EVH nearly killed by Master Cleanse diet?

[Hörnisse]

I recommend the live release, "Still Dangerous."  I believe it is OOP but you can still get copies on Ebay of course.  The live version of Opium Trail is worth the price of the CD.

[gearHed289]

Robertson (as well as Downey and Gorham) think Visconti has a distorted memory on how the album came about...

http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/brian-robertson-puts-the-live-back-in-live-and-dangerous/147543

Ha! Nice comeback. Truth is somewhere in the middle I suppose.

Exactly. DLR has had trouble pitching and remembering lyrics all through his career.
But I've seen him live several times and I can assure you it never bothered me one second. I only remember my big smile from ear to ear. He sure knew how to entertain an audience.
I saw VH with Hagar once and I wanted to leave early because I was bored...

Yeah, DLR is what he is. I've always "gotten" his schtick. He's a major factor in what made VH (the band) VH. Never had any interest in the Hagar stuff. I always thought he was a total cheese ball, aside from the Montrose stuff. Great pipes, but kind of a big dork. 

[westen44]

Ha! Nice comeback. Truth is somewhere in the middle I suppose.

Yeah, DLR is what he is. I've always "gotten" his schtick. He's a major factor in what made VH (the band) VH. Never had any interest in the Hagar stuff. I always thought he was a total cheese ball, aside from the Montrose stuff. Great pipes, but kind of a big dork. 

I think I understand what you're saying.  I get the impression that DLR is actually a great person.  For instance, I read that about 8 years ago he was training to be a paramedic in NYC.  He was already traveling around with crews.  I think he was just doing that to help people.  Certainly, there can't be any money in that.  In a sense, I feel kind of bad that I never liked Van Halen very much and never liked David Lee Roth's singing.  On the other hand, I have close friends who are country musicians and I don't like their music very much, either.  They're fantastic musicians, capable of performing in any genre at the optimum level.  Something which I've heard both of them do many times, actually.  But usually when they play, it's country, and I find it pretty hard to get into that kind of music. 

[uwe]

http://www.tonyvisconti.com/artists/thinlizzy/live.htm

"Bad Reputation was a big hit. That meant Lizzy and I would get a second chance to create a great album. Unfortunately they caught me between a Bowie album and at least three other projects I had committed myself to produce -- albums by the Steve Gibbons Band, the Radiators and Rick Wakeman. I was also trying to launch my own Good Earth record label that year. The record company was clamoring for a new Lizzy album and the band wanted to work with me. As much as they wanted to do another studio album, they felt that I couldn't accommodate them because of my commitments (which was true). So we had a summit meeting at my Good Earth studios. Phil said that they had stacks of tapes from live gigs, so why didn't we spend two weeks going through the tapes and come up with a decent live album? That was the best we could do in two weeks. Hah! For the next eight weeks I was up to my eyeballs in Live And Dangerous!

We listened and listened and listened -- to at least 30 hours of tape recorded during many gigs, from Toronto to Philadelphia to London! We definitely had something, but the task of choosing the right takes was awesome. When we did, Phil asked if he could touch up some vocals. No harm in that -- this is commonly done for live albums because of technical faults, like microphone wire buzz and other gremlins. The trick to getting a studio vocal to sound like a convincing live vocal is to sing the song in the same way. Otherwise the live voice will poke through if the new voice is not in sync.

We spent a few days re-recording a few vocals. It went very well. Once we established a sound and a system to do this, Phil suggested that we might as well redo all the vocals. So we did. Then we noticed that Gorham and Robertson were not on mic for backing vocals half the time. If you listen closely you can hear Phil doubling the backing vocals at the same time he was singing lead! Then Phil realized that he'd missed a few notes on the bass when he was singing live. Could we replace some bass parts? "Of course!" I said. We did. The bass was harder and more precise and so ALL the bass parts were replaced. In walked Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson. Since it was so easy to replace Phil's parts, could they redo theirs? "Of course!" But now it was obvious that this was not completely live anymore. The guitars, bass and vocals were replaced -- just Downey's drums and the audience reaction were left! Fortunately Downey liked his playing and we kept ALL the drums.

I've gone on record before saying this album was 75% recorded in the studio, so I hope I haven't shattered any illusions. Still, the album went platinum, reaching #2 on the British charts, and it deserved it. Every track was performed before a live audience with the exception of "Southbound". There weren't any good takes of the song recorded in concert, so we used the recording made during the sound check onstage in Philadelphia and dubbed in the intro and outro audience reaction from that night's show.

