Thin Lizzy - Disc of the day

Thin Lizzy
Bad Reputation

(Mercury, 1977)

The “fighting-est band in the world” take on the punks… and win!

While Thin Lizzy enjoyed an impressive run of albums from 1974 onwards – their long-players included Nightlife, Fighting, Jailbreak and Johnny The Fox – it was their eighth offering, 1977’s Bad Reputation, which saw them at their most focused and compact. Whether leader Phil Lynott felt obliged to rise to punk’s street tough challenge is a moot point. Nevertheless, Bad Reputation – produced by Tony Visconti in Canada where Lizzy enjoyed endless mischievous nights on the town with labelmates Rush – was their most aggressive album to date. Most evident was the reinforcement of the band’s patented twin guitar sound. This time around, however, Scott Gorham assumed the lion’s share of the six-string duties, with fellow guitarist Brian Robertson having damaged his hand in a brawl at London’s Speakeasy on the eve of the band’s departure for Toronto. His recklessness was such that, for a while, Lizzy contemplated continuing without him (hence the album’s cover shot of Lynott, Gorham and drummer Brian Downey). Robertson returned to the fold in time to appear on three of the nine tracks and to grace the back of the album sleeve but would be gone within a year. For all the muscularity of the delivery, however, Bad Reputation also managed to further underline Lynott’s versatility as a songwriter, most notably on the slinky, bass-led funk-shuffle of Dancing In The Moonlight (It’s Caught Me In A Spotlight). Along with Southbound and Dear Lord (both owing a debt to Van Morrison’s melodic phrasing), Moonlight provided a perfect of example of just why Lizzy were always far more than a ham-fisted hard rock band, placing Lynott on a par with fellow Van devotee Springsteen. That said, 31 years on and Bad Reputation remains a heroic, air-punching effort whose title track has fittingly been included in playable form on the Guitar Hero II computer game. A devout rocker, Lynott would have loved that.

Phil Alexander

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 11/04/2008

Further Listening

Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak (Mercury, 1976)

UFO – Lights Out (Chrysalis, 1977)

Bruce Springsteen – Darkness On The Edge Of Town (CBS, 1978)

SUGGEST YOUR OWN DISC OF THE DAY ON OUR MESSAGE BOARD HERE, OR, MORE PRIVATELY, HERE!