I always viewed Thin Lizzy as similar to UFO in the respect that they would put out a great album and follow it with a mediocre one. Jailbreak broke them, but the follow-up was a let down.
The production of their mid period albums did Thin Lizzy no favors at the time - not their fault, they just weren't a band big enough to entertain a large production budget. The popularity of the, uhum, "Live" ("and Dangerous") album had much to do that for the first time the production of Tony Visconti mirrored what the band actually could sound like. It really is their
best studio recording, don't you think so too, Rob?
Production of Bad Reputation (though in many ways not their happiest album, the Gorham/Robertson team had broken apart, Robertson can just be heard on a few tracks, Gorham had to mimic him which makes a lot of the twin guitar melodies sound too tame) was also handled by Visconti and that album too sounds worlds apart from the rather dusty and limp production of Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox. Those albums did not sound well even at the time, when I first heard them I was disappointed by the sonics more than everything else (initially I thought I had a bad cassette copy of Jailbreak until I heard the album which sounded just as flat). Any Martin Birch, Rodger Bain, Ron Nevison, Roger Glover, Jimmy Page, Eddie Kramer, Roy Thomas Baker, Tom Dowd or Bob Ezrin production of the time was in another league. The lack of an adequate producer can only be explained by the fact that their record company did not know what to do with them initially. Production quality perked up following Bad Reputation, but then other issues blocked the band's way into the big league such as drugs and the futile search for a lead guitar team as stable as Gorham and Robertson had been initially. Gary Moore (a difficult man at the best of times and a drug hater), Midge Ure (yup, him, Irish is Irish, forget how he didn't exactly have a hard rock pedigree, he later on healed the world but he couldn't heal Thin Lizzy), Snowy White (more comfortable playing blues or backing Pink Floyd than headbanging with Scott Gorham), Dave Flett (he of Manfred Mann's Earth Band, I don't know why he didn't work out), John Sykes (a young gun and fledgling guitar hero then, but not yet the Les Paul monster he would be on Whitesnake's 1987 or the Blue Murder Album, also not really someone you can pair with another guitarist) - did I forget anyone, Rob?
