Venue: Arena / Vienna / Austria
Concert date: 07.10.2008
Attendance: 600
Ticket price: 35,00€
October 2008! Thin Lizzy are heading out on a European tour with Uriah Heep, but before that they play four shows without Uriah Heep. Sadly, one of them is the Vienna date, which for Slovenes is the cheapest and most practical way to catch the band out of all the confirmed locations.
Today’s Thin Lizzy are by no means the Thin Lizzy who won rockers’ hearts in the golden days of the second half of the seventies. There’s no Phil Lynott 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 the current lineup, on the album “Night Life” (1974). Guitarist and vocalist John Sykes (Badlands, Blue Murder, Tygers Of Pan Tang, Whitesnake) just barely caught the train to Thin Lizzy, putting his name on the album “Thunder And Lightning” (1983). The drums in Lizzy are now pounded by one of the loudest drummers on Earth. That’s Tommy Aldridge, who these days works as a kind of floating license, helping out bands that are short a drummer on tour. The fateful connection between the band’s present-day musical chairs and Whitesnake isn’t marked only by Tommy Aldridge, but also by Sykes, and finally by the departure of Marco Mendoza from Thin Lizzy last year, who has now been replaced in the lineup by Francesco DiCosmo, a short-trousered kid of Italian descent.
DEALER: 20.30-21.30
Around half past eight in the evening, Vienna’s Arena was warmed up by local veterans Dealer. The two-guitar quartet served up a mix of dirty hard rock with a harder riff-driven grip, which was naturally dictated by the character of a lineup with two guitars. Picture punchy, tightly packed tunes cruising on a basic rock n’ roll drive and tinged with the dirtiness of the Rolling Stones, even the Ramones. Add a pinch of Motorhead, especially in the rhythmic rattle of the Rickenbacker, and they’re no strangers to strolls through blues waters either. So: rock n’ roll drive with a clear touch of deliberate sloppiness. Dealer got plenty of time to show what they’ve got in front of the crowd. They played a full hour. Being locals, they were welcomed by the crowd with open arms. Even for us “laymen and passers-by” they were surprisingly interesting, given the general apathy and pale nature of Austrian bands trying their hand at rock. The sound, which wasn’t optimal, with the vocals hard to hear, didn’t bother much, considering the band’s punky edge. Still, it didn’t go without a few misfires. The singer/bass player was a half-tone off on the bass quite a few times, and ears used to all kinds of trouble just couldn’t overlook it. Otherwise, a very welcome set with a convincing dose of rock n’ roll that follows the legacy of the bands described above. So the hour of waiting for Thin Lizzy passed more easily than we’d expected.
THIN LIZZY: 22.15 – 23.35
The roadies set up the stage for the legends incredibly fast. They could have gone on at exactly 21:45. But that didn’t happen. They left us waiting. Half an hour. Unbelievable. The Arena filled up considerably and people were packed tight in the front rows. Surprising. But in the crowd you could also hear true-believer rockers who had traveled in from Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia. Naturally, they went outstandingly wild with the band during Thin Lizzy’s set.
The clock turns and the guys come bouncing onto the stage. The crowd erupts! I can’t get my head around it. People haven’t forgotten Thin Lizzy. The lights come on, and the men open the show with the elemental rock n’ roll riff, a veritable mini-definition of what rock music is all about. Jailbreak!
Let’s take a closer, more “under the skin” look at what’s happening on stage. The three guys of the current lineup have walked a long musical road on stage and belong among the definitive legends. Let’s start with John Sykes. In Thin Lizzy, Sykes took over the vocals, which is about the most thankless thing that can happen to you. Losing Lynott is no smaller a blow for Thin Lizzy than it would be for Motorhead if the rest of them were left without Lemmy. Who would replace Lemmy? Any ideas? Mission impossible. Well, with Thin Lizzy it smells strongly of that too. But Sykes barely manages a decent job of dragging his voice in the direction of the famous late buddy, trying to snarl through his nose and trying to be dirty. The question is whether this kind of average approach and average end result wouldn’t work for just about any passer-by you meet on the street. Sykes has brought a touch of glitz into Thin Lizzy, which he naturally learned from David Coverdale during his years of service in Whitesnake. Sykes is deeply into this style and behaves accordingly on stage. The man is superbly well preserved, his Boris Becker-colored hair is still thick, he’s got a lean frame, chains around his neck, shiny bracelets. Interesting that he chose to wear low-cut sneakers instead of boots. Sykes revels in 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 who makes a living as the butler of a well-off household. Likewise without any excess fat, superbly preserved. Gorham doesn’t try to win over the crowd by pleasing them or grabbing attention, and anyway the roles for that are clearly assigned in the band. The legend is sovereign in everything. With extraordinary essence and charisma. Gorham is the true prototype of a rock icon!
