round in limousines bit, actually earning some real
money for once.”
Gary and Phil were like brothers. Either fighting
each other or totally loved up. Phil had been the
“freaky black singer” in Skid Row, Gary’s first
professional group. Three years older than Moore,
Phil had shown him the ropes. “He was always up
at eight o’clock, down the market buying clothes.
He was always incredibly driven.”
Phil was the same the first time Gary helped
Lizzy out, on their 1974 album Nightlife. “In the
studio he’d be the first guy in and the last guy out.
He was such a workaholic you wouldn’t believe it.”
It was a very different freaky black cat Moore
encountered now, though. “He was still okay when
we did the Queen tour in seventy-seven, but by the
time of Black Rose the drugs had definitely kicked in
and I saw a big change in him. He had lost a lot of
his energy and it was very difficult.”I
n fact it wasn’t that Phil had lost his energy so
much as squandered it. By 1978 he was trying
to be so many things to so many people at
once that his focus was shattered. Driven to
distraction by Lizzy’s lack of commercial success
in America, where he was now thrilled – and
relieved – to be offered the opening slot on arena
tours by the likes of Kansas and Journey, at the
same time he was busy pandering to the emergent
punk stars in London, afraid he might lose all
credibility, branded an old fart at 29, the way
Zeppelin, Queen and the Stones had. Hence his
surprise palling up in 1978 with Sex Pistols stars
Steve Jones and Paul Cook, in the live-for-laffs
Greedy Bastards; his guest appearance on stage in
April with Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe; his under-
my-wing friendships with Joe Strummer and Mick
Jones of The Clash; his patronage of doomed punk
junkies like Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen,
Heartbreakers guitarist Johnny Thunders, Ruts
singer Malcolm Owen and Heavy Metal Kids
frontman Gary Holton – all destined to die one day
in smack-related human traffic-jams.
Bob Geldof, newly famous as the singer of Irish
punk stars the Boomtown Rats, was another new
best mate. Phil had passed their demo to his record
label chief, Nigel Grainge, who then signed them to
his own label. Phil was happy to play the generous
mentor, but when the Rats had their first No.1
single, Rat Trap, in 1978, and their first platinum
album, Tonic For The Troops, his jealousy was
obvious for all to see.
Geldof famously recalled taking his pretty
19-year-old girlfriend Paula Yates to visit Phil at
home one night, where the Lizzy star laced the lines
of cocaine he fed Geldof with heroin. The result: the
Rats singer on his knees in the bathroom, throwing
up, while Phil stayed downstairs and tried to get off
with Paula.
“He sneaked into the bedroom and tried to jump
into bed with my missus!” Geldof recalled. “But
I couldn’t be angry with Philip, because he was just
trying it on, the way he’d always try it on. To him it
was just a laugh.”
All this at a time when Phil’s own love life was
apparently in full bloom. It was in 1978 that Phil
fell heavily for 18-year-old Caroline Crowther,
another slender, pretty blonde, then working for
Lizzy publicist Tony Brainsby, and the daughter of
TV entertainer Leslie Crowther.
Appearing as one of the ‘star judges’ at the 1978
Miss World contest in November, Phil returnedthe next day boasting of having spent the night
with Miss Brazil, one Laura Angelica Viana de
Oliveira Pereira.
“I have no idea if he really did or not,” Moore,
who watched it on TV with the rest of the band,
told me. “But you believed it because it was exactly
the sort of thing Phil would have done.”
In March, Caroline had discovered she was
pregnant with what would be their first daughter,
Sarah. Phil responded by purchasing a five-
bedroom house in Richmond, opposite Kew
Gardens, for £250,000 – around £1.5 million in
today’s money. He was on tour at the time, and left
the arrangements to a heavily pregnant Caroline.
The night Sarah was born, he had just finished
another rabble-rousing gig with the Greedy
Bastards at McGonagle’s – the same night
Bono later recalled the heavy “mood”
surrounding Lynott.
His newborn daughter’s arrival, though,
swept that away as he and Gorham spent
the rest of the night cruising the bars of
Grafton Street, Phil handing out cigars to
everyone they met.To celebrate, Phil wrote the song Sarah that
would later become one of the three hit singles
from Black Rose, although having also signed a solo
deal in 1978 he had originally intended to include it
on his first solo album.
It was also around this time that I first met Phil
Lynott. Like everyone else, I was swept away by his
obvious rock-star charisma and one-of-the-lads
bonhomie. It was also around this time that I, too,
became a junkie. Aged 20 and working as the
publicist for Wild Horses – the Lizzy-lite spin-off
group formed by Robbo and ex-Rainbow bassist
Jimmy Bain – meant moving in the same smack-
heavy circles. Phil, Scott, Robbo, Jimmy, Pete Way
from UFO, Bon Scott from AC/DC, several others,
roadies, record exes, other musos, we all scoredGET
TY^
x^2
Looking good at the studio
in Paris in ’79, but behind
the smiles all was not well:
(l-r) Moore, Lynott,
Downey, Gorham.Lizzy and (^) guest Bob Geldof of the
Boomtown Rats at Manchester
Belle Vue in June (^1978).
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THIN LIZZY