The following year saw the release of Johnny the Fox, an album that was well received in Britain but fared poorly in the States. A single from this album, "The Boys Are Back in Town," received much airplay and hit Number 12 on the U.S. The record did well on both sides of the Atlantic, going gold. Thin Lizzy scored big with their 1976 album Jailbreak. tour after suffering a cut hand in a London club brawl. Robertson would stay with Thin Lizzy until 1978-although he was forced to miss a 1977 U.S. Downey returned and Thin Lizzy entered its most successful period. No one seemed to work out, and for a time even Lynott's childhood friend Downey quit Thin Lizzy.įinally Lynott settled down with Scotland's Brian Robertson and a Yank, Scott Gorham, from Los Angeles, thinking that perhaps two guitarists could equal the departed Bell. After guitarist Eric Bell collapsed on stage during a New Year's Eve show and quit the band, a series of guitarists took a swing at the job. These mediocre sales strained the band's willingness to stay together. Vagabonds unfortunately followed suit, despite a more traditional "rock" sound. Thin Lizzy had already endured the record-buying public's apathy toward two earlier albums, their 1971 debut effort Thin Lizzy, and the following year's Tales from a Blue Orphanage. In 1973 Thin Lizzy secured a Number Six hit with a rock version of the traditional Irish tune "Whiskey in the Jar." The band, wishing to avoid being pegged as a folk-rock cover group, did not allow this song to be included in Vagabonds of the Western World, an album that came out later that year. Rejecting the ring for a musical career brought Lynott to London in the early 1970s, where he did encounter some prejudice because of his skin color. That same year the British tabloid the Sun crowned Lynott "the superstud of rock." Although he was for a time a fairly serious boxer, Lynott soon found, as he told Rolling Stone in 1978, that "the tough guy with the thick ear wasn't getting the chicks, while your man up on stage seemed to be doing okay." The observation was not misleading. Growing up black in Dublin proved relatively free of racist difficulties, according to Lynott, though presumably life in a Catholic working-class neighborhood raised by a single mother- Lynott's Brazilian father deserted his son at age four-provided trials enough. (Readers also found poetic sensibility in books of Lynott's lyrics that were published later.) As for Lynott's band, it would have to wait six years to chart an album-a record aptly named Fighting, given Thin Lizzy's struggles to find stable personnel and success. The label "poet" stems from Lynott's early attempts at verse, which received some serious attention in Ireland. Phil Lynott, described in the Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock & Soul as a "brash black musician-poet from Dublin," founded Thin Lizzy in 1969 along with drummer and childhood buddy Brian Downey. Members included Eric Bell (born September 3, 1947, in Belfast, Northern Ireland left band), guitar Brian Downey (born January 27, 1951, in Dublin, Ireland), drums Scott Gorham (born March 17, 1951, in Santa Monica, CA replaced Bell), guitar Phil Lynott (born August 20, 1951, in Dublin died of heart failure resulting from acute blood poisioning and pneumonia, Janumarried Caroline Crowther, 1980 children: Sarah, Cathleen), vocals, bass, songwriter Brian Robertson (born September 12, 1956, in Glasgow, Scotland replaced Bell left band, 1978), guitar. If you would like to share Thin Lizzy lyrics with other users of this site, please see the bottom of this page on how to submit Thin Lizzy lyrics.
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