Guitar legend John Sykes always preferred Thin Lizzy as a band over Whitesnake

By Steve Newton

John Sykes only recorded two albums with Thin Lizzy before the death of Phil Lynott–1983’s Thunder and Lightning and the same year’s double-live effort Life–but his brief time with the band meant a lot to its hardcore fans.

And according to a new rockumentary released today, it meant an awful lot to him as well.

In New Jersey-raised, Munich-based filmmaker Damian Kolodiy’s John Sykes: His Words, His Music Part 2–which follows Sykes’ career from 1993 until his cancer death was announced in 2025–he professes his love of the legendary guitar-rock band.

At around the 30-minute mark, in a 2017 interview for Swedish TV, he compares his time with Thin Lizzy to that spent with Whitesnake, the more financially successful of the two acts. (As well as playing guitar on the latter’s self-titled 1987 album, Sykes cowrote most of the songs with singer David Coverdale, and the LP went on to sell a whopping 25 million copies worldwide.)

“For me, as a young band coming into [Thin Lizzy], it was quite overwhelming, and like a dream come true, ya know, so it was a fantastic time for me. I mean, Whitesnake was good too–I had some great times with Whitesnake. But I always preferred Thin Lizzy as a band than Whitesnake. Always.”

To hear the full 14-minute audio of my 1989 interview with John Sykes subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can also eavesdrop on over 500 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with rockers since 1982.