Text: Anne-Marie Forker
Photo: Geir Kihle Hanssen
– Hi Scott! Thanks for your time today. I grew up with your music. It was played everywhere in Ireland that I went, every club, every bar, you always heard Lizzy at some point in the evening.
– So you got sick of it after a while! [laughs]
– No! [laughs] I strangely grew to appreciate it even more when I left Ireland to go to England and now I live in Norway.
Norway is a beautiful country, isn’t it? I have worked there many, many times. I remember one of the first times I came over and started an album for 21 Guns. I had no idea what cold really was. So I got there, I think it was January or February. It was 20 below and I just had jeans and a really thin jacket on. Norway was one of those countries that it was really easy to fall in love with though. I loved all the people there. They love to have a great time. The alcohol is a little too expensive, right? The mountains and the forests and all that. It’s just a gorgeous place to be.
There’s a line from a Thin Lizzy song, from the iconic “Black Rose” album, that you co-wrote, “Got to Give It Up”. “I put a pen to paper but I was frightened.” Was that why you kept your artistic talent a secret for over 40 years?
It was just one of those things. I was always on the road when I started these drawings. I could only do it on days off, which we didn’t have very many of, as you can imagine, but I always loved it. There was the band, and I was totally committed to that. I didn’t think anybody would really be interested in it. “Hey guys, do you see what I just drew here? What do you think of that?” I just didn’t think to show anybody, you know? In fact, the crazy thing is, and you’re going to think I might be a little strange here, but I didn’t even show my wife until about four years ago.
Wow.
All these drawings that I’ve done for over the last 40 years, and she’s a little bit miffed with me.
I bet! So what changed your mind about going public with it?
She did. It was her. I showed her a few years ago and she immediately said “we have to show people, we’ve got to let them know that there’s another side to you” and now I’m doing that. She kept on at me, for three years, and finally I said, “well okay, let’s try something here”. She immediately contacted one of my friends, Denis O’Regan, who’s a rock photographer. He did David Bowie and Queen and came out on a lot of our tours. I really respect Denis a lot because he’s got a great artistic eye. I figured if I show it to him and I get a bad review from him, then I know that I don’t need to show anybody else anything. He took a look, and said the exact same thing my wife did, and my wife went “See?!”. So that was kind of the beginning of the whole thing.
Cool. I believe Jim Fitzpatrick had some compliments for you as well?
I love Jim, I really do. I think he’s just such a great artist. On album cover day I tried to be the first one into the studio, so I could just sit with Jim and look at his ideas. You give him one word, and he comes up with five ideas. I mean five really good ideas. That always just blew my head off. My wife says she is going to call Jim in a Zoom call and show him my art. I said okay but I immediately left the room. I couldn’t sit in the room while Jim Fitzpatrick, this guy I really admired, was looking at this stuff. My wife told me he had said “Well, thank God you didn’t show all the rest of the guys in the band this stuff back then, or I might have been out of a job!” Such a nice thing for him to say. It gave me a lot more confidence.
That is the perfect feedback from someone like him. Can you recall any moments where Phil (Lynott) almost discovered that you were drawing? Did you ever have to quickly shove everything away?
Yeah, I had to do that several times. I’d be drawing away and there’d be a knock on the hotel room door and I’d say “Who is it? Give me a second!” and I would shove everything under the bed covers so nobody could see what I was doing. Such a coward, I really am, but that’s just the way I work. Nobody in the band ever saw what I did. I now kind of regret it. Phil was such a good friend, you know, it just would have been nice to have shown him some of this stuff.
“Coward” is a bit harsh. I think a real coward would have been someone who chose not to express themselves because they didn’t believe they could draw, so they didn’t even try to develop it. You’ve done that. You’ve still expressed yourself. I’m glad that the rest of the world is finally seen it, though!
Thank you!
One image that stood out and reminded me a bit of Francis Bacon with the prominence of the mouth, and also a bit of HR Giger, was “Pain”. Can you tell me about the inspiration behind that image?
That’s kind of a high compliment there, thank you very much. A lot of this stuff comes from my own experiences because it’s often the only thing you can really draw upon. “Pain” came specifically out of a condition that I got called cluster headaches.
Oh, I had those.
So you know what I’m talking about. These are the granddaddy and grandmothers of all the migraine headaches. For me it felt like somebody taking a railway spike and then a jackhammer and putting it in the top of your head, while on the other side, somebody was kicking your other eye in. It’s the way you feel that you look like, when you’re going through this terrible thing. You feel ugly because you feel like you look ugly, because you’re feeling so ugly. So that was kind of an easy one to draw, because it was almost angry. Whatever made me go through this, I’m going to try to get it out on paper.
