Joining his first band, The Black Eagles in 1965, Lynott was persuaded by his school friend Brian Downey to defect to The Liffey Beats. Speaking of Frank, music came into Phil’s life by way of his grandfather’s soul-heavy record collection. And though he’d admit to often feeling different to his classmates, he was a popular child who forged a close relationship with his grandparents Frank and Sarah. When asked about his schooldays in his later life, Phil was at great pains to explain that he’d experienced relatively little in the way of direct racism. After a spell in a home for unmarried mothers in Birmingham and a move to Manchester, Phyllis – as she preferred to be called – took her child back to Dublin to live with her mother and father.Ī black kid growing up without parents in a city with little ethnic population to speak of, you could be forgiven for thinking Lynott’s upbringing was horrific. The couple’s union was brief and although Cecil did contribute to his son’s upbringing, he wasn’t present in the child’s life. Born Philip Parris Lynott in West Bromwich in 1949, Phil was named after his parents – Philomena Lynott, an Irish nurse, and Cecil Parris who’d gamely swapped Georgetown for the West Midlands. Soon to provide the basis for a new documentary, Phil Lynott: Songs For While I’m Away, the Thin Lizzy front-man’s life story stands up to regular retelling. That said, if you’d have explained how things were going to work out to the mixed-race child growing up in Manchester and Dublin with a white Irish mother and an absent Guyanese father, it’s fair to say the kid might have given you a funny look.

A string of great songs, trans-Atlantic album success, the tendency to wear his bass like a gunslinger – it was Lynott’s destiny to take a place among the gods of rock.

It wasn’t just lines like that that ensured Phil Lynott’s place in the rock pantheon. Thin Lizzy plan to reunite for occasional concerts.“It’s a bit like being a pint of Guinness.” In 2012, Gorham and Downey decided against recording new material as Thin Lizzy so a new band, Black Star Riders, was formed to tour and produce new releases such as their debut album All Hell Breaks Loose. Rolling Stone magazine describes the band as distinctly hard rock, 'far apart from the braying mid-70s metal pack'.ĪllMusic critic John Dougan has written that 'As the band's creative force, Lynott was a more insightful and intelligent writer than many of his ilk, preferring slice-of-life working-class dramas of love and hate influenced by Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, and virtually all of the Irish literary tradition.' Van Morrison, Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix were major influences during the early days of the band, and later influences included the pioneering twin lead guitars found in Wishbone Ash and American artists Little Feat and Bob Seger. Their music reflects a wide range of influences, including blues, soul music, psychedelic rock, and traditional Irish folk music, but is generally classified as hard rock or sometimes heavy metal. As well as being multiracial, the band drew their members not only from both sides of the Irish border but also from both the Catholic and Protestant communities during The Troubles. Thin Lizzy featured several critically acclaimed guitarists throughout their history, with Downey and Lynott as the rhythm section, on the drums and bass guitar. Lynott, Thin Lizzy's de facto leader, was composer or co-composer of almost all of the band's songs, and the first black Irishman to achieve commercial success in the field of rock music. Gorham later continued with a new line-up including Downey. After Lynott's death in 1986, various incarnations of the band emerged over the years based initially around guitarists Scott Gorham and John Sykes, though Sykes left the band in 2009.

The singles 'Whiskey in the Jar' (a traditional Irish ballad), 'Jailbreak', and 'The Boys Are Back in Town' were major international hits. Lynott led the group throughout their recording career of twelve studio albums, writing most of the material. Two of the founding members, drummer Brian Downey and bass guitarist and lead vocalist Phil Lynott, met while still in school. Thin Lizzy are a hard rock band formed in Dublin, Ireland in 1969.

Thin lizzy lead singer