Phil Lynott

Born to a black Guyanese father and a white Irish mother, Philip Parris Lynott was born in West Bromich’s Hallam Hospital in Staffordshire, England on 20 August 1949. His parents met not long after his mother moved to England to look for work and were together until his dad Cecil Parris was transferred to a job in London. Since his mother Philomena had him out of wedlock at a time when that was seen as shameful, she spent some time in a home for unwed mothers where she had Phillip baptised on 4 September. Philomena stayed in touch with Cecil, who would pay for Phillip’s support. Phillip spent part of his early life in Manchester before being sent to live with his parents in the Dublin suburb of Crumlin where he had a happy childhood and was a popular figure at school. When it came to his race, Phil was one of the few people of colour in Ireland at that time and he was about to become an inspirational figure of many Irish people of colour.

Introduced to music by his uncle Timothy’s record collection of Motown and The Mamas & The Papas, Phillip, joined his first band the Black Eagles as their lead singer in 1965 before joining another band called Liffey Beats after befriending Brian Downey. For the next 4 years, Phillip would start going by Phil would participate in small music groups who would play in local clubs and pubs around Dublin before breaking up over various reasons. Phil also learned how to play the bass while in one of these small groups, but it would be in late 1969 when Lynott and Downey were introduced to a guitarist named Eric Bell and a keyboardist named Eric Wrixon. Together they formed Thin Lizzy. They got the name from a character in The Dandy Comic and they added the H to imitate the way word “thin” is pronounced with a Dublin accent. While the band’s first single was “The Farmer” in 1970 and their first album “Thin Lizzy” was released in 1971, it was in 1973 was when they obtained their first top 10 single with “Whiskey in a Jar” which was a rock version of a classic Irish song. Then came 1976 as that was when they released the album Jailbreak on 26 March 1976 that one of the tracks “The Boy are Back in Town” was what helped solidify the band’s members as stars. Rolling Stone has considered the song to be the best song by the band. To this day, it has been used at most Irish rugby matches and was introduced to a new generation of listeners through trailers and TV spots promoting installments in the Toy Story franchise. The following year, they had another hit song on their 1977 album Bad Reputation with the song Dancing in the Moonlight (not to be confused with the song of the same name by Toploader).