When Ash frontman Tim Wheeler played a solo set at the Jack Daniel’s birthday bash in the Tennessee distillery in 2008, he introduced his blistering cover version of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Running Back’ thus: “A lot of people say that U2 are Ireland’s greatest rock band, but they’re not. Here’s a song by Ireland’s greatest rock band.”

Talking to Hot Press Wheeler laughs at the memory.
“I’d totally forgotten about that,” he says. “It probably sounded a bit negative about U2, and I didn’t mean it like that. I just said it because a lot of the time, in America especially, Thin Lizzy are overlooked, even though they pretty much laid the foundation for most Irish rock. Sometimes I feel they don’t get the credit they deserve. I didn’t mean to be knocking U2, though. It came out wrong! But I still think that Phil Lynott was a great symbol for Ireland. He didn’t look very Irish, but he had the Irish sense of craic about him.”
Wheeler has been a devout Thin Lizzy fan from his early youth.
“My big brother gave me a cassette of Live And Dangerous when I was about eight,” he recalls. “He was leaving the house to go off to university, and he also left me his cassette player. The cassette door was hanging off and you had to jam the tape in to make it work. He gave me two tapes – one was a Wings album and the other was Live And Dangerous. I just played it to death.
“It was cool because I was quite into metal at the time – stuff like Iron Maiden – and it fitted in with that, but also there was much stronger songwriting going on. I do love Maiden! Still, Thin Lizzy had much more intelligent lyrics, and the guitar sound was just so amazing. Especially the lead work of Brian Robertson. That was what I was trying to emulate with my own guitar solos.”
As it happens, Wheeler has since had the opportunity to play with his guitar hero.
“Yeah, I’ve played with Robbo a few times. He used to live near me in Islington, when I lived in London. One of the best days I ever had was when he came to my house and we played guitars for a few hours.
First of all, he threw a giant bag of weed on the table. Then he spent about five minutes taking off his rings and bracelets and stuff before he could start playing. He showed me exactly how to play ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, with all these amazing jazzy chords. He got up on stage and played it with us a couple of times as well. We did a pretty mean cover because he showed me exactly how to do it. He got up and did it with us at Oxegen one time too. It was one of those pinch yourself dream-come-true kind of days.
“I’ve met Philomena a few times as well. She’s amazing. She calls me one of her ‘toy-boys’. She’s got an album full of pictures of her with people like Tom Cruise and Jon Bon Jovi. And I’m in there too. I’m real proud of that. She’s such a character, with a huge personality and really sweet. I think she loves people talking about Phil.”
Although a massive Lizzy fan, Wheeler was actually celebrating in his Downpatrick home on the day Phil Lynott passed away.
“Phil actually died on my ninth birthday. I always felt very connected to him in some ways when I found that out. But I wasn’t aware of him dying when it happened. I guess I knew the music, but I was still too young to be switched on to what was going on. I probably didn’t put it together. Then when I found out he had died on my birthday, it really freaked me out.”
While Ash most certainly enjoyed their hard-partying days in the early stages of their career (who could ever forget the ‘secret track’ of drunken puking at the end of their debut album 1977?), Wheeler maintains that Lynott’s untimely death was a salutary lesson for many young musicians.
“I think people are just a lot more aware of how dangerous heroin is nowadays, certainly more than they were back then. But I think a big part of Phil’s character was his natural bravado. He was probably a bit fearless about getting into it. I heard stories about him showing off his track-marks to Johnny Thunders and stuff like that. He probably thought he was invincible. It was tragic. It’s not glamorous when you hear the reality of how he died.”
What’s your all-time favourite Thin Lizzy song?
“I think it’s probably ‘Cowboy Song’ from Live And Dangerous. And when it segues into ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, the blazing guitars at the start of it and the sheer energy of the track is just amazing. On the Jailbreak version it doesn’t have the same sound, but those two guitars and the searing melody are amazing. The lyrics are very escapist and they really spoke to me when I was young. It still has the same effect now.”
Do you still listen to your old Lizzy albums today?
“I go through phases. Like I’ll sometimes go a year without listening to them, and then I’ll binge on it. Sometimes you only want to listen to the early Eric Bell stuff. But I’ll definitely play Live And Dangerous at least once a year.”
Are there any Ash songs directly influenced by Thin Lizzy?
“Ah yeah. If you listen to the guitar solo on ‘Lose Control’, the first song on 1977, I ripped the opening lick of the solo straight from the live version of ‘Don’t Believe A Word’. I’m always stealing little things. Actually, we did a cover of ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ with Mick from Republic Of Loose one St. Patrick’s Day weekend in Dublin. I loved doing that because I’d learned the solo note for note, and it was just brilliant to play.”

For archive interviews with Tim, see hotpress.com.