, and vocalist Ricky Warwick. At that point, Marco Mendoza handled bass guitar duties.

In 2012, members of the band established the Black Star Riders name to write and release new music without impacting Lizzy’s legacy. Thin Lizzy, meanwhile, was reserved for special tours and one-off events. Fast-forward several years, and a torn Hamilton had a decision to make.

“I knew in my heart there was no way I would say no, although it would be the first time I ever did something outside of Aerosmith, so I had some butterflies,” he says. “I had done some minor things outside of my day job, but never a tour.”

Hamilton listened to his heart and agreed to get involved.

“A few months after that, after studying my ass off learning the songs, I was in London for the first day of rehearsals. I thought I had the songs down, but I was a little behind the curve,” he accepts. Luckily, he had a get-out-of-jail-free card.

“Damon Johnson, who is now a great friend of mine, was playing guitar. He and I got together one-on-one the next day and he helped me get polished. From then on, rehearsals went better and better, and then we were off to our first gig.

“We played five or six big festivals in Europe and it was a blast,” he remembers.

The bassist says he never met Phil Lynott, but tackling his songs gave him “an immense amount of respect for what he accomplished musically.”

Hamilton has since stepped down from the role, with Mastodon’s low-end bringer Troy Sanders tapped up for their last run of shows in 2019.

In August last year, Aerosmith announced their retirement from touring in light of Steven Tyler’s vocal injury, but Hamilton has refused to rule out a potential return in the future.

Meanwhile, original Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell has spearheaded a new acoustic release blending Phil Lynott's bass and vocal parts with newly recorded guitars.

Jack Moore, the son of former Thin Lizzy guitarist and blues star Gary Moore, has stepped out on his own with his debut single, In My Shoes, with plans to launch a debut album this year.

The blues and nostalgia-infused single was co-written with singer Quentin Kovalsky and, as Moore explains, is “inspired by the relationships between parents and their sons, and how they guide you through life.”

“I worked on the track with Quentin while we had been paying tribute to my father around Europe with shows. We discovered that we shared musical inspirations, so doing our own original project was natural. I think it’s the start of an identity that we’re comfortable with going for.”

There's also an unmistakable homage to Thin Lizzy on the track, further cementing Moore's link to his dad's legacy.

“I think my father would have loved this song. There’s a nod to Thin Lizzy’s unmistakable dual guitars in there, too,” he asserts. “I think it’s very much up my father’s street in terms of style.”

Moore started his career playing with his father in 2008 and, over the years, performed with Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, Otis Taylor, and Joe Bonamassa, to name a few.

In addition to touring with the Gary Moore Tribute Band, Moore is also a member of indie-folk trio Smith Lyle & Moore. He also contributed to Bob Daisley's 2018 tribute album, Moore Blues For Gary (A Tribute To Gary Moore), where he played the solo on This One's For You.

Stories of disastrous, but ultimately successful, auditions abound in rock lore. Adrian Belew's difficult audition for Frank Zappa is a particularly good one, and another happens to be that of Scott Gorham's tryout for Thin Lizzy.

Now, it wasn't a disaster due to Gorham being unprepared; it was because the guitarist's bootleg Les Paul almost seemed to have a vendetta against him.

Having sold his Stratocaster to Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson, Gorham was left with, as he described in a recent interview with That One Guitar, only a “horrible black, Japanese Les Paul-ish” guitar with which to audition for Thin Lizzy.

The glory of The Boys Are Back in Town couldn't have been further away at that moment...

“[The guitar] really, on the day, started to fall apart, right in front of everybody's eyes, which was very embarrassing,” Gorham told That One Guitar.

In particular, the screws on the guitar's pickguard came out, leaving that part “dangling down.”

“Both Phil [Lynott, Thin Lizzy's bassist and frontman] and I, we were both on our knees trying to find this damn screw,” Gorham recounted, “And I said, ‘Ah, forget it,’ and I just ripped the scratchplate off.”

It may not come as a great surprise, then, that Gorham never wanted to be put in that situation again. Even once he had the means to acquire the best of the best genuine Les Pauls, Gorham would do the same thing with each subsequent example that he played.

“Afterwards, I looked at that guitar, and I went, ‘You know, that looks so much better without the scratchplate,’” Gorham said. “So, every Les Paul I had after that, if it had a scratchplate, that was the first thing that went. I took that scratch straight off because I love that shape of the Les Paul. And I just thought the scratchplate ruined it.”

In an interview with Guitarist earlier this year, Gorham went into further detail about the fateful audition.

“I had no idea who Thin Lizzy was,” Gorham recalled. “I’d never seen a picture of these guys, never heard any of their music. But I was told they’d had a hit with Whiskey In The Jar and asked if I wanted to put my name forward. ‘Hell, yeah. I got 30 more days left on my visa then I gotta go home.’

“The audition was at a dinner club. Phil stuck out that bear paw of his and shook my hand. We walk in and Phil says, ‘Hey guys, this is Scott.’ Robbo [Thin Lizzy guitarist Brian Robertson] just looked up and went, ‘Yeah, okay.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, let me warm my hands on that welcome.’

“But the reason they did that was because they’d already auditioned 25 guitar players. And here comes number 26, and guess what – he’s a fucking Yank.”

Irish rock legends Thin Lizzy have announced they will release their first new album in over 40 years early next year.

Titled The Acoustic Sessions, the record will comprise acoustic reimaginings of classic songs that pair unreleased Phil Lynott vocal tracks with brand-new guitar parts recorded by original member, Eric Bell.

Renowned for their twin guitar harmonies, Thin Lizzy found themselves exploring a heavier sound on their last studio album, 1983's Thunder and Lightning.

Not long after that record arrived, the band came to an abrupt halt following the death of bass player and founding member Phil Lynott in 1986.

Despite sporadically touring with various new-look lineups over the years, the Thin Lizzy brand has released no official music since then. As such, this new record represents the first new Thin Lizzy release for over four decades.

Eric Bell was part of the band’s original line-up alongside Lynott and drummer Brian Downey. He and organist Eric Wrixon would eventually make way for what would become the band’s most-known line-up, featuring Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson.

