In 1976, the NME’s Chris Salewicz spent some time with Phil Lynott in Los Angeles as the band began their ascent to international stardom.
In the late spring of 1976, I flew to Los Angeles to write an article about Thin Lizzy for the NME.
I’d already met Lizzy several times and was thoroughly aware that although guitarists Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson, and drummer Brian Downey, played significant roles in the group, it was Phil Lynott who led the band.
They were in town to play a show on June 2 at the Santa Monica Civic, not topping the bill but supporting Journey. Since the booking, their single The Boys Are Back In Town had surged up the US charts, pulling the Jailbreak album behind it.
As we sat by the pool on the roof of the Hyatt House hotel, we both knew this was a pivotal moment. The cavalry, in the form of the hit single and album, had arrived just in time, heading off the group’s creditors at the pass and saving them from breaking up. Now, the only way was up.
Like a reflection of this, Lynott seemed chipper that day. Perched on the edge of a sunbed that had been pulled into the shade of a parasol, his bare feet stuck incongruously out from the bottom of his black leather trousers, which was somewhat inappropriate wear considering the baking heat. His top half was encased in a black cowboy shirt, its silver press-stud buttons snapping the sleeves firmly shut around his wrists, as though he was making a point about his attitude to life.
But as we talked, I couldn’t help noticing that he looked quite exhausted. Despite his natural bravado, the demands of newfound success were having an effect on him.
“I mean, okay, the band’s breaking,” he told me in that rich Dublin brogue. “It’s not that important that we break as fast as we’re breaking. It’s never been that important to me. It’s the quality of the breaking. If we break with quality we’ll last like all them bands that are me heroes. Like The Who. That band’s great. It’s got integrity and that’s why it works. Pete Townshend never lost contact with his audience and he didn’t go through too many mind fook-ups.”
Phil Lynott and Bob Geldof in 1977 Lynott and Bob Geldof sing backing vocals for Blast Furnace And The Heatwaves, 1977.
I’ve noticed that you seem to believe almost passionately in a kind of total contact with Thin Lizzy’s fans. And you seem to certainly believe in songs, as opposed to just getting up there and creating a series of sounds.
Yeah [nodding]. Well, I was a singer, right, and the 60s proved that melodies played in the rock idiom… That whole weird thing rock went through when the arrangements dominated – ELP, Jethro Tull and 10/4 time – was very harmful to rock because although there are a lot of good musicians, musicianship and melody don’t always have to be the same thing. And there’s a lot of false focus. The very harmful stage of the whole thing was when the bands just got up and just let it float. Put screens and films on and hoped the audiences were tripping and that they’d get off on it.
Of course, much of that pretension came from such acts considering themselves as artists. But you also certainly regard yourself as an artist, and not just in the field of music. For example, you’ve sold 10,000 copies in the UK of your book of poetry, Songs For While I’m Away.
I’m incredibly proud of that. I’m more proud of that than, say, I was when the record got into the charts. A budding poet, eh? There’s a guy here in LA who’s written how I’m Bruce Springsteen. Now I have to spend half me interviews saying “I’m not fooking Bruce Springsteen” and that I appreciate him but I don’t try to imitate him. I take it as a compliment when we’re compared, but I take it as an insult when it’s said I imitate him. This guy ’ere in LA worded it in such a way that all of a sudden I’m on the defensive. It’s a freaky one, the power of the pen.
So is the power of being up onstage…
Oh, yeah. [Momentarily distracted as he wheels around to follow a passing bikini bottom] That’s the nice thing about being a live act. I can get the audience, but it’s for the moment. It’s like, “Can I do it tonight?” And you can see when people like you. But on record – and with the pen – it’s almost for all time. Really a lot more thought has to go into it.
At this point, Chris O’Donnell, Thin Lizzy’s co-manager, wandered over and handed Phil a set of photo contact sheets the band had taken at Disneyland the previous day. The frontman flicked through them, largely satisfied.
“I only want shots where I look ’andsome,” he said, smiling with a measure of irony. “And some of these are very funky. I love shots where the band look grassed. Knowharramean? And I think the girls do, too.”
Thin Lizzy seem to be doing very well with girls now. But you still remember the bad old days, though, Phil? Remember being looked on as a token loser band?
