September 1 • 2019 The Mail on Sunday^
What did your parents
teach you about money?
TO BE careful with it. My
mother was pretty frugal but
my dad was a real gambler. His
favourite holiday was to Las Vegas.
He was in construction – he had
worked his way up from painting
houses to building houses in Glen-
dale, California. Then the recession
came and he lost everything.
We had to sell our home, this
beautiful big house at the top
of a hill that my father had
built, which was his pride
and joy. I was 12 years old at
the time. So growing up, I
saw the big wins – but also
the big losses. That made me
think about money in a dif-
ferent way. It made me a lit-
tle conservative with it.
What was the first paid
work you ever did?
A CONSTRUCTION job
for my dad when I was 13
or 14 years old. I and a couple
of Mexican guys were paid $2
an hour to fill up dump trucks
with garbage from the houses
my dad was building. I think that’s
probably where my bad back
comes from.
Have you ever struggled
to make ends meet?
YES, when I moved to England
in the 1970s, I had nothing, no
money at all. I came over here
because my brother-in-law was in
the English rock band Supertramp
and he thought maybe he could get
me in. But it didn’t work out.
I formed a little band myself but I
could only make £12 a week playing
on the pub circuit. So I signed up
with the Manpower Services Com-
mission, a temporary workers’
agency, and went round people’s
homes cutting their lawns, taking
Thin Lizzy guitarist escaped being a builder – and hit the jackpot
THE legendary guitarist Scott
Gorham was struggling to make
ends meet when he joined the Irish
rock band Thin Lizzy, which he
thought was a ‘ridiculous name’ at
the time.
He was earning just £12 a week
playing in pubs and was about to
get thrown out of England and sent
back to America where he came
from when he auditioned for the
chart-topping band – and never
looked back.
Another State Of Grace, the first
single from his new album with the
Thin Lizzy spin-off band Black Star
Riders, will be released on Friday.
Black Star Riders will also tour the
UK and Ireland in October. Tickets
are available from http://www.
blackstarriders.com.
ME and my
MONEY
TV licence protesters to target PM with Twitter tidal wave
By Laura Shannon
PERSONAL FINANCE 101
their rubbish out, washing their
windows, whatever – as long as it
meant I could stay in England, I was
happy with that. It got to the point
that I had 30 days left on my visa
before I would have to get back on a
plane to Glendale, which I did not
want to do. My father had actually
said: ‘I will see you in six months,
and when you come back, you’re
going to go back to work for me.’
And I did not want to do that. I hated
the construction business like you
would not believe.How did you turn
things around?
THIS Irish musician called
Ruan O’Lochlainn heard me
play at the pub and told me therewas a band called Thin Lizzy,
which was looking for a guitar
player. The first thing I
thought was, ‘What a ridicu-
lous name, those guys aren’t
going to go anywhere with a
name like that’.
Then he asked me if I knew
anything about Irish rock. I
didn’t want to say I did not, so
I said, ‘Hell yes, I know eve-
rything.’ But at that point,
‘Irish’ and ‘rock’ didn’t really
compute. It made no sense to
me. I had not heard any of
their songs. But I did not
care, I still said great, I would
go to the audition.
I guess I impressed them on
the day of the audition. I actually
thought I’d blown it – and after I got
to play with the band for just a cou-
ple of songs, I really wanted to be in
it. They were far and away the best
I had ever played with. And that guy
Phil [Lynott] in the front – I was like,
‘Wow, I love that guy’.
At 10pm that evening the phone
rang. Phil asked me to join the band
and I just about jumped down the
phoneline trying to get the word
‘Yes’ out quickly enough. The man-
agement took over my whole visa
problems and all of that went away.Have you ever been
paid silly money?
THERE was one festival we
were supposed to be playingWe earned
£200,000
just to sit at
home when
rain halted
a festival!
CHARITY Age UK is encouraging
hundreds of thousands of angry
campaigners to bombard Prime
Minister Boris Johnson on social
media in a bid to overturn the
decision to charge the elderly for
their TV licences.
From June next year, most over-
75s will have to fork out £154.50 a
year. In the past the cost was first
subsidised by the Government and
then latterly by the BBC.
Age UK’s ‘Switched Off’ petition,
which was signed by more than
600,000 people, was handed in at
Downing Street last month.
Now the charity is calling for
protesters to try to get the Prime
Minister’s attention on Twitter.
They are also being urged to write
to their local MP.
