PHIL LYNOTT would have been 50 on 20th August this year. Here, PETER MURPHY profiles the legendary Philo, and talks to other stars about his enduring influence.
OVER 13 years after his passing, the abiding image of Phil Lynott is still the cover shot from Thin Lizzy s classic Live And Dangerous album: The Rocker on his leathered-jeaned knees, bass cradled in one hand, face contorted, the fist held aloft in a gesture of fuck-you exuberance.
But even that iconic shot masked a complex and wily artist. Here was a man whose work on classic albums like Jailbreak and Johnny The Fox at once abided by the traditional rules of hard rock guitar heroism, lyrical braggadocio and a fascination with Sci-Fi/Wild West/Celtic myth (reflected by Jim Fitzpatrick s intricate sleeve designs) yet suggested much more.
Thin Lizzy were always harder to pin down than their contemporaries (listen hard to the legendary dual Les Paul parts on Emerald or Chinatown and you ll hear echoes of O Riada and The Chieftains). For a start, they were one of the few old-guard 70s rock n roll combos with enough street cred to keep favour with audiences defecting to The Clash and The Ramones. When the punk terriers brought down the dinosaurs, Phil Lynott was to be found consorting not with Rod Stewart and Robert Plant, but Steve Jones, Phil Chevron and Johnny Thunders.
By all accounts, Phil was a nice bunch of guys, one minute revelling in heavy rock s lady-killing trappings on tunes like Killer On The Loose , the next penning tender ballads like Sarah and Cathleen for his daughters. These polarities constantly fueled the work, giving him the freedom to pursue trajectories as apparently contradictory as the boyish romanticism of Cowboy Song , the wry jazz of Fats or the YMO-style electronica of Yellow Pearl .
Furthermore, on tunes like Randolph s Tango and Shades Of A Blue Orphanage , Lynott could be an astonishingly poetic lyricist. But then, this neighbour of Crumlin natives Brendan and Dominic Behan also had a knack for articulating universal themes through the plainest language, in songs like his classic solo single Old Town or the evergreen rallying call of The Boys Are Back In Town . As Stuart Bailie pointed out in his Lynott biography The Ballad Of The Thin Man, writers like Greil Marcus spoke of the latter song in terms of pure tribalism, representing a fertility ritual, the renewal of the land and the deposing of ancient chiefs . These were approaches to songwriting that had more in common with Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen than Black Sabbath or Deep Purple.
Even in the twilight of his career, Phil was still stretching himself, trying out folk forms with Terry Woods on a cover of Tennessee Stud or the lovely melancholia of A Tribute To Sandy Denny with Clann Eadair. Always restless (check out the array of musical hats he tried on in Solo In Soho alone), one wonders what Lynott would ve made of current musical climates. Certainly, Phil the experimenter and bass player would ve had a ball with drum n bass; Phil the black Paddy bard could ve been the first to translate the rap vernacular into an Irish argot; Phil the master songwriter might ve applauded Blur, Pulp and Radiohead; Phil the sonic landscaper would have marveled at Mercury Rev and Air.
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