Mainly, though, it was little groups with big dreams. “There were a few big Irish acts, like Them and Taste,” says Bell. You’d have to meet someone straight off the boat from London, who’d sell you a quid deal.”īell (originally from Belfast, but living these days in West Cork) recalls an Irish music scene dominated by the show bands big ballroom groups for people to dance to, not sit and look at. “The first time we saw a piece of hash wasn’t until about 1969. “You have to remember, we were a bit behind the times when it came to the rock scene,” says original Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell. In fact, Lynott was already looking beyond the Irish music scene, such that it was, towards England and America, swapping Van Morrison for The Band, while always under the spell of Hendrix. Dublin was a very small pond, but Phil was determined to be the biggest frog in it.” “He had to be the guy who could outfight anyone, could pull more chicks, drink more. “He was always trying to prove himself,” said guitarist Gary Moore, an old compadre of Lynott’s in Dublin, who would later pass through Lizzy’s ranks three times.

(Image credit: Jorgen Angel/Getty Images ) It wasn’t until later I found out he’d already had four different females that night!” Then after it was over he came to my room to tell me how lonely he was and could he come in and chat. Gale Claydon recalls the party in Dublin for Phil’s 21st birthday. It wasn’t just the guys that loved to hear Phil talk, though. “He had that Irish way of telling a story, seamless. “He was a funny fucker, too,” says Downey. He’d drag me along to some well in Ireland and go: ‘You know what happened here?’ I’d be like: ‘You know what? I don’t really give a fuck.’ He’d be like: ‘Well I’m gonna tell ya anyway!’” He knew all the dates and names and what battles happened. “To hear Phil speak, Ireland was the greatest place in the world. “Phil was the most nationalistic person I ever met in my whole life,” says former Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham, who met him in 1974. There was another side to the teenage Lynott too: one that was shy, gently spoken, devoured Irish history books, loved the plaintive folk ballads of the mythological Celtic past, and would reference 19th-century Dublin poets like Clarence Mangan, who had influenced James Joyce. So because he had that reputation, people would back off him.” “Phil would get picked on, called the ‘N’ word.

“He was the only black kid in the whole neighbourhood, let alone the school,” recalls Lizzy drummer Brian Downey, who first met Lynott when he was nine. “But I knew I was the only one around like me. It was something Lynott himself would be made painfully aware of every day. “But to be unmarried with a black baby… was just unheard of.” “The stigma of not being married was a big thing in Ireland back then,” says Gale, who was close to Philomena (or Phyllis, as she still calls her today). Philomena recalled how her mother fainted when she first saw a picture of her “little black baby”. He was four when Philomena sent him to Dublin to live with his grandmother, Sarah Lynott, while she stayed in England and worked. The illegitimate product of an affair between his Irish mother Philomena Lynott and Brazilian father Cecil Parris, Phil was born in West Bromwich in 1949. Power trio: Thin Lizzy circa 1972, Brian Downey, Eric Bell and Phil Lynott.

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