Thin Lizzy – Dancing in the Moonlight, but Deep in Debt (2008)

Location: Vienna / Arena / Austria
Date: Wednesday, 08.10.2008

October 2008! Thin Lizzy are heading out on a European tour with Uriah Heep, but before that they play four shows without Uriah Heep. One of them is in Vienna, which, for Slovenes, is the cheapest option of all the confirmed dates if you want to catch the band.

Today’s Thin Lizzy are by no means the Thin Lizzy who won over rockers’ hearts in the golden days of the late seventies. Phil Lynott isn’t in the lineup, so the heart and soul of the band are missing. Among the ruins of the old lineup, the name that rings loudest is Scott Gorham, the guitarist who joined Lynott and company earliest of everyone in today’s lineup, back on the album “Night Life” (1974). Guitarist and vocalist John Sykes (Badlands, Blue Murder, Tygers Of Pan Tang, Whitesnake) caught the Thin Lizzy train by the skin of his teeth, appearing on the album “Thunder And Lightning” (1983). The drums are now pounded by one of the loudest drummers on Earth, Tommy Aldridge, who these days works as a kind of floating freelancer, helping out bands that are short a drummer on tour. This fateful, chess-move-like connection between today’s Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake isn’t marked only by Tommy Aldridge, but also by Sykes, and last but not least by the departure of Marco Mendoza from Thin Lizzy last year, who has been replaced in the lineup by Francesco DiCosmo, a short-pants kid of Italian descent.

DEALER: 20.30-21.30
The Vienna Arena began warming up around half past eight in the evening with local veterans Dealer. This two-guitar quartet served up a mix of dirty hard rock with a harder riff-driven grip, which was of course dictated by the nature of a lineup with two guitars. Picture punchy, tightly packed little numbers cruising on basic rock n’ roll drive, with a whiff of the dirtiness of the Rolling Stones, even the Ramones. Add a dash of Motorhead on top, especially in the rattling rhythm of the Rickenbacker, and they aren’t strangers to strolls through bluesy waters either. So: rock n’ roll drive with a clear touch of deliberate out-of-tuneness. Dealer got plenty of time to show what they’ve got in front of the crowd. They played a whole hour. Being locals, they were welcomed by the crowd with open arms. Even for us “laymen and passers-by” they were surprisingly interesting, considering the general apathy and pale nature of Austrian bands trying their hand at rock. The sound, which wasn’t optimal, with a vocal that was hard to hear, didn’t bother us much given the band’s punky edge. Still, it didn’t go without misfires. The singer/bass player hit a note half a tone off on the bass quite a few times, and ears used to all kinds of bad stuff simply couldn’t ignore it. Otherwise, a hugely grateful set with a convincing dose of rock n’ roll, following the legacy of the bands described above. So the hour of waiting for Thin Lizzy went by easier than we expected.

THIN LIZZY: 22.15 – 23.35
The roadies got the stage ready for the legends incredibly fast. They could have gone on at exactly 9:45 PM. But that didn’t happen. They left us waiting. Half an hour. And, unbelievably, the Arena filled up considerably and people were crammed together in the front rows. Surprising. There were also die-hard rockers in the crowd who had traveled in from Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia. During Thin Lizzy’s set they naturally went wild with the band, standing out from everyone else.

The clock strikes and the boys come skipping onto the stage. The crowd erupts! I can’t wrap my head around it. People haven’t forgotten Thin Lizzy. The lights come on, the guys open the show with the elementary rock n’ roll riff, a veritable mini-definition of the point of rock music. Jailbreak!

Now let’s look at what’s happening on stage with a more “under the skin” approach. The three guys of the current lineup have walked a long musical road on stage and are definitive legends. Let’s start with John Sykes. Sykes took over the vocals in Thin Lizzy, which is about the most thankless thing that can happen to you. Losing Lynott is no smaller a loss for Thin Lizzy than, say, Motorhead being left without Lemmy. Who would replace Lemmy? Any ideas? Mission impossible. Well, it smells strongly of that at Thin Lizzy too. But Sykes barely manages a decent job of dragging his voice in the direction of the famous late buddy, trying to sound nasal and trying to be dirty. The question is whether that kind of average approach and average end result wouldn’t work for just about any passer-by you meet on the street. Sykes brought a touch of glitz to Thin Lizzy today, something he of course learned from David Coverdale during his years with Whitesnake. Sykes loves this style to bits and behaves on stage accordingly. The man is superbly well preserved, his hair in Boris Becker shades is still thick, he’s got a slim build, chains around his neck, shiny bracelets. Funnily enough, he opted for sneakers rather than boots. Sykes enjoys posing, and as such he’s almost too pretty for Thin Lizzy.

His opposite is the oldest surviving member of Thin Lizzy, Scott Gorham. He gives the impression of a refined gentleman making a living as a butler in a well-off household. Likewise with no excess fat, superbly well preserved. Gorham makes no attempt to win over the crowd by pleasing them or grabbing attention, but then the roles for that are clearly divided up in the band anyway. The legend is in total command of everything. With exceptional essence and charisma. Gorham is the true prototype of a rock icon!

