JOHN SYKES TRIVIA
Trivia
The 1994 Thin Lizzy reunion began with a question asked in Japan. In a 2008 interview Sykes recalled that his career in Japan was thriving at the time and that interviewers kept asking whether Thin Lizzy might ever regroup. He brushed the idea off as absurd, but the question would not go away over a period of years. Having played Lizzy material on a Blue Murder live record, he finally put it to Scott Gorham; Gorham passed it to Brian Downey, and to everyone’s surprise Downey was willing to try. Rehearsals followed, then shows. Blabbermouth carried the interview.
The first record to carry Sykes’s own name predates his time in Thin Lizzy. Universal Music Japan’s biography records that he signed a solo deal with MCA in the summer of 1982 and issued a debut solo single, Please Don’t Leave Me. The song was written with Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, who also sang it. Sykes, in other words, had already written with Lizzy’s driving force and put that voice on a record of his own before he became the band’s guitarist.
Sykes turned Whitesnake down the first time they asked. His official biography records that when David Coverdale spotted him, his reason for refusing was loyalty to Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy. The calls kept coming, and what finally settled it was Lynott’s own blessing. His playing first surfaced on the US release of Slide It In, and the tour behind that record ended in front of 500,000 people at Rock in Rio in 1985 — a show broadcast across South America.
Blue Murder started life with an entirely different cast. Universal Music Japan’s biography records that when Sykes moved his base to Los Angeles in 1987 he formed the band with Cozy Powell, Tony Franklin and Ray Gillen, and signed to Geffen Records — but Gillen and then Powell both left. Carmine Appice came in on drums in 1988, and the group settled into a trio with Sykes handling guitar and vocals alongside Franklin. The debut album appeared in April 1989, and the band played shows in Japan that August.
The guitar on the cover of Loveland is Sykes’s own 1959 Les Paul Sunburst. His official equipment page records that the instrument was not merely photographed for the sleeve but played on most of the record. He took it out for a handful of shows as well, then thought better of exposing a guitar of that value to life on the road and went back to his usual black Les Paul Custom.
The year of Sykes’s death is still reported wrongly in places. In February 2025 his official site addressed a run of questions about the dates on the memorial image on its front page, which read 1959–2024. He died in late December 2024, the site explained, and because the news was not made public until 2025, some outlets went on to report his death as having occurred in January 2025. The same notice asked readers to disregard rumours about memorial events, and stated that accurate information would come only from the official site and his official social channels.
Is This Love was not written for Whitesnake to begin with. Songfacts records that Coverdale went to the south of France for the album’s early writing sessions carrying a request from a contact at EMI: if he came up with anything suitable for Tina Turner, they wanted to hear it, as the label was hunting a follow-up to the worldwide success of What’s Love Got To Do With It. Sykes heard him working on the song in the villa and joined in, having been told plainly that it was earmarked for Turner. The destination changed only when label head David Geffen heard it and told Coverdale to keep it for Whitesnake.
Sykes co-wrote nine of the songs on Whitesnake and was out of the band before it reached the shops. Speaking to the UK magazine Rock Candy in 2017, he said he was dismissed alongside bassist Neil Murray and drummer Aynsley Dunbar, that Coverdale told none of them anything about the decision, and that he learned he was no longer a member only when he asked the band’s A&R man, John Kalodner, what was going on. By Sykes’s account, Coverdale’s explanations — that the label had forced the line-up change, and that he had written 95 per cent of the guitar parts — were both untrue. Blabbermouth reported the interview.
Sykes’s first appearance on a Japanese stage came with Thin Lizzy’s final world tour. Universal Music Japan’s biography records that he joined in the autumn of 1982 and that the band announced its break-up a few months later. He therefore became Thin Lizzy’s last guitarist, playing on their final studio album and on the live album, and it was as part of that farewell tour that he performed in Japan for the first time. The band formally dissolved in August of the following year.
Japanese audiences first saw Sykes as a Whitesnake guitarist at Super Rock ’84 in August 1984. Universal Music Japan’s biography records that he joined at the end of 1983 and that his first task was to re-record guitar for Slide It In, an album already finished, so that it could be remixed for the American market. He came to Japan the following summer.
