Scott Gorham may not have been a founding member of the band Thin Lizzy he is widely regarded as a key influence on the band's sound.The California born Gorham joined Phil Lynott, Brian Robertson and Brian Downey in 1974, at the time the band were only just making a name for themselves in Ireland.Over the next few years the band enjoyed success with hits The Boys Are back In Town, Don't Believe A Word, Dancin' In The Moonlight (it's Caught Me in its Spotlight and Waiting For An Alibi.However throughout this time the band struggled to maintain a consistent line-up with several member quitting and a string of replacement members, the band often being reduced to the core trio of Lynott, Gorham and Downey.Thin Lizzy split in 1985 and the death of lead singer Phil Lynott followed a year later.But now with the release of their Live and Dangerous DVD the Thin Lizzy boys are back and as popular a ever. I caught up with Scott Gorham to take a quick stroll down memory lane and discover why they have decided to return.
Why have you decided to release Live and Dangerous?
To tell you the truth that was a record company thing, Universal Mercury, they have been wanting to put this out for quite a long time now and to be honest we have resisted a little bit, and the reason for that is no one could find the multi track to actually mix it. So I was a little nervous doing it, because I have a copy of the non mixed version at home that I have seen and wasn't really impressed with. But they said 'we are gonna get this guy in his name is Simon Freeling and he has done a lot of this kind of thing and we will put a 501 mix on it and I'm telling you, you will love it', and I was thinking oh yeah right ok. So I went down to the studio on the day they asked me and i pretty much thought ok I will be real polite, shake everybody's hand, listen to a few songs then look at my watch and go 'oh god is that the time get me a cab.'But what happened was he said 'well this is what we were given to work with' and he played it and I was like yeah that's what I remember and he says 'but this is after the mix, after the 501' and he hit the button and I was just like oh my god that sounds incredible. It actually sound like what it was supposed to sound like if I was actually sitting in the audience watching, and it was the first time I had seen something like that, and I was amazed that i was able to sit here and be able to watch and listen to that from that concert and they have enhanced the picture.
What was this gig in particular chosen?
Well it's because it's the only one we had. We didn't go out and do a lot of that kind of thing, like recording whole concerts, yeah you can go on YouTube and you can see a lot of different clips but that's basically what it is there's a clip here of one song and there's a clip here of that or a Top of the Pops thing or whatever but there wasn't really a whole show going down. It was also the first time we had been recorded in that format. It is the Live and Dangerous album, minus a few song, and it was pretty much the first time we had done something like that. It was strange because there was no template for us to work on so we didn't really, I wish we could have done it now with all the technology and seeing the way everyone else has done it and seeing their mistakes, we didn't have that choice it kind of is what it is.
And what kind of memories did you get from watching the DVD back all these years later?
Well nothing but good ones, obviously, because it sounds real good and it looks good and I was remembering little things Phil and the two Brians and kind of remembering how nervous we were backstage, which was new territory for us because we based our whole thing on being live that was like our office when we walked out we used to just take command there was never a problem, now all of a sudden there are cameras stuck in your faces and alien microphones up against your calves it was like a whole other genre and it was like how do we handle this, how do we react to this. You can kind of see it on the film itself everyone looks a little reserved because of it there was that little sort of nervousness happening, and that's the main think that I remember.
Does this DVD epitomise your home on the road were you more comfortable there as a band?
Oh absolutely that was the office being out on the road, hotels the whole thing, at that point none of us owned houses or anything because we knew that once we got off the road there was really no where to go to and there was no point in buying houses or whatever because we weren't gonna be in them, so our comfort zone was in the hotels and on the stage.
You weren't a founding member of Thin Lizzy so what was it like joining an already established band - did you know who they were?
Well, you say established, when I joined them there was only one other guy that had been there, his name was Eric Bell, and they had pretty much had, it wasn't an international hit that they had, it was a regional hit and it was kind of this acoustic traditional song that they had done, they hadn't actually written it themselves. So me being from America and them not being known in America yeah I didn't know who the hell these guys were, what their music was like, who was in the band. so objectively I could just walk in with a clean slate and just take these guys for who I'm just meeting at the moment so there was no such thing as being nervous or whatever it was just I'm gonna have a blow with these guys and see what happens.
And that is pretty much the way it went down you know, in fact I didn't even know that Phil was a black guy, I walked in, and they were rehearsing at this African dinner club in Hampstead, how they got there I have no idea, but I remember they were trying to set up all the tables for the dinner that night and there was a lot of black and African guys, and they were putting out the silver wear and all that, and there was Phil, but I thought Phil was part of the personnel, he comes bouncing up to me and he was like 'Are you Scott?' and I'm like yeah and he said 'well I'm Phil man the singer bass player' wow really you are freaking me out buddy back up.
