When Brian DowneyEric Bell and Phil Lynott had been pushed into recording conventional Irish tune Whiskey In The Jar in 1972, they’d already been going three years, had launched two albums and had been exhibiting little signal of scoring that elusive hit single. The music, which folklorists have traced again so far as the seventeenth century, is a tribute to a lovelorn Irish highwayman who robs a British military captain, solely to later discover his sufferer’s been cavorting along with his woman.
Whereas the ditty was one of many large Irish requirements by the point Skinny Lizzy got here to cowl it, no model had ever sounded wherever close to as rocky as their association.
The immediately memorable melodic lead traces that Eric Bell wrote into Lizzy’s Whiskey In The Jar would assist take the observe to No 6 within the UK charts and No 1 of their native Eire for 17 weeks. Bell’s riff would additionally flip up in quite a few different covers over the course of the following few many years, together with variations by U2, Belle & Sebastian, Easy Minds, Gary Moore and – most famously – Metallica.
Phil Lynott was solely messing round when he first began enjoying the music throughout an abortive band apply in the beginning of 1972. “Phil picked up my second guitar, the Telecaster, and went as much as the microphone and simply began singing all these foolish songs,” recalled Eric Bell to Whole Guitar in 2011. “I used to be simply sat down, actually bored, studying Melody Maker, and Brian was on his drum equipment studying some journal. After about 20 minutes, Phil began singing Irish songs after which he began singing Whiskey In The Jar simply as a joke however, for some unusual motive – I believe it was simply out of boredom – I put down the journal and began enjoying it with him, then Brian began enjoying the drums.
A couple of minute later, the door opened and our supervisor Ted Carroll are available in…” Carroll was dropping off a brand new transistor HH amp he’d simply picked up for Eric, however the little bit of equipment was shortly forgotten about. “Ted saved saying, ‘I used to be standing down the underside of the steps as you had been enjoying that music and I believe you might need a success document there!’” defined Eric. “And we had been taking a look at him like he had landed from Venus! We had been going, ‘What? You’ve acquired to be kidding, mate – we left Eire to get away from this type of stuff!’”
However, Carroll did persuade the band to put down the observe whereas they had been holed up in Decca’s Tollington Park studio recording Black Boys On The Nook, which had been earmarked as the following Lizzy single.
It was advised Whiskey In The Jar could be the B-side. Lynott and Eric each donned acoustics for the preliminary backing observe, however Bell simply couldn’t fathom a good electrical lead line overdub. Weeks later, inspiration for the intro got here throughout an extended automobile journey after a gig in Wales. “It was like The Twilight Zone, about half one within the morning, and me and Brian had been within the again just a little bit stoned and really drained,” remembers Bell. “Phil’s within the entrance and he’s acquired just a little cassette recorder with him and, at this explicit second in time, he had The Chieftains on and I heard these Irish kind of Uilleann pipes and I went, ‘Proper, that’s the method to make use of on the intro of Whiskey…’”
The catchy lead traces got here throughout one other automobile journey – this time whereas Bell was sitting at the back of a London cab en path to his flat after {a magazine} interview. “The driving force’s speaking to me, saying, ‘Good day mate, what a part of Eire are you from?’ and all that,” says Eric. “However, as he’s speaking to me, I out of the blue made a riff in my creativeness. I went ‘Duddle dah da dah da dah da dah’ and I assumed, ‘That’s it!’”
Fortunately, Eric managed to maintain the riff in his head for the remainder of the journey again to the flat the place he grabbed his axe and Lynott’s tape recorder. “I learnt these notes on the guitar, I put it on the cassette and I phoned up the f***ing administration and stated, ‘Proper, I’ve acquired it! Let’s do it!’” explains Eric.
“I had the intro, I had the riff after which the solo simply got here from the riff and that was that.” When he lastly got here to put down the lead overdubs at Decca, Bell not solely plugged his trusty Strat into his comparatively new HH transistor amp, he additionally double-tracked the riff utilizing a revolving Leslie cupboard to get that basic maintain. Whiskey… was chosen as Lizzy’s subsequent A-side and the band’s title was quickly scrawled within the annals of rock historical past.
On 5 July 1999, Metallica performed the Level Depot in Dublin and requested Eric if he’d be a part of them onstage to visitor on their very own take of Whiskey… However Bell doesn’t maintain the fondest of reminiscences of that gig. For a begin, he needed to play the music in F for the primary time as a consequence of Metallica tuning down and, secondly, he was paid nothing greater than a bag of Metallica merch {that a} roadie tossed to him after the present.
“We flew again to England of their non-public airplane,” explains Eric, who nonetheless lived in London on the time. “They usually stated, ‘OK, man, see you once more – good one!’ Then all of them f***ed off, acquired me a automobile again to my flat however no cash, and that was that!”
