ALBUM: Johnny the Fox (1976)
MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$$
Moving more into the ‘T’s, I am here with an Irish rock band headed by the talented and charismatic Phil Lynott.
Sadly, he died of complications of drug dependency, including pneumonia, in 1986.
When I went to Dublin, Ireland as part of my bucket list, one of my first stops was the Irish Rock ‘N’ Roll Museum where Lynott is prominently featured along with such Irish greats as Van Morrison, U2 and the Pogues, among many others.
A museum tour guide told us that Lynott’s mother Philomena often dropped by the museum to chat with museum-goers. Unfortunately that didn’t happen during my visit. (She died in 2019, several years later)
Philomena is white and Phil’s father, who didn’t play a role in his life, was black. Phil joked about being the only black person in Ireland. Or, at least that’s how it felt sometimes. Lynott a bass player, wrote nearly all of the Thin Lizzy’s songs. Their first hit, though, was not a Lynott song but a cover of the Irish traditional folk song ‘Whiskey in a Jar.’ Their biggest hits included “The Boys are back in Town,” “Jailbreak,” ”Don’t Believe a Word,” and ‘Dancing in the Moonlight (It’s Caught Me in Its Spotlight).”
Lynott set Thin Lizzy above your average hard rock boogie band with his streetwise, world weary songwriting and singing.
‘You can surely lose your heart but you can never lose your head,” Lynott sings in Johnny the Fox about a man who ends up getting shot robbing a drug store.
If only Lynott had heeded his own words. But it’s as if he sang on the album I have: ‘Don’t believe me if I tell you, not a word of it is true.”
The drummer BTW, Bryan Downey. is co-founder with Lynott of the band, is a very good drummer.