Latest Release: When Life was Hard and Fast
Nuclear Blast
Black Star Riders and Thin Lizzy front man Ricky Warwick was born in Northern Ireland but after moving to Scotland as a teenager, his growing interest in music of the day led to forming bands, including successful hard rockers The Almighty. Despite having toured with some of the biggest bands of the day, The Almighty temporarily imploded so a solo career with an acoustic focus beckoned. Down the track, Warwick returned to the rock fold, joining the 2009 version of Thin Lizzy as lead vocalist and guitarist. Soon after, as a song writing flow-on effect, he co-founded Black Star Riders, who have released several well received albums and continues today.
Warwick’s solo career is now back in focus with his fifth album titled When Life was Hard and Fast, which was recorded in Los Angeles. It does what it says on the tin, combining rock fury with melodic hooks and a bunch of notable guest appearances, plus a slew of great songs, largely co-written with album producer and contributor, Keith Nelson [ex-Buckcherry]. Loud Online had the pleasure of discussing all things from huge tours to country music, with the authentic Warwick.
Your latest solo album delivers as the title suggests but at the same time, there is a bit of Americana and naturally, some acoustic tracks. Do you think you’ve mellowed a bit?
No. Ha-ha, yeah. I mean, who knows? I think that there are different ways. When you’re younger, you want to go out there and you want to beat people over the head with a big hammer. I think that as you get older you realise that can do as good a job with a box of different little hammers, which one way or another is the best way I would describe it. I feel I am still relevant and that I have something to say, I still feel I’m really fluid and I am still excited about music as I ever was, I have absolutely not changed in that scope, in fact, I am more passionate [about music] that ever. For me, I am just more comfortable in my skin, I know what I want to achieve and I think that when that comes along or when you reach that sort of level in your mind, your confidence grows as well.
I gather it is a similar state of mind for the guests [including Andy Taylor, Luke Morley, Joe Elliott and Dizzy Reed] you have on the album?
Yeah, the guests on the album are people that I have met and with whom relationships have been forged, in the last thirty years of playing rock and roll. I’ve met these guys that I have been a fan of their music and they have become friends. So, I work with them and it all gets a bit incestuous sometimes because I’ve gone and been a guest on their stuff as well over the years, and vice versa. Certainly when you make a solo record you’re not going to get anybody’s nose out of joint in the band because [in that situation] there is no band so you can have whoever the hell you want to play on the record. That is why I enjoy doing the solo stuff.
Working with Keith Nelson is obviously of benefit for the album’s overall feel and sound. The slide guitar parts that he plays on Still Alive are pretty good.
Thank you, Keith is amazing and is an amazing human being. He’s a great guy and he really brought a lot to this record and helped me achieve what I wanted to achieve on this thing. He definitely channelled his inner Pete Wells on that track. I said to him, ‘You have got to play some slide guitar; you have got to play like Pete Wells from Rose Tattoo.’
The guitar tone he has is great and he has a lot of vintage guitars, which you can hear.
Yeah, he has an incredible collection of vintage guitars and to have that arsenal at his disposal when we were in the studio was just incredible. There is something in the gear, something in the [amplifier] valves that make them sound the way that they do that the newer sounds or digital stuff haven’t got. So, it was lovely to be able to work with that kind of instrumentation readily available at all times.
Of course, that whole twin guitar aspect harks back to Thin Lizzy days. Twin guitar harmonies are certainly a recognisable sound within your music.
Yeah, I think that’s from all of us being so immersed in the Thin Lizzy thing for the last ten years and being in a band with Scott Gorham [guitarist], with Black Star Riders, and carrying, obviously Scott’s trademark throughout Black Star Riders. That is something that has had a profound effect on me, and it is something which I love. I just love that idea and I love the way he sounds so, you know, when I was doing the solo stuff, I definitely had to have some of the dual harmony guitars on some of the songs and Keith would say he felt the same way.
Did Gary Moore’s guitar playing have an impact on you given his legacy of being in Thin Lizzy?
Only so much in that really, I think, my favourite Thin Lizzy album is Black Rose: A Rock Legend, which obviously is the one that predominantly features Gary. I think his playing on that is incredible and I think that the songs on that record are incredible. I love all of the albums but that is ‘the one’ for me. I think being from Belfast, and with Gary being from Belfast, I saw him as a hero when I was kid because he was from a couple of streets away from where I grew up and he was one of ours and you always go, ‘He’s one of ours,’ you know, but he was such an incredible, inventive guitar player with a feel like no other. I mean, the only other guitarist who I think comes close in his own style is Rory Gallagher. The two of them are just incredible musicians and the fact that they were both Irish was a bonus. Certainly some of Gary’s solo stuff like Over the Hills and Far Away, which is a great song, has been an influence on me and on my writing, over the years.