The only live album Blue Murder left behind documents a Japanese tour. Universal Music Japan’s biography records that after releasing Nothin’ but Trouble in September 1993 the band played Japan that December, and that the recording of those shows appeared as Screaming Blue Murder in March 1994. The line-up of the period ran to five, taking in Sykes on guitar and vocals, Marco Mendoza on bass, Nik Green on keyboards and Kelly Keeling on backing vocals.
The 1982 solo single Please Don’t Leave Me has been put on CD in Japan again and again. Universal Music Japan’s discography lists a CD issued on 16 December 1992 (catalogue number MVCM-309) alongside SHM-CD editions dated 7 May 2008 (UICY-93470) and 18 May 2016 (UICY-25650). The one song Phil Lynott sang for him was thus still reaching Japanese shops more than a quarter of a century after its original release.
John Sykes did not learn the guitar in Britain but on a Mediterranean island. Born in Reading, England on 29 July 1959, he moved with his family to Ibiza in Spain in his early teens when his parents’ work took them there, and it was there that he picked up the instrument and immersed himself in the blues. According to the biography carried by Universal Music Japan, he was back in England by the late 1970s and working a job in the building trade; what settled the question of a musical career was seeing Gary Moore play with Colosseum II. Local bands followed.
The end of Thin Lizzy’s farewell tour did not end Sykes’s work with Phil Lynott. His official biography records that he went straight on to join Lynott’s solo tour of Europe, in a band that went under the name The Three Musketeers. The same page notes that the BBC captured Thin Lizzy’s final show, at the 1983 Reading festival, as a live album.
It was Gary Moore’s playing that decided Sykes on a career in music, and years later he played on a record made in Moore’s memory. His official site reports that Moore Blues for Gary – A Tribute To Gary Moore was the idea of Bob Daisley, who had played bass with Moore since the early 1980s and felt that too little had been said when Moore died in 2011; the project answered that by re-recording his music with players drawn from his own circle. Sykes’s contribution was a version of Still Got The Blues.
Blue Murder’s second album came with a wholly new rhythm section. His official biography records that Nothin’ But Trouble brought in Marco Mendoza on bass and Tommy O’Steen on drums. The same page frames the debut as a record that showcased not only Sykes’s fiery, melodic guitar but his singing as well, and points to its range — from the epic Valley of the Kings to the more pop-leaning Jelly Roll.
Out of My Tree came out not under Sykes’s own name but under the band name Sykes. Universal Music Japan’s biography records it as the first release of his move to Mercury, issued in August 1995 and framed as a guitar-led record that returned to his roots. He played shows in Japan that December, and early in 1996 appeared in Dublin at a Thin Lizzy reunion marking ten years since Phil Lynott’s death.
The thick distortion Sykes is known for is not what you hear on Is This Love. His official equipment page records that he often reached for a 1961 Fender Stratocaster when recording clean guitar sounds, and that he used it for much of the Whitesnake recording of that song. The man identified with a Les Paul Custom picked an entirely different instrument to get the texture that track needed.
What makes Sykes’s black Les Paul Custom recognisable at a glance was Phil Lynott’s idea. His official equipment page records that during the Thin Lizzy years, on Lynott’s suggestion, he swapped the pickup mounting rings, pickguard and toggle switch plate from the stock Gibson parts to chrome ones. His main instrument is a 1978 Les Paul Custom, and the same page notes that this single guitar has carried him through thousands of shows and every recording of the past twenty years. The tuners were replaced with Grovers, the nut is brass, and the Gibson Dirty Fingers in the bridge — after years of wear — gave way to a lower-output Gibson PAF reissue.
The sound of Whitesnake’s 1987 album and of Blue Murder’s debut came out of the same amplifiers. His official equipment page records that Sykes used a pair of Mesa Boogie Coliseum heads for much of both records — a design carrying a Mark III preamp section but six 6L6 power tubes, giving 180 watts apiece. The same page notes the contrast on the road: for more than ten years of Thin Lizzy and Sykes tours he ran his Les Paul straight into a single 50-watt Marshall JCM800 head and one 4x12 cabinet.
