Renegade is the eleventh studio album by Irish rock band Thin Lizzy, released in November 1981. Though not his first appearance, this was the first album in which keyboard player Darren Wharton was credited as a permanent member, becoming the fifth member of the line-up. As such, he made a contribution as a songwriter on the opening track "Angel of Death". However, even though he had officially joined the band, his picture was omitted from the album sleeve. Renegade was the second and final album to feature guitarist Snowy White. By his own admission, White was more suited to playing blues than heavy rock and he quit by mutual agreement the following year. He went on to have a hit single with "Bird of Paradise" in 1983.
A remastered and expanded edition of Renegade was released on 23 September 2013 and includes five bonus tracks.
Recording
The previous album Chinatown having been released in October 1980, Thin Lizzy travelled to Compass Point Studios, Nassau, in early January 1981 to start work on the follow-up. Chinatown co-producer Kit Woolven accompanied them, and they worked on four songs during the following week. However, band leader and main songwriter Phil Lynott was also using this studio time to record material for his second solo album, and two of these songs, "Cathleen" and "A Little Bit of Water", appeared on The Philip Lynott Album the following year. "In the Delta" ultimately remained unused, but "It's Getting Dangerous for Us" became the first song earmarked for the as yet untitled Thin Lizzy album.
The band then went on the road, before convening at Townhouse Studios in London in March to work on more new material. Work continued on "In the Delta", and a song left over from the Chinatown sessions, "The Act", was reworked and abandoned again, while another song destined to be a Lynott solo track, "Someone Else's Dream", was recorded. Three other songs were brought in: the upbeat "Kill (Gotta Get a Gun)"; guitarist Scott Gorham's song "Wham Bam", and a song begun by Snowy White called "Fats". The latter was the only track which emerged on Renegade. Wharton remembered, "Everyone hated the damn song," while British music newspaper Record Mirror described it as "dinosaur stuff". It was later released on the Vagabonds Kings Warriors Angels box set in 2001, with the title corrected to "Song for Jimi".
Change of co-producer
The band continued working at Odyssey Studios and Morgan Studios, recording overdubs and developing more material during September. At this point Lynott and co-producer Kit Woolven had a disagreement about sharing studio time between Thin Lizzy and Lynott's solo project. Woolven had become frustrated: "I wanted to try and make sure that the solo album sounded one way and the Lizzy stuff sounded another way. If you're flipping between things all the time, it's quite confusing." He also said he was not keen on the Renegade material: "It didn't do it for me. I stuck with the solo stuff as it was more interesting." Tsangarides said they all struggled to find a single to release from the album, "but I think we felt that "Hollywood" was the closest."
| rev2 =Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal
| rev2Score = 10/10
|rev3 = Rolling Stone
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Greg Prato of AllMusic claimed that Renegade is Thin Lizzy's worst album, with "blatant pop leanings and a production too similar to British heavy metal bands of the early '80s", blaming Snowy White's incompatibility with the group, Lynott's "flat vocals" and the band's drug problems. Prato named "The Pressure Will Blow", "Leave This Town" and "Hollywood (Down on Your Luck)" as the album's better songs. Paul Elliott of Mojo deems it an "overlooked album", drawing attention to Wharton's keyboard work and the lighter-edged material such as the swinging "Fats" and cinematic "Mexican Blood",
Co-producer Chris Tsangarides said later, "When I hear the Renegade album now, I get it... I think it was maybe ahead of its time. It was just too diverse for people to accept when it was first released. If you listen to it you'll notice that no one song on there is like another."
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