SCOTT GORHAM Says Recording A THIN LIZZY Album Without PHIL LYNOTT Was 'Not Going To Happen'

"In The Basement With Jesse Bruce" of Grand Haven, Michigan radio station 93.1 WMPA recently conducted an interview with BLACK STAR RIDERS guitarist Scott Gorham. You can listen to the entire chat via the SoundCloud widget below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the band's new album, "Another State Of Grace":

Scott: "If you're any kind of a BLACK STAR RIDERS fan at all of the other three albums, what you will notice is a definite step up in every way on this album, from the production of the album to the actual songwriting. We've got two new guys in the band right now, Chad Szeliga on drums and Christian Martucci on guitar. Whenever that happens, whenever you bring in new and talented blood into any situation, there's always going to be some resurgence in some corner of whatever you're doing. That's primarily what we got. We got new blood in the band. There's even more energy than we've had before and I think you can hear that in the end result in 'Another State Of Grace'. I really believe this is the best album that we've done to date."

On the origins of BLACK STAR RIDERS:

Scott: "A lot of people really did expect us to continue to record under the name of THIN LIZZY, and I was just way too uncomfortable with that. Everything that I had done up to date recording-wise under THIN LIZZY, it had always been with my buddy Phil [Lynott] sitting right in the middle, so I thought, 'Really, I'm going to go out and record without him on this album? No, that's not going to happen.' Everyone was good with it, but, 'What are we going to do with these 17 songs that we've just written?' That was kind of the birth of BLACK STAR RIDERS. We'll just come up with a new name, we'll be a new band, and we'll do what all new bands do — we'll start at the bottom and work your way up. And that's always a hard road. Starting at the bottom is going to be tough. You're duking it out there with numerous bands. We seem to be able to keep one step ahead of everybody, especially in England and throughout Europe. Right now, what we need to do is to get over to you guys and show you what we can do. Next year, that is what is going to happen. That's the plan for next year is getting BLACK STAR RIDERS over to America. Predominantly, the band is an American band. Ricky Warwick, the singer, he's the only non-American but he lives in L.A. Everybody wants to play on their own front doorstep and we're no different, so that's going to be a priority for us next is that we want to get over to the United States."

On the origins of THIN LIZZY's patented twin-guitar harmonies:

Scott: "The way that came about was kind of an accident. Brian Robertson, the other guitar player at the time, he was in the studio and what he was doing was a single line. When we heard it back, there was this millisecond delay on the line and it played back on itself in harmony. Phil and I looked back at each other and said, 'That's really cool!' And, of course, the engineer is, like, 'Oh my god! I'm sorry.' Then we had Brian go back out there and re-record this line and while he was doing that, I was learning the harmonies to it and I went out and did the harmony to it. We liked it so much and I said, 'I got a line in this other song. Why don't we do it there?' And it kind of snowballed from there. It wasn't some pre-meditated idea, that, 'This is going to be a harmony guitar lineup.' It wasn't that way at all. It started accidentally and we liked it so much that we kept on doing it and doing it."

"Another State Of Grace" was released on September 6 via Nuclear Blast. The follow-up to 2017's "Heavy Fire" was recorded in February 2019 at Sphere Studios in Burbank, California with producer Jay Ruston (STONE SOUR, ANTHRAX, URIAH HEEP).