He claimed that Robertson's absence was not noticeable due to Scott Gorham's "double duty", and that this was "pure visceral rock & roll, the hardest and heaviest that Thin Lizzy ever made". Hailing Bad Reputation as an improvement on the previous album, Johnny the Fox, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described the album as "leaner and tougher" than its predecessor, partly due to the influence of producer Tony Visconti.
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I didn't want my picture on the album cover because I hadn't done any of the backing tracks, and I was even in a bad mood shooting for the back of it." Reception Professional ratings Review scores Robertson later said, "This was another of my little moods. Lynott insisted that Robertson would not appear on the front cover, with which Robertson "agreed entirely", although he did appear in a group photograph on the back cover.
![soldier of fortune thin lizzy soldier of fortune thin lizzy](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gDFVqpnxu3o/hqdefault.jpg)
The album also featured the playing card suit motifs that previously featured on the Fighting album in 1975, with the spade (Lynott), club (Downey), heart (Gorham) and diamond (Robertson).
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The interior artwork featured photos of all four members, plus photos from The Incredible Case of the Stack O'Wheat Murders by Les Krims, which Lynott had seen in New York. A photo of the band including Robertson was used on the reverse.
![soldier of fortune thin lizzy soldier of fortune thin lizzy](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wdHohhmJXhs/default.jpg)
Unable to meet with Fitzpatrick in time, Lynott agreed to use an image by Sutton Cooper which featured the band as a trio, without Robertson. With the deadline for the submission of the cover drawing near, Lynott travelled to the US to meet Fitzpatrick at his home in Madison, Connecticut, but went to Madison, Wisconsin by mistake. Thin Lizzy's usual cover artist, Jim Fitzpatrick, did not contribute to the cover of Bad Reputation, after a misunderstanding between himself and Lynott. Robertson stayed on for the subsequent Bad Reputation tour, which provided some tracks for the Live and Dangerous album (released 1978), but he left the band when the tour concluded. "We had to pull this together or we were going to go down in a ball of flames." "It was such an important album to us because of all the adversities that we'd been going through," recalled Gorham. He later added, "I tried not to go out to clubs for about a week, then succumbed." Robertson and Gorham shared lead guitar parts on only one song, "That Woman's Gonna Break Your Heart". However, he initially refused to socialise with the other band members: "Christ, I wouldn't even have a drink with them," he said. Lynott relented, and Robertson flew to Toronto and recorded his lead guitar parts. He later said, "I was always a big believer in the magic circle – once you broke the magic circle, the whole thing was broken, right?" He deliberately left two songs ("Opium Trail" and "Killer Without a Cause") without guitar solos recorded, and persuaded Lynott to allow Robertson to return to the band to record the solos for them. However, Gorham believed that a second guitarist was required, particularly for live work, performing songs that were written for two guitars. With Robertson out of the band, band leader Phil Lynott had decided that Scott Gorham would be able to handle all the guitar duties himself, and that no replacement for Robertson would be recruited prior to recording the album.