Cowboy Song

by Graeme Thomson

  There was an innate refinement to Lynott’s thought process, to his imagination and expressive instincts, which was evident not just in the way he shaped words and phrases, but in his intelligence, his organizational skills, his wit and leadership qualities. These were natural gifts which he exploited, but his songs also draw from an intellectual curiosity not always evident in the non-negotiable trappings of being a rock star.

  For a man who left school at fifteen with little to show for it, Lynott was well – and widely – read. ‘I don’t remember him with his nose in anything flippant,’ says Chalkie Davies. In interviews Lynott not only dropped the names of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, he pondered the validity of their philosophical tenets in his natural saloon-bar register. ‘I am normal, everybody else is different,’ he told interviewer Chris Salewicz in 1977. ‘I know it’s an existentialist point of view: that I am the centre of the world. I was into that for a long time. Figuring I was Number One, and if I die the world ends. I was into Sartre and his pals for a long, long time. I believed what they wrote was correct. Now I’m not so sure.’4

  ‘I remember the two of us went to see a production of [John Osborne’s] Look Back in Anger at Trinity College, which had a big effect on him,’ says Frank Murray. ‘He liked Sherlock Holmes, he liked The Great Gatsby.’ On moving to Kew in 1978, Lynott filled his shelves with literature: history, poetry, science fiction, biography. Next to the jukebox sat a framed picture of James Joyce, a juxtaposition that conveyed a certain crude but neat symbolism.

  On tour, even when life got high and heady, he was rarely without a book. ‘Phil did a lot of reading,’ says Scott Gorham. ‘He never liked to give the impression that he was a bookie kind of guy, but he was. He was a huge history buff, and not just with Ireland, but America and different parts of Europe. On our very first tour of Ireland he dragged me out of the hotel and gave me a history lesson of Dublin … He went out of his way to find out things, he was that kind of person.’ On downtime in hotels, while the band were watching sports on television, he would invariably be tuned into a documentary.

  Just as often, Lynott would absorb information and inspiration second-hand, without paying much heed to the source. ‘If I’d read a book and I told him the story and he gleaned some information from it, he’d be really happy with that,’ says Frank Murray. ‘He wouldn’t say, “I must go out and buy that book.” He’d say, “That’s a great story.” He loved the idea of storytelling.’

  He liked to learn and he liked – to a point – to be challenged. He could stay up through the night talking politics, cheerfully acknowledging his own contradictions. ‘My heart leans to the left,’ he’d say, ‘But the hand in my pocket leans to the right.’5 He was a socialist in the broader view: egalitarian in his dealings with people, a natural ally to the underdog, eternally a backer of David over Goliath.

  During the ascendancy and prime of Thin Lizzy, Lynott made a concerted effort to do more than the necessary required, even as he moved from wordy introspection to a ‘street-opera’ vernacular that found beauty in the urban hustle, a carnival of cinematic characters. His later style became steadily tougher and leaner, until eventually Lynott’s lyrics betrayed the threadbare amount of time and effort he was applying to them, but throughout the 1970s in the vast majority of his songs a vivid phrase or startling image will leap out. The line in ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ about getting ‘chocolate stains on my pants’, both innocent and suggestive, has no need to be there other than to lend a tight, swinging pop song an extra twist of individuality.

  Such details mattered to him. He was possessive of his status as the band’s lyricist. When the new four-piece Thin Lizzy came into being, says Scott Gorham, ‘Phil threw down right at the beginning that he was going to do the lyrics. Nobody but him. So nobody actually even tried … He couldn’t suffer dumb lyrics. He had to sing things he wrote and believed in.’

  It is rich and superior rock lyricism, but it is not poetry as poetry is widely understood, particularly when cut loose from the animating strut of the music and the marvellous textural gradations of Lynott’s voice, which possessed a poetry all of its own. His great phrasing guru was Van Morrison, from whom he also learned the value of keeping the listener on their toes. Singing ‘gigolo’ with a hard ‘g’ sound; the oddly garbled ‘if it means to justify the ends’ in ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’. You were never quite sure if these eccentricities were deliberate or not, but they worked.

