Cowboy Song

by Graeme Thomson

  Downey hadn’t seen Lynott since March of the previous year, at the aborted Grand Slam rehearsals. ‘I flew over and met him at his house, and I got a shock to say the least,’ he says. ‘It became obvious that he had changed, physically and personality wise. He had put on lots of weight, I noticed that immediately. He looked a bit unhealthy, and he didn’t seem to be his normal self. He was withdrawn, and talking in a fairly negative way. I did say to him, “Are you okay? You’ve put on a bit of weight there, man.” He said, “I’ve got no time to exercise, I’m pretty busy.” I didn’t really question it, but I was keeping an eye on him. There was a fair bit of brandy and port being consumed on the plane up to Newcastle. I noticed that. It really stuck in my mind.’

  After taping the television show, presented by their old champion, David ‘Kid’ Jensen, Lynott, Downey and guitarist Robin George flew back to London and returned to Kew Road. Downey took one look at the scene of dissolution that Lynott had allowed to accumulate around him and booked into a hotel rather than stay the night, as had been originally planned. He left for Dublin the next day and never saw Lynott again.

  Before they parted, Lynott talked about reforming Thin Lizzy as a four-piece in six months’ time, once he had got back into shape. ‘The conversation was very positive,’ says Downey, ‘But I did say, “You’ll have to get your health and your fitness back.” He realized that.’ Lynott rehearsed the same theme with Sean O’Connor, earmarked as a prospective second guitarist, over coffee in London, and again when Scott Gorham came to visit him for the first time since Thin Lizzy had split.

  The guitarist had finally succeeded in coming off heroin, using the NeuroElectric Therapy technique pioneered by Meg Patterson, the Scottish doctor who had successfully treated Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton. Gorham knew from the grapevine that Lynott was still using hard drugs, but felt strong enough to see him again.

  ‘He was in his robe and slippers,’ he says. ‘His face was all puffy, and he was suffering really badly from his asthma. He looked terrible. I was clean now, and glowing with health. I played him some stuff, and he said he had a song he wanted to show me. He picked up his acoustic guitar and played, and I started to play along with it. Then he started to say things like, “We’ve really got to get back to writing songs and putting the band back together.” I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, “Buddy, there’s nothing I’d love more, but you’re not ready to do this.” I think he saw that in my face. He said, “Yeah, I’m going to quit all this drug shit, get healthy. It’s all going to be good.” I gave him a big hug, and went home.’

  At the time, Lynott had another court case pending. He had been arrested for possession of a small amount of heroin. A custodial sentence was a possibility. During the three hours Gorham was with him, Lynott received a call from his solicitor informing him that the charges had been dropped, and celebrated by immediately draining two tall glasses of neat vodka.

  Lynott was admitted to Salisbury General Hospital on 25 December 1985. His mother and daughters had arrived at Kew Road two days earlier to spend Christmas with him, but Lynott could not shake off the detritus which surrounded him. He struggled to get out of bed. When he got out of bed, he struggled to get dressed. He was vomiting and listless, frightened and freezing cold.

  He deteriorated in the period leading up to Christmas Day. Brian Robertson came over on Christmas Eve with Jesse Wood to deliver a present. ‘I walked in the bedroom, and he was totally a mess,’ says Robertson. ‘I tried to have a chat with him, but it was no good. I went straight downstairs, and said to Phyllis, “You’d better call Phil’s doctor. This is not flu or whatever it is he’s told you. This is dangerous shit.”’ He was visited by a doctor, who administered a shot and left.

  He declined further. Caroline Lynott was spending the holiday period in Bath, and after calling the house on Christmas Day she drove to Kew to collect her daughters. In the belief that his condition was drug-related, Lynott was taken to Clouds House Treatment Centre in East Knoyle, near Salisbury in Wiltshire. Now comatose, he was swiftly transferred by ambulance to Salisbury General Infirmary.