One guitar in Sykes’s collection was a gift. His official equipment page records that the Joe Satriani model Ibanez he owns came to him from Satriani himself, after Satriani had used it on tour. The same page notes that his favourite among his more recent acquisitions was an EVH Frankenstein.
In 2006 Gibson put Sykes’s name on a Les Paul. His official biography records that the Inspired By signature model was built after his 1970s Les Paul Custom and offered in two forms: an aged version recreating the look of the real instrument, and a standard VOS finish. The run was small — 66 of the aged models and a little over a hundred VOS — and both sold out almost immediately, becoming collectors’ items thereafter.
Nuclear Cowboy was put together in a way unlike anything else in Sykes’s catalogue. Universal Music Japan’s biography records that the album, released in October 2000 after a three-year gap, brought back his Blue Murder colleagues Carmine Appice and Tony Franklin while introducing drum loops and programming — methods that had not appeared on a John Sykes record before. It turned out to be his last studio album.
The Golden Robot Records deal announced in 2019 was dissolved within the same year. Sykes’s camp stated on his official site that contractual undertakings went unfulfilled after the signing and that, for all their own effort and patience, there was little attempt to move anything forward. Once written contracts revert to unkept verbal promises, they said, a company’s integrity is gone. Going forward, they intended to release the album under their own control.
When Sykes stood on an awards stage, it was not to collect anything of his own. His official site reports that in January 2019 he was invited to accept an award on behalf of his friend Bob Daisley, on Daisley’s induction into the Hall of Heavy Metal History. Daisley is the bassist behind work with Ozzy Osbourne, Gary Moore, Uriah Heep and Black Sabbath, and had most recently appeared alongside Sykes on the Gary Moore tribute. The ceremony was hosted by another friend of his, the rock radio personality Eddie Trunk.
Sykes had no personal social media account. In January 2019, after someone created a Facebook profile impersonating him, his official site issued a warning and stated plainly that he held no personal account of his own on any social platform. The only pages connected to him were the official Facebook page linked from the site and an associated Twitter page, both run by an administrator as a news feed with the occasional message from Sykes himself. The site was careful to add that it welcomed the tribute pages that carry his history without pretending to be him.
A documentary about Sykes’s work was made after his death. In August 2025 his official site announced that the filmmaker Damian Kolodiy had completed a two-part film titled John Sykes: His Words, His Music, tracing his career as a guitarist and songwriter. It is available on YouTube.
Sykes was remembered at the 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Awards. His official site records that his name appeared in the ceremony’s In Memoriam segment that November, roughly three hours and eight minutes into the broadcast, and that the show was available on Disney+ for a limited period.
His family has set out a position on the site regarding the Sykes recordings that continue to appear after his death. A statement of September 2026 says the Estate asked Golden Robot Records to identify the contractual and legal basis on which the label claims the right to release and commercially exploit the recordings, to clarify the extent of the rights asserted, and to account for what has already been issued. The label’s legal representative replied that it considers itself to hold valid rights, but the documentation and detailed explanation requested were not supplied; the label said on 18 June 2026 that a fuller response would follow in due course, and almost three months later none had arrived. The Estate states plainly that it has neither approved nor authorised the forthcoming release and had no part in the decision, and that it issued the statement so that fans and the public would understand where it stands.
Straight after leaving Tygers Of Pan Tang, Sykes went to the United States chasing a place in Ozzy Osbourne’s band. Universal Music Japan’s biography records that he travelled over as a candidate, that nothing came of it, and that he returned to England. Both Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake came after that false start.
Whitesnake’s 1987 album sold in the region of twenty million copies worldwide. His official biography gives that figure and records that Sykes co-wrote the entire record, producing songs such as Still of the Night and Is This Love that still get radio play. The same page notes that a thirtieth-anniversary collectors’ box set was assembled in late 2017, carrying original demo recordings and archival session photographs.
