Nightlife – Classic THIN LIZZY Line-Up Born 40 Years Ago Today

November 8, 2014, 9 years ago

Martin Popoff

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Nightlife – Classic THIN LIZZY Line-Up Born 40 Years Ago Today

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Thin Lizzy's fourth album Nightlife, significant in that it marked the ascent of the band's classic line-up, with guitarists Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson joining bassist/vocalist Phil Lynott and drummer Brian Downey in the formation of one of the most beloved and revered hard rock bands of all time.

The quartet's first record together, however, is a bit light and arguably the least representative of the sound they would perfect on records like Jailbreak and Johnny The Fox. In this excerpt from my trilogy of Thin Lizzy books (specifically book one, Fighting My Way Back: Thin Lizzy 69-76, available only at martinpopoff.com), we celebrate Lizzy's curiously laid-back yet well crafted record from 1974.

Lizzy would enter the studio with a good base of road-tested songs, but the foundation on which Nightlife would be built upon would be undermined by the tentative hiring and subsequent actualization of not one but two new members of the band, to boot, in the all-important guitar slot(s), namely Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham, the first a Scotsman, the latter an American. No one knew it yet, nor would they for another couple of years, but Philip and Brian Downey had planted within the band, the seed of a swell sound that would take Lizzy admirably far, both commercially and critically.

 

 

Nightlife as a record indeed lacks the bite of its lively predecessor, even if it’s obvious the band had taken a huge leap in meticulousness, detail, class. Weirdly though, there are only two heavy rockers on the record, both “It’s Only Money” and “Sha La La” forming a set, with the non-LP “Black Boys On The Corner,” as these sort of complicated rhythmic takes on the newly forming genre of heavy metal.

Says Brian Robertson of “It’s Only Money,” “I always felt the riff was really strong, but we were very, very rushed at that point, to do that album, as you can tell. The album is quite disjointed. We didn’t have a lot of time to work with it. I didn’t really understand a lot about arrangements and all the rest of it. But having said that, over the years, I think I’ve played it quite a lot with a lot of different bands. Nightlife… it’s kind of mellow because we didn’t have an awful lot of material. We were using stuff that Phil had demoed. 'It’s Only Money,' he demoed with Gary Moore. And that was a really cool version as well, but the version that we put out there was, as you say, laid-back. I don’t know, I think it was just the timing as well. In 1974 we weren’t really sort of as heavy then as we were later on. And a lot of the songs were kind of stuff that Phil had lying about, really. And like I say, we only had a few months to do the album, so there wasn’t a lot of time to start thinking about production and everything else, so I don’t think the production was particularly great either.”

 

 

No less than “Showdown,” “Dear Heart,” “Still In Love With You,” opener “She Knows” and the bluesy title track–half the album–portray the band as surprise possessors of black music chops, each down a different historical path but made comprehensive through R&B.; Further perplexing, normally a rock band starts a record with a bit of a high energy track and that is emphatically not the case with the studio muso skills of “She Knows.” As well, it is rare that a title track is one of the most laid-back song on a record, and “Night Life,” with its country picking guitar solo and shameless elaborate string arrangements… well it’s enough to cause a punter revolt. In any event, both those slots are generally receptacles of showcasing and Thin Lizzy abdicates.

Brian Robertson disagrees that Nightlife was substantially an exploration of black musics. “No, not at all. To be honest, Nightlife was a transitional period between Thin Lizzy and a new band, although we called the new band Thin Lizzy. It was a stopgap. I mean, okay, we did 'Dear Heart,' which was kind of a Barry White-type thing. Phil was a big Barry White fan; he really was. He used to play that in the car all the time, and I used to think, what the fuck are you playing? Barry White!? It made no sense to me. But I can listen to Barry White now and think, gee, the guy was a genius, to be honest. I love his music, but at the time I was into rock ‘n’ roll and I’m a youngster and thinking, what the hell is this Barry White shit, you know? I don’t think there’s anything else, sort of black-orientated on that album. There’s 'Showdown,' but that’s more rock, to me.”

