Scott Gorham, one of the twin lead guitarists for Irish rock band Thin Lizzy, is featured in a new interview with Antihero Magazine's Mark Dean. Gorham discusses his status in Black Star Riders, as well as the recently released Phil Lynott - Songs For While I’m Away + Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back In Town Live At The Sydney Opera House October 1978 multi-format release. An excerpt from the chat follows...
Antihero: One thing I wanted to ask you as a longstanding Lizzy fan after Lizzy broke up and Phil died, was it difficult to reactivate the name again when John Sykes came to you and said, “I want to do Thin Lizzy.”? Did you not have any conflict of emotions? How was it?
Scott Gorham: "No, that’s another great question. The first time someone’s asked me that in a long time, really. John had only done one album and was so enamoured with Thin Lizzy, that he was shocked when the whole thing broke up. He just hadn’t had enough of being in this band. So, he goes out and he starts Blue Murder or one of his other bands, so he calls me up one day and said, 'Hey, what do you think about getting Thin Lizzy back together again?' And this is totally out of the blue for me. 'What are you talking about? There’s no Phil Lynott. That’s impossible.' Back then, people were not really bothered. Once the band was over with, it was over with yeah. You didn’t back together again, so there was no… I don’t know. There was no blueprint for how do you actually do this kind of thing?
"So, I instinctively went, 'No, no. I’m out. I don’t even want to know this.' And he called again and again. It was probably about the fourth time he called me. He says, 'I’ve just come back from Japan, and I put a couple of Thin Lizzy songs in my set and the Japanese just tore the roof off the roof.' Now, I know the Japanese and they’re a lot more sedate with their reaction to anybody, but when I heard what he said, I said, 'John, are you beefing this up in any way? Are you exaggerating?' He says, 'I swear to God, they were ballistic.' And I said, 'Well, I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go talk Brian Downey and if he wants to do it, then I’m in.' Knowing, for sure, that Downey was going to go, 'Forget about it. That isn’t going to happen.'
"So, I was all full of confidence. I call up Brian and say, 'Hey, Brian. There’s this idea that we put Thin Lizzy back again.' And he went, 'All right, when do we start?' That blew my whole excuse right out of the water. As soon as I knew that Brian wanted to do it, Sykes wanted to do it, at this point, I seemed to run out of excuses. So, I said, 'Okay, what’s the plan?' 'Well, let’s go to Japan. We’ll just do seven shows and then that’s it.' Okay. Yeah. Why not? It’s the other side of the world. Okay, we’ll do seven shows. Got together in Los Angeles, there were three weeks of rehearsals, and went to Japan. Sure enough, the Japanese people went duly crazy for the whole thing. We all shook hands at the end, got in our prospective aeroplanes, and went home.
"But in reality, what happened was there were no emails at this point. The letters started coming into the Thin Lizzy fan club. People were angry, really angry saying, 'We’re the ones that supported you guys all these years, and you decide to go halfway across the world and do this and you’re not going to do this for us? What’s going on here?' Okay, and I took that board because there were enough of those letters to make me really think about it. Oh, okay, well, okay, next year we’ll do 10 shows in Europe. Four or five in England and then five in Europe somewhere and then we’ll call it quits. And the problem with that idea is the ticket sales went mad. The audiences were there, and they loved it. So, I realised that this was such a loved band that the fans were not going to let this go. Everybody knew that Phil wasn’t there, everybody was there to hear the songs. They wanted to hear the songs live.
"Sykes sounds enough like Phil to pull it off. He did. He pulled it off in a really good way. So, we kept that going for quite a number of years. And then the whole idea of Lizzy doing an album. I kept saying, 'Oh yeah, yeah, sure. We’re writing songs.' Knowing that I did not want to do a Thin Lizzy album at all, at any point. But it got to the point where it’s shit or get off the pot kind of thing. And I just told everybody, I said, 'I can’t do this. I’m sorry, guys. I can’t do a Lizzy album.' And to be honest, it was a lot of relief with the guys, with Ricky and Damon and all these guys. They were relieved that I was the one that actually said it because they knew that they were going to be going up against history and they were going to be judged against all the albums that we brought out. So that’s when we decided, well, okay. Because we already had a whole boatload of songs written."
Read the complete interview at Antihero Magazine.
With their driving hooks, twin lead guitars, lyrics saturated in working class lore, and the charismatic presence of singer/songwriter/bassist Phil Lynott, Thin Lizzy are undeniably one of the most influential bands in rock n' roll.
Mercury Studios salutes their legacy with the recent release of Phil Lynott - Songs For While I’m Away + Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back In Town Live At The Sydney Opera House October 1978. Pairing the acclaimed Phil Lynott documentary with a renowned live concert film, the set is available as a 2xDVD+CD and Blu-ray+DVD+CD (with the Phil Lynott documentary on the Blu-ray).
Songs For While I’m Away chronicles the life and music of Phil Lynott, utilizing archival footage, interview snippets from the man himself, and music from both the Thin Lizzy and Phil Lynott solo catalog. Notable conversations with Midge Ure(Ultravox / Thin Lizzy), Darren Wharton (Thin Lizzy), Scott Gorham (Thin Lizzy), Adam Clayton (U2), Huey Lewis (Huey Lewis & The News), James Hetfield(Metallica) and others, as well as Phil’s wife Caroline Taraskevics and daughters Sarah Lynott and Cathleen Lynott reveal an all-encompassing look at Phil, from his 1950s’ upbringing as a Black boy in blue collar Dublin to his rise to fame. Fully exploring his history and rippling impact on music, the film examines Lynott as a singer, songwriter, poet, father, and cultural icon.
Complementing this film is The Boys Are Back In Town Live At The Sydney Opera House October 1978. Previously released on VHS, Laserdisc, and DVD, this version presents the show in the highest quality that has been made available, with not only cleaned up video and remixed audio from multi tracks, but five additional songs from this set that have never been officially released. This performance showcases the electricity of these original rock n' roll masters – Lynott, Scott Gorham (guitar / background vocals), Gary Moore (guitar / background vocals), and Mark Nauseef – delivering searing versions of their celebrated anthems, such as “Jailbreak”, “The Boys Are Back In Town”, “Bad Reputation” and “Me And The Boys”.
Unveiling the story of Phil Lynott, then backing up the band’s power and prowess with a dynamic performance, Phil Lynott Songs For While I’m Away + Thin Lizzy The Boys Are Back In Town Live At The Sydney Opera House October 1978 echoes the importance of Thin Lizzy in the pantheon of rock music.
Order here.