  Singing, he was capable of shading in the spaces between the words with an entire spectrum of implied meaning. Naked on the page, stark black on unforgiving white, the same lines appear diminished. ‘They are lyrics,’ says Tim Booth. ‘They have a tempo and a time and a way they are written. They’re not really written as poetry.’ They are, perhaps, closer to the ballad tradition than the poetic one. They are almost always conceived to be sung.

  ‘His initial works I felt were superb,’ says Jim Fitzpatrick. ‘As he got busier with Thin Lizzy I felt his writing style deteriorated poetically, [though] as a rock lyric writer he improved hugely. “The Boys Are Back in Town” and “The Rocker” are great, but there were periods [before that] when he was a poetic lyricist, with things like “Little Girl in Bloom” and “Dublin”.’

  In the long run, Songs for While I’m Away caused some discord between Lynott and Peter Fallon, who had agreed to work on it for free. ‘Philip did always say that if it made money I would get something. I thought, fine, it doesn’t matter. Years later he told me that it had sold 100,000 copies – which I didn’t believe and I don’t believe – but he kind of waved it at me in a different tone. Like, “It’s sold 100,000 copies and you’re still not getting anything.” I thought, you don’t need to do this. It was unpleasant … It shifted the chemistry between us.’

  He and Fallon were never quite so close again, although they did enjoy an impromptu rapprochement in the year before Lynott died. ‘We bumped into each other in the Bailey one night,’ says Fallon. ‘He said he wasn’t using [drugs] anymore. I wasn’t convinced, but he was clear enough, and suddenly, whatever distance and awkwardness there might have been just dissolved. We got rid of all that shit. There was a hug, and I felt pleased about that.’

  As the singer and lead songwriter in a struggling band with three misfiring albums to their name, clearly the impulse to create a book was not commercial, nor was it to satiate public demand. Published on his birthday, Songs for While I’m Away was conceived primarily as a present to himself; it afforded Lynott a shot at a different kind of posterity. He bragged in an interview in 1976 that in two years the book had sold 10,000 (not 100,000) copies. ‘I’m incredibly proud of that,’ he said. ‘I’m more proud of that than, say, I was when [‘The Boys Are Back in Town’] got into the charts. I can get the [live] audience, but it’s for the moment … On record – and with the pen – it’s almost for all time. Really a lot more thought has to go into it.’6

  He published a second volume of lyrics, Philip, in 1977, this time with an introduction by John Peel, and collected both titles together in a single volume in 1980, adding a handful of other pieces. More intriguingly, in the late 1970s and again in the early 1980s, he revealed that he was writing prose.

  ‘I started about six months ago to write ten short stories,’ he said in 1977. ‘Basically they were going to be about the business. But as opposed to “how I made it in the business” kinds of stories, I was just gonna write about it in an almost – not as good, obviously – but almost like Scott Fitzgerald did. Write about it like, “I happened to be very popular at the time and I mixed with a crowd of other people that was very popular at the time and this is what went on.” Like one story would be about the day in the life of a roadie. Or maybe the chick that’s followed this guy all the time and goes to the concerts and she gets backstage and meets him, and he makes a pass as her and what does she do? I was gonna write stories like that, about ten of them, and use the language we use today. So as time goes on it will become a period piece.
I’ve done about four chapters of two stories and stopped because there was something else to do. It was a good idea at the time.’7

  Later, he claimed he had developed ideas for thirteen stories. As late as 1984, he was still talking up the project on television, although the idea did not appear to have developed much beyond its original concept. From 1977 onwards, Lynott increasingly found himself with less time and finally less inclination to devote to lyrics, poetry or prose. He never stopped caring about words, but he was not under any illusions. Poetry? He had read enough of the real thing to recognize that he belonged among the ranks of talented aspirants. ‘Poet … seems like a whole career,’ he said. ‘I work in lyrics … but poetry in that? Yes, it means a lot to me.’8 Or, to put it another way: ‘If I make it as a poet, I’m a poet. When we die a death, I’m only the bass-player.’9

  The landscape of Lynott’s professional life changed dramatically in 1974. During the first Irish tour with the new line-up, Ted Carroll stood down as Thin Lizzy manager, handing over to Chris O’Donnell and leaving the band in control of ‘The Two Chrises’ (O’Donnell and Morrison), as they are known by all, for the remainder of their lifespan. Carroll wanted to devote himself to his Rock On store, but he also saw trouble on the horizon.