And he and I pretty much hit it off straight after that. Apparently they had gone through like twenty five guitar players and the were all pissed off with the whole auditioning thing, I didn't know this, so I walked in and they taught me a couple of songs, I think Brian Robertson the other guitar player was the veteran he had already been there for two weeks, I guess I did pretty good because Phil called me up that night and asked me join the band.
Over the years the line-up has changed often how great a problem was that?
Probably more emotional than technical because it always seemed like we were just breaking through somewhere. like breaking through in America or breaking through in Europe, and somebody would get fired, or get injured, or flat out just couldn't take the pressure any longer and end up quitting so you constantly, because I'm on the left hand side of the stage, it seemed like I was constantly looking over to the right and seeing a new face.
Whenever something like that happens, you obviously beforehand have built up all this confidence and comfortable with everything, and now that is shattered and it feels like you are having to start again and that is where the emotional drain comes from. It became a bit of a draining experience having all these new guys through the revolving doors but I got there in the end. Each guy that came in was unique in his way of looking at things and in his guitar style so once you got over the initial hump of the FNG part it became good each time.
The band split in '85 and you went on to play in 21 Guns and Phenomena II how did your experiences differ from your experiences with Thin Lizzy?
Well quite a lot, my partner and I Leif Johansen had written a lot of songs, and we knew that it had more of an American feel to it than it did a British kind of feel so we went to New York to try and get a deal out of New York. But what kept happening is, you would see the ANR guy, and he would know who I was, my history and where I came from and he would expectantly but the cassette or whatever on and listen to it and he would say 'I like it but it doesn't sound anything like Thin Lizzy' and that became a little bit of a millstone.
I mean it was great that everybody really liked Thin Lizzy and all that but it was a little bit of an anchor, as far as trying to break out of it, these guys were expecting a certain thing and they weren't getting it, and they weren't getting it from me on purpose because i was absolutely trying to go in another direction, and they didn't particularly want that. I think it was because they thought they had an angle oh we have got this Lizzy angle now we can feed off of that. But we found a home at RCA, we found some love and it was ok.
Why did Thin Lizzy decide to return in 1996 and then again in 2004?
Well it was a strange thing, more of an emotional thing on my part, I resisted for ten eleven years I never at one point played one Thin Lizzy note I just thought you know I'm done I'm not gonna play any more Thin Lizzy songs Phil is not here what is the point. But John Sykes, who plays guitar with Thin Lizzy now, he kept calling me up and saying things like 'I've just played in Japan with my band and we played a couple of Thin Lizzy songs at the end and the audience just blew the roof off and I thought that was incredible, because it has been a while now, I thought it was done and dusted but that isn't the way. He said why don't we try to put this thing back together and we will go out do one tour of Japan and call it quits. So after perhaps the fourth of these conversations I finally caved in. And that is what we did, me, Brian Downey, John and we got a bass player in Marco, and John actually sang the stuff, I didn't even know he could sing.
So we went over to Japan and it went down a storm and we all shook hands and said that was really cool glad we did that and that was supposed to be the end but that is when the emails came in and the texts from record companies and management kind of complaining really, especially out of Europe and the UK, really kind of insinuating that we had snubbed everybody that we were the one who supported you all the years, we were the ones who bought the records, we were the guys what the hell are you doing in Japan? There were certain kind of angry ones where people had got emotional and that got me thinking that maybe they were right then ok what we will do we will do a really short European thing, three or four shows, then we will come to England do three shows here then that will be the end.
And that's what we did and it was supposed to end there but nobody would let us end it they wanted to see us keep going, and to be honest at that point I was getting into it, because we would go through all this rehearsal, a few weeks of rehearsal, you really get into the songs you do the shows and then bang it's over. I guess a few years ago we decided that if we were really gonna do this, and it really gives people some value, then we will rehearse the hell out of this and we will go an honest to god tour and give everyone their moneys worth and lay it on the line, and that's kind of what we have been doing since and it's just kind of grown.
Aren't you touring again later this year?
Yep we start November 2nd and we end up at the Hammersmith Apollo on December 13th.
What do you think is the secret to your longevity?
Well it sure ain't my good looks! I think a lot of it has to do with the songs and probably the honesty in the way in which we did it, there wasn't tons of productions layers of bank ground vocals you know, it was four guys against the world and I think people realised that and kind of dug that fact and Phil was such a cool character he lit the place up with his charisma. And with the help of Live and Dangerous it really showed everybody, live wise, what we actually did on stage, if you came out to see the band, what you were going to get we are not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes this is it buddy. So I think that's is what it was there was just a hell of a lot of honesty that went down with the whole thing and people really appreciated that.
Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous DVD is released 15 October.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw