Wo ist der Holländer, der Thin Lizzy mag?

[uwe]

Rob, I'm making amends! I've finally gotten around to listening to the Live (well, sort of) & Dangerous boxed set by Lynott and his men and rather than listening to it from start to end, I started at the end with the full London and Toronto gigs. And, yes, I never thought I'd be writing this, the band is on effing fire and the group interplay is tight and exciting with lots of panache. Impressive, more so than the original doctored Live & Dangerous which always sounded too good and tidy to be true to me. These new releases from the vaults, however, sound both looser and more to the point.

[uwe]

I've now heard them all and I'm in the process of finishing with the original Live & Dangerous release. I'd say this comprehensive and great box actually proves that Live & Dangerous was (too heavily and unnecessarily so, see below!) doctored in the studio. Phil's bass, his singing and even some of the guitar tracks sound a lot more behaved on the official Live & Dangerous release. His bass signal there is more direct and his playing is relaxed sitting-concentrated-in-the-studio as opposed to adrenaline-charged, he sounds a lot more live on all the other recordings. His timing is tighter (but also a bit lifeless) on the official live release, yes, while on the other recordings his timing is obviously influenced by the live performance, but in a good way because he has a nice way of flowing along to Downey's beat, a bit rhythm guitarish even. There is more excitement and enthusiasm than in the Live & Dangerous bass tracks.

Which seems to confirm what Toni Visconti said, namely that Phil initially patched up just a few little things, but then was so pleased with the outcome, he wanted everything to have similar quality and got carried away in the process. To my ears, Live & Dangerous actually suffered for this, the other, undoctored full gig recordings have a lot more immediacy. Lizzy messed with something they shouldn't have. Perfectionism isn't always a good thing.

[Basvarken]

I am really happy with the box set. A wonderful box set that indeed proves the band was on fire on all nights.

I'm not sure I agree with you on all points. To me this document actually proves Visconti grossly exaggerated when he said it was 70% overdubs.
The new releases are just mixed a little rougher round the edges. Which adds to the excitement. But to my ears there wasn't that much that had to be repaired apart from the backing vocals and a few (scarce) not so precisely placed notes.

[uwe]

But the bass signal on the original Live & Dangerous is incredibly direct and in your face while on some of the other recordings it is hard to make out/diffuse/billowing due to the local acoustics of some of the various venues! And the bass on the official release also sounds consistent from track to track even though the performances were recorded almost a year apart at different venues.

I agree with you: There wasn't much that needed repair, but Phil obviously went ahead and did it anyway. Perhaps he just wanted his bass more upfront and distinct. Mission accomplished then.

[Basvarken]

Local acoustics don't really matter that much when you use a DI to track the bass.
Really, the rougher mix plays a bigger role.

Having said that. Live & Dangerous has always been considered one of the best live rock albums. It solidified Thin Lizzy's name in the rock pantheon. A true winner.
And the winner is always right.

[uwe]

Uhum, let's not get carried away, Rob ...

Do we want to battle about sales figures, chart placings, historical relevance, completely undoctored recordings and who came first?  Luckily, Phil has already assumed a kneeling position below, albeit with a clenched fist. 

https://bestsellingalbums.org/album/11126

https://bestsellingalbums.org/album/48000

https://dutchcharts.nl/showitem.asp?interpret=Deep+Purple&titel=Made+In+Japan&cat=a

https://dutchcharts.nl/showitem.asp?interpret=Thin+Lizzy&titel=Live+And+Dangerous&cat=a

Purple #32, Lizzy #46 ...

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/50-greatest-live-albums-of-all-time-173246/fela-ransome-kuti-and-the-africa-70-with-ginger-baker-live-1971-159056/

[Basvarken]

Ruhig Uwe!
Ruhig.

One of the best


Tsk tsk. 

[uwe]

I'm already back to gentle. 

[Basvarken]

I'll just leave this here for you to chew on Uwe. 


https://www.loudersound.com/features/why-thin-lizzys-live-and-dangerous-is-the-greatest-live-album-ever


https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/nmes-50-greatest-live-albums-of-all-time-what-are-yours-1554831


https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Nighthawk/classic_rock__magazines_the_50_greatest_live_albums_ever/


https://www.guitarworld.com/features/thin-lizzys-live-and-dangerous


https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/thin_lizzy_win_best_live_album.html

[uwe]

I'm masticating, Rob, give me a minute! 

Of course, the relative (given Thin Lizzy's modest studio album sales) success of Live & Dangerous was utterly deserved. After all, weeks and weeks of painstaking aftermath precision studio work had gone into the final product, that should not go unrewarded.

