Thin Lizzy – Cold Sweat (Live, 1983)

It’s the only song John Sykes ever wrote for Thin Lizzy — a last jolt of electricity on the band’s final album — and now both the men who wrote it are gone.

By the time Cold Sweat tore out of the speakers in early 1983, Thin Lizzy were already living on borrowed time. Phil Lynott, the band’s charismatic Irish frontman, was deep in the heroin addiction that would kill him; the group was fracturing; and this heavier, sharper single announced both a thrilling new direction and, as it turned out, the end of the road. It stands as a genuine one-off in the Thin Lizzy catalog — the only song their new guitarist, John Sykes, ever co-wrote for the band.

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Sykes was the fresh blood. A 22-year-old firebrand poached from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal band Tygers of Pan Tang, he had first crossed paths with Lynott on a one-off 1982 single, “Please Don’t Leave Me,” and impressed the frontman enough to be recruited that September, replacing the departing Snowy White. There was one problem: by the time Sykes arrived, the songs for the next album were essentially already written. His single lasting contribution to Thin Lizzy’s songbook was Cold Sweat, which he and Lynott finished together in the studio — and it became the lead single and one of the most enduring tracks the band ever cut.

The sound of a band getting heavier as it ended

Cold Sweat is built for maximum impact: a lean, driving riff, Lynott’s urgent snarl, and a mid-song solo from Sykes that rewired what people expected from Thin Lizzy. Where the band’s classic sound had been all twin-guitar harmony and melodic swagger, Sykes brought a razor-edged, hyperactive attack — a blazing display of Van Halen-style two-handed tapping and furious bends that pointed straight toward the heavy metal of the coming decade. It made Cold Sweat a favorite of the metal crowd, later covered by the likes of Megadeth, Helloween, and Sodom, bands who heard in it a blueprint for where hard rock was heading.

The song led off Thunder and Lightning, released on March 4, 1983 — Thin Lizzy’s twelfth and final studio album, and by common agreement their heaviest. Produced by the band with Chris Tsangarides, the record reached No. 4 on the UK album chart, while the Cold Sweat single climbed to No. 27. Critics and fans have often noted the irony: after a run of commercially disappointing albums, Thin Lizzy found a revitalized, harder sound just as they were about to break up. The performance featured on this page captures exactly that moment — the band tearing through Cold Sweat on the BBC’s Sight and Sound In Concert, recorded at the Regal Theatre in Hitchin and broadcast on January 26, 1983, weeks before the album even hit shops.

Two names, both gone

What gives the song its weight now is everything that came after. Thin Lizzy launched a farewell tour behind Thunder and Lightning and played their final show at Germany’s Monsters of Rock festival on September 4, 1983. Sykes soon decamped to Whitesnake, where he would help craft that band’s blockbuster 1987 breakthrough. And Phil Lynott — one of rock’s great songwriters and its first major Black Irish star — died on January 4, 1986, at just 36, his body ravaged by years of addiction. The reunions that followed always pointedly avoided recording new material, out of respect for him.

Then, in 2024, John Sykes died of cancer at 65, closing the book on Cold Sweat entirely: both of the men who wrote it are now gone. That lends this blistering three-minute rocker an unexpected poignancy. It was the sound of a young guitarist announcing himself and a legendary band roaring back to life for one last record, captured here in full flight on a British stage in early 1983. A song about pressure and nerves, written by two men at the height of their powers, has become a small monument to both of them.