Nor does he think that components of the Nightlife canon might have been intended for a Phil Lynott solo album, as has been bandied about. That theory however somewhat holds up, given the very real possibility that Thin Lizzy might not have continued at all.

“I don’t think so, not at that point. Unless he was considering just not going ahead with the band, which possibly he was at that point, because we definitely hadn’t proved ourselves as a band. Like I say, we weren’t even going to call it Thin Lizzy at that point. The only reason it was called Lizzy was because the management insisted. You know, Phil wanted to start a brand-new band. So with that in mind, I wouldn’t have said he was thinking particularly of solo album-type stuff. In any case, you listen to his solo stuff, it has nothing whatsoever to do with what we were about at the time anyway.”

 

 

“I don’t think anybody gave a shit about Phil Lynott solo albums, to be perfectly honest,” scoffs Brian, having, it seems, lived the experience of hearing about Phil as a solo artist for much of his run with the band. “Because you hear some of his ideas for it, and you just think, it’s nothing to do with us, really. It’s nowhere close to what Lizzy are. So who cares? And then get on with it. And it certainly wasn’t up my street, any of the stuff he was recording. I just didn’t like it. I thought it was sort of anal, really, and not really very strong songs, going into the reggae and all this, and back to his roots. As far as I’m concerned, his roots were in Dublin! Not bloody Jamaica, right? It was all, well, Phil was black, and it’s like, no he wasn’t, he was Irish! (laughs). That’s the only way I ever looked at Phil. He was Irish! And he was Irish through and through. And this sort of back to my roots, going to Jamaica and all that sort of nonsense, it was, as I say, nonsense, as far as I’m concerned, right? I mean, I’m Scottish (laughs). He’s Irish, and that is all I see in Phil, is a strong Irishman. I don’t see any of these roots-type things, which… and I think it reflects very much on when he tried to sort of embrace the black music scene. It was rubbish! It was crap. The reggae was crap, you know what I mean? There was no connection there, and bloody, for some reason he wouldn’t give up on that. He just always wanted to go back to that. And with his solo stuff, I don’t think the record company was too impressed with it either. Certainly the record buying public weren’t (laughs).”

Back to the record at hand… supporting Nightlife’s Irish side, Phil offers “Philomena”–in affected Irish accent no less–on which Scott and Brian craft some of their best inaugural twin leads, pronounced of characteristic due to the Irish melody of it all. “Philomena,” recorded on Phil’s 25th birthday, was of course a composition in dedication to the mother who had supported Phil and his decision to be an entertainer.

Elsewhere, “Banshee,” all 1:27 of it, is an ethnic masterpiece, maybe the album’s highlight, given its gorgeous evocation of both Phil’s Irish heritage and his romanticism o’er the cowboy life. “Frankie Carroll” (a nod to manager Ted Carroll and road dog Frank Murray) does much the same, only now with piano, strings and close, intimate vocal.

The blustery “Sha La La” and the bluesy “Still In Love With You” are the only tracks that would lead a full life within Lizzy live, “Sha La La” for its Brian Downey workout, “Still In Love With You” for a soft respite, bonus being its bed for history-steeped soloing, on the record, played by exiting guitarist Gary Moore, given that Robbo insisted Gary’s “perfect” take be kept.