As the guitarist attests, the acoustic reworkings – which tackle classics such as Whiskey In The Jar, Shades of a Blue Orphanage and Dublin – hark back to their original songwriting tact.

Of recording Eire from their 1971 self-titled debut, Bell says: “I wrote the main guitar part first on acoustic and then we built it up from there. I played the 12-string acoustic guitar throughout the track and introduced the electric on top.

“This was useful in the studio in Belfast recently where we recorded fresh guitar parts to allow us to create new Thin Lizzy acoustic versions of some of our favourite songs,” he continues.

That found the guitarist and producer Richard Whittaker “recreating those original acoustic parts and adding the vocals which Philip laid down on the day and those original drum parts”.

There have been numerous versions of Thin Lizzy’s classic Whiskey In The Jar over the years, including Metallica’s hugely successful Garage Inc. cover, but this marks the first official acoustic release from the band.

Its origins as an Irish folk song can reportedly be traced back to the 1700s, but Lynott and co. breathed fresh life into it in 1972, when it appeared as a bonus track on Vagabonds of the Western World.

Whittaker, who was tasked with scouring the original recording sessions to create skeleton tracks for Bell, believes “we’ve made something really quite unique and special”.

Acoustic Sessions releases on January 24 2025 via Decca Records. A special two-disc edition includes an exclusive bonus track, Slow Blues G.M, written as a tribute to Gary Moore.

Head to Thin Lizzy for more.

Track listing:

1. Mama Nature Said
2. A Song For While I’m Away
3. Eire
4. Slow Blues
5. Dublin
6. Whiskey In The Jar
7. Here I Go Again
8. Shades Of A Blue Orphanage
9. Remembering Pt. 2
10. Slow Blues G.M (Gary Moore)

Pat Travers will be the first to tell you that he had a very good time in the 1970s. “It was an incredible decade,” he says. “We played hundreds of shows and traveled everywhere. Yeah, after the gigs, I knew how to have fun – maybe I’d smoke a little and drink a little with the other bands on the bill. But I never trashed my hotel rooms or carried on and did anything too crazy. I always knew my limit.” He laughs. “Maybe that’s why I can remember the '70s. A lot of people I came up with have no memory of what went down.”

During the second half of the ‘70s, the Canadian-born singer and guitarist was an omnipresent figure on the live show circuit. He’d cut his teeth playing the clubs of Quebec and spent a year in Ronnie Hawkins’ band, but when he decided to get serious about a record deal, he found no takers in his homeland.

“I didn’t want to go to New York or L.A., so I thought, ‘Let me try England,’” he says. In London, Travers’ rough and ready blues rock sound netted him a contract with Polydor, and his cover version of the boogie-woogie gem Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights) quickly became a fan favorite.

“I didn’t try to fit in with anything that was going on,” Travers says. “I was lucky enough to get my deal in England, but then the whole punk thing exploded, and that morphed into new wave, and then disco got huge. There was a lot of musical friction and changing tastes, and everything got too trendy in England. That’s when I decided to do my thing in the States.”

On his first three albums (1976’s Pat Travers and 1977’s Makin’ Magic and Putting It Straight), Travers performed with a trio that included British bassist Peter “Mars” Cowling and drummer Nicko McBrain (who would later go on to join Iron Maiden).

For his Stateside debut, 1979’s Heat in the Street, he expanded his lineup to feature Cowling, drummer Tommy Aldridge and guitarist Pat Thrall. He changed his billing, too; no longer were albums credited to “Pat Travers.” With Heat in the Street, it became “the Pat Travers Band.”

“Suddenly, things were firing on all cylinders,” Travers says. “It was four great players from different parts of the world, and it all came together like magic on Heat in the Street. We were a tough band. We rocked like mad, but there was some real cool stuff going on musically.”

That combustive chemistry is documented on the band’s rip-roaring ’79 release, Live! Go for what You Know, which contains the definitive rendering of Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights). Closing out the decade, the band convened to record the album Crash and Burn, which, thanks to the uproarious single Snortin’ Whiskey, resulted in Travers’ first and only Top 20 hit. Sadly, the album’s title proved prophetic, and shortly after its 1980 release, Aldridge and Thrall headed for the exits.

“It’s really unfortunate that we couldn’t keep the band going,” Travers says. “We were going faster and faster, and we were getting bigger and bigger. But before I knew it, the front wheels came off, and I went into a ditch.

“I just couldn’t control the situation. People in the band started having their own groups of friends, and once people started whispering in each other’s ears, the whole thing went downhill.

“Plus, we had management trouble, and we weren’t very smart. Everything came apart pretty quickly.” He pauses, then says, “Luckily, we’re friends now. Unfortunately, Mars passed away six years ago, but I see Pat every once in a while. I haven’t seen Tommy in a bit, but we’re friendly. We had a really good thing going for a while.”

What was the guitar scene like in London when you got there in the mid ‘70s?

“It was interesting. There was kind of a changing of the guard, but nobody knew what it was changing to. It had definitely diminished from those ’60s guys – you know, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton. But I did experience some guitar brilliance in the U.K. The first night I was there, I met Gary Moore.

“Actually, I first met the guys in Thin Lizzy. Scott Gorham said, ‘We’re going down to this pub. It’s a jam night, and Gary Moore is going to be there.’ I had never heard of him, but when I saw him play I was knocked out. He was amazing – so good and fast and so bluesy. That was incredibly cool.”

You were in England right as the first sparks of punk ignited.

“And I pretty much saw it right before my eyes. I had a housemate who worked for a record company, and one night he dragged me off to see this band called the 101ers. They did pretty crappy versions of Little Richard and rock ’n’ roll tunes. Well, wouldn’t you know it? Joe Strummer was in that band, and not long after he formed the Clash.”

Did you become a fan of punk?

“No, I didn’t think much of it. It was a fad. Guys would go out and grab instruments, and they thought they could make records. The cream always rises to the top, and eventually the Clash made some cool music. It was interesting seeing the change from the 101ers to the Clash. They got better clothes, and they got their teeth fixed.”

