"I first met Phil Lynott completely by accident during my first ever acid trip." Original Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell on the birth of the band and his relationship with their "gentle and romantic" frontman

Eric Bell was the founding guitarist in Thin Lizzy, forming the band in 1969 alongside the great Phil Lynott, drummer Brian Downey and keyboardist Eric Wrixon.

Bell played on Lizzy's first three albums – Thin Lizzy, Shades Of A Blue Orphanage, and Vagabonds Of The Western World – and is the musician behind the famous guitar intro and solo on the classic Whiskey in the Jar. He also co-wrote the longtime fan favourite The Rocker.

Below, he tells Classic Rock about those early days.

“It’s unbelievable to think that I’ve known Phil and Brian Downey since they were members of Orphanage [back in 1969]. Along with Eric Wrixon, keyboard player of the band Them [who were fronted by Van Morrison], I first saw Orphanage completely by accident at a club called The Countdown in Dublin during my first ever acid trip.

"As we stood at the bar drinking this horrible cheap sherry, Eric and I didn’t even know a band would be playing. I was pretty ‘out there’, and it was the drummer, Brian, who would only have been around seventeen back then, that impressed me. Phil was out at the front – he didn’t play the bass back then – and he was wearing a white Indian kaftan. He sang Bob Dylan’s It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry and was a very good singer.

“I had just left a show band and wanted to form a three-piece rock group. So during the break I went to Orphanage’s changing room. Phil and Brian were there, and it was our first meeting. We had a brief chat, then as I left, Phil called me back inside and asked Brian: ‘Do you fancy forming a band with Eric?’ But Brian wasn’t interested. I prepared to leave – again. And Phil called me back – again. He said: ‘C’mon, Brian, let’s form a group with Eric. Fresh blood and all that.’ And this time Brian agreed.

“Phil had two conditions: he wanted to play the bass, and the band had to write its own songs. And that was the start of Thin Lizzy."

“Phil came over with a reel-to-reel tape machine, wearing a Humphrey Bogart-style raincoat. The music was just him singing along to an acoustic guitar. After the first of three songs he played Phil asked what I thought. I replied: ‘Brilliant.’ I could imagine my guitar being a part of the song and knew it would be great. There was no doubt at all about the guy’s talent.

“We had our first rehearsal and Eric Wrixon came along thinking he was going to be a part of the band. But I didn’t want that, it had to be a trio. Phil got lost on the bass during the first song that we played together because he had only just taken up the instrument, but right from the start there was a spark.

“Our only goal was to form a band and play around Ireland, but although Phil was a very gentle guy in those days he was incredibly driven. He was very, very into what he was doing. Ask what he wanted to do with his life and he would reply: ‘I want to be rich and famous’. That was a key phrase of his.

“Phil’s personality was always so outgoing. The only time it would change was if you brought up his mother or his childhood. If you did that, he would swing in a different direction right in front of you. His guard would go up in an instant. Otherwise he was fine. Those were just the areas that he wouldn’t talk about."

“In those days there was probably only two black guys in the whole of Dublin, so Phil stood out from the crowd like a sore thumb. He was a tall, good-looking bloke and his company was never dull.

“After about six weeks he came into the pub wearing a suit and tie, looking very respectable, and dangling a set of keys – he had got the band a house on Castle Avenue in Clontarf on the outskirts of the city. When the two of us moved in it was quite an upmarket place, but before too long as many as ten people lived there.

"It became an open house. We wrote the first song on the first album [The Friendly Ranger At Clontarf Castle, on 1971’s Thin Lizzy] about that place. In those days Philip was such a nice, gentle, romantic bloke and I have extremely fond memories of those earliest of days.

“When I quit the band on New Year’s Eve 1973, I had no inkling of what Thin Lizzy might go on to achieve. To be completely truthful, I stopped thinking about them completely as soon as I left. I was in cloud-fucking-cuckoo land with drink and drugs and needed to get my life back together. It took a long, long time."

“Eventually the manager did get me to go and see the ‘new’ Thin Lizzy, the one with two guitarists. I couldn’t play in a band as ‘worked-out’ as that, but they were fabulous at what they did.

“I think Phil would have loved that people still enjoy his songs so much. He’d be walking down Grafton Street [Dublin’s main thoroughfare, a stone’s throw away from the statue of Lynott on Harry Street] and shouting: ‘Look at me, look at me – I did it!’ He was that kind of a guy. He loved the limelight. And of course he did become rich and famous, but he worked his bollocks off to get there.”

Eric Bell was speaking with Dave Ling. His latest album, Authenticity, is available via Of The Edge Productions/ Cargo Records.