If Eric Bell closes his eyes and lets the music carry him off, he finds himself right back at the beginning. The scene is London’s Decca Studios, in the biting-cold winter of ’71, and the veteran guitarist is a young man once more, flanked by his Thin Lizzy bandmates, singer/ bassist Phil Lynott and drummer Brian Downey. None of the three Irishmen can believe their luck at being across the water, getting paid to do what they love. And it’s about to get even better.
“If you’d stuck your head into the studio for Lizzy’s first album sessions,” Bell remembers, “you’d have seen three big joints. What happened was, Philip had a very small piece of hash, and he asked our producer – an American guy called Scott English: ‘Is it okay if I roll this?’ And Scott went over to this drawer and pulled out, like, a pillowcase of grass. He just said: ‘Help yourself.’ And that was it.”
This distant memory, like so many others he’ll share, has been triggered by Bell’s recent work on Acoustic Sessions, a 10-track release billed as the first new Lizzy studio album in 42 years. This is the band’s cult early material as you’ve never heard it before, mostly pared back to the wood and wire of Bell’s acoustic guitar, Lynott’s howled street poetry and Downey’s supple, jazzy beats.
“Phil had two sides to him,” says the 77-year-old. “One side was the rock image. ‘I want to be rich and famous.’ That was his classic line. And he did it. But he had a very different side which was more poetic and lent itself to acoustic stuff.”
Mind you, that term ‘new’ regarding the album needs qualifying. Strictly speaking, only Bell’s acoustic parts were laid down from scratch last May at Belfast’s Start Together Studio.
The late Lynott’s vocals are alternative takes from the sessions for each of Lizzy’s first three albums: the aforementioned self-titled debut, 1972’s Shades Of A Blue Orphanage and 1973’s Vagabonds Of The Western World.
That this stitching of the space-time continuum sounds so coherent and vital is down to producer/mixer Richard Whittaker, perhaps best-known in these pages for his work with The Who and being the producer of the recent Vagabonds Super Deluxe box set.
In fact, Whittaker tells us, it was the latter project that led into this one. Having put out four stripped-down tracks last year as The Acoustic Sessions EP, Decca enquired if there was anything left in the vaults that might allow a full unplugged album. Not quite, Whittaker replied, but with some additional guitar from Bell the project might fly.
“Phil would track so many alternative versions of each vocal,” Whittaker says. “He did not rest. I mean, he wrote Johnny The Fox from a hospital bed, for crying out loud! Some of those [vocal takes] worked really well, but they were missing the guitar solo or whatever. So it made absolute sense that Eric got involved, because he was the guitarist on those early records.
“He’s got a wicked sense of humour too,” Whittaker adds of his partnership with Bell. “I remember when we went to last year’s Northern Ireland Music Prize Awards. All these kids had been on stage accepting their awards. Then Eric came up for the Lifetime Achievement Award. He walks up to the microphone and he says: ‘Welcome to the Antiques Roadshow…’”
Bell’s dry wit is in evidence today (“When Decca called me up about working on the project, I just said: ‘Bye’,” he deadpans), but his respect for this material and Lizzy’s legacy is palpable. “I did wonder: ‘Can I do this?’” he admits. “The first thing I had to do was forget everything I played on the electric guitar, get rid of all those memories, because the original solo I did fifty years ago is still playing in my head. The only way I could approach this was making it up as I went along.”
The project’s north star, he adds, was a reinvention by another great electric warrior. “Acoustic Sessions actually reminds me of when Clapton did Unplugged. That was a strange thing to do, because he was obviously a superb electric player. Then he comes on stage, sitting down with an acoustic guitar. I think it woke up a lot of people, they weren’t ready for it. But I think he started a new trend by doing that.”
Some of these acoustic Lizzy tracks take a beat to identify themselves (“Eire is twice as long as the original,” says Whittaker, “with Phil’s ad-libs in the background and that huge Ry Cooder-esque slide guitar”). Most notable is the absence of Bell’s famous ‘spaghetti western’ intro to early hit Whiskey In The Jar. “What can you say?” he shrugs, a little ambivalent. “They have their reasons, I suppose. They let me keep half of my guitar solo.”
Remembering Pt. 2 is arguably more thrilling than the familiar take from 1971’s New Day EP, Bell’s fingers flying across the frets. “There’s that really fast acoustic solo, and he double-tracks it perfectly,” says Whittaker. “Technically it’s very complicated. On acoustic there’s nowhere to hide. It’s got to be perfect or you’re in trouble.”
The subject of ‘real’ musicianship naturally segues to a slightly thornier subject: the (false) rumour that AI was used on Acoustic Sessions. But Whittaker states bluntly: “There’s no AI anywhere near this project. I wouldn’t allow it. Eric wouldn’t allow it. Decca wouldn’t allow it. The whole Thin Lizzy establishment – there’s no way. I don’t think AI is very good, to be honest. It doesn’t have any soul.
“Some people are saying this release is cashing in on the band’s legacy. It’s certainly not. From the get-go it’s been a very authentic album and respectful to the original.”
Whittaker stresses that for the fans it’s an unprecedented chance to hear another side of Lizzy. “It takes it somewhere else. It emphasises a different angle of the band completely. You think of Thin Lizzy and you’re into the big duelling guitars, The Boys Are Back In Town, Jailbreak, all that stuff. But people don’t think of the earlier tracks. So I think it will enthuse a lot of people to go back and check out the first two or three albums. Then they can decide which version they prefer.”
And what’s in it for Bell? We suggest to him that one of the draws of this project might be his unfinished business with the band. Notoriously, his original Lizzy tenure ended when he lurched off stage in Belfast on New Year’s Eve 1973, “out to lunch completely”, he says, on drink and drugs. “My private life was pretty messed up. It got to the point where I just had to get out.”
He pauses to consider this full circle moment. “It’s more of a surprise than anything to record under the Lizzy name again.”
Did Acoustic Sessions give him a sense of closure?
“Yeah, in a funny way, it did.”
Acoustic Sessions is out now via BMG
