“The first night I was in London, I met Gary Moore. Scott Gorham said, ‘We’re going down to this pub. It’s a jam night.’ When I saw him play I was knocked out”: Pat Travers on Thin Lizzy, Gary Moore –and what guitarists got wrong about Eddie Van Halen

A black and white image of an open-shirted Pat Travers playing a Gibson double cut onstage in 1978.

Pat Travers will be the first to tell you that he had a very good time in the 1970s. “It was an incredible decade,” he says. “We played hundreds of shows and traveled everywhere. Yeah, after the gigs, I knew how to have fun – maybe I’d smoke a little and drink a little with the other bands on the bill. But I never trashed my hotel rooms or carried on and did anything too crazy. I always knew my limit.” He laughs. “Maybe that’s why I can remember the '70s. A lot of people I came up with have no memory of what went down.”

During the second half of the ‘70s, the Canadian-born singer and guitarist was an omnipresent figure on the live show circuit. He’d cut his teeth playing the clubs of Quebec and spent a year in Ronnie Hawkins’ band, but when he decided to get serious about a record deal, he found no takers in his homeland.