In a letter to signatories, the
charity says: ‘Whatever you think
about who should pay, this needs a
proper discussion. I think Johnsonshould sit down with the BBC and
agree a way forward.
‘We know that Johnson uses
Twitter a lot. Let’s tell him what
we think by sending tweets. If all
of us do it, he’ll get over 600,000.’
The move to end free licences
for over-75s has caused outrage.
Scores of readers have written to
The Mail on Sunday with many
using the words ‘heartless’,
‘contemptuous’ and ‘shameful’.
The only people over 75 who will
be able to avoid the fee from nextyear will be those in receipt of
pension credit, which is paid to
those of State pension age to
ensure they receive a minimum
weekly income.
But more than a million eligible
pensioners fail to claim every year- either because they do not know
about the benefit or are too proud
to accept help.
Pension credit will top up your
weekly income if it falls below
£167.25 for a single person, or
£255.25 for couples. To claim call
0800 99 1234. Those reaching the
age of 75 between now and next
June should claim a free licence
until the new rules are in place.
You can do this from the age of
74 and receive a short-term paid
for licence valid until your next
birthday. Anyone who has
mistakenly paid for a licence that
should have been free can claim a
refund. Visit tvlicensing.co.uk or
call 0300 555 0286.
laura.shannon@mailonsunday.
co.ukand it was sold out. Then the heav-
ens opened and the field became
unliveable. Health and Safety can-
celled the whole thing. But thanks
to our contract, they still had to
pay us. We got £200,000 just to sit
at home.What was the best year of
your financial life?
I CANNOT say one year. There
were five years when we
earned really big money from the
end of the 1970s but I don’t think
there was one year that was better
than another.
Those were the golden years,
when the band earned millions of
pounds a year. We had a really hard-
core fanbase. Whenever we brought
out an album, we could depend on
our fans to buy a certain amount.
Every quarter, a cheque would float
in and you’d look at it and go, ‘OK,
that’s pretty damn good.’ Then you
would forget about it.What is the most expensive
thing you bought for fun?
MY 1959 Les Paul guitar. I
bought it in 1978 from a vin-
tage guitar dealer – he was selling
six of them at the time.
The one I wanted was $2,300. I
thought that was outrageous but I
turned to Phil and he gave this
knowing look.
He didn’t say anything because
the sales guy was right there, but Ibought it. I still have it. It’s worth a
six-figure sum now. I wish I had
bought two of them.What is
your
biggest
money
mistake?
I HAVEN’T
really made
any. I did invest quite a bit in
Japanese stocks in the 1980s. My
investments started to fall so I
called up my investment guy and
asked him if he’d seen what was
happening in Japan. He said: ‘Yeah,
that’s really a drag.’
I asked him: ‘Aren’t you supposed
to tell me when I’m losing money?’
and he actually said to me, ‘Oh no,
I’m only supposed to get you in. I’m
not supposed to get you out.’
I was so angry, I told him to sell
everything. Eighteen months later,
Japan was a total dump. So many
people lost a lot of money, but I
didn’t because I had got so angry.
That was a lucky escape.The best money decision
you have made?
BUYING my home in Putney
in 1981 for £54,000. My wife
and I thought we would only live
there for two years and we’re still
here. It’s a four-bedroom house in
the heart of the village and is val-
ued at £1.3 million. We’ve been
mortgage free for 30 years.Do you save
into a pension?
YES, I started 20 years ago, on
the advice of an accountant.
None of us in the band had a pen-
sion. That topic never came up.Do you invest directly
in the stock market?
YES, via Individual Savings
Accounts. I leave the day-to-
day decisions to a financial expert
I know well and trust – we play golf
together. I have opted for medium-
risk investments.What little luxury do
you treat yourself to?
GOLF. I play as much as I can- probably twice a week – and
it costs me about £200 a month.
People expect me to say I ride dirt
bikes and parachute out of
aeroplanes in my spare time, but
no, it’s golf.
It’s something I really love doing.
It helped me with my drug problem
in the 1980s.
If you were Chancellor
what would you do?
I WOULD plough a shedload
more cash into the NHS. I’ve
lived in this country for more than
40 years and I have never under-
stood how the NHS has been able to
survive because it has always been
in trouble.
In my opinion, a healthy nation is
a happy nation.n^ Donna Ferguson
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SPIN-OFF:
Scott with the
Black Star
Riders in 2013BACK IN TOWN: Scott Gorham, right, with Thin
Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, centre, and Bryan Robertson