Tell me the legends of long ago

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

27/05/79 : Black Rose : A Rock Legend - Thin Lizzy

Our third visit with Thin Lizzy and they've been very unimpressive so far, but I believe this is one of their better albums so let's hope they pull out the stops here.

Yeah, I didn't mind this at all - it just got a bit more oomph to it, with some very impressive guitar work in places. I can't say any of it was particularly memorable except for the title track which is a bit of a mess and "S&M" for some of the dubious lyrics, but at least it wasn't dull. And do I have anything else to say on it?!? Nope, not really...

We're at #11 in the charts this week on their fifth week of an impressive 21 week run, with it having peaked at #2 in its second week - not a bad effort at all. The top five this week were ABBA, Ian Dury & The Blockheads (a new entry), James Last, Bob Dylan (thankfully ignored because it's a live album) and a Leo Sayer best-of (the mean part of me wondered how many tracks that could possibly have on it, but he's actually had eleven top ten tracks, including two #1s!). And the next highest new entry was a compilation entitled This Is It! (#18) which looks to be mostly disco, but it's certainly no TBDAITW.

Wikipedia tells us this is their ninth album and is the only one on which Gary Moore plays as part of the group although he had several stints with the band (I also learned that when he left after this album, he was replaced by Midge Ure). The album was produced by Tony Visconti who also did David Bowie's Lodger which we met recently - also, somewhat bizarrely, Huey Lewis plays harmonica on a couple of the tracks. Critically, it received moderate reviews at the time but is retrospectively considered to be one of their best albums - although its critical success might have played a part there because it was their most successful album here and also got to #8 in Sweden and even #61 in the US, which feels like a pretty decent effort.

discogs.com tells us that you'll need to spend a fiver to get a decent copy, but you can drop £120 on a version if you want to that seems to have no obvious reason to be so expensive. I can't say I loved this album but it was nicely of its time and considerably better than previous Thin Lizzy visits, so I find myself viewing it positively - despite barely remembering any of it.

03/06/79 - Not an enjoyable experience
04/07/79 - Megadisco!

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