I'M BACK AND I'M BEAUTIFUL!

Philip Mohammed Ali" Lynott talks to Damian Corless about life since Grand Slam, and his new single, Nineteen

Last summer may have been the worst in living memory but for Philip Lynott a little sun shone through when, for the second time in an erratic but highly successful career, he burst back into the Top 10. This time it was courtesy of Gary Moore s Out In The Fields , nine years previously The Boys Are Back In Town had proven a prophetic title.
Now, by way of capitalising on his recent success, Philip Lynott brings you . . nu, nu, nu. Nineteen , a single produced by one Paul Hardcastle. Sounds familiar?
It s not unless you were one of the few to catch the ill fated Grand Slam who premiered the song, a Lynott original.
So how did this coincidental pairing come about? Well, for a start we share the same management, he reveals. I met him on a tv show when we were doing Out In The Fields and he was doing 19 . He was saying he d been a big Lizzy fan. He really liked the Johnny The Fox album. I told him I wanted to experiment with putting a dance production to a rock song ZZ Top have done that successfully. Eddie Van Halen worked well with Michael Jackson. I had this idea of trying a
scratch mix with a heavy song and I already had Nineteen written from last year.
That appealed to him (Hardcastle) cos he wanted to show that he s up to doing more than disco mixes, so we just decided to go into the studio. Gary (Moore) was busy so I looked around and got Robin George in I d played a few basslines on his album about a year ago. We did the single in three days.
For a hardened rock-biz veteran Lynott exhibits remarkable enthusiasm for the project, explaining I did the single to show (affects an Ali banter) I m alive! I ve landed on my feet after all the troubles of the past two years and I m still hard n heavy. If I d come out with a ballad, people would be saying Phil s changing.
He s softening up! Lynott modestly hopes that the single will scrape the Top 20, but even if it doesn t it s still X amount of Publicity to let people know that I m still around.

Throughout punk s heyday Thin Lizzy were the world s only credible metal band and the one with the best songs to boot. But ill luck dogged the group relentlessly, preventing them from breaking the States key to the cash-box and thus to longevity. By the turn of the eighties Philip's muse, it seemed, had deserted him.
Artistically, things reached a nadir with the offensive Killer On The Loose single while saleswise, things just ground to a halt.
The subsequent failure of Grand Slam to get off the ground is still something of a mystery to Phil. I was really trying with Grand Slam he says. We just couldn t get a deal. A lot of people didn t like us but we weren t bad I wrote Nineteen and some other good songs with Grand Slam. And then, the minute they all left,
leaving me on my own, I got a deal.
With that, Philip Lynott reluctantly became a solo artist. He uses the word reluctant because, he says, I feel safe in the security of a band. The solo albums I did when I was in Thin Lizzy were different. I tried hard to make them sound totally different from what the band was doing. He feels now that the resultant artefacts
were a bit forced and that future efforts will be more honest. l'm a bit tired of writing ballads and love songs the new record will give a fair representation of what I m about.
Over the past couple of years Lynott has also rediscovered traditional music, a feeling for which he believes is subliminally there from my childhood. Nowadays he often takes his own children to Howth s Pier House after mass on a Sunday to see Clann Eadair, a group of sometime fishermen who double as traditional
musicians. Philip believes that Clann Eadair s youth makes them something special since Christy Moore, Alex Finn, Donal Lunny and all those have been around since the year dot. There seem to be no new traditional musicians coming up. Work on Clann Eadair s debut lp has been disrupted by Lynott s constant running around , something he regrets though it s unlikely to change in the near future. (Indeed, the video for Nineteen took him to Texas for a romp with a bunch of
Hell s Angels!)
Another door may open to Phil Lynott in the near future that of film soundtrack work. His name has been linked with the big budget Soldiers Of Destiny movie due to be shot in this country next year. The plot revolves around the activities of the notorious Black And Tans during the struggle for independence. While nothing concrete has yet been settled between Phil and the film company, the prospect of soundtrack work clearly appeals to him as he talks of combining the rock element
with the trad element , in a possible joint venture between himself and Clann Eadair.

While Lynott expected Out In The Fields to perform moderately well, he admits surprise, and delight, at hitting the heights again. You just get this feeling about good things, he explains. When Rebel Yell is the heaviest thing in the charts a song like Out In The Fields stands out a mile. People are fed up with hearing
plinkin and plonkin on guitars and keyboards. I like to hear a guitar sound that s good n raunchy. To the loyal, I don t think heavy sounds ever went away.
Fashion changed. All of a sudden you got all these people wearing dresses and lipstick.
What it all boils down to is that aggression is always there in music but you have to present it properly. Heavy Metal s production is usually very bland. For the 'Fields single we used Peter Collins who gave it a contemporary production and that made a big difference. Fashion doesn t always have to dictate what s happening in music. From the time of the New Romantic thing you had everybody buying their DX-thls and Poly-that but in the end a musician has to play them.
A new single with Gary Moore is scheduled for January release, following which Lynott will be taking a new band on the road, some-time in March. Brian Downey,
he says, has ag-reed to man the drumkit and as for the rest, Phil is looking around , spurred by the con-viction that there will always be a place for a good rock song.
Philip Lynott believes in himself again. l m back and I m beautiful, he says. I ll pass on the beautiful but it s good to see him back!