THE NIGHTLIFE PORTFOLIO

THE ART OF JIM FITZPATRICK
WHEN ART AND MUSIC RHYME

50 years! Time flies when you are enjoying yourself.
I’m taking this 50th anniversary of the release of Nightlife by Thin Lizzy as my excuse to show my artwork for this cool album.

Not just the well-known cover art but the other elements that went into the development of the art style that I used on the cover of the Nightlife album and the poster.

It is probably hard to believe but the artwork for the poster is not an extension of the cover art but was a stand-alone piece of art, complimentary to the album cover artwork but slightly different. Remember too that this was the first iteration of the new Thin Lizzy logo which appeared on the back of the nightlife album cover.

THE ARTWORK

When myself and Philip were discussing this new album it was obvious that Philip wanted something different from the style of art I was using on Vagabonds of the Western World, which he absolutely loved.

My gut instinct, learned in advertising and marketing, is simple. One style only, with image variations for the entire life of the band, and never vary the look while creating consistent images much as in the manner of my old friend Roger Dean, who did such memorable album cover images for prog-rock band YES.

Philip thought we should do the exact opposite and surprise everyone every time. His logic was just as valid as my own, I could see where he was coming from and he genuinely felt that using me as the regular and recognized semi-official Thin Lizzy artist the look of the album cover would have a consistent ‘feel’ as they would be all my work anyway, just different each time.

That was the challenge Philip set for me with Nightlife and so I set out to make a really dark but compelling image for the cover, unlike the Vagabonds cover in style but in that same idiom.

I was a huge follower of the notorious Black Panthers and for me, while Philip was more than a friend and fellow Irishman, he really did have this feline quality about him, he really was a cool black cat, and I played on that big-time.

I used that big black panther in the foreground as a metaphor for Philip himself, stalking the mean streets of New York, the tenements, the potholes, the roaches, the pimps and their prostitutes, the seedy side-streets full of menace, where a Mafia mobster boss could be gunned down in a barbers shop, a place where everything was possible and of course I wanted to portray also the vibrant nightlife of this cool, dangerous city, with this air of menace about it everywhere.

I had already incorporated the brand-new Thin Lizzy logo into the poster and that is when I made a new exclusively ‘Nightlife’ logo incorporating the Panther and this new Lizzy logo for the first time. In the end we never used this design as Philip felt the Thin Lizzy logo should be used as a stand-alone work, which I agreed was the correct course of action.

Finally, in this portfolio, I have remastered and, I hope, added to it with my newly learned digital colouring skills.

OLD MASKS FOR NEW

That graded airbrush work on the original cover art was hugely time-consuming and labour intensive, involving scalpel-cut frisk masks and endless airbrushing layer after layer until my snoz ran with the inks I used even when I wore a surgical mark while spraying fine mists of colour on to the artwork in my studio.

Now, with this new technology, I can use the Photoshop tools to create a mask and a graded tone effect over different areas in a matter of minutes. I have my daughter Suzanne who worked as a photoshop professional for years and has all the skills I needed to learn. Once I had done this new full colour version of the Panther logo in purple I decided to remaster the Nightlife artwork using the same negatives, now scanned and inverted, I used way back in 1973-74.

For this new work I rejigged the city, enlarged the area visually and threw in a few extra skyscrapers and painted up areas a little lost in the original artwork.

Next, I had to cut and paste the black panther once I had it painted and with the help of Suzanne, we managed to add outlines and more detail in the panther and the rock foreground.

The results are just amazing. Here is my old work now rendered in all its beauty and detail for the new image.
When you get to my age this stuff is nothing short of miraculous. Who could have foretold that I would live long enough to see this work come full circle and be reissued to such interest 50 years later.

Jim FitzPatrick.2024