THE THIN LIZZY LOGO. GENESIS.
While I was working on the final artwork for Nightlife, Thin Lizzy’s first album for Vertigo/Polydor Records, Decca, the record company who had earlier dropped the band, got in touch with Philip and asked if I could do a poster for a single, The Rocker’ from the ‘Vagabonds’ album which they owned.
Both of us were a bit concerned about any move that would disturb their new working relationship with Vertigo but in the end the Lizzy management sorted it out and I got the go-ahead. Two sketches later we were in business.
But time was against us.
Remember no email, no zoom just an overnight courier or snail mail so without any delay, I sketched out my idea of Philip as a Judge Dredd type helmeted character first, but on reflection, I decided I wanted it to be obviously Philip himself riding the crazy oversized motorbike which kept the elements from the comic.
In the sketch, I added the heavy black pencil line dynamic shape to give the image momentum and the illusion of speed instead of the usual comic book energy lines.
My own instincts always veer towards a more graphic image so this became more linear and graphic than comic book art in style and execution, but we both loved comics so that element remained thru the final work.
While I was working in my studio in Dublin on the finished artwork after Philip had seen the only pencil rough I had time to produce, the phone rang. It was Philip calling from the management office in London.
Philip, I could tell, was pretty excited so I presumed it was going to be about some new little ideas he wanted incorporated into the work.
Remember in Vagabonds he kept adding little things like the spider, frog, and mouse to represent the three lads and then the Lizzymobile spaceship so I was expecting more of the same but I was wrong.
Philip had an idea and wanted to run it by me:
‘I love that lettering and think it would make a great Thin Lizzy logo’, he told me, ‘so the minute you finish that poster get going on a new band logo using that lettering for The Rocker’. If I can I’ll get it on the back cover since the front cover is in production right now’.
And that was it. Philip had a great eye, picked up on the letter style, saw a new logo in his mind’s eye when I did not even consider it myself. But as soon as I saw what he was on about I thought it was a brilliant idea so off I went and got drawing out the new lettering.
I loved the idea myself anyway so it was no great effort.
THE NOW ICONIC THIN LIZZY LOGO
I was now under pressure working like a mad man as I had a few other quite urgent commissions running too bit I made the new logo idea my priority and sketched it all out in pencil carefully measuring each letter width and stem length carefully in pencil on a grid until it, the pencil work, was near perfect and ready for the final art in pen and ink.
If there is a hell for artists it will be filled with German technical pens like Rapidograph, Rotring, and Graphos pens but while they are a real pain they are superb for any black and white linework, unbeatable in fact.
No matter how careful you are they flood until your fingers are all black and stained, can just dry up arbitrarily despite endless cleaning and they can leave you very frustrated and sometimes in a red rage but they do the job in the end.
I was blessed with superb eyesight when I was younger and it shows here with the finished artwork for the logo.
You can judge just how fine the artwork actually is from the scale ruler below.
Today I marvel at it myself and wonder just how the
f**k I managed to do such very fine line artwork with a 0.2 Rapidograph and then overlay the entire work carefully with a Letraset graded dot-matrix sheet which was then scalpeled out of the lettering so the graded impression was achieved and could be used in stand-alone black and white repro.
That little leftover piece on the left is just a reminder of how delicate and fine the matrix material actually was and how fragile too. One mistake with the scalpel on it or on the fine line ink work and you’re dead in the water.
It’s not like now where I would just pop it into Photoshop, enlarge it up, and fix it in a jiffy no problem.
Back then I would have had to just start all over again.
So there you are, that’s how we ended up with the now-iconic Thin Lizzy logo in all its endless variations.
All because I was lucky enough to have a real fellow artist and collaborator to work with on some amazing graphic art projects, that wonderful and creative mate of mine, Philip Lynott.
It was around that time too, in 1973, that I created the combination logo for Philip of the Black Panther + the brand new Thin Lizzy logo but by the time we had this done the album was out and that version was shelved for obvious reasons as it was no longer relevant, being tied to the Nightlife album.
THE THIN LIZZY LOGO. FIRST APPEARANCES.
The very first appearance of this new thin Lizzy logo was on the back cover of the album and then on the new posters out just in time for the launch.
It looked damn good too.
Later when Lizzy brought out ‘Fighting’ I was disappointed not to be asked to do the cover as I felt we were all on a roll after the rave reviews for the covers of Vagabonds and Nightlife -and to be honest I hated the whole vibe of the photos, complete with iron bars, for the cover and publicity.
I felt it took down the band and was happy not to be involved in retrospect but nonetheless, the logo looked superb and I loved the design of that cover, just not the photo imagery which Philip felt made them more relevant and dangerous.
Only later in 2001 did I get an opportunity to use this long-forgotten Black Panther version for a French record company’s Thin Lizzy tribute album titled ‘ Killers on The Loose’.
Looked damn good too, even after more than twenty years buried in the attic.
A few years later and I’m in Florence, Italy with my son and daughter browsing the fashion stalls when I spotted a beautiful black silky puffa bomber jacket and guess what’s on the back, yep, the circular black panther logo printed in a beautiful purple print on silk black.
I was a bit broke as usual so when I asked the price and told it was over €100 I passed on it. Now I just wish I had that one, it was superb, yep, a complete ripoff, a total violation of all our combined copyrights but a real beauty too.
Not ever seen one as nice since.
In the end Philip liked this logo so much he had a huge version of it made for the band’s stage shows with it in the background of nearly every gig they played, all full of rotating lights and flashing strobes.
The uses of it are many and varied and in 1981 Philip asked me to upgrade the entire logo into a 3d version for an album tentatively titled ‘Trouble Boys’.
This was it, the new Thin Lizzy look, artistic, metallic, and pretty much one of my very best.
Now artistically and technically this was my finest work ever for Thin Lizzy or anyone else for that matter, and I am, to this day, still immensely proud of it, even though it was never used and I was never paid for it by the record company.
Along with my ‘Lizzy Killers’ live painting, both of which I spent over two whole summer months working on, this beautiful mirrored logo bit the dust when the record company was taken over, fired its own art dept and then told me they would not pay me as I had ‘not got a proper pink order form from the company’, according to the accountant guy who took over, so never got a penny for all that work.
Philip was shattered and disgusted too at all this. The a band were having troubles with Vertigo and I was just collateral damage.
But that’s deffo another story for another day.
