![]() He would later become a founding member of RAW rock magazine in 1988. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica (opens in new tab), published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. We owe a lot to that single, and to the foresight of Chris O’Donnell and those DJs in Louisville, who saw in it something we as a band had missed." "As it was, The Boys Are Back In Town ensured the album sold well and therefore we could carry on. If it hadn’t sold, then I’m sure we’d have been dropped, and who knows what would have happened. Jailbreak was our third for the label, and it really was make or break. “The most important impact The Boys Are Back In Town had on us as musicians was that it allowed the band to make further albums and to continue developing our style. That’s part of the reason why we never became a big name in the States. But it inevitably prevented us from appealing to a mass audience the way in which Styx or Journey did at the time. "I think this is what true fans loved about Thin Lizzy – the fact we were unique. “Every album we did was different, and we were not the sort of band who would follow a formula, however successful it might have made us. But that was never gonna work for us,” says Gorham. “Sure, there was some pressure from the label. We certainly did not think it could be a single! To us, this was a decent album track, no more. “One night, Chris O’Donnell came into our dressing room while we were touring in the States and said: ‘Well, guys, it looks like we have a massive hit single on our hands.’ We just said to him: ‘Hmm, maybe it’s time to put this song into our set.’ Can you believe we weren’t actually playing it live at the time? Leave it to musicians to get things wrong!”įor the band, the success of The Boys Are Back In Town was never going to lead to a repeat of the formula in the search for another hit. “But it was the backing we had from radio stations up and down America that forced their hand.”ĭespite the enthusiasm of those DJs, incredibly the band still had little faith in the track, as Gorham amusingly admits. “If you listen to what the record company say now, of course they take full credit for releasing the single,” says Gorham. It was at this stage that Thin Lizzy’s US label, Mercury (in the UK they were on Vertigo), decided to put out The Boys Are Back In Town as a single. The States, it seemed, had fallen in love with this tune.” Then other radio stations picked up on it and also gave it a lot of exposure. "People then began phoning the station, requesting the song. They especially loved The Boys Are Back In Town, and gave it multiple spins every day. But two radio DJs in Louisville, Kentucky heard the Jailbreak album and began to play it on air. We had no fan base there, and had achieved no success at all. ![]() What happened next was a happy accident, as the finished The Boys Are Back In Town took on a life of its own. We certainly did not think it could be a single!” “To us, this was a decent album track, no more. There was no belief from the band, though, that what they had was the game changer it would soon become. It wasn’t easy, but nor was it too hard.” “I have to say that recording this track was a pretty quick process. ![]() He played it on the bass, and then Brian and I adapted it to the guitar. Although the guitar part in the middle of the song that helped to make it work so well came from Phil. "He also had the lyrics written, and I read through them, thinking: ‘Hey, now this is fucking cool!’ Brian Robertson and I then got the guitar harmonies finished to our satisfaction. Phil came into the studio and said he wanted to call the song The Boys Are Back Town. “We actually still didn’t have the title. “No, it wasn’t a complete track even by this time,” Gorham recalls. However, the song still wasn’t fully realised when Lizzy went into Ramport Studios in South London during late 1975 to record the Jailbreak album with producer John Alcock.
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