Former members of Thin Lizzy to join Guns N' Roses, Black Star Riders stars at 40th anniversary tribute concert celebrating Phil Lynott's life and legacy

Former members of Thin Lizzy, Guns N' Roses guitarist Richard Fortus, and the 45-piece RTÉ Orchestra will assemble in Dublin, Ireland on January 4 next year for a special 40th anniversary tribute concert celebrating the life, music and legacy of the late, legendary Phil Lynott.

The Dedication To Phil Lynott concert, to held at Dublin's 3Arena, will mark 40 years since Lynott's death, aged 36, on January 4, 1986.

Founding Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell, Renegade/ Thunder And Lightning-era keyboardist Darren Wharton, ex-Thin Lizzy vocalist/guitarist Ricky Warwick (Black Star Riders/The Almighty) and Marco Mendoza (ex-Thin Lizzy/Whitesnake) will be among the musicians performing on the night. Lynott's shortlived post-Thin Lizzy band Grand Slam will also appear.

Tickets for the concert go on sale on August 16, here.

Longtime Thin Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham saw his friend and former bandmate Lynott just three weeks before the frontman’s death.

“This was at his house in Kew,” Gorham once told Classic Rock. “I arrived at eleven o’clock in the morning, and Phil answered the door dressed in a bath robe, PJs and slippers. He was all puffed up. Because of his asthma he could hardly breathe. See, that’s what happened; every time he took smack the asthma would come back at him with a vengeance.”

Gorham recalled that Lynott had just learned that a possible drug possession charge against him had been dropped. He celebrated by filling a pint glass three-quarters full with vodka and sank the drink in one gulp.

Phil Lynott then suggested that he, Gorham and Brian Downey should get Thin Lizzy back together.

“I’m looking at him thinking, Are you kidding me?” he recalled. “I’m there thinking, You know what it takes to be out on the road, man. You’re never gonna make it out there in your condition. And he must have seen the look that I gave him, because then he said: ‘Oh, man, don’t worry. I’m gonna get my shit together; I’m gonna get off of this crap, man.’ And he sounded so determined that I actually believed that he was going to do it.”

On January 4, 1986 Gorham was at home when his wife Christine took the phone call that brought the news that Phil Lynott had died. Hearing the sound of her tears, the guitarist just knew. He remembers thinking: “That’s it, he’s dead.”

“I was grief-stricken,” he recalled. “And I was surprised too. He’d been through hairy-ass bouts of hepatitis, and all sorts of crazy health issues, and he’d always come through this with flying colours, as if nothing had ever happened… You know, this is Phil Lynott we’re talking about, the iron man. This man is indestructible.”