Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Sometimes as an audience member, it only takes the intro music, the sound of footsteps echoing across the floorboards and the flicker and change of light to realise that not only are you in for a gig of high quality but also that you are in the presence of greatness.
That feeling is electric; it gets deep into the soul and starts the process of enjoyment and almost staggered awe. There really is no other way to describe it, especially in a venue such as the 02 Academy in which the sweat gathers momentum and dances with delight with the dependable guitar and drums. For many a band gets the welcome they deserve inside the Academy, as with other venues in the heartland of music but perhaps none get as rapturous response to coming on stage, especially for their first ever gig in Liverpool as Black Star Riders.
Even if the audience somewhere at the back of their minds had come to take in the sight of the legendary Scott Gorham on stage, to revel in the thought of another man whose untimely passing still leaves a scar in his legion of fans and who to this day make what can only be described as a pilgrimage to Howth in Ireland to leave the smallest or most personal of mementos at the graveside of Phil Lynott, by the end of the night what would have passed between each of them would have been just a signal, an acknowledgment that the band live are as every bit impressive and memorable to watch as Thin Lizzy.
That is of course not doing down the memory of one of the greats of Rock music but there is no other way to convey the sense of electricity that passed between Ricky Warwick, Marco Mendoza, Jimmy DeGrasso, Damon Johnson, Scott Gorham and the audience, the passing of one flame carried by a generation with pride to another, the same sound, the same devil may attitude but with added bonus that Phil Lynott would have approved of the way the Thin Lizzy tracks were performed in amongst tracks from the Black Star Riders own brilliant album All Hell Breaks Loose.
The incredibly talented bass player Marco Mendoza was in such fine form that there was a point where you could almost catch yourself wondering if he would just do an entire session on his own, the bass and the man taking any audience into a series of musical rapture. This though was a group effort and as the electricity flowed freely and with almost wanton abandon, tracks such as Bloodshot, the brilliant Before The War, Hey Judas and Kingdom of the Lost, which for everyone with a Celtic soul in the audience took to their hearts with uncontrolled eagerness, were given the same respect and cheering as Are You Ready, the superb Bad Reputation, the amp destroying Jailbreak and Emerald.
The festive period hasn’t really truly begun but to have Scott Gorham smiling his way through a set, that must have been full of reminisce, was perhaps the best present his fans could have asked for, only topped by an outrageously fantastic performance by the Black Star Riders.
Ian D. Hall