Originally published in Hot Press in 2024:

Brian Downey

On the origins of Thin Lizzy:

[In 1969,] Phil had joined Skid Row. But at some stage, he went off to Manchester to get his tonsils out and when he came back, he discovered he wasn’t needed! So, we got together and formed a band called Orphanage – Phil, myself, Terry Woods for a while, Joe Staunton on guitar, Pat Quigley on bass. Phil was singing, he wasn’t playing bass.

We had a gig in the Countdown Club, off Mary Street and Eric Bell turned up with Eric Wrixon. During the interval, they both came into the dressing room. Eric Bell said, ‘Man, it sounds really great. I’d like to have a chat with you guys after the gig’. I said, ‘What about?’ He replied, ‘Well, I intend to form a band, I’m just wondering are you guys available?’

So, we played the rest of the gig. Later, Eric was back in the dressing room and told us, ‘I just dropped a tab of acid before the gig, you sounded really brilliant!’ Phil enquired, ‘You’re tripping at the minute?’ Eric goes, ‘Yeah, I’m pretty out of it, but I’m really interested in getting together with you guys. The band sound amazing’. I said, ‘I’m not surprised!’

We didn’t know what Eric was like playing guitar. He’d played with Van Morrison’s Them, but he wasn’t on any of the albums or singles. When we started to rehearse, we discovered Eric was a brilliant player. Phil wanted to play bass, but Eric had an idea of somebody else playing bass. When Phil announced it, he said, ‘I have my bass here’ and Eric said, ‘Let’s play and see what happens’.

Phil took the bass out – an old Fender Jazz that he bought off Bobby Ballagh, who was playing with The Chessmen Showband at the time. It was later stolen out of our van when we played The Marquee Club in London. We jammed some blues numbers. Phil had told me he was practising five hours a day on the bass – Pat Quigley and Brush Shiels were giving him lessons – so Phil really held his own, jamming through those numbers. I was really surprised, because we’d never played together before. Eric was also pleased, so we had a band together. Eric Wrixon played keyboards – the original Thin Lizzy was a four-piece.

Other bands’ material was a core part of their repertoire at first.

We got a set together with Hendrix and Deep Purple covers. Then Phil said he’d a few original tunes. He played them on the acoustic guitar and some of them ended up on our first album. We were getting some publicity, especially from New Spotlight magazine. We were regarded as a supergroup, because I came from Sugar Shack, Phil from Skid Row, Eric Bell from Them and Eric Wrixon from The Trixons.

Reaction to the gigs was good, and the band recorded a single, ‘The Farmer’, at Trend Studios with John D’Ardis. Lizzy manager Brian Tuite persuaded Decca to come to Dublin to listen to the band, after which they were offered an album deal and took the boat to England, sans Eric Wrixon. They were now a trio.

We recorded our first album, Thin Lizzy, in five days. It was mixed in two days, but we weren’t allowed into the mix. Back then, you weren’t – they were still in white coats in Decca Studios. Nick Tauber was the guy who mixed our albums, and he became our producer for Vagabonds, but we never met him.

Read the full interview here, and revisit Thin Lizzy below: