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Philip
Lynott was more than just Dublin's favorite son, he was the
first real Irish rock star. He was born on August 20, 1949,
the son of a working-class Irish Catholic mother and a black
South American father. His mother, Philomena (Phyllis) Lynott,
had crossed the Irish Channel in search of better wages. She
found work in London, where she shortly became pregnant with
the future Rocker. Little is known about his father except
his name, Cecil Parris, and the fact that he and Phyllis did
not marry. Philip was born in West Bromwich, Birmingham, England
at the Halham Hospital. She returned to Dublin, but had to
leave her baby with her parents in order to earn money in
England to support the two of them. Philip Parris Lynott grew
up in the household of his grandparents, in the company of
uncles who were less than ten years older than he.
In his early teens, Philip joined a local band called the
Black Eagles as their vocalist. The group played the chart
songs of the day, and became locally popular. Their drummer
was Brian Downey, who had been at school with Philip, and
was to remain associated with him for many years, both personally
and professionally. The Black Eagles eventually became well-known
enough to open for some of the most fashionable Irish "showbands"
in huge ballrooms up and down the country. By the time Lynott
was 18, however, the group had fallen apart and he was asked
to join Brendan "Brush" Shiels' group, Skid Row.
"I didn't particularly want someone who could sing well",
Shiels said,"I just wanted someone who looked good. Philip
was about the best-looking boy around, and I knew that with
him fronting the band we'd get lots of attention from the
girls."
In 1968, Skid Row's guitarist was replaced by "a kid
from Belfast" named Gary Moore, whose talent sent the
band in a new direction. They began introducing original material
into their sets, and in 1969 came out with their first single.
"New Faces, Old Places", a Brush Shiels composition,
was released on the independent Song label. It is Lynott's
first appearance on vinyl.
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Shortly
after that, Philip left the band to have his tonsils removed,
and was not invited to return. Shiels remained interested
in him, however, and volunteered to teach him to play the
bass. Brush chose the bass rather than the guitar because,"with
only four strings to worry about he could have a band together
in three months, but with six strings to contend with it would
take much longer." Sure enough, just about the time that
Philip began to master the bass, he ran into his old friend,
drummer Brian Downey. Downey was temporarily out of work,
and when he heard that Lynott was in the same case he said,"Hey,
let's start a band!" They did, with the addition of Pat
Quigley on bass and a guitarist called Joe Staunton. This
band, known as Orphanage, provided Lynott with his first chance
to perform original material. In fact, Downey said that,"Quite
a few of the melodies that ended up on the first Lizzy album
were being thrown around in Orphanage." He added that,"We
were getting into the hippy thing, doing a bit of acid, hash,
and stuff like that. It didn't improve matters musically,
but it was fun!"
At the end of 1969, Lynott and Downey were approached by guitarist
Eric Bell about the possibility of forming a new band. It
was Downey that Bell was really interested in, but Phil joined
too, with the proviso that he would play the bass (he had
been strictly a vocalist) and do some of his original songs.
By early 1970, they had agreed on a format and a name, and
Thin Lizzy was born. When the band announced their name to
the Irish press in February, the line-up was Eric Bell (guitar),
Brian Downey (drums), Philip Lynott (bass and vocals), and
Eric Wrixon (keyboards).
By July, the band was working on a studio single, one of Lynott's
own compositions. Released on the Parlophone label on July
31st, 1970, "The Farmer" was Thin Lizzy's first
record. It was hardly a chartbuster. In fact, folklore says
that of the 500 copies pressed, 283 were sold, the rest being
melted down in an early example of recycling.
Wrixon left the band at about this time, and the remaining
three were playing four and five nights a week just to keep
going. These early days of Thin Lizzy were described by Peter
Eustace, the group's "first and last roadie": "Thin
Lizzy was very much Eric's band at the beginning, and Phil
barely got a look-in. My earliest memory of Thin Lizzy live
was that it was just Eric going through his Jeff Beck and
Jimi Hendrix routines." By the end of the year, the band
had signed with Decca Records, and their first album, "Thin
Lizzy", was released in April of 1971. Of the group's
first recording sessions, Bell said,"We were totally
bombed for the duration of that record, completely out of
our tree. Our producer, Scott English, was in even worse shape.
At one point we were tuning up, and Scott said,'OK, let's
tape that'! God knows how we got anything done - we were all
an inch and a half above the floor for two weeks." Despite
its technical flaws, however, "Thin Lizzy" managed
to capture the band's fiery Celtic spirit and progressive
intent.
The band's second Decca album,"Shades of a Blue Orphanage",
was released in March of 1972. Overall, it lacked the quality
of "Thin Lizzy"; as a follow-up, it was more of
an anti-climax. Thin Lizzy toured Europe in 1972, a trip which
produced some notable memories. Manager Ted Carroll recalled
one occasion among many:"We spent the afternoon up in
the mountains, taking acid and playing football. We returned
to the hotel to find a show going on - there was a band like
a Turkish version of the Shadows playing this awful music,
while a woman of about 45 was writhing around, pouring hot
wax all over herself. She ended up putting out the candle
by sticking it up her....well, you can imagine. We couldn't
believe it, especially after all the acid." At this early
stage, Thin Lizzy was already developing the brawling, anything-goes
style that distinguished them throughout their career.
Like most bands that hadn't had the luxury of a hit single,
Lizzy's financial status was shaky, to say the least. Yet
such was their popularity back in Ireland that they were able
to use home tours as a means of keeping afloat. The money
they made from those Irish gigs esentially subsidized their
work in England, where the band was literally losing money.
Lizzy could make five times as much in Ireland, but if they
wanted to break into the big marketplace, they had to keep
playing in England.
In late 1972, Thin Lizzy toured as a support band to Slade,
and Decca released a single to coincide with the tour. To
Lynott's immense annoyance, not to mention that of Bell and
Downey, the track chosen was not one of Phil's many original
compositions, but a traditional Irish folk tune called "Whiskey
in the Jar". Lizzy's version was as far removed from
the Gaelic original as Bell's piercing electric guitar and
Lynott's Rod Stewart delivery could make it - one critic compared
it to a reggae version of "Greensleeves"! That didn't
prevent Thin Lizzy from being lumbered with a folksy image
that would take years to shed. The song enjoyed a 17-week
run at the top of the Irish charts, and reached number six
in England.
Thin Lizzy's third album,"Vagabonds of the Western World",
was released in September of 1973, and the band was pleased
with the result. Downey said,"The quality of Philip's
songwriting and the aggression in our playing made it a good
album. I think "The Rocker" just about sums up what
Thin Lizzy was all about at that time."
In January of 1974, Eric Bell left the band. He was replaced
by Gary Moore for the remainder of the Irish tour and the
English one which followed. By April, though, Moore had had
enough. He had been drunk every night and hung-over every
morning for about four months, and,"Ultimately I left
Thin Lizzy because I realized I was killing myself."
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Thin
Lizzy was then joined by two new guitarists, 17-year old Brian
"Robbo" Robertson of Glasgow, and a Californian
named William Scott Gorham. The band's deal with Decca had
run out, and they signed on with Phonogram. Their fourth album,
"Night Life", was released in November 1974. It
wasn't the most successful of projects either commercially
or artistically, but the sheer amount of road work the band
was doing suggested that they could only get better.
In
March of 1975, Thin Lizzy visited the United States for the
first time, touring with Bob Seger and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Scott Gorham said,"BTO were a very professional band,
and gave us an indication of what was expected of us on a
bigger stage. We went on that tour thinking that if we were
supposed to be on at 8:00, we'd probably make it by about
8:30. That attitude ended the first night, when their manager
had ours up against the wall by the scruff of his neck, threatening
to throw us off the tour if we were ever late again. The next
night we were on by 7:55!" Another difference the tour
made was that Lynott saw first-hand the kind of effort and
projection that top-rank bands put into their performance.
By the time they returned to the UK, Lizzy was an altogether
tighter band. They released the album "Fighting"
in September of 1975, and ended the year on a high note, turning
in a great performance at the Great British Music Festival
at Olympia on December 31st.
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1976
brought the breakthrough album "Jailbreak". Gorham
said,"I suppose the most obvious improvement was the
twin guitar thing, which we fell into about the time of "Fighting",
but which didn't become a big deal until "Jailbreak".
Wishbone Ash had done the twin guitar thing before us, but
we took the idea and put it into a hard rock context, with
more aggression." The key track on the album was "The
Boys Are Back in Town", arguably Lynott's most famous
song. The single was released in April of 1976, and reached
number eight on the British charts. It reached the Top Twenty
in the States as well, and the album notched up sales of 100,000,
far in excess of anything the band had achieved previously.