For the first three albums, you recorded and performed with a trio. Was that the format you actually wanted? I imagine you had to do extra work as the singer and sole guitarist.

“I did have to do a lot of work. And I should say that I should have had a second guitar player right away, because the music I was writing wasn’t meant for just one instrument. I was constantly looking for somebody else to play in the band. That said, playing as a trio for a time helped me to develop my performance style.”

I would also imagine you had to become a real showman.

“Oh yeah, but I was 21 and very cocky. If you run into people who knew me at the time, like Glenn Hughes, he’d say [affects British accent], “Oh, you were fucking cocky, boy!” I was a different character then. I was pretty showy because I grew up on Hendrix and Johnny Winter and Clapton.

“I wasn’t trying to be a guitar star, though. I loved playing keyboards and doing other things. I have an aptitude for the guitar, but I was never on my bed playing for 10 hours a day. That wasn’t me. Speaking of Gary Moore – he was like that. If you went to his hotel room, he’d be on the bed with Peter Green’s Les Paul, just practicing and practicing.”

One of your first songs to gain wide recognition was your cover of Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights). Had it been a staple of your live shows before you recorded it?

“No. As a matter of fact, it was one of the last songs we recorded for my first album, because I was short one song and I needed something. I remembered seeing this band in Hamilton, Ontario; it was this guy called King Biscuit Boy, but his real name was Richard Newell.

He played Little Walter material, and Boom Boom was a song Little Walter had done. I saw King Biscuit Boy when I was 13, and I never forgot him playing that song.

We recorded it in a more traditional way with piano, more of a Long John Baldry boogie-woogie kind of thing.

“[Laughs] Listen to me – ‘boogie-woogie’! But when we started playing it live, it evolved and got more rocking, and then it became a call-and-response thing. One night I was feeling pretty confident, and I knew that the audience would answer me back. It just worked.”

What was it like when you went back to the States and had to promote records? Nowadays, you can make appearances remotely. Back then, you probably had to visit every tiny little radio station and mom-and-pop record store.

“That’s how it worked, sure. It was hard, but as I was introducing myself to audiences in the States, the value in meeting people and having that one-on-one contact was inestimable. You were building relationships and becoming part of the family, in a way. And I was really pleased to discover that the people I met were on my side – they really wanted me to succeed.

“It was a hustle: I got up early, like six or seven in the morning, and I’d do the drive-time radio show in the morning. Then we’d hit somewhere else before soundcheck, and then I’d do some other kind of appearance before the show.

“Of course, I had a lot of energy back then. Everything was brand new, and I enjoyed it. It would wear on me now if I had to do that kind of thing, but back then it was fine. I’ve always hated hotel rooms, so I was happy to be anywhere if it meant I wasn’t sitting around looking at the walls.”

What guitars were you playing during this period?

“The guitar I took to England was a 1973 Telecaster Custom. It had one humbucker in the neck position and a Tele pickup at the bridge. It was black, and it was just like the one Keith Richards played – same black pickguard, four knobs and a maple neck. I used that guitar on the first two albums.

“I found a Gibson Melody Maker at this little mom-and-pop music shop in Sheffield, England. It just felt right, but I put a couple of humbuckers in it. I bought them at a music store in London. It was pretty basic: ‘Hey, I need some humbuckers!’ [Laughs] I didn’t do the mods myself, though. I had somebody else do the work on the guitar.”

Expanding the band really opened your music up to new possibilities. Was bringing Tommy Aldridge in your first move?

“That’s right. I had seen Tommy play with Black Oak Arkansas at the big California Jam in ’74. He did a big drum solo and was just phenomenal. Funny thing was, we didn’t play together before he joined the band. My manager made the call, and one day Tommy showed up at my hotel room.

“It was a riot; Tommy had his thick Southern accent, and my bass player Pete had this proper British accent. I was the hoser in the middle. [Laughs] But man, Tommy brought such energy to the band. The second we started playing, it was incredible. And then Pat Thrall came in.”

And as you said, you were always thinking of adding a second guitarist.

“It should have happened much sooner. Pat and I clicked right away. We were the same age, and his dad passed away when he was 11 or 12 – we had that in common. Pat’s appetite for music was infectious. He got me into reggae and Bob Marley and all sorts of stuff.

“He really wanted to know how music cooked. Plus, he was just brilliant on guitar. He played some incredible stuff, a lot of which never got recorded. I’ve got a recording somewhere with him playing an outro; it’s four minutes of insane musical freedom.”

Did it take long for you two to blend your playing styles?

“Not at all. It’s like we were of the same musical mind, but we were also different. I was more percussive and rock ’n’ roll. I came up with a sound that wasn’t necessarily standard playing; I was kind of diving around on the strings and doing this and that. Pat had a way of voicing chords that was really cool. He had a wide musical palette. He provided a lot of atmospheric and ambient sounds, things I never would have thought of. It was great.”

What kinds of guitars did Pat use to complement your sound?

“He had a Strat with no whammy bar. That’s the only one I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what happened to that guitar, but it was the coolest thing. I’d like to get one of those Strats with no whammy bar. Of course, Pat was also one of the first kids on the block to get a Floyd Rose. He just didn’t have one on that particular Strat.”

We’re talking about a time when Eddie Van Halen suddenly made guitarists rethink the way they played. Did he have much impact on you?

“Not necessarily. I realized pretty quickly that Ed Van Halen was a lot more than his tapping solo – a whole lot more. His rhythm, his chord choices, his voicings – there was such melodic value to everything he played.

“Sure, he had the whole tapping and dive-bombing thing going on, but he didn’t do that in every song. It was like an effect, but it was very effective. Unfortunately, all the other guitar players in L.A. thought it was all tapping and dive bombs, and they became cartoon versions of Eddie.”

Snortin’ Whiskey is an absolutely brilliant song. I understand you had that riff for a while before you knew what to do with it.