Because the original recordings lacked certain details I had to resort to some trickery when Phil asked for audience participation. For instance, on the breakdown of "Rosalie" Phil asks the audience to "put yer hands together". I boosted up the audience tracks and there was a wildly enthusiastic audience clapping like mad, but the band was far louder. I couldn't use those tracks because the band would've sounded too echoey, picked up by the high audience mics. So I made a 20-second loop of the audience clapping for an encore. I put the loop through electronic gates that were triggered by a note from a keyboard. The loop was silent until I played a note on the keyboard. So when I played quarter notes (crotchets) it sounded like the audience was clapping along. Remember, they'd been clapping along that night but the mics just didn't pick them up loud enough. Also, at the end of this track the tape ran out and I had to edit in the audience reaction from the end of another song. That's why it literally sounds like a burst of applause at the end.

Despite the necessary trickery this album is very real. It represents electrifying moments before an audience and fabulous second chances to get it right in the studio."

Certainly, on the Live and Dangerous remaster, the bass is extremely well separated and spotlessly played. It's not the Phil Lynott I remember from 1983 who was sloppy and listless, but that might have been due to drugs taking their toll. The bass on Live & Dangerous just doesn't sound frantic at all nor as "strummy" as you would expect from watching Lynott playing live. It sounds concentrated and focused, played sitting down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh2RgAiBKY4&feature=related

And weren't all Lizzy gigs supposed to be frantic back then?

The bleed argument doesn't strike me as convincing: Robertson and Gorham had played those songs - drugged or sober - hundreds of times, of course they could in the studio play almost immaculately along to a live guitar track that didn't sound so great without the bleed of the original providing more than an echo you won't notice much in the final mix.
 

[Basvarken]

Did you read Robbo's version of the story?

[uwe]

I did. According to him Tony Visconti is a raging drug addict who made all this up. Coming from someone whose sobriety is as notorious as his lively dinners (see below) and who has a bad reputation for making measured judgements in difficult situations, his memory must be correct.  

"A further tour of the USA was planned for December 1976, but it had to be cancelled when, on 26 November, Brian Robertson suffered a hand injury when trying to protect Scottish singer and friend Frankie Miller in a fracas at the Speakeasy Club in London. Miller had been jamming onstage with the reggae band Gonzalez, but had been drunk, offending Gonzalez guitarist Gordon Hunte. Hunte attacked Miller with a bottle in the dressing room, and Robertson intervened, suffering artery and nerve damage to his hand. Robertson subsequently broke Hunte's leg, broke the collarbone of another man, and headbutted another, before being hit on the head with a bottle, rendering him unconscious.

Robertson maintains that, contrary to reports at the time, he was not drunk and had only gone to the venue for a meal."

But don't tell him, Rob, he might hit me!

[Basvarken]

Robbo is a notorious alcoholic alright. But as far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with his memory.
I did two tours with him, I like to think I know him better than you do.

If his version of the story is far from the truth, wouldn't Gorham and Downey have stepped up to the plate by now?

Phil Lynott was an excellent bass player by the time they were a four piece. The (undoctored) radio recordings that I have from Thin Lizzy are there to prove that.
No matter what Ian Paice or Ritchie Blackmore may have said about him 

[uwe]

Robbo is a notorious alcoholic alright. But as far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with his memory.
I did two tours with him, I like to think I know him better than you do.

If his version of the story is far from the truth, wouldn't Gorham and Downey have stepped up to the plate by now?

Phil Lynott was an excellent bass player by the time they were a four piece. The (undoctored) radio recordings that I have from Thin Lizzy are there to prove that.
No matter what Ian Paice or Ritchie Blackmore may have said about him  

Sshhhhh, they said that about him in 1972 and Ian Paice was quick to add that he became a very good bass player in later years. You know how Deep Purple members don't drink, pick fights, say bad things about other people and are generally kind to animals, Rob! And for Blackmore, even Roger Glover wasn't good/hungry enough as an instrumentalist. He wanted someone like John Glascock who however preferred to stay with Tull rather than join Rainbow.

It's hard to construe what Herr Visconti might have had to gain from depicting the recording of Live and Dangerous as he has done. He is no foe of Thin Lizzy or Phil Lynott and obviously proud of what he did with them. I also believe that most people trusted Tony Visconti to be able to record a bass or guitar in the studio with good results so there was no reason for him to invent something like that in connection with this album.

Downey has nothing to opine - his live drums are on there, anywhichway opinion you follow! And as for Gorham, he surprised me recently with the comment that Bad Reputation and Black Rose are his two favorite Thin Lizzy albums (neither of them with much or even any input of Robbo) and that he enjoyed playing with ever disciplined Gary Moore the most. I'm not sure he jumps to taking sides with Herr Robertson anymore and his diplomatic comment about Live & Dangerous has been that it is 75% live. (Interestingly enough, he has not mentioned bass overdubs IIRC, that I learned from Robbo's statement.)