  ‘As soon as Gary Moore said he was leaving, I had told Chris [Morrison], “Look, I’m out of here. We’re always going to have problems with Phil and lead guitarists. I want to get out but I’ll stay until everything is sorted.” That’s what we did. I came to Ireland and saw them play in Ballybunion. I was committed to leaving at this stage, but when I saw them play that night I thought, Hmm, am I making a mistake? They were great, but I had made my mind up. The next day we drove to Galway and Phil came with me in the car, separately from the band, and I told him that I was leaving. He was okay with that. He was surprised, but I told him he still had the same team, and it will be fine.’

  Carroll left Thin Lizzy with a parting gift of a new record contract. The path from a disinterested Decca to their new home at Phonogram had not been easy. They had been turned down by Polygram and CBS. RCA offered terms without any advance payment. They came close to signing to Island but a deal had foundered on a general lack of support from within the company. Decca had made a derisory offer to renew their relationship, only to withdraw it when the band dithered. ‘We were getting pretty desperate,’ says Carroll.

  Late in the day, chance intervened. Phonogram’s Nigel Grainge was a frequent customer at Rock On. Carroll mentioned in the shop one day that Thin Lizzy were looking for a deal, and within a matter of weeks Phonogram had offered a contract. ‘I knew who they were,’ says Grainge. ‘I wasn’t a total fan, but I knew they were a really good live band. They’d had their top-ten record with Decca, but they weren’t stars in any way. They sent down a demo tape of two songs, and one was absolutely amazing. That was “Still in Love with You”.’

  Grainge was particularly moved by the guitar solo. ‘We told Nigel Grainge it was the two new guitarists in the band,’ Lynott recalled. ‘It wasn’t, it was Gary Moore.’10 Grainge didn’t discover the truth until years later.

  It was do or die. Thin Lizzy were £30,000 in debt. Chris Morrison had to borrow £250 from the bank to cover the expenses for their showcase gig for Phonogram at a broiling Marquee on 9 July 1974. It was so hot that night all the guitars went out of tune, but they played well enough to confirm the deal, even if the advance for a two-album contract only cleared what they owed. ‘It was a ridiculously low-budget deal,’ says Grainge. ‘They ran out of money straight away, so we had to renegotiate immediately.’ Thin Lizzy Mk II had barely become accustomed to each other when Phonogram put them in the studio to record a new album.

  The arc of Lynott’s relationship with Gale Barber can be measured in song. If ‘Look What the Wind Blew In’ captures the rush, trepidation and wonder of its beginnings, the claustrophobic, bleakly beautiful ‘Still in Love with You’ encapsulates its sour times and protracted end. ‘Philip was a man of two personalities,’ says Chris O’Donnell. ‘Once inside the flat with Gale, he was incredibly jealous and very guarded about his relationship with her. Then he would walk out the door and put on this swaggering, main-man persona and embrace the lifestyle that goes with that. Chicks in every town, which according to him was fine because that came with the gig. Then he’d go home to Gale and say, “But we’re in a relationship!”’

  When he was away from London he would sleep with other women. Indeed, he did not always have to be away. Yet the thought that Barber might be unfaithful drove him to distraction. He would assign friends to monitor her movements. While on tour, Lynott would telephone to interrogate her about her whereabouts at specific times. He would say he had called her at nine o’clock last night – why wasn’t she there? What had she been doing? And with whom? ‘It got to the stage where I thought, I’m going mad, because I was there and the phone didn’t ring,’ said Barber.11

  The scenes between them became increasingly ugly. There had been an incident on holiday in Ibiza in 1973, where he and Gale, Philomena and Dennis Keeley had accompanied Frank Murray and his wife Ferga on their honeymoon. Lynott had been best man. One night he discovered that Barber had been dancing – by herself – and lashed out at her.