“I did. What happened was, we were rehearsing one day and Pat Thrall was late to arrive – like, really late. I had my four-track recorder, and we were running through ideas. The day wore on, and no Pat. Finally, after about four hours, Pat burst in with his girlfriend, and they both looked a little rough.

“I asked him, ‘Dude, what in the world have you been up to?’ And he goes, ‘You know… snortin’ whiskey and drinkin’ cocaine.’ What a line, you know? I had the riff already, but those words just matched beautifully. Before you knew it, we had a great rock ’n’ roll song.”

Gary Moore's stint with Thin Lizzy may have been fraught with personal and creative disagreements with the band's co-founder, vocalist, and bassist Phil Lynott. However, the two did collaborate on several tunes, most notably on Moore's 1978 solo album Back on the Streets, which remain forever etched in rock history.

Discussing Lynott's role in writing his UK top 10 single Parisienne Walkways, Moore told Classic Rock, “It was such a lovely, creative process. I played it to him on an acoustic guitar and he went, ‘That sounds kinda French, let me write some lyrics.’

“I’d never even thought of that possibility. You should have seen us trying to play this fucking accordion in the studio; him on one side squeezing, and me on the other trying to play the keys. When it came out and was a huge hit, I was so proud that it showed what we could do together.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Moore asserted that Lynott's songwriting and unique musical sensibilities were underrated and not as recognized as they should've been.

“To me, Thin Lizzy reached a peak with Jailbreak [their sixth studio album, released in 1976]. By the time I joined them, they were on the way down,” he acknowledged.

“I’m still proud of the Black Rose album [their ninth and the band’s first with Moore], but it’s not regarded as a classic Lizzy album. He was writing better songs in those earlier days. I used to love going to see them with Scott [Gorham] and Robbo [Brian Robertson].”

He continued, “If the songs had stayed at that standard, he’d have had no problems cracking the next level – being on a par with the likes of Springsteen and Van Morrison. Lizzy never really cracked America, but Phil was one of the first people to bring that poetic, romantic Celtic style to rock music. He deserves credit for that.”

Scott Gorham is in his element. Holding court at London’s Gibson Garage, surrounded by the tools of his half-century trade, with a wicked-uncle twinkle and an e-cigarette on the side that represents his last unkicked habit, the Thin Lizzy veteran remains the very best company in rock ’n’ roll.

You sense it’s a relief for Gorham to be back on home turf, having struggled in recent weeks with a nasty case of imposter syndrome. The official reason for our interview is the 73-year-old’s unveiling of his historic artwork: a series of wild, fantastical pencil sketches that he worked up while on tour with Lizzy, then hid under the bed for decades. But even after the successful launch of his collection at the Karma Sanctum Soho Hotel in April, the guitarist still flinches at the ‘A’ word.

“I can’t call myself an ‘artist’,” squirms Gorham. “I figure there’s all these brilliant men and women who were at art college for years – and here comes some slob like myself and I just step right into it. I feel really guilty with that.”

Music, though, he can talk about all day. The band that made his name in the mid-’70s now moves at a more leisurely pace, eschewing studio albums since the death of talismanic frontman Phil Lynott in 1986, while touring sporadically with a patchwork quilt of members. But all it takes is the click of a dictaphone to send the guitarist rifling through his memory banks for the best war stories in the business.

You joined Thin Lizzy alongside Brian Robertson in 1974, making it a twin-guitar band for the first time. Thinking back, what was the audition like?

“I had no idea who Thin Lizzy was. I’d never seen a picture of these guys, never heard any of their music. But I was told they’d had a hit with Whiskey In The Jar [1972] and asked if I wanted to put my name forward. ‘Hell, yeah. I got 30 more days left on my visa then I gotta go home.’

“The audition was at a dinner club. Phil stuck out that bear paw of his and shook my hand. We walk in and Phil says, ‘Hey guys, this is Scott.’ Robbo just looked up and went, ‘Yeah, okay.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, let me warm my hands on that welcome.’ But the reason they did that was because they’d already auditioned 25 guitar players. And here comes number 26, and guess what – he’s a fucking Yank.”

How did that first meeting with Robbo progress?

“Phil said, ‘So, Robbo, teach Scott blah-blah-blah.’ He’d flash these chords really quick, and I’d say, ‘Could you slow it down a bit?’ Then it was 1-2-3-4, and I’m looking at Robbo’s hands and my changes were just a fraction later than his. Then he’d say, ‘Now you take the lead.’ It was chaos, really.

“But Robbo was just a great player, light years better than anybody I’d ever played with at the time. He just seemed to have his shit together. And, boy, he had the ego to go along with it: ‘I always knew I was gonna be in Lizzy…’

“Phil took my number, on this tiny little piece of paper. And I thought, ‘Great, he’s not gonna lose that, is he?’ I’m thinking, ‘I probably did pretty shitty.’ But that night, Phil gave me a call and said, ‘We’ve all been sitting around listening to the tapes.’ I went, ‘Tapes? What tapes?’ They’d been recording [my audition] the whole time. I had no idea. Probably pretty good that they didn’t say anything.

“And Phil said, ‘We all agree that you’re the guy. What do you say?’ I couldn’t get the word ‘yes’ out quick enough. Hearing how talented all these guys were, you’d be crazy not to want to get in this thing called Thin Lizzy.”

How fast did you establish the guitar dynamic with Robbo?

“I can’t remember it taking a long time. There were certain songs where we’d be like, ‘Well, maybe you take the second lead.’ Or, if it was a song that Robbo didn’t like, he’d say, ‘Yeah, you take the lead on that one.’ So it worked out like that until we started to feel each other out. We started to hang out, go out for drinks, make each other laugh, all that. We became a lot looser and closer at the same time.

“Still, to this day, I love the guy. I was devastated when he got kicked out. I kept trying to get him back in the band, and I finally did talk Phil into it, and I said, ‘Brian, for fuck’s sake, just keep your goddamn mouth shut. Every time you open it, man, you get yourself in trouble.’ He’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Then he’d do it again. But the great thing about Phil was that it was always my decision who was gonna be the next guy.”

