62 PLANET ROCK
HE ALMIGHTY were one of
%ULWDLQ¶VELJJHVWDQGEHVWĥ
loved rock bands in the
’90s, chalking up eight
Top 40 singles, and four
Top 40 albums after rising to national conĥ
sciousness with their gritty debut album
Blood, Fire & Love. These days, frontman
Ricky Warwick can be found leading
Black Star Riders and Thin Lizzy, but it
was in The Almighty that he learned all
his important life lessons. Planet Rock
walks him down memory lane...Who was the young Ricky Warwick?
A day dreamer. I was born on a small
farm, so I think that was the future that
was mapped out for me, but I never wanted to
be a farmer, I wanted to be a football player,
until I was about 14, and discovered music and
girls and drinking. Obviously The Troubles
were in full swing in Northern Ireland then,
VRRFFDVLRQDOO\ ZH¶GKHDUERPEVJRLQJRɱLQ
Belfast, and the house would shake, but when
you’re a kid you don’t think much about it.What bands did you get to see as a teenager?
Hardly any. I wasn’t allowed to go into Belfast
at night because it was too dangerous, and to
be honest I was too damned scared to go in on
P\RZQDQ\ZD\ %XW¿QDOO\PHDQGDPDWH
SOXFNHGXSWKHFRXUDJHWRJRVHH6WLɱ /LWWOH
Fingers in 1980 and that just lit the fuse. It was
like, “This is it, this is what I’m doing, I want
to be Jake Burns, I need to get a guitar and be
XSWKHUHGRLQJWKDW ́,WZDVJDPHĥFKDQJLQJ
Around then my sister bought Thin Lizzy’s
Black RoseDQG,KDGWKDWDQGWKHQ6WLɱ/LWWOH
Fingers’ ,QÁDPPDEOH0DWHULDO and 1RERG\·V+HĦ
roes. Those became the three albums that I
listened to all the time.Your family moved to Scotland when you
were 15. That must have been quite a wrench.
It was a crap age to move. I don’t really underĥ
stand why we moved, I think there were a wee
bit of... shenanigans going down, and we kinda
had to get away. It was that generation where
\RXMXVWGLGQ¶WWDONDERXWVWXɱLWZDV ³:H¶UH
moving to Scotland, and we’re moving next
month.” It wasn’t up for discussion. It was crap
EHFDXVH,¶GMXVWJRWP\ ¿UVWJLUOIULHQG,¶G
a great bunch of friends, I was coming of age
and discovering the world, getting into music
and having a great time. I found Scotland a lot
tougher than Northern Ireland.In what way?
,IRXQGLWKDUGWRVHWWOH 2 QP\ ¿UVWGD\DW
school kids were coming up to me saying, “Did
AP \RXEULQJ\RXUERPEVZLWK\RX" ́7KHYHU\¿UVWUL^HARRIES,GETTYJesus saves:
Warwick in full
force lovin’
machine mode.