Eyes are prominent in quite a few of your artworks. I’ve noticed the eye in “The Fanatic” and “Curiosity” as well.
I quite liked “Curiosity”. What I do a lot is that, while I’m drawing, I try to tell myself a story. I’m a big science fiction fan. I have always loved science fiction ever since I was a tiny little kid going to the movies. I always like the idea that we are not alone. I heard a statistic, one of the science programs was saying there was a thousand trillion stars, which means there’s like a hundred thousand trillion planets, right? So you think in those kind of vast numbers, we’re it? I found that hard to believe. This is inconceivable to me. I like the idea that we’ve already been discovered by them. They could probably destroy us in a blink of an eye, but for some reason, they’re very curious about us and they like to see us in this world. I also like to think that every once in a while they see something going terribly wrong with Earth and pick somebody out and not tell them the answer, but kind of sprinkle the idea to get these scientists on the right track. It might sound kind of corny. There is a total destruction of planet Earth, which is another picture, where I’ve got worms coming out and the oceans and gravity have left, so the oceans are falling off the side of the earth. It’s kind of a science fiction fantasy world.
Did the music you were playing on tour inspire any of the old artwork, or was it more of an escape?
It was more of an escape. I think what happens is the repetitiveness of being on tour, play the song over and over again…. you know, now you say it, subliminally it might have. Yeah, I can’t discount that in any way, shape, or form, but I don’t remember thinking “Oh, yeah, that song there, I think I need to draw something about that”. That never happened, but you never know. Something might have gotten through. Good question!
Was it difficult to draw on tour?
The problem drawing wise is that there’s a lot of intricacies going on in there, small lines and all that, so I could start a few pictures out on the road, but there’s no way I could finish them out there, so I would have to wait until I got home. Even at home I’d have to wait until there was time off, no interviews, no rehearsals. When everything was totally calm and there was nothing on the menu, I could sit down by myself and try to finish these things.
The work comes across like that, as it you have been in a state of total focus, with intricate draftsmanship.
You kind of need that. When you sit down and you look at the paper, you just kind of go away, like nothing else is around. It’s almost like being hypnotised a little bit because you’re so absorbed in what you’re doing. It’s just this kind of roller coaster ride, a gentle roller coaster, but it just never stops. I have to actually tell myself to stop at times.
Artwork is very much a solo effort, rather than being in a band, and you were part of the iconic guitar twin sound for many years, but you had to do that with different guitarists. Did you have to adjust what you did with each different guitarist?
Yeah, a little bit, you have to know that everybody’s got their own personality and their own style. You’re free to do whatever you want. Whoever that other guitar player was, you just go ahead and just go for it. All these guys joined the band because they well and truly loved the music that we were playing.
As an Irish woman I can’t possibly let you go without asking you about “Emerald”. What are your memories of co-writing that with Phil?
It’s got some punch to it, and that made it easy to write other parts to that song because that central riff was so cool and so strong. Then to put the harmony guitars in was almost pure joy. I’m glad you picked that one out because that is one of the songs that I will always be in love with, and always love playing on stage. “Jailbreak”, that’s another one. It’s simple but has a lot of punch, a lot of power, and you know it will sound great live on stage. Phil was always great, he wanted everybody in the spotlight. He was that kind of guy. He said it on more than one occasion that we have all got to be in the spotlight. He wasn’t a spotlight hugger.
That’s rare for a front man.
Yeah, absolutely.
In your music career, what are you proudest of?
There’s a song I play the lead guitar on, but it doesn’t get talked about a lot, “Romeo and the Lonely Girl”. I love that because Brian Robertson and I have great syncopation together. I listened to that just a little while ago and I realised that he and I were just solid in there, and it has these quick chord changes and you have to have happy right hands. That was the guitar solo that Gary Moore came up and said “Check this out. I love the solo that you did” and he had learnt it, the whole thing, and he played it for me right there. I thought that was pretty cool because I don’t think I’ve ever learnt anybody else’s solo from any band. I think he and I together played so many really great gigs. We really made a good guitar team. I think what happened with Gary is he really always wanted to be that solo artist. He wanted to sing the songs, he wanted to play all the lead guitar, he wanted to write all of his songs. And he could, because he was such a talented person. They were all great players, they were all good people, good songwriters, good players. A great experience, the whole thing.
Speaking of great, I hope you know, after over 40 years of doubt, that you are also a great artist.
I’m feeling easier about it. But I can’t hear that enough to get my confidence going about it, still to this day. Thank you so much. I appreciate that, I really do.
(The prints are now available for rock fans as t-shirts at www.scottgorhamworld.com.)
First published i Norway Rock Magazine # 4/2025