Whiskey In The Jar had been a hit, but success wasn’t a done deal at that point, was it?

“Yeah, we had nothing. Back then, you got your three-album deal, and if you hadn’t made an impression by that time, they’re warming up the car for you. We knew the pressure was really on. Phil brought in this song, which at that point was just called The Boy Is Back or something. And the lyrics were great, but it was kind of a bland song, just chord after chord.

“When we were making up the list for the Jailbreak album [1976], it was like, ‘Okay, these are the nine songs, and those over there we’re not gonna do.’ But one of the managers came down to hear what we’d done. And he said, ‘How about The Boys Are Back? Why have you discarded that one? I think you oughta include it.’

“So that’s when Brian and I went to town on it. Phil was going, ‘You know, there’s a huge gap in between these lyrics. We gotta do something musical in there. Something like doo-dah-doo-dah.’ And I was like, ‘Really? Doo-dah-doo-dah?’ And I was like, ‘Well, how about [sings classic guitar refrain].’ And Robbo put the harmony on.

“And it was just like, ‘Wow.’ All of a sudden, that song exploded. I wouldn’t say it was one of our favourite songs, but now we could see it was worth something. And we did the ascending line kind of deal at the end – that was the icing on the cake.”

Was it an easy decision to release The Boys Are Back In Town as the first single? Or were there other contenders in the running?

“With Nightlife [1974] and Fighting [1975], we picked the singles and they did shit. So this time we’re going, ‘Well, obviously, we’re crap at picking the singles out, so we’re gonna let anybody else do it.’

“We were on tour in America, and in Louisville, Kentucky, there were two disc jockeys that fell in love with The Boys Are Back In Town and played it to death, at least twice an hour. That song just spread all through America.”

In the early years you played a Les Paul Deluxe with mini-humbuckers – something of a budget model.

“Well, it was because I had to buy my own guitars. And when you’re only earning £30 a week, it gets kind of expensive, right? And I liked that guitar. I knew it didn’t have the sound Robbo had because he’s got the big humbuckers, all that sweet sustain. That Deluxe had a thinner sound. And I loved the feel of that guitar. The way it looked, the way it felt, the way it played – I just wish it had some more guts, a little more bottom-end, some more sting. As soon as I was able to, I got my ’57.”

How did that ’57 Les Paul come into the frame?

“Gary [Moore] was in the band, so it was probably ’77 or ’78. We were in Boston, and this vintage guitar dealer comes in and lays five cases down, flips all the lids. I went immediately to that one. It’s the Holy Grail, right? He says, ‘It’s 2,300 bucks.’ I’d never heard of a guitar being that expensive. So I play it, and it sounds great, feels great.

“I look at Phil and he’s going, ‘Yeah, man.’ I got on the mic to our sound guy: ‘Hey, Pete, what do you think?’ And all he said was: ‘Buy it.’ So I had no negotiating room at all now. You wanted someone to go, ‘Ah, I don’t know.’ But they were just saying, ‘Buy it!’ So I was kind of stuck on the $2,300.”

How did it work out with that guitar, then?

“I played that ’57 for a month in the States. We get back to Heathrow and the customs guy has all our cases out, with the lids flipped up. And he went straight for that Les Paul. He says, ‘What a beautiful guitar – how much did you pay for it?’ I said, ‘$2,300.’

“He goes, ‘Really? On the carnet here it says $600.’ He closes the lid – whack! ‘That’s my guitar now.’ So we had to go to court, right there at Heathrow. I didn’t even know they had a court. A guy comes in, he’s got the black robe on, and he goes, ‘Well, Mr Gorham, we find you guilty – and the fine is the price of the guitar, plus £750 for breaking the law.’”

You’re reticent about showcasing your art. In the early years of Lizzy, did you feel the same way about music?

“Oh no. I was all in. ‘Let’s make the album, do all the fucking interviews, get it out there.’ If you’re a wallflower, nothing’s gonna happen. To be any kind of success, you have to be the guy that takes three giant steps to the front of the stage.

“It sounds like an ego thing, but, to me, you have to think of yourself as an important cog in the machine, and that machine can’t exist without you. Whether that’s true or not is a whole other subject. But that’s how you have to think.”

And with music, everyone out there has an opinion…

“Right. And that’s where you’ve gotta grow thick skin. That’s why I stopped reading reviews decades ago. Because it’d be ‘great, great, great, shit’. And it’s the ‘shit’ you remember. And it destroys you. So I was like, ‘I’m not even gonna read these. Just give me a quick overview…!’”

Scott Gorham’s 1957 Gibson Les Paul Standard is one of the Thin Lizzy hero’s most prized electric guitars – but just a month after buying it, he faced a fight to fly it overseas.

Originally acquired in the late 1970s, the guitar was sold to Gorham for a princely sum of $2,300 by a vintage guitar dealer who visited the band while they were in Boston.

Gorham was besotted with the ‘Holy Grail’ guitar, and – with the enthusiastic encouragement of his colleagues – quickly snapped up the Les Paul, and began playing it while in the States.

When it came to traveling to London a few weeks later, though, Gorham ran afoul of the airport customs security, who seized his new pride and joy while it was entering the country.

“I played that ’57 for a month in the States,” Gorham recalls in the new issue of Guitarist. “We get back to Heathrow and the customs guy has all our cases out, with the lids flipped up.

“And he went straight for that Les Paul. He says, ‘What a beautiful guitar – how much did you pay for it?’ I said, ‘$2,300.’ He goes, ‘Really? On the carnet here it says $600.’ He closes the lid – whack! ‘That’s my guitar now.’”

As a result of the incorrect carnet – which, in the context of music gear, is effectively a passport for goods that lets you take equipment out of the country without paying tax or duties – Gorham’s newly acquired ‘57 Les Paul Standard was confiscated.

In order to smooth over the issue and get his Les Paul back safe and sound, Gorham had to go to court. Fortunately, London Heathrow airport had its own court, which would hear Gorham’s case.