This was Thin Lizzy in focus, and the group was at last beginning
to make money. Just seven months after "Jailbreak",
in October 1976, the band released another album, this one
called "Johnny the Fox". It was an ideal follow-up
to "Jailbreak", and confirmation that Thin Lizzy
was on the crest of a wave. The album went to number twelve
on the UK charts.
Although
a tour of the States had been planned for November / December,
Lizzy's brawling surfaced again and forced a cancellation.
The road crew was actually in New York, finalizing the preparations,
when they were told that guitarist Robertson had slashed his
hand in a bar fight and would be unable to make the tour.
There are several versions of this story, and Robbo still
insists that the injury was due to bad luck rather than bad
judgment. The agreed-on facts, however, are that the incident
happened in a bar, late at night, and that the injury was
inflicted with a broken bottle.
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After
the injury, Robbo was told that he would never play again.
That turned out to be untrue, but the issue of whether he
would ever play with Thin Lizzy again was far from settled.
Gary Moore was once again recruited to fill out the line-up,
and in early 1977 the band took off for a US tour as the supporting
band for Queen. (This gave the marketing men the chance to
come up with one of the corniest titles of all time; in Elizabeth
II's Jubilee Year the it was billed as "The Queen Lizzy
Tour".)
Moore
left Thin Lizzy at the end of the tour, and the remaining
three began work on another studio album. "Bad Reputation"
took shape during May and June of 1977, by which time Robbo
was back with the group, at least on a session basis. During
August the band, with Robbo officially "guesting"
on guitar, undertook a European festival tour. In September
"Bad Reputation" was released, and quickly rose
to number four on the UK charts. Thin Lizzy had never been
bigger, nor Lynott more influential: adored by fans, admired
by contemporaries, accepted by critics, and a natural for
the media.
It was, however, a time when those who knew Philip best
began to sense a change in his personality. In retrospect,
it can be blamed partly on the fame that he was enjoying,
and partly on the drugs he was taking. Whatever the explanation,
the emergence of Philip Lynott the Difficult Artiste dates
from the summer of 1977 and Thin Lizzy's autumn U.S. tour.
Tour manager Frank Murray recalled,"The problem was
that we'd all been hitting it a bit heavy - smoke, drink,
coke, and so on. But then Philip started taking tranquilizers;
he'd do all this coke to keep him awake until five in the
morning, and then take a load of sleeping pills to get himself
to sleep. Then there'd be someone knocking on his door a
few hours later trying to get him on the bus to the next
town. Consequently, he'd usually be in a really foul mood,
and he'd be looking for a fight." Live sound engineer
Peter Eustace added,"Philip was OK until he discovered
powders, pills, and potions."
Of course, with Thin Lizzy nothing ever went as planned
anyway. For their UK tour in late 1977, the record company
decided to lay on a limo to promote the band's cool rock
star image. But because there was only one limo, they were
hauling around a trunkful of gear - so much that the trunk
would never shut properly. They ended up having to tie the
trunk lid down with a wire coat hanger, which totally destroyed
the look of opulence the limo was supposed to project. That
was typical Thin Lizzy.
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1978
began with the mixing of the double album "Live and
Dangerous". Released in June, it was a hit on both
sides of the Atlantic. On this album, for the first time,
the band managed to recreate the excitement of their stage
performances in the studio. The live rendition of "Still
in Love With You" is considered by some to be the highlight
of Lynott's entire career.
The 1978 summer tour was the last featuring the Robbo line-up.
Tension had been building for some time; Brian Downey said
that,"Robbo always seemed to be in the wars - broken
bones, cuts, bruises, slashed tendons, and God knows what
else. You never knew if he was going to turn up to the next
gig in one piece." "He was a fucking nut case",added
Scott Gorham,"He was a great player and a lot of fun
to be with. But Phil was always pissed at him for some reason,
and in the end even I had to agree that he was a liability."
Robbo himself admitted,"I was really out of control,
a complete asshole. I used to drink a lot of whiskey and
snort a lot of speed, so I was fired up a lot of the time,
like a stick of dynamite waiting to explode. I mean, I'm
short-tempered enough, but when I'm on whiskey and speed
I'm uncontrollable."
