VIVIAN CAMPBELL On Playing With THIN LIZZY: 'I Know My Heart Is In The Right Place'

DEF LEPPARD guitarist Vivian Campbell recently spoke to AOL's Noisecreep about playing with the classic rock outfit THIN LIZZY alongside original-era THIN LIZZY members Scott Gorham, Brian Downey and Darren Wharton, as well as former WHITESNAKE bassist Marco Mendoza and ex-THE ALMIGHTY frontman Ricky Warwick.

"It's certainly nice to re-connect and remember why you're doing what you're doing," he said. "When you do anything for a long time, you have a tendency to become a little complacent, jaded perhaps. When something is your hobby, your passion... you do it for entirely different reasons."

THIN LIZZY has recruited GUNS N' ROSES guitarist Richard Fortus as the temporary replacement for Campbell, who will return to DEF LEPPARD next month.

"The situation as it stands with LIZZY is that they've very generously said that I could come and go as my schedule dictates — that they'll find someone else to play with over the summer while I'm touring with DEF LEPPARD, and then I'm free to come back," Vivian said.

Regarding the possibility of taking part in the songwriting sessions for a new THIN LIZZY album, Campbell told Noisecreep, "I know my heart is in the right place and I feel the same is true of Ricky Warwick. Ricky embodies a lot of the same soul and spirit that Phil Lynott had. He has a lot of the same characteristics to his personality and he's very authentic at what he's doing. He's not trying to be Phil Lynott, he's trying to be Ricky Warwick fronting THIN LIZZY. I think we've won over a lot of skeptics who said THIN LIZZY shouldn't even be playing with the name THIN LIZZY... and taking it one stage further. I do think that at some point in the near future the band might want to experiment, to write new songs and see what happens."