Philip-Lynott.com

Lizzy –

energy thin on the ground

Thin Lizzy

Hammersmith Odeon – Sunday 14^th November 1976 - Sounds

A CHILL, foggy evening in London and, believe me, I was really looking forward to seeing the first concert of Thin Lizzy's three-day 'residency' at the Hammersmith Odeon.

But I came away feeling well disappointed.

The reason?  Hard to put one's finger on, actually. More a myriad of tiny factors than one major consideration, I suppose - barely significant details that, when bonded together, make for a, well, boring concert.

For sure “Johnny The Fox” is a fine album. For sure, the Thins represent, in many ways, the British success story of this year, and rightly so. For sure, they're one of the country's fastest rising, most popular bands, more power to their collective elbows.

But all the same, on Sunday night, some magic was lacking.

Most definitely lacking.

There we were, caught up in the midst of the surging crowd upfront, in the first few rows

where you'd think the atmosphere would he at its thickest, most tangible and exciting.  But there was zilch.  Zero.  Rein.  Nothing.

Don't think I was the only one to feel this, either - the kids around were clapping, shouting, waving and cheering certainly, but it seemed to me to he more out of a sense of duty than actual spontaneity and want to.

Maybe it's significant that by far the most predominant of the between number calls from the crowd was - "LOUDER!!!”

The sound emitted from the PA was indeed of a weird sort - muggy and grinding, you felt as if was passing right over your head and disappearing somewhere in the bowels of the auditorium behind.

This didn't help the Thins any, who, it must be said, played quite mechanically. The set they're doing at the moment - out of necessity perhaps - is far too much of a consciously structured, greatest hits, take-no-chances package, including the all too familiar songs “Suicide”, “Jailbreak”, “Sha La La”, “Johnny” and many others besides.

Within the tight confines of such concise numbers there's little room for improvisation or inspiration, the recipe seeming to be - keep faithful to the album version of the tune, sprinkle in a couple of short solos for good measure and tie it all up as quickly as possible.

And although Lynott's “B-b-b-b-b-baby” crowd communication number was as always, supremely entertaining, surely the time has come to drop the thing and replace it with something new. It is rather old hat.

The only song that truly came alive, to my mind, was “Still In Love With You”, Lizzy’s Show-stopping slow tune, immaculately performed, including scintallating solos - of reasonable length even – from Messrs. Robertson and Gorham.

So, sadly, not as good a gig as I hoped it would have been.

Possibly the next couple of nights will be better, once the band have learned to live with the fact that they are able to fill one of London's most prestigious rock venues for three days with great ease.

I’ll be there on Tuesday to find out.

Geoff Barton