In the fall Thin Lizzy took off for the States again, with
Gary Moore replacing Robbo, but without Brian Downey. "I
was totally exhausted", he said,"I just couldn't
take any more. I didn't want to see another stage again,
and I certainly didn't want to go on to Australia, as had
been proposed." The band auditioned drummers in LA,
and as Moore told it,"One of the guys we tried was
Terry Bozzio, but he just didn't fit in with us - he didn't
do drugs and he didn't say "fuck" enough times
in a sentence! Plus, he wanted to bring his wife on the
road. We were like,"Oh, yeah, SURE!" So we ditched
him and got in Mark Nauseef, who'd been playing with the
Ian Gillan Band."
This "Live and Dangerous" tour was marked by turbulence,
as everyone from Phil to the limo driver got into fights.
Two of the road crew got arrested in Honolulu on the trip
to Australia, and the whole trek was something of a circus.
"Typical Lizzy, really. If it wasn't for bad luck we
wouldn't have had any luck at all."
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Moore
and Nauseef flew back to LA when the tour was over, and
the remaining members of the band returned to London to
begin work on the next album. They were soon joined by a
rejuvenated Brian Downey, and Thin Lizzy released "Black
Rose" in April of 1979. The centerpiece of the album
was the title track, in Gaelic "Roisin Dubh".
It was possibly the most ambitious piece of music Lizzy
had ever attempted, sprawling across the second side of
the record in four sections - 1) Shanendoah, 2) Will You
Go, Lassie, Go, 3) Danny Boy, and 4)The Mason's Apron.
Gary Moore was back with the band for their next U.S. tour,
but as he recalled,"It quickly became apparent to me
that things were going downhill. Phil just wanted to have
a good time basically, and it seemed like he didn't give
a shit about performing. It got to the point where the party
after the show was more important than the show itself.
Phil was becoming harder and harder to work with. You couldn't
get him out of his hotel room, for a start. We were always
late for everything. Scott used to call us the most unprofessional
professional band in the business, and he was dead right."
The friction between Moore and Lynott reached its peak in
July, and Moore quit the band in mid-tour. "I couldn't
stand there watching Phil blow it night after night",
Moore said. "No one could control him. I told someone
once that they fired me for going on stage with my guitar
in tune! I was joking, but it was a bit like that."
Moore was replaced by Midge Ure, and for their tour of Japan
in September Lynott added a fifth player, guitarist Dave
Flett. This allowed Ure to switch to keyboards for some
songs, and it also afforded a spectacle not seen since the
demise of Lynyrd Skynyrd - three lead guitars huddled together
at the front of the stage.
On St. Valentine's Day, 1980, Philip Lynott married Caroline
Crowther, the mother of his 14-month old daughter, Sarah.
One of the highlights of the wedding was the speech given
by the bride's father, entertainer Leslie Crowther. "When
Philip asked for my daughter's hand in marriage",Crowther
quipped,"I said,'Why not? You've had everything else!'"
This was confirmed by the arrival of their second daughter,
Cathleen, some five months after the wedding.
About the same time as the wedding, Thin Lizzy announced
the name of their new guitar player. It was Terrence Charles
"Snowy" White, a seasoned session player who had
worked with artists as varied as Peter Green, Al Stewart,
Cliff Richard, and Pink Floyd. The new line-up also included
keyboardist Darren Wharton. Lynott's first solo album, "Solo
in Soho", was released in April of 1980, and in May
the band opened their "Chinatown" tour, although
the album of that name was still languishing in the studio.
The tour was a lackluster affair, and most of the blame
fell on Snowy White. He was a great guitar player, but not
much of a showman onstage. (A joke of the time was that
White took valium as a stimulant!)
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"Chinatown"
was finally released in October, and the track "Killer
on the Loose" provided the band with another hit single.
On the whole, though, the album was judged to be "agonizingly
average". In March of 1981 Vertigo released the compilation
album, "The Adventures of Thin Lizzy", which went
gold in the UK.
The next project in the production line was the album "Renegade",
released in November of 1981. Like "Chinatown",
"Renegade" tends to get swept under the carpet
when rock historians review Lizzy's recording career. But,
while most fans would agree that the two Snowy White albums
lacked the firepower of some of the earlier releases, it
seems unfair that an album containing such stirring songs
as "Renegade", "Hollywood (Down on Your Luck)",
and "It's Getting Dangerous" is regarded with
so little enthusiasm. Unfortunately, whatever its artistic
merit, the album was a commercial failure.
