On the first day I showed up for that initial
meeting with the guys Phil introduced me
to the rest of the band and told me to pull
out my guitar so he could teach me a couple
of the songs. I opened up this guitar case
and out came this old, black Japanese Les
Paul copy with no name on the headstock. I
remember looking over at Brian Robertson
and Brian Downey and they both rolled their
eyes and were probably thinking, Holy crap,
who is this guy? It was such a piece of shit. I
think at one point during that first meeting
the volume knob and a screw even fell off.
After I actually got the gig with Thin Lizzy,
I remember going back for the first day of
rehearsals and Phil said to me, “If you’re
going to be in this band, we have to buy
you a decent guitar.” I was all for that so we
both went down to a place called Tottenham
Court Road in London–it’s where all the
guitar shops were at back then–but the
problem was we had a real strict budget.
Unbeknownst to me, Thin Lizzy at that point
was heavily in debt, so to even get a new
guitar at all was pretty amazing. Of course,
I went straight to the expensive guitars and
I could see Phil starting to sweat. He kept
trying to draw my attention away from the
top dollar guitars and so I finally grabbed
this Sunburst Deluxe and plugged it in. It
sounded pretty good and it had a great neck
on it with a perfect shape to my hand, but
most importantly, the price was right. And
that’s how I landed that Deluxe you see me
with in so much of the old footage. I played
that guitar for the first three albums.
What about the other Les Paul?
We were touring in the US and a vintage
guitar dealer came down to a show in Boston
and flipped open about six boxes and I made
a bee-line for this one guitar; he told me it
was a ’ 59, but it was actually a ’ 57. I picked
it up and it felt right. It sounded like a Thin
Lizzy guitar. I asked our sound guy, Pete,
what he was hearing and he just looked
at me and said, “Buy it.” I looked down at
the dealer and said, “Well, that just blew
any negotiation on my part.” After a while,
the wine red finish began to wear off and it
appeared to have a Gold Top finish originally,
so who knows what that guitar was.
Even in those days you weren’t a one guitar
guy, but more recently you’ve been playing
Strats. What was behind that switch?
Really, my Strats are Strat in body only. The guts
of my Strats are all Gibson, so soundwise they
still gel nicely. They are custom-built Charlie
Chandler Strats which are a little easier to play,
but more importantly, they are a lot lighter than
the Les Pauls. With my custom Strats, I have
been able to incorporate a Floyd Rose-type
tremolo and a Gibson T-500 humbucker in the
bridge, which suits my playing and Thin Lizzy
songs a lot better. Another addition to those
Strats is a Cornell mid-boost preamp.
Those old Les Pauls are heavy enough
to throw your back out.
Oh man [laughs]… you start wielding those
babies around for two hours and your back
is misaligned, your shoulder is destroyed and
your neck is strained. It’s funny now because