“So we had to go to court, right there at Heathrow,” he continues. “I didn’t even know they had a court. A guy comes in, he’s got the black robe on, and he goes, ‘Well, Mr Gorham, we find you guilty – and the fine is the price of the guitar, plus £750 for breaking the law.’”

So, what on paper started out as a $2,300 guitar ultimately ended up being a $4,600 guitar with a premium down-payment that, when adjusted for inflation, made it even more expensive.

But Gorham did get the guitar back, and he’d put it to good use for the rest of Thin Lizzy’s career. As he explained in a previous interview with MusicRadar (above), it became his number-one recording instrument.

“I used this guitar right after the Jailbreak album and right to the end of the band at that point,” he said. “Whatever guitar sounds you’re hearing on those albums, it will be this guitar.”

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitarist, which features the full interview with Gorham.

Damon Johnson was born to rock. He grew up in Georgia and eventually moved to Alabama, idolizing the likes of Eddie Van Halen and even crafting his own Eddie-like Floyd Rose-equipped super Strat – before returning to his Gibson Les Paul roots.

“I guess I’m boring when it comes to gear – I just need a Les Paul,” Johnson says. “But with my band Brother Cane, I’ll step on a wah pedal every once in a while. I guess I’m officially a traditionalist. I’m very happy with that.”

After forming Brother Cane – who toured with Van Halen and Aerosmith and made waves on ‘90s rock radio – Johnson held it down with Alice Cooper, Thin Lizzy and Black Star Riders before taking on the task of replacing Gary Rossington in Lynyrd Skynyrd in 2023.

Some would jump at the chance to make the iconic Freebird solo their own – but Johnson is a purist.

“The fans want to hear those songs,” he says, “and those songs and parts are perfect. You better play the solo for Simple Man or Freebird note for note. If you play those wrong, you’ll hear about it on YouTube the next day.”

Johnson has been in the same spot with Cooper and Lizzy. But he does like to noodle now and again, and that’s where the reformed Brother Cane comes in. 

“I love to improvise; I do it every day in my hotel room or at home. I get plenty of that in with Brother Cane – putting my own style down and expressing myself in my own songs.

“But when it comes to these established classic rock bands, I’m a fan as much as the people in the audience. I want to give them what I’d want to hear if I were sitting in that seat.”

While Skynyrd has ongoing dates with ZZ Top, Johnson is looking to the future, which includes Brother Cane’s first studio record since 1998’s Wishpool. 

“I’m getting the itch to get back into the studio, but the holes in my calendar are pretty scattered,” he reports.

“I’d love to move the Brother Cane thing forward between dates with Skynyrd. The Skynyrd thing has got control over my calendar; but I’ve got space to do other stuff, so I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I feel very fortunate to have all of this activity going on.”

When did the guitar first enter your life?

“My dad had two Gibson guitars that he bought in 1960. He was a traveling farm equipment salesman, and an older colleague had recommended he get something to do to pass the time in hotel rooms. He had an acoustic and an electric, and my very first memory is of seeing those guitars around the house.”

What got you playing?

“They belonged to my dad, who was kind of my superhero, so the two things were connected. I was always intrigued, then I became obsessed – I’d see him play and jam with friends who came over. And my brother was a fantastic acoustic player.

“I was like, ‘Okay, anybody can do this. I can do this one day!’ When I was in grade school in the ‘70s, I discovered all this amazing rock music, and it all hit at the same time.”

Is it safe to assume that most of your early influences were classic rock?

“Kiss, Doobie Brothers, Bad Company, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Zeppelin, Sabbath and Pink Floyd. But in the late ‘70s, things got interesting – Aerosmith and Van Halen changed everything.”

You were born in Georgia but moved to Birmingham, Alabama, early in your career.

“I went from one garage band to another and even had some real gigs in bars. I sometimes set up in shopping malls just to get a little attention. In my early 20s I ended up playing in a house band four nights a week; I was really growing in confidence and belief in myself.

“One night played at a popular nightclub in downtown Birmingham. About two weeks later, a manager who had heard about the gig called and asked if I wanted to join Split the Dark, an established band. I wouldn't have been more excited if David Bowie had asked me to be his guitar player! That’s why I moved to Birmingham.”

How did Brother Cane come about?

“Joining Split the Dark was a huge deal. Everyone in my life said, ‘You have to do this.’ I played in several bands in Birmingham – but I wasn’t the key member; I didn’t start these bands. I went back to the same manager and he offered his support if I put my own band together, which led to Brother Cane.”

What did your rig look like around that time?

“I had a homemade guitar with a Floyd Rose. It was fun, and I had a Marshall half-stack and a bunch of pedals on the floor. I even started getting into rack-mounted effects – at least, as much as I could afford, because of the influence of players like Steve Lukather.

“But in 1989 I played in a Memphis band and the other guitar player – sort of an underground legend, Eddie Shaver, the son of Billy Joe Shaver – was just gifted. When I heard that guy plug a Stratocaster straight into a Mesa Boogie head with no pedals, nothing, and get the tone he had, it changed my life.

“I took the Floyd Rose home, got my Les Paul out, and I’ve never turned back from that. The influence of Eddie, Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction and the Black Crowes hitting right after that fueled my thinking.”

Is that what shaped Brother Cane’s guitar sound?

“Yes. I felt the parallels between their sound and my other influences. If the Black Crowes could get a record deal, why couldn’t I? We were just down the street in Birmingham. So it was Les Paul's and Marshall's from then on.”

Hair metal and super Strats were the flavor of the day.

“I’m proud that our reputation as an ‘80s hair band was nothing. We weren’t a grunge band; we were just a straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll band that somehow managed to etch out a little real estate on rock radio for the better part of the ‘90s.

“We were like a sub-genre, which is why we couldn’t just go out and tour with anybody. We were grateful to tour with Van Halen, Robert Plant and Aerosmith – but the kids at the time were all going to see Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam.

“I get it, but we weren’t part of that, and it led to the demise of Brother Cane. We couldn’t find an infrastructure to succeed, be self-contained and make a living doing our own records. It was tough.”