Some of the problem had to do with the fact that Lizzy's
sound fell into the gap between heavy metal and pop music,
sometimes pleasing the fans of neither. There was also the
question of image: one of the tracks from "Solo in
Soho", "Yellow Pearl" had been picked up
by the BBC as the theme tune for their "Top of the
Pops" show, and hard-core rock fans felt that Lynott
had no business being associated with such pap. Part of
the band's problem, however, was unquestionably due to an
increase in activity in "the illegal chemical sweepstakes".
Everyone knew that Philip was getting heavily involved with
drugs.
The "Renegade" tour of 1982 was an improvement
on the "Chinatown" one, with more effort and imagination
being put into the stage production. It is not, however,
remembered with much fondness by those who took part in
it. Things were rapidly spinning out of control, and Lynott's
drug abuse was getting worse. "We used to have patrols
at our concerts", said engineer Eustace,"with
people scouring the audience for drug dealers. We'd also
have people going through Phil's luggage and throwing away
all his chemicals. But it was a losing battle, because Phil
would always get more."
Eventually Lynott became so unreliable that Snowy White
could take no more. Rather than face another siege in the
studio for which Philip might, or might not, show up and
might, or might not, be capable of working, White quit the
band. Even manager Chris O'Donnell, who had been part of
Lizzy's team since 1973, threw in his hand. He'd had enough
of watching the deterioration of the band, and especially
of its leader. His assessment of the last years he was with
Lizzy is brusque: ""Chinatown" was absolute
garbage, and when Phil brought in a keyboard player for
"Renegade", that was it for me. A once brilliant
band was turning into a pile of crap before my very eyes."
Philip's second solo album,"The Philip Lynott Album"
was released in October of 1982. It has been described as
"a patchwork of simple ideas drenched in the moist-eyed
emotions of a soppy, sentimental fool", which seems
hard to improve upon. Following the failure of "Renegade",
this work made it clear that both Lynott's future and that
of the band were in jeopardy.
The main thing that held Thin Lizzy together for one more
album and one more tour was their precarious financial situation.
The band was, in fact, on the verge of bankruptcy - they
couldn't afford to quit. Manager Chris Morrison recalled,"In
those days it was costing about 500,000 pounds a year to
run Thin Lizzy. Every person on that crew was on a bloody
retainer, and the wages bill was enormous. I work with bands
today (1993) that cost 50,000 pounds a year to keep together,
so you can imagine the extravagance of the Lizzy operation."
It was Morrison who came up with the idea of billing the
"Thunder and Lightning" tour as a Farewell Tour,
in order to increase ticket sales.
In
fact, "Thunder and Lightning", with John Sykes
replacing Snowy White on guitar, was probably the best work
the band had done since 1976. It did well on the charts,
reaching the highest position (#4) of any Lizzy album since
"Black Rose". Within days of the press announcement
of the Farewell Tour, all the tickets had been snapped up.
With the success of the album sales as well, it began to
look as if Thin Lizzy would be able to clear their debts,
and move on with clean slates.
At the last of Thin Lizzy's shows at the Hammersmith Odeon
(March 12, 1983), Chris Morrison realized a long-standing
dream - the reunion of the Lizzy guitarists. As the main
set reached its climax, out from the wings stepped Brian
Robertson to contest one more dual with Scott Gorham on
their signature songs "Emerald", "Rosalie",
and "Baby Drives Me Crazy". Then Gary Moore waltzed
on stage to lead the band in "Still in Love With You"
and "Black Rose". Eric Bell joined the party for
"Whiskey in the Jar", and then the whole pack
fought over "The Rocker".
Originally planned to last three months, the Farewell Tour
ended up lasting nearly a year. After the UK and Scandinavia,
the band went on to Japan, where the trip turned into a
nightmare. Peter Eustace recalled,"Phil couldn't get
any heroin in Japan, and he was in a bad way." He came
apart during the set one night, delivering a long rambling
monologue before staggering offstage. After that he pulled
himself together after a fashion, but didn't really recover
until they left Japan.
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Thin
Lizzy presented Phonogram with a live double album in fulfillment
of their contract and as a souvenir of the last tour. Titled
"Life", the album included the guitar jam at Hammersmith,
and it should have been a treasure. Unfortunately, Lynott
insisted on doing the mixing himself, and he just wasn't
up to the job. Not only was the finished mix rough, but
it took forever and cost a fortune. The album didn't come
out until the end of the year, when the furor had long since
died down.
