LEGENDARY rock guitarist Eric Bell is back on the road doing what he does best – playing searing guitar chords that resonate with rock and blues lovers.
When he was a teenager in east Belfast he walked out of his job as an apprentice mechanic – much to his parent’s disapproval – after hearing the Rolling Stones on the radio for the first time, to chase his own career in music. And he’s still playing more than 50 years later.
To anyone with even a passing interest in rock music history – let alone just the rock music from this island – since the late 1960s, Bell is known and regarded as one of the true greats who made it through some of the craziest of times.
One of the founding members of Thin Lizzy with Phil Lynott and Brian Downey, he wrote and played the haunting opening riff to Whiskey in the Jar and came up with the band’s name, inspired by Dandy comic character Tin Lizzie.
But he also played with top Irish showband The Dreams after joining Them briefly with Van Morrison in his formative years, and has recorded dozens of albums over the years, both as a solo artist and as part of a band.
And after Thin Lizzy, he was asked by ex-Jimi Hendrix band guitarist Noel Redding to play in his band for several years, playing all over Europe.
The 69-year-old’s rock and blues credentials therefore are impeccable; he has also played with blues guitarist and singer Bo Diddley.
And to those familiar with Bell’s epic meltdown – when, stoned and drunk, he threw his guitar up into the air and kicked over his amplifiers – on the night he literally walked away from Thin Lizzy as the band played Queen’s University Belfast on New Year’s Eve 1973, the good news is that the guitar survived, just like the man himself, and is still being played.
“That Stratoblaster is still my favourite today. Sometimes when I look at it I can’t believe that it’s over 40 years ago. I must have thrown it up about 12 feet in the air that night but it’s still good and I practice for at least two hours every day,” says Bell, a much calmer man today.
He’s fresh from his latest gig in The Voodoo in Belfast last weekend, having played at the Blues Hill Festival in Dungannon; when we speak he's about to head off to Manchester where he’s filming video for tracks of his new album Exile, which has also recently been released on vinyl.
“That was the first time I played that place [The Voodoo]. But it was a good atmosphere with people coming up to the front and enjoying it, so it was pretty good on Sunday night," he tells me.
Exile is Bell's first studio album in six years and while he says that it has some songs that he wrote more than 20 years ago, there are also new tracks that he's been working on for the past six months. He explains that he was encouraged to record the album by a supporter who was prepared to cover the costs.
“About a year ago I was asked to play a blues gig in Manchester and at the end of the night this guy Andy Quinn, who was running the gig, came up to talk to me and said that he had loved early Thin Lizzy. And a week later I got a call from him saying would I like to record an album and he would foot the whole thing.
"The album reflects the music I like to play and listen to, so I'm trying to cover the whole spectrum of music. I did most of the album myself in what was really an experiment to see if it would really work or not and it’s turned out really nice. There’s been a lot of interest in it and a number of things springing off from it so it’s been great.
“Songs on the album like Thank God, which is about 20 years old, and then there’s this song that I wrote form a melody that came to me one morning when I woke up. At first I wondered if it was original or someone else’s but it eventually turned out to be Gotta Say Bye Bye.”
The last track on Exile, and one he has not yet performed live, is Song for Gary (Moore), a tribute he wrote for his friend and fellow former guitarist with Thin Lizzy who died from a drink-related heart attack in 2011.
He says: “Song for Gary started off as an instrumental Blues for Gary but then I thought I would have to do more for him so I added words to it. I haven’t really played it live much yet. It’s a very simple song and because it’s so simple it’s very hard to play sometimes.”
Bell tells candid stories of his time with Philip (just as the star’s mother insists on referring to the Lizzy frontman) Lynott and Brian Downey.
He outlived his contemporaries Lynott and Moore, mostly due to his decision to walk away from the drink and drugs temptation that went with the band.
Bell was with Irish rock god Lynott, who died 30 years ago at the age of 36, when he took his first hit of cocaine at a German gig.
“I must have smoked dope every night for about 18 months; it was just there every night and after the gig there was always drink in the dressing room,” the rocker, now a father and grandfather, recalls.
“One night Philip was in the toilet with these guys and I came in and we were offered a line of coke, Philip took it and liked it and I didn’t. It just didn’t appeal to me.
“It took me longer to get off the drink as it was such a routine and a way of living. I always say to people that if I hadn’t have left the band, I would have ended up an alcoholic, or a junkie or dead. Now if I have three pints of Guinness, I’m rightly – and I think I’m lucky.”
:: To buy Eric Bell’s new vinyl album Exile and to find out gig dates visit eric-bell.com