But you can't blame them, the - nicely done - book of the new box set reveals that the radio omnipresence of this track here



inspired the Lizzy men to try out a live album themselves. How fitting, given that the audience cheers Frampton Comes 'Alive' is immersed in stem from a previous Grand Funk Railroad gig.

On In the Studio with Redbeard, Frampton said "the album is mostly live except for the first verse of 'Something's Happening', the rhythm electric guitar on 'Show Me the Way' (the talk-box came out but the engineer forgot to move the mic) and the intro piano on 'I Wanna Go to the Sun' were fixed in the studio but the rest was all live (all the guitar solos, acoustic guitars, electric keyboards, drums, bass guitar and rest of vocals) which was unheard of at the time".

Kiss Alive and Judas Priest's Unleashed In The East are similarly scathingly honest live recordings too.

Lest we forget:

There were no overdubs on the album. Lord claimed once in a magazine interview that a line from "Strange Kind of Woman" had to be redubbed from a different show after Gillan had tripped over his microphone cable, but no direct evidence of this was found when the multitrack tapes were examined. According to Lord, the total budget for the recording was only $3,000 (equivalent to £42,109 in 2021).

"That double album ... wasn't meant to be released outside of Japan. They wound up putting it out anyway and it went platinum in about two weeks."

Jon Lord

The band did not consider the album to be important and only Glover and Paice showed up to mix it. According to Birch, Gillan and Blackmore have never heard the finished album. The band did not want the album to be released outside Japan and wanted full rights to the tapes, but it was released worldwide anyway.

The album was released in the UK in December 1972, with a special offer price of £3.25, the same as a typical single LP from that period. It reached number 16 in the charts. The cover was designed by Glover and featured a colour photo of the band on the front and rear covers, and black and white photos in the inside gatefold. The release in the US was delayed until April 1973, because Warner Bros. wanted to release Who Do We Think We Are first. They were motivated into releasing it due to a steady flow of UK imports being purchased, and it was an immediate commercial success, reaching number 6 in the charts. Warner Brothers also released "Smoke on the Water" as a single, coupling the live recording on Made in Japan with the studio version on Machine Head, and it reached number 4 in the Billboard charts. A recording of "Black Night" from the Tokyo gig, one of the encores that was not on the album, was released as the B-side to the single "Woman from Tokyo" in Europe, and as a single in its own right in Japan.

[gearHed289]

I read that it wasn't so much Phil wanting to clean everything up, but rather a matter of dealing with mic bleed. If they changed one thing, suddenly they might have to change something else because the sound changed.

[uwe]

https://issuu.com/markcunningham2/docs/tony_visconti

Tony Visconti says the vocals and bass parts were completely redone, the guitars augmented by extra tracks to fatten the sound. Only the drums stayed as is - Downey didn't even want to correct little glitches (and he deserves all credit for that, his drumming on those live recordings is spirited, dynamic and swinging).

Now why would Visconti - who liked Lizzy as a band, its members and is proud of his production work with them - invent something like that? (It's not like he was on heroin and coke which would have impaired his memory.)

Scott Gorham, Brian Robertson and of course The Netherlands' greatest Thin Lizzy fan dispute all this. However, none of them were there when Phil rerecorded his parts with Visconti in the studio, they only heard the result after he was done with his bass and vocal tracks. Given the notoriously competitive atmosphere prevailing with Lizzy's members, Phil perhaps simply didn't care to tell the other two how much he had rerecorded? He can sadly not be asked anymore.

BUT - and it is a BIG BUT - that wasn't my point at all when I offered Rob the olive branch in my first posting in this thread. I actually like the undoctored extra recordings of that box set better and I think they are of a quality that would not have necessitated all the studio embellishments in the aftermath! Yes, the bass is more indistinct there and not as metronomic (but played with more gusto and panache), the singing a bit more out of breath or uneven in volume in places because of varying microphone distances plus Phil is in better voice on some nights than on others (all very human and he is in very good voice on average throughout), the guitars aren't as voluminous (on Live & Dangerous extra tracks with power chords were added by both guitarists to beef up the sound), some of the synchronized harmony playing more exact (but Robertson and Gorham had great rapport playing with one another no matter what).

Rob's attempt to put this all down to "a better mix" does remind me a bit of Hollywood actresses and models explaining their youthful looks with "lots of mineral water, sufficient sleep, healthy foods & fresh air". Mind you, Thin Lizzy were all about a healthy lifestyle of course.