Description

THIN LIZZY LIZZY KILLER ALBUM COVER

This Thin Lizzy artwork was originally made for an album called ‘Lizzy Killers’. Unfortunately, the name and cover were not used.

The main reason was quite a simple one: British rockers Iron Maiden released an album of that title ‘Iron Maiden Killers’ just as we, myself, Philip, the band and management were developing the marketing concept while I finished off the cover which Philip approved.

From that point onwards it was dead in the water.

Furthermore the record company refused to pay me as I did not have a written ‘Order Form’ from them. No one had ever given me one or asked for one before so that should tell you everything. Philip was really angry at this turn of events and as I had a family to feed, tried to help me by getting other work for me and commissioning the ‘The Lynotts, Gelncorr’ painting for Caroline to hang in the house on the Burrow Road where the family lived. But that’s another story for another day and a good one too.

Philip had always wanted me to do a painting of Thin Lizzy in action and asked me to echo the colours of a Japanese compilation album that used my logo and added beautiful pinks and blues to it. The artwork was a detailed pencil drawing and the colour was added by airbrush. It took ages too but I was happy with the result and I thought I had a real ‘live’ feel to it. Philip was happy with it too and he wanted to continue with artwork rather than photography and he wanted me on board to continue the look he felt I gave the band. The end result was spot on –a real labour of love -but before it was due to be released it was canceled for the reasons explained above.

It got buried for years until Jorgen Holmstedt of Universal Music, Sweden spotted it on my website in 2000 and used it on a superb compilation double album, titled ‘ The Boys are Back in Town’ –it is my own favourite Lizzy compilation album too.

It was absolutely wonderful to see it used so beautifully all of twenty years later.