You Can Always Hear The King's Call

There may have been many Phil Lynotts but any Dubliner must always come back to one memory that will forever celebrate and redeem him . The sight of Lynott and Thin Lizzy that 1977 night in Dalymount Park when he and his band were momentarily kings of the city and we all left beneath the blessing of the floodlights, internally singing 'Dancing in the Moonlight'.

For it is no exaggeration to say he was our Elvis Presley, the man who validated rock for a generation of Irishmen and women. genuinely he was our first star in an intimate way Van Morrisson's seventies exile prevented.But Lynott wasn't just

our first Irish star by the accident of birth and the fact of his elevation. Philip Lynott also represented both our values and aspirations.

Our values in his tolerance, his mischievous good-humour, his genuine efforts at accessibility and cagey playfulness especially typical of Dubliners who took nothing for granted. And our aspirations - when he was sharp - in his style and class and the fact that he was the most masculinely sexual of any Irish star before or since at a time when we were struggling to escape the prison of our repressions.

Besides being a Dub, Lynott knew the value of self-depreciation in this town. Moreover he knew how to merge his stardom with our aspirations. Lynott let us in on his secrets. Even if it may have been a game he thought he controlled, he knew how to share his art and make it ours.

Besides, though Thin Lizzy were definitely founded on hard rock, they weren't so exclusive as to deny a wider audience, people whose record collection might more likely include Van Morisson, Sly Stone or Gram Parsons as Grand Funk Railroad or Kiss. It must be said that Phil Lynott would never have passed a feminist's New Man test but it must equally be said that Thin Lizzy emerged before hard rock had congealed into stadium and cock-rock formulas. It is no coincidence that Joe Elliot places Lizzy alongside Mott The Hoople in his own youthful pantheon. Equally it is no coincidence that the early U2 briefly played 'Dancing In the Moonlight'.

Yes, he was our Elvis. But that is as true as his controversial decline and death as of the success of his life- and there's the rub.For to the generation reared on Eighties values, there must be a sense of something unsound, something wasted in Phil Lynott. well, let us not mourn and forget, let us also criticise and celebrate his complex legacy.

Phil Lynott's diversity is in danger of being disregarded. Five years after his death, there's a temptation to target Thin Lizzy's music at a younger generation of hard rock obsessives but it doesn't tally with my first and last informal musical memories of the man.

First time was in '69 or '70 in Slattery's of Capel Street, then Dublin's premier folk venue. That evening Lynott and Eric Bell snuck in on the middle of the bill, clutching acoustic guitars and playing, of all things, a set of Django Rheinhardt tunes. but then Lynott was a creature of the eclectic late sixties Dublin scene. Indeed he certainly as close- possibly even closer-to the

innovating folkies in 'Sweeney's Men' and 'Doctor Strangely Strange'(the Orphanage was the name of Strangely's communal pad) as to the emergent hard rock set. It wouldn't suit the studied casual cool that Phil Lynott adopted even then to say he

flung himself headlong into that scene but he was always alert to ideas and people who stimulated him.

Certainly the Irish flavour in his music came from those days and the links continued far into his career. For instance, Jim Fitzpatrick would supply Lizzy's fantasy Celtic artwork. Frank Murray, later the Pogues manager, would be an especially

close friend and later Lizzy's tour manager on their upswing to success. Similarly Terry Woods was an ally, with Lynnot later at pains to produce a solo single, 'The Tennessee Stud', for him when Woods career was in a slump. And towards the end,

Philip would also produce a trio of now sadly neglected singles for Auto Da Fe, the group co-led by Terry's former wife and musical partner, Gay Woods. Add all those clues together and the unconscious ground of Lizzy's own melodic and dramatic double guitar sound becomes apparent.

Furthermore though it also had significant input from Horslips, Rory Gallagher and Stiff's Dave Robinson, one can even argue that Phil Lynott was actually the keystone of that London-Irish network of informal co-conspirators, the Murphia. Indeed

'The Rocker' would celebrate Ted Carroll, Lizzy's manager through their Decca days and later the proprietor of the original and exceedingly influential collectors' store 'Rock On' and founder of the Chiswick and Ace labels.

Besides, Phil Lynott was typical of that sixties generation of musicians who delighted in jamming and crossing musical borders. Often when visiting Dublin in the mid-seventies before he bought his house here, he'd jam in Morans. But yet again,

my last bookending memory is hardly that of the killer on the loose, instead Lynott and Sunday lunchtime neighbour, the friendly ranger in Howth's Royal Hotel.

