The last year has been one of ups and downs for Thin Lizzy. Brian Downey elaborates for Niall Stokes.
Happier times indeed. The scene is McGonagles, the event The Hot Press Christmas lig where Phil Lynott, Gary Moore and assorted members of the Greedy Bastards have been among the participants.
By this stage the sounds are being pumped out via records and the assorted metal warriors are resting their bones beneath the admiring gaze of the multifarious liggers present and - sorry that's one cliche that's going to want its other half for the moment.
A few words with Gary, not so much on the run as on the nod as the morning slowly struggles towards realisation, nevertheless leave one abiding impression. The final step for Lizzy is to 'crack' America, he says. "When they've done that, they'll have done everything." Words that ring with an ominous futility some nine months subsequently. I didn't pick up on it at the time, but the use of the third person now seems almost too obviously prophetic. Gary Moore, following a series of incidents which became undeniably unsavoury in the extent of their bitterness and vitriol, is no longer a member of the band. But equally ominous in some respects is the fact that Lizzy haven't made that 'final step' - though that it could have been conceived as such by one of the members of the band is in itself perhaps equally disquieting.
You couldn't do better than talk to Brian Downey in the circumstances. The major clash of personalities following the departure of Moore from the fold has inevitably been between the latter and Phil Lynott, the acknowledged prime mover and leader of the band - even if this is a press-created phenomenon to the extent that the first person a reporter wants a comment from is Lynott. Understandably so.
On that level, Downey is in the best position to remain objective. But on another, he's likely to have a little bit more sympathy with Gary's course of action, given the fact that he'd pulled out of Lizzy's previous Stateside stint - though Downey at least hadn't waited 'till the middle of the tour to inform all and sundry.
In fact Brian is bemused. Almost shocked - but not quite. And he steadfastly steers clear of out and out abuse.
"It didn't surprise me in the least," he opens, "which was the ironic thing about it. Nor did it surprise anyone else in the band. It seemed to surprise a lot of people outside the band, like fans and especially journalists. But it hasn't surprised me and it hasn't surprised me the way Gary has reacted since either..."
Moore is renowned as the kind of volatile personality who will not suffer situations he finds problematic gladly. Quite the contrary, in this case at least.
"I know Gary very well," Brian explains, "and anybody who had any illusions when Gary joined the band was crazy. He said himself when he joined that he wouldn't last too long. And Gary's just like that - he never lasts long in a band."
Having set about establishing that much, Downey shifts into a more sympathetic frame of mind. Moore's ultimate objectives were clearly at odds with Lizzy's current business rationaler. And it's not as if that's a totally cut and dried issue.
"If you look at it in his way, primarily he wants to be a player. So he didn't want to go through the whole thing of six months of touring and then coming off the road and rehearsing for three months and then going into the studio to record for three months that's a whole twelve months taken out of your life."
The grind that saps the creative juices of so many bands and leaves them for dead to go on and make platinum albums ad infinitum. The grind the music business comprises - and which only a few survive intact.
"He is a good player, yeah," Brian patiently elaborates, "but he doesn't seem to want to work for any length of time. Besides, he seems to have these false illusions about how good we should've been. I think that's bullshit myself. We were playing fairly well I don't see why Gary should come back and say we're not fit to walk on stage. I can't see his point, saying that the band is musically bad. What I can see, actually, is that Gary was getting frustrated in the band and said a couple of things out of turn that he shouldn't have said."
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