The first two records – Brother Cane and Seeds – held their own, with And Fools Shine On going to number one and being part of the Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers soundtrack. 

“The first record allowed us to make the second, and also the third, Wishpool. We were on rock radio constantly between the summer of ’93 and the summer of ’94; it was just incredible. Looking back, I’m still amazed that it even happened.”

What was touring with Van Halen like?

“It was the greatest experience of our lives. There’s no band I went to see more as a teenager than Van Halen. For me, nothing occupied more real estate than Van Halen. I had a bumper sticker and played every album on vinyl and cassette.

“I did my best to figure out some of Eddie’s insane alchemy. So, yeah, to get a call that we’d gotten even just a couple of opening slots with Van Halen was amazing. And that’s how it started; but Eddie, Sammy Hagar and the other guys took a shine to us and had us come for more dates when they needed an opener.”

Did you get to talk with Eddie much?

“Man, it was life-changing. It was amazing to get behind the curtain and become friends with all four of them. I have priceless memories of conversations and shenanigans with all those guys.

“On that tour in 1994, Eddie was sober, super clear and super focused. He was a proud parent; Wolfgang was maybe three or four then and he’d be running around the dressing room. There’s no way we could have had any idea that the kid would turn out to be what he is!

“Eddie and I would have conversations about family; I had three kids myself then. We connected on other things besides guitar. He was super gracious – he showed me his rig and his guitars and even shipped a brand-new Peavey Wolfgang guitar to my house after the tour. I still have it and I cherish it to this day.”

Did touring with Eddie – and later, Joe Perry and Aerosmith – impact your gear choices?

“My gear odyssey has been a lot of fun. My amp of choice changed after Brother Cane toured with Aerosmith in 1994, following the winter NAMM show. Joe Perry introduced me to Rick St. Pierre, who’d launched this new amp called Wizard. Rick took a real shine to me because he loved my blood-and-guts approach to playing guitar.

“The way I play has more in common with Angus Young and Joe Walsh than with Eddie Van Halen, who’s a technical, flashier player. I love sitting around attempting that stuff, but I tend to be more melodic. Rick recognized that and was familiar with Brother Cane, and that relationship continues today.

“The Wizard stuff was a staple of my rig through Alice Cooper, Thin Lizzy and Black Star Riders. Had it not been for my relationship with Gary Rossington and his family, and how important Gary’s amps are to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s sound, I’d be playing Wizards there too.

“But I’m currently playing Gary’s personal Peavey Penta and Magnatone amps. It’s almost like his spirit is there, and it’s such an honor for me. He ran the Peavey and the Magnatone together at the same time to give the front-of-house guy some flexibility.

“If he was playing a rhythm part he’d lean on the Magnatone, but I’d encourage readers to research Gary’s Peavey Penta – it’s badass. It sounds just like a big, nasty, woolly vintage Marshall.”

What was it like sharing space with Scott Gorham in Thin Lizzy?

“I was incredibly flattered that Scott would even ask. When it happened, Alice Cooper was the first person I called. I talked with him about how much I loved Thin Lizzy, and Alice was super supportive. I showed up the first day beyond prepared, knowing the Gary Moore and Brian Robertson versions. 

“After the first couple of rehearsals Scott said, ‘Buddy, you’re playing your ass off and we love it. But don’t feel like you have to play those songs note for note. I want you to be Damon Johnson… I want you to bring your style.

“My gear has been consistent for decades. It’s not that I’m not open to other stuff, but I’m not going to Guitar Center and checking out stuff because effects have not been an essential part of any band that I’ve ever been in. But I argue that Wizard amps are some of the great amps ever made; it’s like classic Marshall adjacent.

Is that the same mindset you bring to Lynyrd Skynyrd?

“That’s how Thin Lizzy prepared me for Skynyrd. When I got the phone call from Johnny Van Zant and Rickey Medlocke about needing someone to fill in while Gary was home recovering, they said, ‘Damon, we need you to put in the time and learn these songs note for note.’ I said, ‘Guys, I wouldn’t dream of doing it any other way.’”

Gary’s amps aside, is there room for new discoveries in your rig?

“My gear has been consistent for decades. It’s not that I’m not open to other stuff, but I’m not going to Guitar Center and checking out stuff because effects have not been an essential part of any band that I’ve ever been in. But I argue that Wizard amps are some of the great amps ever made; it’s like classic Marshall adjacent.”

You fired Brother Cane back up in 2022. Is anything new on the horizon?

“Skynyrd’s tour with ZZ Top resumes in August,  but we’ve got some one-offs planned. I’ve got some new songs I’m writing with the newest version of Brother Cane.

“Glenn Maxey and I put the band back together, and the rest of the guys are people I’ve played with in my solo band for the last 10 years. So it’s just me and my friends. I’m grateful they want to play the old songs, but we’ll put out a couple of new ones in October of 2024. A new full-length Brother Cane record is definitely in my plans.”

• Follow Johnson on Instagram.

Damon Johnson has amassed a staggering list of credits across his career, having played electric guitar with the likes of Brother Cane, Alice Cooper and Black Star Riders, while touring with bands such as Van Halen and Aerosmith.

Johnson has also held down roles in not one, but two, classic rock outfits, and in both cases was given the monumental task of stepping in to replace a string of iconic guitar players.

Specifically, in 2011, Johnson was tapped by Scott Gorham of Thin Lizzy to fill a role previously held by Gary Moore and Brian Robertson. 

A decade later, he was appointed by Lynyrd Skynyrd, initially as a temporary replacement for Gary Rossington – who was recovering from emergency heart surgery at the time – and later on a permanent basis following Rossington's death.

As Johnson explains in a new interview with Guitar World, both opportunities had their own distinct challenges, but his approach for the gigs remained largely the same: honor the original material as closely as possible.

“I was incredibly flattered that Scott would even ask,” Johnson says of his Thin Lizzy recruitment. “I showed up the first day beyond prepared, knowing the Gary Moore and Brian Robertson versions.

