
From the vocals, to the guitars, bass, drums, just everything on this album is just tight, polished, and played with pure professionalism throughout here. Every song is just perfect, essential, classic hard rock listening. This whole album is just wonderfully produced from start to finish. Sadly though, the concept of this album here would prove prophetic for Phil Lynott as he would become a victim of the same lifestyle a decade later. We seemed to gel and knit really well on that record, and that makes it my favourite Lizzy song.“Overall, “Johnny the Fox” is a very underrated but superb and excellent album from Thin Lizzy, and is also the second of four “classic” releases that these legendary Irish rockers put out in the 70’s which also include 1976’s “Jailbreak”, 1977’s “Bad Reputation”, and 1979’s “Black Rose”.

We played for six or seven minutes, which is a long time for an album track, and I’m kinda glad it takes up a lot of space on the album - I’ve heard a few different edits - because Eric Bell plays some unbelievable guitar on it. We had the idea, we rehearsed it a lot before we went into the studio, but yet again it was left slightly open, so we could play whatever we wanted, and that’s what happened. And that shows on the record, but it sounds brilliant: it was so rough and ready when we started the song, it sounds like a jam we just happened to capture on the day, and that’s basically what it was. We went into the studio in London and left everything open for spontaneous jamming. Phil left it nice and open, didn’t really arrange it too much, leaving lots of room for the drums, and it sounds pretty good to me.įrom the Vagabands Of The Western World album, the third album we did for Decca. It came together pretty quickly: lots of nice strumming in there. This song came about before we went to Canada (we had to get out of England at the time because of our tax situation, so Tony Visconti came up with the idea of going to Canada to record). That’s what makes Black Rose really special for me: everybody contributed something to the song, and it came out brilliantly. He came up with the idea for the riff, and we all waded in with our own ideas. Gary Moore came into the band a couple of times to help us out when guitar players left, or disappeared, or didn’t turn up. “Down from the glen came the marching men” is the kind of standard opening line you’d get with those traditional tunes - I’d heard that sort of refrain before - but Phil put his stamp on it. Lots of Irish-influenced guitar, too, with a jiggy kind of vibe. Kind of an Irish-influenced groove on this one. There’s also a great guitar solo with lots of feedback.įrom the Jailbreak album.

And Phil’s lyrics just sound fantastic on that song. A very simple, heart baseline that the drums compliment.
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It’s a song that was thrown back and forward a few times in rehearsal, and was originally quite different. I still love listening to it.Īgain, a great groove. It was a spontaneous thing that came up in rehearsal: Phil came up with the tempo, and it’s one of those tunes that’s just great to play. It’s from the Nightlife album, the first one with Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham, and I love the groove on it.