Third on the hierarchy ladder is the legendary Tommy Aldridge, who has made a living in his career 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 at their faithful guitar gear, which has been unable to hide its age for decades despite the faded spots, scratches and scrapes of 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 his two bass drums. 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, which we’ll save for debates on music forums or bar sessions over a mug of beer. Aldridge delivered a typical performance during the show. An animal behind the fortress, open! All you saw was a red, frizzy, tripled “Ginger Baker” plume going wild, an occasionally contorted face twisted by pleasure and effort, and two enormous tentacles tormenting 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. The typical set for Aldridge (read the Whitesnake report from Križanke). In the meantime I went to grab a plastic cup of cold caffeinated Coca Cola and cut short the misery of a performance I’d already seen.
The fourth member of the band is a young guy with a typically plastic, “wanting to please everyone” artificial smile, which in the hour and 20 minutes the show lasted didn’t vanish from his face for a second. That’s Francesco DiCosmo, who replaced Marco Mendoza a year ago. If I assess his hairline once more, 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 ranked lowest on the hierarchy ladder, he wisely took care not to step into the beam of light where someone might proclaim him a movie star, and Sykes would consequently kick him out of the band. The friendly guy fulfilled only his bare duty in the band. Nothing outstanding.
The Gorham/Sykes duo of course masters the signature twin-guitar harmonies with their eyes closed, the ones that built the Thin Lizzy name and inscribed it irrevocably forever in the alphabet of rock music’s greatest names. The solos are equal, the riffing in sync. Sykes doesn’t remind you of Lynott vocally in the slightest. I was really “pumped” about this when I came to the show, because people kept insisting Sykes was a vocal carbon copy of Lynott. Far from it. Anyone who tries to imitate Lynott can sing like that. Maybe even Thin Lizzy obsessive Mat Sinner (Sinner, Primal Fear), known mostly to metalheads, would be a more ideal vocalist for Thin Lizzy today. That way Lizzy would kill two birds with one stone. Sinner would play bass while singing, Sykes would switch to guitar only, and we’d get a quartet that in this shape and in the overall sum 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’ vocals were barely audible, the guitars weren’t clear, the harmonies and solos suffered, and Aldridge drowned out everything that could possibly be drowned out. Even so, some 600 people had a merry time with their brains flashing, especially in the front rows. The crowd welcomed and rewarded the band by knowing the lyrics cold, singing along together with Sykes and so helping raise the overall feeling of Thin Lizzy’s routine emptiness on stage to a higher level. The next thing that disappointed me badly and put me off going to another show by this lineup is that the men, encore included, played just an hour and twenty minutes, and for a ticket price of 35.00€. Mama mia!
Furthermore, Sykes’ star-power sparkled in the fact that he chased us photographers away from the pit right after the end of Waiting For An Alibi, the second song on the setlist. The promoter Nova Music had previously given instructions that we could shoot the first three songs (no flash, of course). Who knows, maybe Sykes skipped the school lessons where they taught counting. The men were conserving their energy very consciously, as proven by the move of cutting the songs Rosalie and Massacre from the performance, though they were on the planned repertoire. Why, we’ll never know. Obviously they just couldn’t care less, but they could at least have stretched a more-than-short show by ten minutes.
The show was obviously highlighted by the lightning-fast start with Jailbreak, Waiting For An Alibi and Don’t Believe A Word, the nostalgic Dancing In The Moonlight sounded great, and the peak of the show’s intensity was reached by the sequence of Southbound and Sha-La-La. After the drum solo, the atmosphere somehow got lost in the hall, and the men brought it back with Cowboy Song, while the show came to life again in the closing Boys Are Back In Town, which fired up everyone in the hall to give back a few more decibels, which were of course more than welcome to Sykes and company.
The encore was surprising in its choice and written mostly to suit John Sykes’ virtuosity. It started with the song Cold Sweat (“Thunder And Lightning”, 1983) and closed with a portion of twin-guitar harmonies that we could dream about in our little heads long afterward, with the song Roisin Dubh (Black Rose) A Rock Legend. In total just 16 songs, and goodnight. Interesting to note that Thin Lizzy left Whisky In The Jar off the list, the song with which Metallica revived the masses’ interest in Thin Lizzy when they brought it back onto radio charts and MTV video rotation in the nineties.
So. Seeing Thin Lizzy is not a must after this experience. In fact, after an experience like this, all that’s left is usually 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 how it is when there’s no more heart and soul. This show, too, proved once again what a huge loss Lynott’s premature departure to the Elysian Fields is for the music world. It was simply one of those performances that, thanks to a lack of feeling brought on by too much routine and the members’ lazy brains settling for a handful of old “Lynott” glory, left a bitter aftertaste that not even the first dose of Red Bull could fully wash out of the mouth of this exhausted concertgoer on the drive back to the homeland.
Setlist
1. Jailbreak
2. Waiting For An Alibi
3. Don’t Believe A Word
4. Are You Ready
5. Bad Reputation
6. Dancing In The Moonlight
7. Still In Love With You
8. Southbound
9. Sha-La-La
10. Drum Solo
11. Emerald
12. Suicide
13. Cowboy Song
14. Boys Are Back In Town
—encore—
15. Cold Sweat
16. Black Rose
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