Thin Lizzy: Eric Bell to receive NI Music Prize's Legend Award (2024)

Published

1 September 2024

Eric Bell is rock royalty, the founder of Thin Lizzy and the man behind the iconic guitar intro to their first hit Whiskey in the Jar.

He is now to be honoured in his home city of Belfast with the Oh Yeah Legend Award at the Northern Ireland Music Prize night.

But he took his first musical steps when he got a toy guitar as a Christmas gift as a child.

"It was like half a toy and half a real instrument, it was plastic and had six coloured strings on it," he told BBC News NI.

It was as a teenager at Orangefield High School in east Belfast that Bell really tuned into music.

He and his friends listened to early rock pioneers like skiffle king Lonnie Donegan and bands like The Shadows.

And Bell is not the only famous musician from Orangefield, where Van Morrison was also a pupil.

"I think Van was a year ahead of me in school, so we weren't close," he recalled.

But it was not long before he saw Van Morrison's band Them playing in the clubs of Belfast, and he was impressed.

"It was unreal, fabulous," he said.

Though Bell started working as a motor mechanic after school, it was the guitar that had captured his imagination.

"I felt like a fish out of water, the nine-to-five I couldn't deal with it, I just couldn't deal with it, I just couldn't get down to it at all."

Bell started to play guitar in a popular Irish showbands, but it was a move to Dublin that led to the birth of Thin Lizzy.

He saw Phil Lynott and drummer Brian Downey in the changing room of a music club in Dublin.

"We talked for a while and we thought we'd get a sort of jam together to see how we would work with each other musically," he said.

Thin Lizzy also had a keyboard player - Eric Wrixon - for a while, but soon became a three-piece with Lynott, previously a singer, starting to play bass too.

"The very first rehearsal Phil started playing the bass, and at one point I don't think he knew what key he was in!" Bell said.

"But there was something there, a telepathy sort of thing."

Their first big hit, Whiskey in the Jar, features a guitar intro from Bell that is still instantly recognisable.

But, according to Bell, it was a bit of an accidental hit.

It was originally planned as a B-side for their first single for the record company Decca.

"We were in the studio and Phil sang a rough vocal and then we went in to listen to it," he recalled.

"We thought it was a joke basically."

Thin Lizzy got the news that the song had hit the charts when they were on tour in Germany.

But Bell's time in the band he founded came to an end after only three years, in 1973, he is candid about why he left.

"I would have been dead if I hadn't, basically, everybody knows what groups are like by now, drugs and drink," he said.

"Thin Lizzy was working very hard, you can get caught up in the alcohol and the drug situation very easily in the music business."

Though he left Thin Lizzy, Bell still ran into Phil Lynott a few times in London.

Lynott died in 1986 from heart failure aged only 36 after years of alcohol and drug addiction.

"I was surprised and I wasn't," Bell said, "because Philip was Philip. He thought he was indestructible."

Despite leaving Thin Lizzy, Bell kept playing and has maintained a career as an in-demand guitarist all of his life.

So what advice would he give to young musicians at school now, dreaming of making it their life?

"Do your own thing, believe in it, but work very hard at it as well," he said.

"There's no point dreaming about it, you've got to put the hours in, there's no doubt about that.

"Keep her lit, keep the dream alive, no matter what happens."

Eric Bell will be presented with the Legend Award at the Northern Ireland Music Prize, external on 13 November at the Ulster Hall, Belfast.

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