Yeah.
You were actually conscious of that, then?
I was conscious that the media saw that we didn’t follow up Whiskey In The Jar. And we didn’t in terms of record sales. The only place we seemed to be happening was on the street. But, you know, that’s Thin Lizzy summed up for you. Like an album and three singles after Whiskey…, man, you’d get people mentioning Whiskey… in interviews – and I’d go “Oh Jeezuz”. That was how far behind the press got on the band. They really lost contact. They were all going on about ‘the Irish traditional thing’. Bad photographs went out. We were generally misrepresented. You know, all the things that I’m worrying about now happened to us the wrong way. And that’s where we got the loser tag. And then when we broke up – well, not many bands break up three times. [Laughs] And still come out on top.
Which can’t be just down to your ego?
It’s also down to our drummer Brian Downey. Me and Brian have known one another since we were kids. But I’m the mouthpiece of the band. You take a band that’s made up of arms, legs, bodies… I happen to be the piece that talks. And does all that area of it, you know? I’m also very easy to recognise; the darkie in the middle jumping around with the guitar, you know. Dat boy’s got riddim! Knowharramean?
The Santa Monica Civic show was a real triumph. Lizzy were introduced over the tannoy as “the next supergroup”. But just over a week later, the rest of the tour was cancelled and Phil flew back to London, where he spent two weeks in an isolation hospital: he had been diagnosed with hepatitis.
Later he admitted to me that during the LA stint he had shared a needle with a girl, catching the disease. Though he never revealed what drug he had been injecting, I assumed it was heroin. While it would later haunt his life, at the time I felt it was simply a one-off.
While he was in hospital recovering, Phil wrote much of Johnny The Fox, the follow-up to Jailbreak. Despite the success of the single Don’t Believe A Word, released in October 1976, just six months after Jailbreak, the album was widely felt to have fallen short of its predecessor.
Johnny The Fox was followed almost a year later by Thin Lizzy’s eighth album, Bad Reputation, a tougher, more substantial record. It was launched with a one-day festival at Dalymount Park in Phil’s home town of Dublin. Also on the bill were Graham Parker, Fairport Convention, the Boomtown Rats and the Radiators From Space.
The day before the Dalymount Park show, I found myself with Phil in the centre of Dublin, in Bailey’s Bar, where the 1916 Easter Rising had been planned. It was the singer’s 28th birthday, and he was downing some celebratory pints before moving on to some serious partying at Castletown House in County Kildare, home of Desmond Guinness, of the Guinness dynasty. He gazed into his glass of beer as he extemporised on his approach to his existence as a rock’n’roller.
“Sometimes I get up there onstage and I go completely berserk – I’m often completely off me fookin’ head,” he said. “And it’s got sweet fook-all to do with drugs, man. It’s just that I can get as heavily into what I’m doing as when I used to be a kid playing cowboys, when you’d be completely wrapped up in killing millions of Indians and just living this whole trip out: hiding behind rocks and trees and sneaking off to imaginary places. Anybody can be anybody in rock’n’roll. It allows for all these people to exist within it and live out their fantasies. I mean, I certainly do.”
He was also looking forward to coming back to the UK in November, after a return visit to the US. “This whole image thing that’s going down between new wave and boring old farts will be sorted out and we’ll be able to just play.”
Do you feel at all professionally intimidated by the rise of punk and the new wave?
Everything they’re singing about I actually do: I do what I want to do. I never wanted to be like anybody else. I don’t give a fook about good, bad or indifferent music – I just like what I like. I don’t care if we lose whatever title or success we have. Because it’s only something the kids give you. And if they want to take it away from you, it’s their God-given right, man. I’ve no God‑given right to be up there saying I’m the people’s choice. I mean, I’m glad for the couple of years that I’ve had. And if it’s ever all over, it’s all over. But [laughing determinedly] I’ll be the last to give in. Knowharramean?
[Glancing around, distracted] Fook, man, they’re the prettiest colleens in the world in this town. The only trouble is I can’t get away with giving ’em the blarney like I can everywhere else. I have to adopt the more subtle approach: “DO YOU DO THE GIG?”