Still alive and dangerous

“I keep telling everyone even The Beatles didn’t write 700 songs!” laughs Scott Gorham, relaxing in his London home. Hot Press is chatting to the rock legend in advance of his visit to these shores with Guns N’ Roses. Conversation has turned to the reported 700-plus Thin Lizzy tracks recently uncovered.

“What it is, is there are 70 separate tracks that were found in a multitude of multitrack boxes,” he explains. “A lot of it is outtakes of songs and alternate versions. Then there’s material I had completely forgotten recording. I think that’s what everyone is interested in. At the moment myself and Brian and the record company are sifting through all these songs to see what will go in the box-set, due later this year.”
Since Gorham drafted in Ricky Warwick on vocals in 2009 and alumni Brian Downey and Darren Wharton returned to the fold, Thin Lizzy have been experiencing a Lazarus-style comeback that seems to be unrelenting.
Sold-out shows, a constant stream of reissues and rarities and a revolving cast of star guitarists have meant the band are rarely out of the music press. The recent addition of Damon Johnson as permanent member has brought a welcome stability to proceedings.
“Well, we always knew Vivian Campbell and Richard Fortus had day-jobs,” says Scott. “When we hooked up with Damon, he kept going on about how it would be his absolute dream to play in Thin Lizzy. Right from the first rehearsals we pretty much knew we had found our permanent member. He knows practically the entire catalogue and it’s the exact style of guitar playing that Thin Lizzy needs, especially to gel with myself. We are not a heavy metal guitar band. We deal a lot more with melodic phrases. And that’s what Damon brings. He’s a very hard but melodic player.”
Johnson left Alice Cooper to join the Lizzy camp. As Scott and Alice are good golf buddies we hope there were no hard feelings?
“Everybody’s happy, nobody has fallen out,” chuckles Gorham. “Damon went to Alice and told him and Alice said he knew that it was his dream gig and he didn’t want to stand in the way.”
Now that the line-up is complete the next logical step is new material. Happily the process is underway.
“Damon and Ricky have met up a few times in Los Angeles to marry up lyrics with guitar riffs and chord sequences and I have a few things myself,” notes Scott. “It’s gonna take a concentrated period of writing at some point this year. We need to secure the record deals too. That looks like it’s on the cards. I’ll probably fly out to California and we’ll spend two weeks out there and start pulling everything together.”
Will the material sound like the original Lizzy?
“I can honestly say hand on heart that it most likely won’t,” affirms Scott. “Phil isn’t there. It’s a different crew of people with a different way of writing and performing. There is no chance really that it could sound like an old Thin Lizzy album and to be quite honest I don’t think it would be right to copy something that has already been done. I think the way to go is to forge forward and come up with what we can come up with.
“We’re really looking forward to this. For such a long time there was a little bit of fear knowing that we were going to be judged by things that had happened in the past,” he continues. “This band is so good right now that fear has taken a back seat.”
As our time is running out we wonder what Gorham makes of David Cameron’s recent announcement that ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ is one of his favourite rock riffs?
“That’s pretty good!” he laughs. “Thank God it wasn’t Gordon Brown! I actually like David Cameron, I think he has a big personality and it’s cool to know that people in government are not just robotic, that they do sit at home and listen to music just like the rest of us!”