A previously unheard album featuring Scott Gorham is about to be released, 40 years after it was recorded. The Californian-born guitarist, best known for being a member of Thin Lizzy, was in Los Angeles group The Western Front towards the end of Lizzy’s lifespan, between 1983 and ’84.
The quintet had been led by their management to believe that a deal with Atlantic Records was a formality. When that arrangement fell through, so despondent were the band that the two-inch master tapes containing its dozen songs were consigned to the garage of their guitarist, Dennis O’Donnell, where they remained.
“I’ll never forget the call from my manager, who said: ‘You want me to send you a dozen roses [to celebrate]? I’m sitting in the office of Atlantic Records and you’ve got a deal,’” former Western Front guitarist Marty Walsh tells Classic Rock. “All these years later, we’re scratching our heads and wondering why we just allowed the band to end there.”
Walsh and Gorham had known one another as aspiring musicians during high school, and their reconnection in the 80s was a key factor in the birth of the Western Front.
“I was in Los Angeles to work on an album by my brother-in-law, Bob Siebenberg [drummer with Supertramp],” Gorham explains of his involvement, “and during downtime from that Marty and I tried to turn this riff I had into a song.”
The song, Set Me Free, was so good that the pair earmarked it as the first single from what could easily become an album. That was given further momentum by the addition to the band of Moon Calhoun, a quite brilliant singer from Oklahoma.
Forty years on, the results still sound amazing. The album is a deliciously smooth example of West Coast AOR, overlain with loud guitars.
“I love that kind of music,” Gorham says. “In Lizzy, Brian Robertson was the fiery guy, but I was the one that came up with the melodies and harmonies.”
Ultimately, however, record company politics would sink the band’s hopes and dreams, and the master tapes collected dust.
“After the deal fell through, I became involved with Supertramp, Darrell [Verdusco, drummer] worked with Mickey Thomas [of Starship], and Scott went back to London to start 21 Guns,” says Walsh. “But none of the guys in the band forgot about The Western Front.”
It was Magnus Söderqvist, a Swedish melodic rock enthusiast and record label boss, who instigated the process of getting the album finally released. After its song Euphoria was repurposed for an album by World Trade, the band of current Yes bassist Billy Sherwoood, and some selections were posted online in bootleg form, the inquisitive Söderqvist contacted former TWF guitarist Marty Walsh to determine the project’s status.
Meanwhile, Walsh happened to mention to his good friend Steve Lukather of Toto the possibility of the album being revived. “Steve advised me that Ed Van Zijl and his label the Mascot Label Group would give it a better home,” Walsh says. “Luke hooked me up, and Ed loved the material, but it was Magnus that got the whole thing rolling.”
Some tense moments followed when the tapes were ‘baked’ to restore their freshness – a risky process that has been known to destroy magnetic tape – but to everyone’s relief it was a complete success.
When the music was recorded, The Western Front was a studio-only project. Now that the album, titled Eureka, finally has a release date, and all of the participants are alive and kicking, Gorham and Walsh would relish the band playing live, although both acknowledge that the idea might be far-fetched.
“Wow!” Walsh exclaims, like the notion has just occurred to him. “That would be expensive, and the logistics all but impossible, but to do a show would be fabulous.”
And maybe a second album?
“One song was left off this record, and we found other scraps of music on the tapes, also a song without lyrics,” Walsh ponders. “So there could be enough for an EP. All of us are ready, and Moon can still sing the way he used to.”
“If Eureka sells enough copies to make it viable, it’s definitely worth thinking about,” Gorham says.
In related news, Gorham reveals that in terms of live performance his relationship with Thin Lizzy may finally have come to an end.
“You know, I loved doing the reunion shows but I’ve decided to walk away from that,” he says, with a hint of sadness. “I kept thinking more and more about my buddy Phil and how I wish he was up there with me. I started to feel guilty doing it without him – it really was his band.
“For years I endured those that said: ‘No Lynott, no Lizzy’, but now I’m admitting: ‘I agree with you,”” he adds. “In my defence, all I was trying to do was to remind people how cool the music was. I’m relieved to no longer have to make those excuses.”
The Western Front’s Eureka is released on July 10 via Music Theories Recordings/Mascot.