So between Robbo's "almost nothing", Scott's "25%", Downey's roaring silence ("My drums are on there, is all I'm sayin'."), Visconti's "75%" and Phil being unavailable to comment for the time being (I believe his only comment would be: "Did it go platinum or not?"), how about agreeing on something around 50%?   Ok, 60% live so you feel better, my favorite Lizzy diehard!  

Or as Timothy B. Schmidt once graciously put it whether the backing vocals on the Eagles live album were live or not: "I don't think I can answer that question. Let's put it this way: The Eagles take the greatest care imaginable that backing vocals live are always as perfect as on record."  Glenn Frey would later quip: "They were sung live at two different coasts!" Apparently, relations among the feathered ones were at that point such that Henley and Frey could not bear to sing in one studio with another.

PS: For all conspiracy theorists: Wikipedia claims that the recent Live and Dangerous remaster (contrary to its caption) is in fact the nineties one and that a new remaster was made but wiped "for unknown reasons" before the remaster release in 2010! If I was nasty, I'd say they did that because you could hear the cut and paste seams now more prominently!  

[gweimer]

I love this place!   

[uwe]

So do I. And for the record: Rob is a better bass player than both me AND Phil Lynott put together. Very nimble, especially when he feels unwatched.

[Basvarken]

And as for Gorham, he surprised me recently with the comment that Bad Reputation and Black Rose are his two favorite Thin Lizzy albums (neither of them with much or even any input of Robbo) and that he enjoyed playing with ever disciplined Gary Moore the most.

Gary Moore disciplined? Have you seen the Live in Sydney video? He is over-playing on every song. A pumped up cocky little upstart if you ask me. 

So do I. And for the record: Rob is a better bass player than both me AND Phil Lynott put together. Very nimble, especially when he feels unwatched.

Haha. If only I had half the talent of Phil Lynott I'd be a rich man by now.

[uwe]

Let's not speak ill of the dead, but, yes, Moore was too intense for me too. Every note had to mean something and in the end didn't. Visconti, however, was impressed by Moore's utter studio discipline and how he patiently spoon-fed Scott Gorham his harmonic co-lead-lines during the Black Rose sessions. I guess with a loose cannon like Phil in the studio, you tend to appreciate someone overly earnest such as Gary M. as a producer!

Phil L. was a gifted songwriter and had a nice (not really hard rock) voice. Half the stuff you played at my home when you were randomly testing some of my basses, he would have had no chance emulating. The bitter irony is that his style of playing is more akin to mine than to yours! You, Sir, are a lot more organic and groovier. Like him, I find myself always a little awkward sounding (he himself was always self-deprecating about his bass abilities as Gorham has confirmed in an interview: "Whenever we asked Phil to double a guitar riff on bass he gave us this droopy sad look: "You lads knoooooow I can't dooooooooo that!" But his bass playing was one of a kind because he didn't PLAY bass, he STRUMMED it like no other bass player I have heard."). I've turned weaknesses into strengths over time but when I hear Lynott I always sense what he would not be able to do. His left hand technique especially is awkward and looks (badly) self-taught. But I give him credit for being more creative than many in a hard rock setting. And his strummy playing ahead of the beat gave Thin Lizzy a certain lightness and liveliness in the rhythm department, they never plodded, they sounded hard but rarely heavy. Listening to him playing I always have the feeling that his left (fretting) hand wasn't particularly strong, relatively little bending and vibrato too which tends to creep into your playing over time. When he died he had been playing bass seriously off and on (he wasn't a bad guitarist) for about 15 years, less than many of us here (my left hand has improved over time more than my right hand has.)  But, hey, I love playing The Boys are Back in Town bass intro lick and am in awe of the crouching, harmonically and rhytmically interesting Sun Goes Down bass riff. Plus: The Boys are Back in Town features more chords in one song than many hard rock bands use throughout their career! Very jazzy in fact.

And who knows what musical wonders Baby Face might have created had it worked out. Paice's drumming is not so far removed from Downey's btw, they are both "swingers" (and I don't mean that they swap their wives either!). For a band with as many syncopated, off-beat chord changes as Thin Lizzy (also a reason why they never sounded quite so heavy), swing is vital. Which is why they sounded so leaden with Tommy Aldridge.

[Highlander]

Every note ever recorded was "live" at the point it was first recorded could be a point to bear in mind, and telling a lie that is not a lie but just the truth from another perspective could be another...

Uwe... Midge Ure - "Irish is Irish" - not sure what you meant about this Scotsman... and Rob standing up for Van Halen: originally a 50% Dutch band, now 62.5% ...

[uwe]

Scottish, Irish ... sind alles Engländer!

[daan]

I love this place. Every time I come here, I learn a ton of stuff. Now if that would just rub off onto my playing...