In 1997 Sykes released two records of quite different character in the same year. Universal Music Japan’s biography describes Loveland, his first full album under his own name, as a ballad record with strings, and 20th Century as the album that followed under the Sykes banner. For the latter he kept Marco Mendoza on bass and filled the drum chair with session players including Simon Phillips and Tommy Aldridge. A Japanese tour followed the next year.
The John Sykes compilations turn up only in the Japanese catalogue. Universal Music Japan’s discography lists Best of John Sykes – Chapter One, issued on 16 December 1998 (catalogue number PHCR-82), and a further edition, Chapter One: Best of John Sykes, dated 9 August 2000 (PHCW-1074). The same listing still carries a CD maxi-single, My Life, from 5 October 1995 (PHCR-8335). The run of catalogue numbers is itself a record of how far Japan was the main market for his solo years.
The first band to put Sykes on tape was not Tygers Of Pan Tang. Louder’s obituary records that he joined his first group, Streetfighter, in 1978, and that the single track he recorded with them, She’s No Angel, surfaced on the 1980 NWOBHM compilation New Electric Warriors. He joined Tygers Of Pan Tang the same year, going on to play on the band’s second and third albums, Spellbound and Crazy Nights. The music that had put a guitar in the teenager’s hands in the first place was Eric Clapton’s.
The seat Thin Lizzy offered Sykes was the lead guitar chair vacated by Snowy White. Louder’s obituary records that after leaving Tygers Of Pan Tang in 1982 he cut the solo single Please Don’t Leave Me with a line-up that included three Lizzy men — Phil Lynott, Darren Wharton and Brian Downey — and that the invitation to replace White followed shortly after. Thunder and Lightning, the only studio album he made with the band, became the heaviest record in Thin Lizzy’s catalogue on the strength of the NWOBHM attack he brought to it.
Sykes was not told that the band he had just joined was on its last legs. Scott Gorham addressed this in a 2020 Classic Rock interview, saying that Thin Lizzy knew Thunder and Lightning would be their final album but did not pass that on to Sykes, because the members could scarcely believe it themselves. Gorham’s view was that Sykes came out of the whole episode short-changed. Louder places his account in the passage covering Sykes’s time in the band.
Slide It In, the first Whitesnake record Sykes touched, was an album the band’s American label had refused to release. Louder’s obituary records that after Thin Lizzy folded he had intended to carry on with Lynott’s new band Grand Slam, but an invitation to join Whitesnake in early 1984 arrived in time for him to add guitar to the stalled record. The same piece notes that Slide It In went on to sell more than six million copies worldwide, and that the following album, 1987, sold more than eight million in the United States alone.
The reason for hiring him is on the record too. In a 2009 Metal Hammer interview, David Coverdale said he had wanted a leaner, harder-edged Whitesnake: the band had made six albums in a short span and done well by them, but he had no wish to stay inside the same blues-and-pop framework. Bringing in a player who could carry that shift was, by Coverdale’s account, exactly why Sykes was invited. Louder quotes the passage in its obituary.
The guitarists on screen in Whitesnake’s videos are not the man who played the parts. Songfacts records that the lead single Still Of The Night was written by Coverdale with Sykes, but that by the time the album reached the shops Sykes had left the band, and the clip instead features Adrian Vandenberg and Vivian Campbell. The same entry notes Coverdale’s account that the song’s musical starting point was the 1957 Elvis Presley hit Jailhouse Rock.
Coverdale’s side of it is on the record as well. Asked about the relationship in a 2023 Metal Edge interview, he said the two of them fitted together superbly as musicians but not as people, and that however good the album they made together was, they could never connect on a human level. He also granted that Sykes was indispensable to Whitesnake and a formidable live player. While demoing his solo record Into The Light, after roughly fifteen years of estrangement, the two spoke and it went well enough that working together again crossed his mind; the more they talked, however, the more he felt how far each had changed, and concluded it would only repeat itself. BARKS carried the interview in Japanese.
Sykes wrote every Blue Murder song and disliked the record being called a solo project. In an interview with Classic Rock — published in 2014 and reissued by Louder when he died in 2025 — he said he was at his best inside a band and regarded everyone else involved as an equal part of it, whoever had written the material. Of the debut he explained that he wanted to put Whitesnake behind him and make a record his own way, and that he intended it to be heavy from the outset. The debut is also the album he was proudest of.