In the morning he'd have stood at the back of the church as he escorted his daughters to Sunday mass and afterwards, sit in on the later session at the Royal, playing simple bass as he accompanied his local proteges Clann Eadair's lone record, a

marvellously graceful gem, "A Tribute to Sandy", dedicated to the late Sandy Denny. Now his own vocals can't but seem eerily prophetic and for me, the immediate aftermath of his death was framed by both that record and his response to Presley's end, "King's Call". As I said, he was our Elvis.

But let's switch from his Irish background to the international context.

Phil Lynott fought his way up through the seventies before stadium rock became inflexible, when the image of the reckless rock rebel still had credibility and acts still released albums annually, not in a three year cycle. The early Decca albums have all the misplaced ambition of a talented but cheaply-recorded apprentice band who still hadn't focused their direction amid all

the conflicting influences of the era. The lyrics have an affectionate and often whimsical eye for Dublin detail but the instrumental passages are often typical technoflase, spliced together to impress live but on record detracting rather than

enhancing the direction or dynamics of the song.

Later Lynott would accept that he hadn't mastered the craft of songwriting and Lizzy's first and only Decca hit was, of course, "Whiskey In The Jar" - which might even have been a drawback to their career since it could so easily be regarded as a novelty record. But if it's follow up, "Randolph's Tango", flopped it should have served notice of Lynott and Lizzy's maturing talent.

Almost a testimony to the Latin side of his character, "Randolph's Tango" was sultry and sensual and more rhythmically subtle and complex than what other rock bands were then attempting. But did it set a headline for his later career? Was the more interesting Lynott often the hitless experimenter?

In the last issue of Hotpress Nigel Grainge explained how he signed up Thin Lizzy to Vertigo. Certainly the Robinson/Gorham group was the classic Lizzy, though the double guitar line up wasn't exactly innovatory. The Grateful

Dead's influence could be detected in Wishbone Ash, while the Welsh group, Man had also taken from another classic San Francisco outfit, Quicksilver Messenger Service, whose spectacular "Happy Trails" live album on Capitol must have been among the factors in the decision to enlarge Lizzy.

Besides, despite the world domination of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, the limitations of a three piece were increasingly

obvious and especially so to a songwriter of Lynott's abilities who already had sufficient stage responsibilities as a bassist and

singer. Also if the original wave of Heavy Metal had championed the pulverising riff over the song, London values were switching. Unlike Zeppelin, U.K. based rock bands were no longer distaining the 45 as certifiably unhip.

With the help of Mick Ronson and the Spiders From Mars, David Bowie had demonstrated how to ally an intense and condensed hard rock style to the song. Then by producing and loaning them his own "All the Young Dudes", Bowie had

kickstarted the faltering career of Mott The Hoople, in retrospect Lizzy's closest relations at the time.

Mott the Hoople drew Dylan and The Doors into the hard rock universe; Lizzy would call on van Morrison (not Bruce Springsteen, since as Bob Geldof would later plead in his own self - defence, the New Jerseyite had also gone to the Belfast well) and be one of the few bands who intelligently took from Hendrix.

Similarly both bands would cite the new 'street credibility' clause, in reaction against the increasingly bankrupt hippie superstar elite, drawing closer to their audiences in the new no-bullshit camaraderie that preceeded punk. "All The Young Dudes" and "The Boys Are Back In Town" were made to be married on opposite sides of a 45.

A new school of post-hippie hard rock was being formed and Lizzy were in the frontline. Bikers replaced the beautiful people and the star would become the man of the people, their representative in the stretch limo reporting back, a role that at

his peak, Lynott would play with beguiling charm. Yet again our Elvis- Lynott knew Crumlin and Finglas psychically shared and didn't envy his pink Cadillac.

But though 'The Boys Are back In Town' cracked the American Top Ten, Lizzy never consolidated in the States. A common view, then canvassed to me by Paul McGuinness, was that Lynott was the victim of a hard rock apartheid. But again, Nigel Grainge ( who should know) disputes that thesis, instead pointing to the promotional incompetence of America's Mercury.

Certainly both Graham Parker and the Rumour and The Boomtown Rats, Lizzy's supporters on the Dalymount bill, also felt neglected by that American label and the Rats would switch to CBS while Parker would pen the vitriolic "Mercury

Poisoning" in revenge at the label that abandoned its rock acts in favour of the short- term disco-boom that later almost bankrupted the company.

Besides, America brought out Lizzy's earlier self-destructive tendencies. The night before one crucial U.S. tour, Brian

Robertson severed a tendon in his hand in a London club incident.. And another American tour collapsed when in the first sign of his health problems, Lynott himself contracted hepatitis.