Is that the same with your singing voice? Has any of that material influenced your vocals?
Yeah, I mean, it has to and I like I said, I’ve been so involved within Thin Lizzy for the last ten years, and I am trying to sing the Lizzy songs obviously as close as I can to the great man [late Thin Lizzy vocalist Phil Lynott]. So, that someone is going to rub off on me. I’ve learned a lot about singing, I’ve learned a lot about my own voice by listening to Phil and singing Phil’s songs. That is kind of in my DNA now and I think that is something I cannot really get rid of – it is just there now and I feel I have gotten a lot better as a singer as I’ve gotten older, as well. It is not something that I want to lose, I’m really happy that it is in there, it is amazing and there is no better, personally, to be influenced by than Phil Lynott, in my books. So, I am totally okay with it.
You’ve also got Pepper, your youngest daughter, singing with you on a song on this album. How did that come about?
Really simply, she was really getting into music and still is, and she started playing guitar and keyboards, and learning to combine her voice. I wrote the song [Time Don’t Seem to Matter] about her, for her and it was one of those things where I said, ‘Hey, I wrote this song about you, kiddo, would you come in and sing on it with me?’ and she said, ‘Okay.’ So we brought her down to studio and she knocked it out of the park. It has been a real proud Dad moment to have her on it, it is just incredible.
You’ve covered a Willy Deville [Mink Deville] song titled Gunslinger. What was the story behind choosing to cover that song?
When that song was on Willy Deville’s first album [Cabretta] and it was a B-side of a track that he had a huge hit with back in ’77 called Spanish Stroll. I remember seeing him on Top of the Pops, the show we had here at the time, then going out and buying the record, flipping it over to listen to the B-side and just being blown away by this track, Gunslinger. I was just learning guitar at the time and yeah, there was only three chords in it so I could play along to it. I would play along to that song for hours on end and when I got my own band, when I started playing in a band I thought, ‘One day, I am going to cover that song because it is such a great song.’ I’d either forgotten about it or the timing wasn’t right but we were putting together the songs for When Life was Hard and Fast, I just thought, ‘Now is the time to bring in this song,’ because we didn’t really know, on this album, all of the rest of the material. So, I played it to Keith and he said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and that was it. So forty years after I first thought about covering it, I finally get to cover it.
It is funny how something like that sat in the back of your mind for that long and you just get around to it one day.
Yeah, it kept popping up but I’d forget about it because I’d go off and then I would hear it again and be listening to it going, ‘Oh, I’ve got to cover that song,’ and then again, something would distract me. But, I found that I was listening to a lot of Willy DeVille while I was making this record, just as an influence because I am such as fan of his song writing and his whole style. I think that when that song popped up again I thought, ‘I think that I can do a pretty cool version of this, let’s have a go at it,’ and that was it.
There are a few songs on there with a hammering snare drum and a punk rock influence. How did you approach Xavier [Muriel, ex-Buckcherry] to play drums on this album?
It was through the Keith connection given that Keith Nelson was in Buckcherry and obviously being really tight with Xavier, when we were putting together a cool band we were obviously mentioning names and, you know, for me, I always want to work with Robbie [Crane – bassist] from Black Star Riders because I always say he is my favourite bass player in the world, and he is that. So, that’s a no-brainer, it was just like, ‘Robbie Crane is playing bass on this, no arguments,’ and Keith was like, ‘I’d like to bring in Xavier from Buckcherry.’ I had never met Xavier but obviously I had heard him play in Buck Cherry and I knew he was more than capable. He came down and killed it, he was great and he was great to work with and a great guy to be around. The core of the band, really, was Buck Star Riders, or whatever you want to call it, with the backing band because of the tracks done.
How does working with Keith as a producer compare to say working with Joe Elliott as producer, which was the case on your first album [Tattoos & Alibis]?
