Primal Scream have spent their whole career shimmying their way out of being pigeon-holed. They’ve gone from twee, C86 indie-poppers to riffed-up hard-rockers to a psychedelically-inclined acid-house collective – and that was just their first three albums. But, as you can tell from their snarling licks that fuelled their classic hit Rocks, rock’n’roll has always been at the heart of the band and frontman and leader Bobby Gillespie once told Classic Rock how Thin Lizzy are one of his all-time favourites.
“Phil Lynott was a hard rock singer who could sing you into bed,” Gillespie enthused, talking to Classic Rock in 2021. Listing his other favourite singers as Paul Rodgers, Ian Gillan, Peter Tosh and Bobby Blue Bland, he described them as “male voices, men who’ve lived, suffered, been wronged; hard lives, real blues.”