The band's last show was on September 4, 1983, in Nuremburg,
Germany. The end of Thin Lizzy came not with a bang but
a whimper. "After Germany", said Darren Wharton,"we
said goodbye at the airport and that was it."
Aftermath:
Chasing the Dragon
For
the remaining three years of his life, Philip Lynott's heroin
use became progressively more obvious, and his deterioration
progressively more pronounced. His wife Caroline left him,
taking their daughters, whom her family sought to protect
from their father's lifestyle.
After
the break-up of Thin Lizzy, Lynott put together a band called
Grand Slam. With Mark Stanway on keyboards, Laurence Archer
on guitars, Robbie Brennan on drums, and Doish Nagle as
rhythm guitarist, Grand Slam debuted in London in May of
1984. The band was well-received, and presented some impressive
original material. The problem was that no one in the music
industry was prepared to gamble on a renowned heroin addict
who was embarking on a mid-life career change. Even with
Chris Morrison's management, Grand Slam could not sign a
record deal. It did not help that the band was out of control,
drunk and/or stoned for every performance. Lynott, Nagle,
and Brennan were shooting heroin as well.
Grand Slam gigged through 1984, interspersing their live
shows with short spells in the studio. But Mark Stanway
recalled that "toward the end [Lynott's] moods were
unbelievable, almost psychopathic. It was terrible rehearsing
with him, because if he was on the gear he'd carry on playing
the same thing for two hours. He'd forget the words. He
put on weight, and seemed to lose all his pride in his appearance."
One of the band's last shows took place at the Marquee in
London at Christmastime. It was a great show, made even
more remarkable by the condition that at least three of
the band members were in at the time. In the end, however,
the money ran out, and without the security of a record
deal Morrison couldn't keep the band going.
In 1985 Lynott worked with Gary Moore on Moore's song, "Out
in the Fields". When this was released, it was backed
by Lynott's "Military Man", which he had written
for Grand Slam. The record reached #5 on the UK charts in
May. "Nineteen", another Grand Slam song, was
released in November, and Philip was beginning work on another
album. By this time, though, his health had become so bad
that "his body had just about shut down".
On Christmas Day, 1985, Philip Lynott was found unconscious
in his London house. He was taken to Salisbury Hospital,
where he died on January 4th, 1986. The pathologist's report
indicated that he had developed multiple internal abcesses
and blood poisoning, as a result of which he had suffered
kidney, liver, and heart failure. "Phil didn't die
of a heart attack; he died of a life style."
On January 9th a service was held for Lynott at St. Elizabeth's
Church in Richmond, and on January 11th he was buried from
the Howth Parish Church in Ireland. The Gaelic inscription
on his stone reads,"Go dtuga Dia suaimhneas da anam"
- "May God give peace to his soul".
The
Boys Are Back In Town?
Hmmm....,
well sort of anyway. In 1994 Brian Downey, Scott Gorham,
John Sykes, Darren Wharton and bassist Marco Mendoza got
together for a "Phil Lynott" tribute tour of Japan
under the name "Thin Lizzy." The dates proved
to be very successful, yielding sold out shows across the
country.
The biggest Thin Lizzy show since Phil's passing in 1986
took place ten years later in Dublin, Ireland at a sold
out venue, The Point. Fans from all over the world turned
out in support of this once in a lifetime show, most of
whom were too young to have seen the original band during
their glory days.
Since that time, the line-up of Scott Gorham, John Sykes,
Tommy Aldrige & Mark Mendoza have continued to tour
around the world under the "Thin Lizzy" name.
NOTE: Having just seen this line-up of Thin Lizzy at JAXX
in Springfield, VA, I walked away with mixed emotions. Something
was wrong in this reporters eyes. Yes, the band performed
all the beloved Lizzy classics, but there was something
missing, and that something was "soul." Mark Mendoza
did a great job on bass for the departed Lynott, and the
guitar playing of Scott Gorham was on mark all evening.
What left me flat was the overplaying of John Skyes &
Tommy Aldrige, both fine musicians in there own right, but
their style of playing may not sit well with the true Thin
Lizzy fan.
In a perfect world where differences can be worked out and
egos put aside, Scott Gorham, Brian Robertson, Mark Mendoza
& Brian Downey would be the "Thin Lizzy" representing
the songs of Phill Lynott. One can only hope that this will
someday come to pass.
Original research, editing & typing by the late, great
Coyote Red. Source material provided courtesy of the Tsilis
Archives. Special thanks to Mark Putterford, The Rocker.
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