Still In Love With You

It is tough for everyone looking back on the life of a fallen hero. But there are times too when it can be inspiring. This is one of them.

We started out with the idea of putting together Still In Love With You – The Philip Lynott Exhibition as a tribute to one of the pivotal figures in Irish rock history. The more we delved, the bigger the idea became. We spoke to old friends and acquaintances. The response was almost universally positive. “What a fantastic idea,” one close confidante of Philip’s said. And in doing so, he echoed what all of the others had been saying too.
People threw themselves into the process of digging up long buried artifacts, pictures, posters and personal momentoes. They went down into the mine and excavated. They came up with gold. From every direction, the items came flooding in. Wonderful material, evocative of Ireland at a time when it was just finding its rock’n’roll feet. Hand written notes. Song lyrics. Postcards. Posters. Scrapbooks. Record sleeves. Photographs. Paintings. Sculptures. Original artwork. A far more interesting, diverse and illuminating collection of fine pieces of living history than we had dreamed possible.
We never do things by halves around here. In the middle of all that we thought: we’ll do a special issue of Hot Press to coincide with the event. And so we started to talk to some of the musicians Philip worked with. Some of those he influenced. Some of the leading lights of Irish music. And before we knew it, this was not just a special issue, it was a bumper special issue. But as James Hetfield and Bono and Imelda May and Laura Izibor all gave their time – and dozens more like them – there was nothing to do but go with the flow. Philip deserved no less. We wanted to honour him, and draw his great music to the attention of a new generation of fans – and especially of Irish fans. Well, if we’re doing it, the reasoning went, let’s do it right.
And so, hopefully, we did.
Philip Lynott was one of the greats. In the early rock’n’roll years here, he emerged as a songwriter of immense potential – a romantic troubador with a poetic bent and a luminous lyrical feel that went beyond the merely functional into bardic terrain. This was a man who had stories to tell and the language to make them riveting. But there were others of similar ambition back then, who subsequently lost their way or underachieved. The beauty of it was that Philip kept the flame alive, going on to more than transcend that early promise, crafting some of the most memorable, tough rock songs of the era.
In ‘Still In Love With You’, he penned an amorous classic that remains unparalleled in Irish rock for its tender evocation of love lost. But he also had a way with three-minute hard rock pop songs. ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ is one of the great rock-band-as-gang celebrations, a magnificently expectant declaration of youthful exuberance and downright horniness that triumphantly transcends the time and place in which it was written. Rare among Irish rock songs – the obvious standards in U2’s canon and Van Morrison’s aside – like the latter’s Them garage-band tour-de-force ‘Gloria’, Shane MacGowan’s ‘Fairytale of New York’ and just possibly The Undertones ‘Teenage Kicks’, it will likely still be sung in fifty years time.
The list of Lynott classics is a long one. There’s the unashamedly macho shape-throwing of ‘Jailbreak’; the wonderful and knowing conceit of the gorgeous ‘Don’t Believe A Word’; the delicious evocation of life as a teenager, coming of age in Dublin during the 1960s, via ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’; the sparkling Morrison-esque enchantment of ‘Running Back’; and, not to keep you here all day, the brilliantly constructed elegy of loss and longing that is the magnificent, melodic, Beatles-influenced ‘Old Town’. And then there’s the softer, more cuddly songs like those odes to the women (or some of them) in his life: ‘Philomena’, ‘Sarah’ and ‘Cathleen’.
But of course, as just about everyone knows at this stage, on its own, talent isn’t enough. The story of Philip Lynott’s rise to stardom is a multi-layered parable. If at first you don’t succeed try and try again. Those who labour longest in the vineyard are most likely to produce the finest wines. Without imagination, it all counts for nothing.
There are so many lessons that you might glean from the story of the ascendancy of Thin Lizzy. One of their early managers Ted Carroll, looking back over his diaries of the time, remarked to me that they were a hard-working bunch in those early days. When lesser mortals would have returned to Ireland with their tails between their legs, Philip Lynott drove Thin Lizzy on till they had their first wave of success with ‘Whiskey In The Jar’. And when that incarnation had run aground, he pulled it all together again – his trusty Crumlin sidekick Brian Downey an almost ever-present on the drum riser – to reinvent Lizzy as the hottest four-piece in the kingdom of hard rock.
Thin Lizzy played some astonishing live shows. They had everything. Power. Style. Swagger. Sensitivity. Instrumental panache. Songs. And out front Philo was a showman. He knew how to play the crowd. He knew how to make people love him. He knew that to command loyalty was an ace in terms of rock’n’troll longevity. And he did it. He succeeded.
It came to a sad end. Lizzy unravelled. His marriage collapsed. He lost his way. Addiction took hold. And came a time, there was no going back. Too late, too late the warning bells. He slipped away and was gone, the shock rifling through the rock community here in Ireland, and of course further afield. Everywhere music is played, Philip Lynott from Crumlin was mourned. His friends have spoken to Hot Press about the how and the why. But all seem to be agreed on this: if he could have stepped back from the treadmill earlier, then a second wind would have carried him and his band to previously uprecedented heights. Looking at what happened to Queen first, and latterly to AC/DC – to name just two – I don’t doubt it for a minute.
The terrible might-have-been. No point in dwelling too long on it. Right now, here at Hot Press, we have an exhibition to open. And there is a brilliant, fully updated and revised new edition of My Boy – trailered in this issue too – to pack off to the printers along with our Philip Lynott issue. There is, indeed, no rest for the wicked: we must get on with it. Let me say just this, though, before signing off: it has been a wonderful pleasure revisiting the past to unearth the multifarious signifiers of the outstanding musician and poet that we were all so wonderfully fortunate to have in our midst, even temporarily, the mighty Philip Lynott.
Thanks to everyone who has been working on the project – and to all of those who helped in so many different ways. You have been marvellous.

Still In Love With You: The Philip Lynott Exhibition opens in The Creative Space, Top Floor, Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, Dublin, on March 4.