ERIC Bell’s musical career stretches back 60 years and includes stints playing with legends like Phil Lynott, Van Morrison and Bo Diddley.
Having celebrated his 77th birthday earlier this week, the east Belfast-born, Carrowdore-based Thin Lizzy founder has just been named as this year’s Oh Yeah Legend and still delights in taking to the stage with The Eric Bell Trio.
But what’s the secret of this impressive longevity?
“Drugs,” quips the guitar ace, who formed Thin Lizzy in Dublin in 1969 with bassist/singer Phil Lynott and drummer Brian Downey.
“Naw, I’m still playing away, because I love it. It’s great, if people are into what you’re doing, there’s no vibe like it.”
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There have been ups and downs over the years in terms of that public interest for Bell, who hails from Jocelyn Street off the Woodstock Road. Catching the music bug after hearing skiffle king Lonnie Donegan’s Rock Island Line on the radio, he got his start in bands playing with friends at Orangefield High School as a Shadows-loving teen, before serving his ‘professional musician’ apprenticeship in a succession of showbands and even surviving a brief stint in Them Again alongside his fellow east Belfastian Van Morrison.
“That was the greatest thing that could happen to you if you were a young guitar player who wanted to experiment a bit,” recalls Bell.
“The first gig we did was the opening night of the Square One club in Royal Avenue. There was a queue the whole way down the street and I couldn’t actually get in. Luckily, I had my guitar case with me and they eventually realised I was in the band.
“This was my first taste of the big time - the press were there and the place was f***ing stuffed. We go on, and I’m ready to start playing Baby Please Don’t Go. Van looks over at me and he goes, ‘start a Blues in E’.
“I said ‘what about the set list?’
“‘F*** the list’, he says.
“And off we went. I don’t think he did one song that night. It was all experimental.”
The trio of albums Bell went on to make with his own group, Thin Lizzy - Thin Lizzy (1971), Shades of a Blue Orphanage (1972) and Vagabonds of The Western World (1973) - have certainly stood the test of time, as has the band’s Irish chart-topping single Whiskey In The Jar, their first UK Top 10 hit.
This rocking re-work of a trad ditty began as a mess-around by Phil Lynott during a rehearsal - until band manager Ted Carroll overheard and insisted the group record a version as their next single.
“That was the hardest piece of music I’ve ever worked on in my life,” admits Bell.
“For weeks, I couldn’t think of a thing, until we were driving back from a gig in Wales one night and Phil was playing his mum’s Chieftains tape. When I heard that, I suddenly thought: ‘Irish pipes - that’s what I am going to think about when I play the guitar [on Whiskey]’.
“After about four days, I had the intro worked out, and then the rest took about another two weeks. Everybody was on my case, but eventually I said, ‘I’ve got it. I’ve got every note. Can you book me in to the studio?’”
Amazingly, witnessing the debut of these soon-to-become iconic rock guitar parts didn’t seem to move the rest of the band.
“Nobody made that much of a fuss about it,” recalls Bell, who explains that the public’s reaction was equally muted.
“It didn’t do a thing,” chuckles the Belfast man.
“Phil said, ‘I f***kin’ told you we shouldn’t have recorded it’. But about two weeks later we were at a hotel in the middle of a real awful tour of Germany when the hotel manager walked in with a telegram.
“‘News from London, boys: Whiskey in The Jar is at Number 14 in the English chart. Come home immediately, cancel all gigs’. We got back to London, and it just started slowly climbing up the chart.”
Impressively, Whiskey and those early Lizzy recordings and are still finding their way to new fans over five decades later via re-issues, box sets and of course the power of YouTube and Spotify.
“Young people are picking up on the first three albums,” Bell tells me.
“And it’s amazing, because back then we could not give them away. The first album came out and people just didn’t buy it - and the second one got even worse reviews.
“So, when the third album was coming up, I thought, right - f*** it: I wanted it to be a statement, you know - ‘This is what we really do’.
“The guitars are in tune, it’s not distorted anymore. It’s a Stratocaster sound, which what I wanted when everybody else was into the Les Paul. I just persevered. A lot of people are well into the third album.”
Vagabonds of the Western World includes The Rocker, an early Lizzy classic featuring a blistering guitar solo which would remain a fixture of the Thin Lizzy set long after Bell quit the band in the wake of a disastrous show in Belfast amid his battle with drink and drugs.
“The last gig was in Queen’s University,” he recalls.
“Each night, before the last number I’d say to myself: ‘Right, I’m gonna have one beer and then out to the hotel for a nice sleep’. But then the party would start all over again. I suddenly realised, I can’t stop. I had a problem.
“That night in Queen’s University, I was out to lunch completely. I shouldn’t have played, I didn’t know what was going on. And this voice in my head says, ‘You’ve got to get out of here. You’ve got to leave, or you’re dead’.
“Before I knew it, I threw my guitar up in the air, kicked the amplifiers off stage and staggered off - and that was it.”
Happily, that wasn’t ‘it’ for Bell. While Thin Lizzy continued on to further success without its founding member, he managed to overcome his addictions to return to the stage with ex-Jimi Hendrix Experience man Noel Redding, Mainsqueeze (comprised of former John Mayall personnel), Bo Diddley’s backing band and his own Eric Bell Band, which evolved into The Eric Bell Trio.
You can read about the Belfast guitar hero’s incredible musical career in last year’s acclaimed memoir, Remembering: Before, During and After Thin Lizzy, lest there be any doubt he deserves this year’s Oh Yeah Legend Award.
“It’s amazing,” he tells me of becoming the second Thin Lizzy member to get the accolade, following his good friend Gary Moore who received the award posthumously in 2012.
“It’s really such an honour to be recognised in my own hometown.”
