*******Sorry about the poor sound quality on this video. Please turn up the volume. ( I still thought it was worth publishing. )

******* Also sorry about my slightly late arrival to film

Last night I was delighted to sit in on an audience with Belfast rock guitar legend, Eric Bell, who was a founder member of the famous Irish band Thin Lizzy from 1969 to 1973. Eric Bell is credited with naming the group Thin Lizzy, after Tin Lizzie, a robot character in The Dandy comic!
Eric Bell is 76 today but his memory is as sharp as ever. He is full of stories of his early musical days and the meteoric rise of the Thin Lizzy.

Eric was born in 1947 on Jocelyn Aveue on east Belfast Woodstock road.
He began his career with local groups around his home area, including the last incarnation of Them to feature Van Morrison, between September and October 1966. He even played in a number of showbands but rock and blues pulled him away. Down on Grafton street Dublin he stumbled across some other discontented musicians at a gig. Not expecting a positive response he asked them to join him in forming a band. The lads in question turned out to be Phil Lynott, Eric Wrixon and Brian Downey, the originals of Thin Lizzy.

19691973 As lead guitarist, Bell played on Thin Lizzy's first three albums Thin Lizzy, Shades of a Blue Orphanage and Vagabonds of the Western World, as well as their hit single "Whiskey in the Jar". He cowrote a number of songs with Lynott and Downey, including "The Rocker" which became a live favourite throughout the band's career. He also composed one song on his own, "Ray Gun", from their first album, Thin Lizzy.

During the early 1970s, the pressures of recording, touring and the excesses of the rock star lifestyle began to take their toll. He left the band after a New Year's Eve concert in 1973, after throwing his guitar into the air in the middle of the concert, pushing the amplifiers into the audience and storming off stage. He stated later that he had no regrets about leaving: "I really had to leave because of illhealth. It was exhaustion, and the majority of things that were available to me... I couldn't really handle it." He was temporarily replaced by Gary Moore. Stints with the Noel Redding band followed and from time to time he turned up back in Thin Lizzy moving between them and his own Eric Bell band. He followed this by joining saxophonist Dick HeckstallSmith's eightpiece blues rock ensemble Mainsqueeze. They toured Europe, recorded a live album in 1983, and later toured as Bo Diddley's backing group, recording the Hey... Bo Diddley: In Concert album in 1986. During the 1990s and 2000s Bell continued to perform and record with the Eric Bell Band. They released several albums. He also recorded with the Barrelhouse Brothers.

In 2005, he joined Gary Moore onstage to perform "Whiskey in the Jar" at the Phil Lynott tribute concert "The Boy Is Back in Town" in the Point Theatre, Dublin. This was released on a DVD called One Night in Dublin: A Tribute to Phil Lynott.
In 2010, Bell moved from London where he had lived for many years to his new home in West Cork, Ireland. In latter days he has returned to Co Down and now lives in Carrodore.