5/10/2023 0 Comments Thin lizzy lead singer“You don’t have to be afraid to ease down into something a little slower or more meaningful, or a little bit more melodic. “I think with Ricky and Damon being such huge fans, they caught on to that way of doing things,” Gorham observes. They’re still quite happy to butter their bread with bludgeoning proto-metal riffs – check the Sabbath-y title track and the headbanging “Who Rides the Tiger?” – but in taking another page from Thin Lizzy, the Riders can deliver soul-flavored rock (“Ticket to Rise”) and even power pop (“Letting Go of Me”) without irony. It was worth every ounce of sweat we put into it.”Īnchored by the rhythm section of bassist Robbie Crane and drummer Jimmy DeGrasso, Black Star Riders have certainly expanded their palette the more melodic and even folk-tinged sensibilities that the band hinted at on 2013’s All Hell Breaks Loose and the follow-up The Killer Instinct are now well-honed features on the new album. Nick really pushed us, and I’m really glad he did. And I think now, with this record, we have our own sound that’s set in stone. But that made a big difference because we could actually sit and live with stuff a little bit more. “I mean, three weeks for us is plenty because these guys are such great players. “I think we really had enough time to do what we wanted to do,” Warwick says. And while vestiges of Thin Lizzy remain – most notably in the dueling guitars of Gorham and Johnson, and in the Lynott-like vocal phrasings of Warwick on such cuts as the rollicking single “When the Night Comes In” and the downtempo rock ballad “Cold War Love” – this is still the work of a band that’s carving out its own turf. ![]() Recorded at Rock Falcon Studio in Nashville, Heavy Fire – out Friday – is the third studio outing by the band that eventually took the name Black Star Riders, and their second with producer Nick Raskulinecz, who’s known for the densely layered, muscular sound he has brought to albums by Alice in Chains, Deftones, Evanescence and Mastodon. I told Ricky and Damon, ‘Listen, I can’t bring myself to bring out a new Thin Lizzy album.’ And the relief on their faces was pretty comical really, because we’d all been thinking the same thing.” To be honest, you take a leap into the unknown when you say, ‘Well, we need to drop the Thin Lizzy name and create this new thing out of the ashes.’ So when it came down to crunch time, I just couldn’t take it any longer. “And all along, to think about doing that without Phil was pretty incomprehensible for me. “People kept asking me, ‘So, when are you gonna bring out a new Thin Lizzy album?'” Gorham says, his California drawl still prominent after years of living in London. Right off the bat, there was a chemistry, a camaraderie, that led them to start writing new material together. After he kick-started a new touring version of the latter group in 1994 with latter-day Lizzy guitarist John Sykes, Gorham guided the lineup through several personnel changes until he finally brought singer Ricky Warwick (frontman for the Scottish metal band the Almighty, and a fiery Northern-born Irishman himself) and guitarist Damon Johnson (formerly with Alice Cooper) into the fold. In one sense, Gorham’s current band Black Star Riders grew out of his long-running quest to cement Thin Lizzy’s legacy. ![]() Meanwhile, the twin-guitar attack of Gorham and Scottish firebrand Brian “Robbo” Robertson became a boldface signature of their melodic prowess as a unit. When Lynott was alive, he had almost single-handedly elevated Irish rock to the world stage, infusing the band’s sound with a soulful honesty and rebel swagger that coaxed drummer Brian Downey into backbeats as steeped in hard funk as they were hard rock. It had been nearly a decade since the death of Phil Lynott – Lizzy’s charismatic lead singer, bassist, warrior-poet and proud black Irishman, and at just 36, a tragic casualty of the rock & roll lifestyle. ![]() And I thought, ‘ Really?‘ We made all these records, traveled all over the world, played to millions of people, and it’s like, ‘Nope, never heard of you!’ It wasn’t so much for me, but knowing that Phil was getting lost in the shuffle – that kind of pissed me off.” “This kid looked at me like, ‘Thin what? Who’s that?’ Then somebody told him, ‘You know, they did “The Boys Are Back in Town” and “Jailbreak,”‘ and it still didn’t register. Scott Gorham can’t recall exactly when he was introduced to a certain towheaded youngster who’d never heard of Thin Lizzy, but at the time, the encounter irked him.
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