It certainly seemed so to the outside world in the
spring of 1979, when Black Rose was released. Lizzy
had been on a roller-coaster ride since The Boys Are
Back In Town tore open the British and American
singles charts for them exactly three years before,
and by the glorious Jailbreak album that followed.
“Up and down like a toilet seat.” That’s how Phil
expressed Lizzy’s journey immediately after that,
though. There had been follow-up hits, notably the
swaggering Don’t Believe A Word and the deliciously
understated Dancing In The Moonlight. There had
also been two more hit albums: the good-not-great
Johnny The Fox and the now-you’re-talking BadReputation, which became their highest chart hit
when it reached No.4 in the UK in September 1977.
On the downside, though, the ship appeared
fatally holed beneath the waterline when
consecutive US tours had been called off for the
kind of reasons guaranteed to spook the music biz
money-cats: the first when Lynott contracted
hepatitis C – the kind you don’t get from a toilet
seat, awright? The second time, after baby-faced
killer guitarist Brian Robertson stuck his left hand
in the way of a broken bottle at a drunken fight in
a London club on the eve of a tour, resulting in
career-threatening injuries.“Oh, man,” drummer Brian Downey chuckled
when we spoke about it later. “At that point we
felt like the band was cursed – at least when it
came to America.”
The wincingly titled Bad Reputation was meant
to restore Lizzy’s standing in the US, but the
album bobbed to the surface in the Top 40 then
vanished beneath the waves again. There was a
semi-successful six-week headline tour, with
Graham Parker & The Rumour in support, but the
venues were theatres, the kind of two-to-three-
thousand-capacity venues that were considered
top-drawer in the UK but in the US were several
rungs below the huge arenas a hit American act
would expect to play.
By the time Thin Lizzy returned for their next
US tour, a year later, they were relieved to be back
opening up for bigger acts in arenas. The strategy
rejigged, to focus on what were considered the
band’s real strengths: not the records, but the
live performances.
“All the reviewers were always going on about
how we’d never really captured the real Thin Lizzy
on any of the albums,” Robertson recalled, when
we first met in 1979. “And the worst thing was,
they were right. We were always better on stage.
The records sounded fucking puny next to that.”
When the momentous live double extravaganza
Live And Dangerous was released in the summer of
1978 it seemed to prove the point, becoming the
biggest-selling hit Lizzy would ever have, going
double-platinum in Britain for more than half
a million sales, and kept from the No.1 spot only
by the Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
Things had moved on considerably, however,
by then. Gary Moore, who’d known Lynott and
Downey since early Dublin days and had twice
been brought in for short but spectacular stints
when first they lost guitarist Eric Bell then, later,
Brian Robertson, had now been brought in as a
full-time member.
“Phil had been after Gary forever,” Downey
recalled. “But Gary always saw himself as a leader,
and usually there’s only room for one of those in
any band. Phil had grown completely fed up with
Robbo, though, and probably vice versa.”
Moore, meanwhile, had decided he’d finally had
enough of fronting Colosseum II, the musically
algebraic but commercially illiterate rock-fusion
outfit he’d recorded three albums with.
“There was always that thing in me of wanting
to be successful, but not at any price,” Moore
would tell me. “Then I did the Lizzy US tour
opening for Queen, after Robbo hurt his hand, and
what can I say? I really got into the whole ridingGET
TY(^) x 2
“We were always better on stage. The records
sounded f**king puny next to that.”
Brian Robertson
The Rocker: Phil Lynott at
Manchester Apollo in May 1979.
Inset: Lizzy in Paris during the
recording of Black Rose.
60 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM