Eric Bell

"Your fabled Strat played a big role in the recording of Exile. What’s the story behind the two DeArmond pickups you have in it? Well, when I joined Brush Shiels’ band [in ’74], Brush was playing guitar at that point, and he was getting an electric guitar made for him by Gary Nelson—he’s an Irish guitar-maker who lives just outside Dublin. He hadn’t got any of these pickups that they have in America or England, but he did have DeArmond pickups. So he made the guitar, and Brush brought it down to soundcheck one night and asked if I wanted to try it out. I thought the tone was really nice, so Brush said, “Why don’t you try DeArmonds in your Strat? If you don’t like them, you can take them out.” So I went off to Gary Nelson and he put the two DeArmonds on, and they’ve been on there ever since. To this day I don’t know whether they’re single-coil or double-coil. They look like double-coil, but I think there’s a single-coil pickup underneath."

"“Whiskey in the Jar” is the song that started Thin Lizzy’s legacy. In the early ’70s, Bell often played with a Colorsound Tone Bender and a Watkins Copicat tape echo, which comes through in his sound here."

"“Whiskey in the Jar” is the song that started Thin Lizzy’s legacy. In the early ’70s, Bell often played with a Colorsound Tone Bender and a Watkins Copicat tape echo, which comes through in his sound here."