Third in the hierarchy is the legendary Tommy Aldridge, who has made his living over the years as a member of Ozzy Osbourne’s band, Black Oak Arkansas, and the bands of Pat Travers and Ted Nugent, and some of you had the honor of seeing him two years ago in Ljubljana, where he visited us with Whitesnake. While Sykes and Gorham peel away on their faithful guitar gear, which has been unable to hide its age for decades, despite the spotty fading, nicks and scratches from faithful service in the name of rock, the boundlessly loud drummer Aldridge took on the road only a basic drum kit, at least half the size of the one we saw in Ljubljana with Whitesnake. Of course he didn’t forget to bring two bass drums along. He worked them effectively into the music of Thin Lizzy, weaving double bass drum lines into the basic frameworks of the songs. That Thin Lizzy don’t actually need this is another story, one we’d rather save for debates on music forums or bar sessions over a mug of beer. Aldridge delivered a typical performance during the show. A beast behind the fortress, open! All you saw was a red, curly-afro, triple “Ginger Baker” plume going nuts, a face occasionally twisted to the extreme by pleasure and effort, and two huge tentacles torturing the drum kit. It didn’t go without a solo spot that nobody would have missed in the slightest. Right after the song Sha-La-La. A typical set for Aldridge. In the meantime I went to grab a plastic cup of the cold caffeinated beverage Coca Cola and cut short the torment of an already-seen show.

The fourth member of the band is a young guy with the typically plastic, “wanting to please the majority” fake smile, which doesn’t vanish from his face for even a moment during the hour and 20 minutes the show lasted. That’s Francesco DiCosmo, who replaced Marco Mendoza a year ago. If I once again assess his hairline, as the youngest member of the lineup, he could boast by far the shiniest forehead. During the show he kept the undercarriage of Thin Lizzy’s music compact and solid. As the man lowest on the hierarchical ladder, he wisely took care not to step into the beam of light where someone could declare him a movie star, and Sykes would consequently kick him out of the band. The friendly guy just did his bare job in the band. No standout moments.

The Gorham/Sykes duo of course has the signature triplet harmonies, which built the Thin Lizzy name and etched it forever irreversibly into the alphabet of the greatest names in rock music, down cold. The solos are on equal footing, the riffing in sync. Vocally, Sykes doesn’t remind you of Lynott at all. I was really “pumped” about this when I came to the show, because people were swearing Sykes was vocally a Lynott clone. Far from it. Anyone who tries to imitate Lynott can sing like that. Perhaps even Thin Lizzy obsessive Mat Sinner (Sinner, Primal Fear), known mainly to metalheads, would be a more ideal vocalist for Thin Lizzy today. In that case Lizzy would kill two birds with one stone. Sinner would play bass while singing, Sykes would move to guitar only, and we’d get a quartet that, in that shape and in sum total, would be much closer to Lynott-era Thin Lizzy. Well, hypotheses are very interesting, but reality is usually (often sadly) very different.

To “wrap up”. Routine and nothing more. The sound was very bad. Sykes was barely audible on vocals, the guitars weren’t clear, the harmonies and solos suffered, and Aldridge drowned out everything there was to drown out. Still, around 600 people had their brains happily lighting up, especially in the front rows. The crowd greeted and rewarded the band with a cheerfully confident command of the lyrics, singing them together with Sykes and so helping lift the overall feeling of Thin Lizzy’s routine emptiness to a higher level. The next thing that really disappointed me and put me off seeing another show by this lineup is that the guys, encore included, played just an hour and twenty minutes, and that for the 35.00€ the ticket cost. Mama mia!

Furthermore, Sykes’s star-trip sparkled in the fact that he had us photographers chased out from under the stage right after the end of Waiting For An Alibi, the second song in the setlist. The organizer, Nova Music, had earlier given instructions that photographing the first three songs was allowed (no flash, of course). Who knows, maybe Sykes skipped the school lessons where they learned to count. The guys were conserving their energy very deliberately, as proven by the move of cutting the songs Rosalie and Massacre from the performance, even though they were on the repertoire. Why, we’ll never know. They obviously just couldn’t care less, but at least they could have stretched an all-too-short show by ten minutes.

Standing out at the show, of course, was the lightning start with Jailbreak, Waiting For An Alibi and Don’t Believe A Word, the nostalgic Dancing In The Moonlight went down great, and the peak of commitment in the live performance was reached by the sequence of Southbound and Sha-La-La. After the drum solo, the mood kind of dissipated in the hall, and the guys revived it with Cowboy Song, while the show came alive again with the closing Boys Are Back In Town, which fired up the crowd in the hall to give back a few more decibels, which were of course more than to Sykes’s and company’s liking.

The encore was surprising in its choice and written mainly to suit John Sykes’s virtuosity. It started with the song Cold Sweat (“Thunder And Lightning”, 1983) and closed with a portion of triplet guitar harmonies that we could dream about in our little heads for a long time afterwards, with the song Roisin Dubh (Black Rose) A Rock Legend. In total, just 16 songs and good night. Interesting in this regard is the realization that Thin Lizzy don’t put Whisky In The Jar on the list, the song with which Metallica brought back the masses’ interest in Thin Lizzy when they put it back on radio charts in the nineties, with video rotation on MTV.

So. After this experience, seeing Thin Lizzy is by no means a must. Basically, after an experience like this, all that’s left is the moral satisfaction of having seen legends on stage who are nowhere near capable of creating the magic that reigned with Phil Lynott. That’s what happens when there’s no heart or soul anymore. This show too proved once again what a huge loss Lynott’s premature departure to the Elysian Fields was for the music world. It was simply the kind of performance that, because of its lack of feeling, brought on by too much routine and the laid-back, brains-stuck-in-a-handful-of-old-“Lynott”-glory attitude of the band members, left a bitter aftertaste that not even the first dose of Red Bull could completely wash out of the mouth of an exhausted concertgoer on the drive back to the homeland.