  He claimed that he wanted a child – a boy, always a boy – and marriage, but it was a romantic idyll that bore scant relation to the reality. Nothing in the way he behaved suggested he was ready for that level of commitment. The atmosphere around him was routinely chaotic. One night at Welbeck Mansions a woman turned up on the doorstep holding a new-born baby. She claimed Lynott was the father and was threatening to throw the child onto the marble floor. ‘When he was born,’ she said, ‘I saw a blue light.’ Jim Fitzpatrick was staying at the apartment at the time and asked her to leave. The woman jammed her foot between the door and the frame. Lynott came out in his underwear. During the inevitable commotion, the police were called. Prior to their arrival, Lynott threw his stash of dope from the window, no small sacrifice as ‘we were living on beans on toast,’ says Fitzpatrick. ‘We were all taken to the station and then released, and never heard another word about it.’

  The woman had claimed that the child was conceived on a ferry – which, as Fitzpatrick notes drily, ‘was not beyond the realms of possibility’ – but Lynott denied knowing her, never mind being the father of her child. ‘That baby was not my baby,’ he told Fitzpatrick. ‘I don’t know that girl from Adam.’ Similar scenes were repeated while he was away. Barber also felt that he was surrounded by people who weren’t prepared to offer him the unvarnished truth when he needed to hear it. ‘Gale knew Philip and understood him better than most people,’ says Frank Murray. ‘She was a no-bullshitter. Philip at times could be full of bullshit.’

  ‘I talked to her once in the Black Lion in West Hampstead for hours, and she was really upset because she felt Philip was drifting away from her,’ says Jim Fitzpatrick. ‘There were other women coming in and out. She knew deep down it couldn’t work.’

  While Thin Lizzy were playing in Germany, Lynott called home to Welbeck Mansions and asked his girlfriend to be gone when he returned. His friends believe that it was a bluff he did not expect Barber to act on. ‘She was having none of it, and split up with him,’ says O’Donnell. ‘She was independent, she wouldn’t put up with any of that nonsense. He’d sing “Still in Love with You” about her – like, I’ll never get over you – but the reality was he sought fame more than a loving relationship with Gale.’

  ‘He was very insecure,’ she recalled later. ‘The truth is that he was deep. And he was complicated. There was a big divide between his public and private selves.’12

  Barber continued to work in West Hampstead, and after the fallout subsided she and Lynott remained in touch. ‘That relationship took a long time to end,’ says Chris Morrison. ‘It seemed to go on past its termination for some considerable time; they would meet up and see each other.’ When Lynott married Caroline Crowther in 1980, contact ceased until
shortly before he died.

  Philomena had always hoped her son would marry Barber, and never quite seemed to accept that he hadn’t. Lynott, typically, did not discuss it. After she left Welbeck Mansions, ‘Gale’s name was mentioned occasionally and quietly,’ remembers Chalkie Davies. ‘I don’t think Phil ever mentioned it, but Frank and I talked about it. Hearts were broken and it was just never discussed. You didn’t mention it because you didn’t want to upset him.’

  His response was to swear off any serious attachment and throw himself into an even more compulsive phase of womanizing. For the next two years, Welbeck Mansions became the realm of the bachelor. Frank Murray lived there, as did Brian Robertson, Charlie McLennan and many others. There are few among Lynott’s group of friends and acquaintances who didn’t cohabit with him at one time or another. He did not easily switch into domestic mode.

  ‘Welbeck Mansions was a funny place,’ says Murray. ‘There were a lot of people there, people who would come over from Dublin and sleep on the sofa for a few nights. There was no real shopping or domestic routine. Philip was really basic in his desires. He liked bacon and egg in the morning. He’d get really pissed off if he went to the fridge and the last piece of bacon was gone. You’d hear him screaming from the kitchen. He liked steak and chips. Beans on toast. I don’t recall him cooking meals. He might make you a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. He’d tidy up occasionally.’

  ‘He was never domestic, no,’ says Brian Robertson. ‘He always had Big Charlie or somebody else there, and he would get them to go to the fish and chip shop. He’d eat half and leave the rest, and get himself a bottle. We had some fine old times, though we argued a lot.’ An air of transience hung over it all. Thin Lizzy producer John Alcock remembers ‘the place being devoid of any furniture. It was piles of tapes and cassettes and shit all over the floor.’ As usual, Lynott was rarely there. As he sang in ‘Sweet Marie’, in one of his simpler, elegant and truest couplets: ‘My home is where my heart is, and my heart is not at home’.