Metal Shock Finland’s Alison Booth recently caught up with Thin Lizzy legend Brian Downey.

A couple excerpts below:

Discussing the formation of Brian Downey’s Alive And Dangerous, Brian explained:

“The band was actually called The Low Riders at that time. I was actually invited down by Brian Grace our guitar player, he was playing that night. So I arrived down, I didn’t even intend to play, but they asked me to play when I got there and I got up and jammed for maybe about half an hour with the guys. And it was really an incredible experience because they knew the songs really well. It was really enjoyable to play onstage with the guys.

“We got chatting about things and I didn’t really intend to ask them there and then to come on board, but over a few days I realised these were the guys I’d been looking for.”

Brian reflected on his Thin Lizzy days:

“It was an incredible time in my life, maybe the best time ever. When we started off, it was kind of hard, it took us a while to get a foothold in the music industry. We went to England and based ourselves in West Hampstead and luckily enough, Decca Records weren’t too far away. It was great to get signed up by Decca in the early seventies, it was a big label then.

It was a struggle for a few years and then suddenly we had a hit record on our hands with Whisky In The Jar. Decca were given the songs – one was Whisky In The Jar and the other was Black Boys On The Corner, which Phil had written as the A side. But when it went to Dick Rowe in Decca Records, he had a listen and decided to flip them around. We had a few issues about it and there was talk in the band, ‘why’s he doing this, he’s going to ruin our career!’ but that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, he made the right decision and the song went into the charts. We got the Top of the Pops slot and that really put the band on the map and we never looked back since.”