 

 

“That was just Scott, wasn’t it?” reflects Brian, asked about “Sha La La” 35 years on. “When I got in the band, as far as I was concerned, we were looking for a rhythm player, not another lead player. Phil wanted, you know, both of us playing, I guess to be politically correct. ‘Scott, you take this solo,’ and he did it and I went, oh my God, this is in the wrong key, what is he doing?! But you know, as we all were, we were all sort of fresh at everything, and he thought it was great. But me being classically trained and whatever, I knew it was out of key. But then again, there’s the weird side I like. Like Jeff Beck–he plays stuff that you just never think of doing; you just wouldn’t think about it. And so there’s the odd solo, like you say. 'Sha La La,' he plays completely in major, but the whole song is in minor, but to me it worked. I just thought yeah, okay, it’s weird, I don’t know if anybody will like it, but I like it. Just one of those things.”
“'Sha La La' was probably the first harmony thing that we ever did,” continues Scott. “It was Phil’s song and he already had that basic line written out. He showed Brian and me the line and we just got into doing it. It became a little bit blunt because the original riff was so simple that you could kinda do it in your sleep, so we worked on it and that started it. I don’t think the dual lead harmony stuff really came until the second album. We just got more and more into it instead of just playing the lead here and there. It was more fun to come up with harmony lines and it filled the songs out a lot. Really, we just fell into it, not with any purpose in mind.”

 

 

“I remember that I was lacking confidence at the time,” recalls Gorham. “When I joined Lizzy, I’d just been playing guitar for about two-and-a-half years and I’d never really taken it seriously. I never regarded it as a viable moneymakin’ prospect because I never really thought I was any good. But I learned a lot from that album, about what I was doing wrong, which was good for me.”

For all the bad vibes around the making of Nightlife from a production standpoint, in fact, there’s very little to complain about in that respect. Nightlife was the band’s best-produced album to date, all frequencies captured, if perhaps a touch twee at the bass end. Nay, if there are complaints to be fired off, they should be leveled at the songs, and even then, only because so many don’t fit the Lizzy mandate established previously or the radically different one again to be established after.

“Oh yes, the album is definitely lighter,” says Brian Downey, concurring with band, producer, label guy and fan opinion that Nightlife had turned out underwhelming. “I think it’s because of the fact that when we had the auditions and got Scott and Brian, we had lots of, maybe a month of, auditions, and most of the auditions relied on laid-back songs. We weren’t really rocking out too hard, because of the fact that there were so many people coming and going. But having said that, there were a couple of instances where we did rock out quite heavily, but most of the time we were just sort of finding our feet, and finding exactly what these guys could do, to be versatile enough to be able to play in the band.”
“And I think the reason that that particular album became kind of soft rock was because of the fact that the guys were new in the band, they didn’t have that much experience, and everybody was still sort of finding their feet. With the result that it was a little bit apprehensive playing-wise. And Phil’s writing is a little laid back because of the fact that we had a lot of auditions under our belt and he was writing as well as playing in that period. So his writing wasn’t up to scratch, as far as I could see. But having said that, there are some good rock songs on there; like 'Sha La La,' is a pretty good one, and there were another couple of tunes that I can’t remember offhand. But I do remember saying to myself, it is soft, and it’s not what I expected.”

 

 

“Because Phil’s writing was just not quite there after the Decca period. We were still finding our feet. But there is some good songs on there, and the guys just weren’t too long in the band when we recorded that album, and we changed labels as well. That was the first album for Phonogram. But that whole change, that period, that was a complete change in the band. Instead of having a three-piece, the focus was so different and the whole psychological thing was playing on our consciousness. And I think that rubbed off on the whole recording experience in the studio, with Ron Nevison as well. Because Ron was the kind of guy who didn’t really listen to too many ideas. He was a fairly independent guy and he wanted to make this album… well, he wanted to put his stamp on it, which, I know Brian Robertson found a bit disconcerting because of the fact that he didn’t get much input when he suggested a few things in the studio. Ron told them to calm down fairly drastically in some of the ideas–it was a very strange experience for Brian, and I think Scott was in the same boat.”
“And so the whole experience of the Nightlife album was pretty strange, to say the least. And with us not being too conversant with each other, not long together, as I say, it just so happened that the band wasn’t on top form when we went into the studio, as far as I can see. Although there are a couple of nice numbers on there, generally we could’ve done better.”

(Classic Phil Lynott photo by Mats Andersson)



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