“After the first couple of rehearsals, Scott said, 'Buddy, you're playing your ass off, and we love it. But don't feel like you have to play those songs note-for-note. I want you to be Damon Johnson.' 

“He said, 'I want you to bring your style to the lead guitar of Thin Lizzy,' and I didn't hesitate. I said, 'Scott, I appreciate that, but respectfully if I'm a fan of Thin Lizzy and come to see the band, I don't want to hear this new guy playing his interpretation.'”

Johnson carried this strong desire to closely honor the source material into his Lynyrd Skynyrd stint. That made things slightly easier, given the fact he received far stricter stage notes from the band’s leaders.

“When I got the phone call from Johnny Van Zant and Rickey Medlocke about needing someone to fill in while Gary was home recovering, they said, 'Damon, we need you to put in the time and learn these songs note-for-note.' 

“I said, 'Guys, I wouldn't dream of doing it any other way.'”

Thin Lizzy's Scott Gorham has revealed how, during the time they recorded the band's commercial breakthrough album Jailbreak in 1976, their amps didn't have a master volume knob. Therefore, Gorham and fellow Thin Lizzy guitarist Brian Robertson didn't even realize how loud they actually played, to the detriment of their amp mics as well as their hearing. 

“They were both the Marshall 100s. They didn't have the master volume at that point. And the microphones really couldn't take the heavy volumes, vibrating through the screens and all that,” explains Gorham in an interview with Guitarist. 

“Both of our playing in the studio really stepped up when Marshall came up with that master volume. So you could actually get the sustained sound that you wanted, but at a much lower level.

“There's so many times before that master volume came in that we were playing so loudly, you could see that we were actually tiring people out. You know, they wanted to get in there with it, but they've just been relentless. And you saw that from the stage, you know, but to be able to get the sustain, you had to turn it up. You know, I think that's part of my hearing problems.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Gorham recalls how Thin Lizzy's twin-guitar setup meant he could write parts that he couldn't necessarily play or were a better fit for Robertson, without having to sacrifice his overall vision for a song. 

“I did do a lot of the writing,” he remarks. “I actually wrote specific lead parts, because I wanted Brian to play it right, you know, in my head, I could hear and see him playing in those bits. I was never one to say, 'No, I have to do this.' That was never my intention at all. My whole thing was to make sure that hopefully the band sounded as good as it possibly could.

"What’s the one thing I still can't do today? Is it that damn double picking thing? The Dick Dale kind of thing. I've never been able to get that together. I can't tell you why there's no rhyme or reason why I can't do it. But and he's [Robertson] got that down perfectly.”

In a 2021 interview with Guitar World, Scott Gorham revealed how he fell out of love with Marshall amps for a decade after a tech blew up all four of his Marshalls. 

Phil Lynott was the consummate rock bassist: always holding Thin Lizzy together, driving things along and just occasionally reminding everyone that there's more to rock bass guitar than root notes and unison riffing.

As a bassist, he wasn't a technician, but he didn't need to be; his basslines always sat perfectly between the drums and the rampant, duelling guitars. He specialised in a warm, middle-heavy bass tone that perfectly anchored his fellow guitarists’ playing. 

Looking for an example of some deft chops? His most identifiable bassline has to be Dancing In The Moonlight, with that swinging, jazz-inflected chorus and walking lines under the fadeout, proving that he wasn't all whiskey-soaked eighth note roots. 

1980's Chinatown is another good starting point as Lynott doubles up the fast descending guitar riff that spans the neck, shifting through two octaves.

Lynott used several basses through his career, but for his fans, his trusty black Fender Precision with a mirrored scratchplate was the favoured instrument. He used the scratchplate to highlight members of the crowd from his vantage point on the stage, which he bestrode like a leather-clad god. 

While his flamboyant style and talent made him a star, it was Lynott’s astonishing appetite for drugs that earned his place in rock notoriety. As the man himself told Classic Rock, “How many times do you say you’re going to give something up and then don’t? People always want to go to extremes. And if you go to the edge, you must be prepared to fall off. And lots of guys have.”

Lynott’s struggle with stimulants caught up with him and he was admitted to hospital on Christmas Day, 1985. He died of heart failure and pneumonia 10 days later, aged only 36.

Always more extravagant as a singer than a bassist, Phil Lynott’s bass playing always served the songs, but that doesn't mean he couldn't lay down some tasty lines when he needed to.

Here, we run through his five greatest basslines.

1. Dancing in the Moonlight (Bad Reputation, 1977)

The standout single from one of the band's best albums shows just what a great bassist Phil Lynott was.

Its slinky, swinging riff is instantly recognisable, memorable and hummable: all the qualities you want in a bass hook.

And we love the way he lays down some walking lines in the outro. The man had groove as well as badass attitude by the bucketful.

2. The Boys Are Back in Town (Jailbreak, 1976)

On this quintessential Lizzy song, Lynott confines himself to root notes with some added embellishments at bar ends, although there isn't much room for showing off in the choruses. 

Note how the bass drives the song through the verses, with the guitars holding back and Lynott providing an expert, almost funky bassline.

3. Waiting for an Alibi (Black Rose, 1979)

This hit tune from Black Rose saw the return of Irish firebrand Gary Moore. Showing all of the trademarks of one of the hottest rock acts of the ’70s – harmony guitars, flashy solos, pushed rhythms and driving basslines. Not to mention Phil Lynott’s tough vocal delivery and backstreet lyrics.

4. Jailbreak (Live and Dangerous, 1976)

Another much-loved Lizzy tune, Jailbreak opened the Live and Dangerous album, and with good reason – it's stuffed full of excitement.

The live version is probably the best place to start, in fact, as Lynott's bass is mixed high enough for his grasp of the role of the bass in the onstage dynamic to reveal itself perfectly.

5. Out in the Fields (Run For Cover, 1985)

This song is best known for Gary Moore's phenomenal guitar solo, but keep an ear out for the bass part – which is thought to be Lynott's line overlaid with a synth-generated sound. The video, with Lynott looking sharp, belies the fact that it was shot so near the end of his life.