Everybody is different and everybody has a different personality so that is what you’re dealing with, straight away, everybody is going to bring in a different approach and a different idea. Joe is very straight ahead, in his way, in what he does and Keith has a different approach as well. But, in terms of personality wise, they are amazingly cool people to work with, hey are both very knowledgeable when it comes to writing music and song arrangements and sounds, stuff like that, there is no real difference there. They are both a joy to work with, you know, in their own way. Also, Keith is a hell of a guitar player so Keith was very involved on the song writing with me on this record whereas with Joe, I would bring in the songs pretty much finished and then Joe would just help with the arrangement and the production on that. Joe is great to work with and amazing in different ways, you know.
The song, I Don’t Feel at Home, is clearly about drugs but musically, it has a very strong Americana feel. I’m curious how Johnny Cash was a big influence on you when you were growing up?
Yeah, very much so and my Dad was a big country music fan and really, when I was a kid, he was always playing Johnny cash, Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and all of those old country singers were heard in the house. So, that was my first real introduction to music. That was a song the Keith and I wrote; I think we were just jamming around on a riff and I had an idea for the lyric. I wrote it about somebody in my family in Scotland that has been a drug user for most of their adult life and the trials and tribulations that they have gone through just trying to get past what is weighing them down. So, I really wrote it from the heart for them and it just seemed to really come together. I love that song; I love the groove on it. It has a great groove on it.
It is interesting that authentic country music sound still outshines American mainstream country music, which is just pop dressed up as country music.
Yeah, I mean, listen, there is some awful country music out there which is just kind of manipulated music where the country-by-numbers music that you’re hearing coming out of Nashville now. It is odious. It is not the outlaw country that appeals, your Merle Haggards, your Steve Earle, Waylon Jennings, you know, the real deal. That is the real country music that I grew up with, along with Johnny Cash’s stuff. It really is an influence and the music that I am really into and these guys are enormously good musicians and at an early stage, they definitely had an influence on me.
A similar song is the emotive Clown of Misery, which has a phone booth type mix. Was that a spontaneous idea or a planned sound?
We lifted it straight from the iPhone, that is what it is. It is me singing the song into my iPhone as an idea and sending it to Keith, saying, ‘We should record this,’ and Keith saying, ‘It’s done,’ and me going, ‘What, are you high?’, you know, ha-ha, really. ‘What do you mean, it is done?’ and he said, ‘It sounds great! There is a desperation and dying tone that I really love. I think we should just lift it from the iPhone, maybe crackle it up a little bit to make it sound like an old ’78 from the blues, like a New Orleans or Woody Guthrie sounding record.’ I thought that was an incredible idea. That is really what we did, you know, it is that simple. It is really just me singing the idea into the iPhone and tinkering with it a little bit in the studio. But, none of it was re-recorded. It was literally that simple.
Another surprising track was I’d Rather be Hit when you’ve got Andy Taylor from Duran Duran playing a guitar solo on it which is brief but has plenty of attitude.
He is an incredibly amazing guitar player and he is really underrated. I don’t think people understand or appreciate how amazing Andy is as a guitar player and as a vocalist too. He is a great singer, as well as being a great producer. I’ve known Andy since my days back in The Almighty and I had been working with Andy a few years ago on some stuff for his solo record [Man’s a Wolf to Man], which I believe is coming out this year. So, I had been writing with Andy for that and I was desperate to get Andy on a track because I love his guitar playing so much. That was the perfect song for him to play on.
The last time Black Star Riders toured here would have been several years back with Kiss and Mötley Crüe. When you were in The Almighty, you were also touring around with arena acts like Alice Cooper, Metallica and Iron Maiden. Were there things big acts did that you took in from watching them perform at the side of stage or did you just focus on your own thing?
Ah, no, I mean, usually we’ve been lucky to tour with a lot of my peers so, you know, I will go and watch these bands because I am a fan of these bands. So, I was probably watching them every night, almost every night. It was the likes of Motörhead, Ramones, Maiden, and Megadeth. It was incredible for us to be opening for these bands and then the bonus was that we got to see them play every night. Yeah, you wanted to see how they did it and you wanted to see why they’re are big as they are, what are they like on stage, what gear are they using, you know, what is their stagecraft like? I mean, I was just soaking it all up and I still do. I don’t think that you ever stop learning, I am always looking at artists and going, ‘Why did he say that?’ or ‘Why did he play that guitar?’ and, I mean, I love that. You never stop learning, you really don’t.
Finally, what would be your favourite track on the album?
For me, that is a no-brainer. It has got to be Time Don’t Seem to Matter because that has my daughter, Pepper, on it and that just takes it way above the rest. It is such a special sort of unique moment, you know, capturing that and the whole vibe in having her on there.