THIN LIZZY And BLACK STAR RIDERS Guitarist SCOTT GORHAM Launches His Artwork
When Scott Gorham was around fourteen years old, at high school in Glendale, California, he took a semester in art. It was his first and only art lesson, and a good way to escape the typing course. Scott sometimes drew pictures at home and was accepted after submitting a line portrait of his sister, Vicky. However, he was daunted by the competition.
“All the kids were sat around this big table, and whenever the teacher set us a project, I would look around and think, ‘God, these people are so much better than me,'” he says. “But then she would grab my drawing and go, ‘Look, class! Scott understands what I was talking about.’ I could see the other kids all looking at me, growling.”
The end of the semester marked the end of Scott‘s art education. “I couldn’t remember a thing — maybe some perspective training, and some stuff about shading, but I’ve always said the most important instrument in drawing is the eraser,” he says.
By then, Scott was playing guitar. “And the guitar always came first,” he insists. In 1974 he moved to the United Kingdom and joined Irish rockers THIN LIZZY. Scott would perform on ten best-selling albums, including “Jailbreak”, “Johnny The Fox”, “Bad Reputation” and “Live And Dangerous”, and on the hit singles “The Boys Are Back In Town”, “Rosalie”, “Dancing In The Moonlight (It’s Caught Me In Its Spotlight)” and “Waiting On An Alibi”.
However, Scott secretly carried on drawing, with THIN LIZZY and, in more recent times, with the group BLACK STAR RIDERS, and at home during downtime after a tour. He just didn’t tell his fellow musicians or even his wife, Christine. Then Christine discovered a folder containing numerous drawings, some of which dated back to the early 1980s. These images were inspired by Scott‘s life on the road, getting sober, the state of the planet and even the time Phil Lynott took him to his first football match.
“But none of the band, even Phil, saw any of them,” he says. “I do wonder what Phil would have thought. But on tour, these drawings were me taking myself away from the music for a few hours.’