Brian Downey
Brian Michael Downey. Would anyone ever suspect he is Irish? Brian entered the world in Dublin, Ireland on January 27, 1951. Crumlin is the town in which he was raised. The Downey household was a musical one. Brian’s dad was a reasonably serious drummer who played in the “Harold’s Cross Pipe Band” in Dublin. Whenever there are drums in a house, you can be pretty sure that the kids who live there will be making their share of “music.” So it was with Brian. At about six or seven years of age, he was showing interest in the drums.
Brian’s dad began to work with him about an hour or two everyday, teaching him the basic foundations that would start him off on the right foot, or should we say, “beat.” During these lengthy lessons at home, Brian’s dad would only use practice pads for playing, no drums. This is how his dad taught him particular rhythms like the paradiddle and medello roll. The aspiration of his father was that Brian would be accepted as a drummer into the number one pipe band in Dublin. His father had connections in the most prestigious band in Dublin, so he was successful at getting his son into the band.
The genres that Brian is known for are hard rock, heavy metal, and blues rock. Brian became associated with a couple of regional bands: “Liffey Beats” and the “Mod Con Cave Dwellers.” While playing in the “Dwellers,” he met Phil Lynott who was with a band called the “Black Eagles.” Eventually, Lynott asked Brian to hook up with him and in 1970 the two, now friends, decided to form the band, “Thin Lizzy.” Eric Bell would be their guitarist.
“Thin Lizzy” went on to become one of the most successful hard rock bands in the world. Though they were known and successful elsewhere, Brian remained disappointed that they never really had a breakthrough in America. He blames that on the fact that they had no manager when touring the U. S., and no real support from their record label at the time. He said, “We had great success there (America), but we were never fully appreciated . . . There was no one to look after us.”
In reference to “Thin Lizzy,” Brian told an interviewer one time, “We certainly had no intention of becoming a worldwide act! . . . I think it’s every musician’s ambition to do something like that. But there was no worldwide plan or anything like that.” “Thin Lizzy’s” world success was so big, that there were ramifications that began to affect Downey’s mental and physical health. He actually had to take a short leave of absence from the band to recoup and a session drummer substituted for him on the Australian tour in 1978. After his short sabbatical, he returned and played with the band until the day they split up in the mid-eighties.
After the Lizzy split, it seemed Downey was nowhere to be found and suddenly in the late eighties, he was drumming for a fairly unknown band called Baby Snakes. He followed that with playing on a couple of Gary Moore’s solo albums. Following this, there was again, silence.
Enter, 1998. Downey has now become a member of a new band called “Blues Up Front.” The band has regular gigs in Dublin and recorded a live album in 1999. In addition to the regular band work, he operates his own website.
When asked how things were going with “Blues Up Front,” Downey said, “Great! We have a long schedule ahead of us, we are constantly playing, and playing places we have not played before. After all these years, I still have that urge.”
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