Ending after two albums was never the plan. Speaking to Classic Rock, Sykes explained that by the time Nothin’ but Trouble arrived in 1993 the music business had changed out of all recognition: grunge had taken hold and the kind of music the band made was abruptly unwanted. He also named the second album’s bid for radio play as a mistake — they had let themselves be talked into being more commercial — and noted the irony that by the time it came out, interest in that sort of record had gone anyway.
Sykes gave his own reason for Blue Murder never regrouping in a 2008 interview. Asked about Carmine Appice’s talk of a Japanese tour, he said that he alone had been signed to the contract, that it was his band, and that he had picked the men who played in it. Appice speaking as though the band were his was, in Sykes’s account, precisely why they never got back together. Blabbermouth carried the interview.
Part of the reason nineteen years passed without a new album is on the record in a 2019 BARKS report. The fifth solo record had originally been slated for 2016–17, with teasers already made public, but Sykes lost a man he genuinely trusted when his manager died, and put the project on ice. Names attached to the sessions at that point included Josh Freese, Tony Franklin and Chris Chaney, and the working title was Sy-Ops.
The Golden Robot deal was short-lived, but a separate route to Japanese listeners had been set up for it. BARKS reported in February 2019 that the new album was to appear on Golden Robot Records overseas and on Ward Records in Japan and across Asia. Tony Franklin, his old colleague, was back on bass for the sessions after a long absence, with Fred Boswell Jr. on drums.
Sykes once auditioned for Guns N’ Roses. In an account BARKS reported in 2021, Richard Fortus recalled that it happened in 2009, when the band was looking for a replacement for Robin Finck; on seeing Sykes in the rehearsal room, Tommy Stinson initially took the view that there was no point in even hearing him. Two minutes after Sykes plugged in, everyone present was astonished, and Fortus remembered the tone as extraordinary. Asked why he was not chosen, Fortus put it down to his reputation.
Sykes returned to the stage under the Thin Lizzy name immediately after losing Blue Murder. Louder’s obituary records that when the label dropped the band following the live album, he put together a touring version of Thin Lizzy with Brian Downey, Scott Gorham and Darren Wharton. His solo career began the year after that, with Out Of My Tree in 1995.
Sykes long resisted the idea of recording new material under the Thin Lizzy name. In a 2008 interview he said he had been set against it for years, on the view that starting to record again might be disrespectful. With plenty of people asking to hear something new, and with Scott Gorham finally keen, he came round to thinking the time might have arrived. His position at that point was that if they could come up with something genuinely good, he was willing. Blabbermouth carried the interview.
Sykes gave his account of the early-2000s Whitesnake reunion rumours in a 2008 interview. Coverdale, he said, rang him and asked for advice on what sort of band to assemble and whom to bring into it. Sykes put forward the names of Tommy Aldridge and Marco Mendoza — and then never heard from him again. Blabbermouth carried the interview.
When Myles Kennedy found Blue Murder he was a teenager in a house without cable. Writing for Classic Rock, he recalled coming across the band while watching MTV at a friend’s place, that the channel played two songs — Valley Of The Kings and Jelly Roll — and that something in them sent him to the debut album. Kennedy noted how good the record sounds under a young Bob Rock’s production, but said what stayed with him more was Sykes’s guitar, the playing of a musician who balances technique against feeling. As for why the band never became huge, he put it down to timing.
Nuclear Cowboy in 2000 was the last studio album Sykes made. Louder’s obituary records that after roughly two decades of silence he surfaced in 2021 with two singles, Dawning Of A Brand New Day and Out Alive, promising that more material was on the way. It never came.
Sykes left the touring version of Thin Lizzy in 2009. BARKS reported in 2021 that he had departed the band that year, and that on 1 January 2021 he put out a music video for the new song Dawning Of A Brand New Day. The report noted that the footage was said to have been made four years earlier, and that a solo album titled Sy-Ops was expected.