Phil and Scott would hang out, going out to clubs, doing coke, smack, whatever pulling chicks. Phil and Robbo would fight – “Phil had hands like fucking shovels!” – and Robbo would invariably come off worse. In truth, Lynott rarely ventured over to Robbo’s side of the stage, instead throwing his best shapes in tandem with Gorham, with whom he felt a much greater kinship. “Phil and I had our differences,” he said at the time, understating the case more than a little, “but we always worked well together.” But in truth he was devastated to find himself on the outside. “I’m getting my own band together!” he bragged to anyone who would listen. Robertson, meanwhile, put on a brave front. But I loved Robbo and I wasn’t at all sure about handling a whole album on my own.” “Lizzy had started as a three-piece – I guess he figured it would be no big deal. “Phil said: ‘Fuck it, we’ll just do the thing ourselves,’” Gorham said.

When Moore declined to continue replacing Robbo for the Bad Reputation sessions, Lynott was prepared to play a waiting game, and decided to record the album with just Gorham on guitar. Having known Moore since they were teenagers in Ireland, however, Lynott also knew how badly the guitarist wanted to be a star. “He was into jazz rock and very technical stuff.”

“He had very high aims as an instrumentalist,” Lynott would later tell me. Moore-o, as they knew him, had already joined the band and left once before. After that, we had no chance of breaking America unless we had another massive hit.”īelfast boy Gary Moore had stepped in to fill Robbo’s shoes for the Queen tour – but on a strictly temporary basis. “They were questioning the band’s credibility. “Promoters started wondering, ‘Thin Lizzy – they cancelled again?’” says Downey. Bad Reputation would be their belated attempt to fix that. In less than a year, they had gone from being compared favourably to Bruce Springsteen to completely dropping out of the conversation. In the end you just move on to other things.” They already had the title, Bad Reputation, which was a sardonic reflection on their damaged relationship with American concert promoters, record company executives and everyone else that had all but thrown in the towel when it came to trying to get the band off the ground in the States.Ĭliff Bernstein, then the band’s A&R man at their US label Mercury – and later co-manager of Lizzy-wannabes Def Leppard – once said: “It broke my heart that Lizzy continually fucked-up in America. The focus now, though, was on ensuring their next album would restore them to the US charts. “We really learned a lot from opening for Freddie and the boys,” says Brian Downey. There had been a decent attempt to recover lost ground in America with the self-styled Queen-Lizzy tour of the US in the early months of 1977. He was right.ĭancing in the moonlight, caught in the spotlight: Robbo and Lynott at the 1977 Reading Festival (Image credit: Alamy/Getty) Lynott was furious.Īccording to Gorham, “Phil had become obsessed by everything American and really saw the band making it big there.”īut with Johnny The Fox failing to follow Jailbreak into the US Top 30, and another tour in tatters, Lynott was convinced the band had blown their big chance. Lizzy were forced to cancel their second US tour in a row – a month of dates in December intended to make up for the previous cancellation. But after a brawl at the Speakeasy involving his tough-guy pal, singer Frankie Miller, Robbo slashed his left hand so badly he was told he’d never play again. Lizzy had repeat hits and even more success on their winter ’76 tour, culminating in the sold-out three-night stint at the Hammersmith Odeon that would be recorded and later released as the 1978 Live & Dangerous double album. The result, Johnny The Fox, had ‘follow‑up’ written all over it – emphasised by the fact its own hit single, Don’t Believe A Word, was an almost identikit Boys Are Back reshuffle. Fleeing home to London, Lynott wrote most of the songs for the band’s hastily scheduled next album from his hospital bed. People coming down with hepatitis and slashed hands… Situations that you could never predict would happen – but did happen.”Ī prestigious US arena tour opening for Rainbow had been abandoned after Lynott – already deep into his potions and powders – had picked up hep C from a dirty needle. As drummer and co-founding member Brian Downey puts it now, speaking from his rural Irish abode: “It wasn’t helped by the lifestyles the band were living, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. Then, almost before the party got started: the crash.

Thin lizzy bad reputation