Arguably Lynott's death was as much a loss for America as Ireland - one can only wonder how he would have used the chance to explore the neighbouring worlds of Prince and Living Colour. Equally, now we can but speculate whether

American success would have tempted his self-destructive urges with heavier poisons or stimulated him with the challenge of a different enviornment.

Clearly, this much is true - Lizzy failed to take America on the high tide when Phil Lynott was at the peak of his artistic

powers and confidence. Thereafter in Britain, Europe and elsewhere, Lizzy reached a plateau and coasted till they increasingly began to be seen as hangovers from the last late night before punk.

Certainly Lynott suffered from the gradual isolation of hard rock and heavy metal into a greasers ghetto displeasing to the middle class music press. Post punk rock in the U.K. took its spiritual agenda from Joy Division,Simple Minds and Echo and the Bunnymen after Sid Vicious had taken the rebel rock pose to its lethal conclusion. As the new progressive rock took its

values from Manhattan, art strategists and European synthesizer music, Phil Lynott was painted into a corner.

Yet he fought such categorisations, allying with Pistols, Steve Jones and Paul Cook in the Greedy Bastards - even if the pair

were punk's most obvious Jack the Lads - and acknowledging the New Romantics in his solo work with Midge Ure- even if the Ultravox man was the movement's most transitional figure.

So by his death, there seemed to be two Phil Lynotts whom he couldn't reconcile in one almighty record-the breadwinner, forced back on the increasingly harsh hard rock and the inquisitive solo artist, dabbling in folk, country-rock and even dance music. But while the hard rock audience still loyally supported him, the new breeds spurned him. Sadly Phil Lynott's value system had become passe. By 1986, it wasn't hip to worship the trinity of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll. And certainly not if it meant groupies, hard drugs and rebel poses, now so commonplace as to be stripped of all their glamour and mystery. But

Phil Lynott couldn't wean himself off the symbols, myth and lifestyle that had propelled him to fame.

Strangely on his return to Ireland, he also found himself distanced from the new circles gathered around U2. Some say he

was resentful, certainly he was uneasy and it must have been galling to his own competitive instincts to be outpaced by his juniors and knocked off his throne.

Certainly the two communities around U2 and Lynott hardly intersected. And as for the principals, U2's own ardous touring schedule through the first half of the eighties hampered any lasting meeting of the minds.

But there had also been a hardening of his artistic liver. His second solo album didn't sell especially well despite the fact that it included the wonderful 'Old Town' and his new band 'Grand Slam', was seen as a reversion to hard rock.But if Phil Lynott had his own doubts about the direction of his final band, he was never one to publicly confess his insecurities.

Rock had elevated him but he couldn't seem to find any other scource of values to revitalise his music. Certainly he was too typically an Irish Catholic to take refuge in Eastern beliefs but there also seemed to be a slackening in his artistic interests.And so, in his closing Dublin years, the stories about drink, drugs and casual sex began to cling to him, all circumstantial

evidence of a lessening self regard.

Five years on, you can worry about the myth of Phil Lynott as the hard living rocker. Just as his own perspectives became drastically narrowed in the period before his death, a latter day view of Phil Lynott that makes him exclusively the property of a heavy metal audience, conveniently avoids the artistic issues that his complete legacy touched on and also limits the

wider influence he is due.

Coincidentally or not, he died just as Morrissey and The Smiths were peaking. It isn't just that Morrissey reversed the terms of rock stardom into a prim life-style, entirely alien to Lynott. The Smiths also led a movement for expunging blues ans r 'n' b traces from the guitar-rock vocabulary. Beforehand, Lynott had barely been adrift of the prevailing trends; now musically

and attitudinally, for once he found himself offside, trapped on the wrong side of hip.

That might be one reason why his name went unmentioned and his legacy unexplored in that recent South Bank Show documentary, 'Clear Cool Crystal Streams', an exclusion that angered many. Perhaps he didn't fit that programmes artistically cramping thesis of born - again Celts celebrating a pastoral paradise but even aside from the issue of Jim

Fitzpatrick's artwork as a statement of Irish independance, surely the grandeur of Lizzy's best melodies could only have come from someone with at least one ear intermittently attuned to Irish music?

It's impossible to say how his own music might have evolved but Phil Lynott's versatility is beyond doubt. His particular skill

was his ability to adapt hard rock and extend its audience and musical range. Indeed I'd even argue that had he lived he would have been the Irishman best placed and equipped to merge Irish rock with dance and hip-hop; it certainly takes no

huge leap of the imagination to hear him being produced by Don Was.

And if this Manchester United fan has one regret innthe after life, I dare say it's that he never made the great Irish football

record. Sometimes when I hear "Ooh Aah Paul McGrath", I think of Phil. I don't believe I'm alone.