  He remained there for eleven days, drifting in and out of consciousness as his system slowly shut down. Graham Cohen, Charlie McLennan and Philomena Lynott were with him. His wife was in regular attendance, and his daughters visited. Chris Morrison came and waved through the glass; Lynott waved back. Everybody else was kept at arm’s-length. ‘Charlie had called to say Philip was in the hospital,’ says Frank Murray. ‘I kind of knew he wasn’t coming out. It was terrible because people said, “No, you can’t come down.” Philip was my friend and I felt really sad that I wasn’t there, just to hold his hand.’

  ‘I was keeping in contact with people, and they were saying, “Oh, he’s coming out of the coma,”’ Brian Downey told me. ‘One day he was out, the next day he was in. I said, “I’d love to come over and see what the hell is going on,” but I was told, “Not really. Don’t come over, it’s a family matter. He’ll be okay, he’ll pull through.”’

  Lynott died on the morning of 4 January, the first Saturday of 1986, and fifteen years to the day since he had entered Decca Studios in Broadhurst Gardens to make the first Thin Lizzy album. He was connected to a dialysis machine and a respirator. His heart, liver and kidneys had ceased to function. He had pneumonia, abscesses and septicaemia. Shortly before Christmas, Lynott had been at a party where he had fallen over and chipped his elbow. This caused osteomyelitis, a bone infection to which intravenous drug users and those with weak immune systems are particularly vulnerable, and which can lead to blood poisoning if left untreated.

  There had been close calls in the past, involving speedballs and cocaine seizures. He was drinking dangerous quantities of spirits, which, given his past history with hepatitis, put his liver under enormous strain. At times his asthma was so bad he could scarcely breathe.

  Clinically, it was necessary to put a name to the cause of death, but Lynott had been terribly sick for a long time, and his ailments were many and varied. ‘Picasso said he could deal with anything apart from fame,’ says Noel Bridgeman. ‘I think it destroyed Philo in the end.’

  Epilogue

  The Ageing Orphan

  ‘Irish funerals are usually a lot jollier,’ says Jim Fitzpatrick with a sad smile. ‘It was pretty awful. Everyone was devastated.’

  Befitting a man with at least two personalities, Philip Lynott had two funerals. On 9 January 1986, the Thursday following his death, there was a Mass at St Elizabeth of Portugal, the Richmond church in which he and Caroline had been married almost six years earlier. Among family and a host of musician friends, Lynott’s life was celebrated by Father Raymond Brennan, the same priest who had performed his marriage ceremony. There was a gathering afterwards at the Richmond Hill Hotel.

  On the Friday, his body was flown back to Dublin, and as the winter darkness closed in, his coffin was carried through the streets of Howth to a service at the Church of the Assumption.

  The following morning, 11 January 1986, a Requiem Mass was held. As he had done countless times before, in the Five Club and the Bailey, Moran’s and McGonagle’s, Lynott seemed to gather all of Dublin around him. Despite the presence of photographers, journalists, a TV crew and a fair number of gawkers, it did not feel like a showbiz affair. This was raw, local business.

  Among the throng of mourners were Lynott’s mother, wife and daughters, his extended family, his many friends, and the community of Irish musicians who had so much to thank him for: Bob Geldof and assorted Boomtown Rats; Bono, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen from U2; Terry Woods and Philip Chevron from the Pogues; Marie Brennan from Clannad; members of Dr Strangely Strange; Paul Brady, Brush Shiels, Eamon Carr and many more.

  Taoiseach Charles Haughey and his daughter, Eimear, another old friend from the Clontarf days, paid their respects alongside local fishermen, drinking partners and neighbours. Crowds of fans and local residents gathered outside the church. Inside, the mourners sang ‘Praise My Soul the King
of Heaven’, ‘Peace, Perfect Peace’ and ‘Lord of the Dance’. Clann Éadair played two tunes. The lessons were read by Peter Lynott and Leslie Crowther, whose choice of text from Romans:14 made passing comment on some of the more lurid and unfeeling tabloid stories that ran in the immediate aftermath of his death: ‘You should never pass judgement on a brother,’ he said, ‘Or treat him with contempt as some of you have done.’

  From the Church of the Assumption, Lynott’s coffin was driven the short distance to St Fintan’s Cemetery in Sutton. It was a freezing slate-grey day. The suburban cemetery was bleached of colour and exposed to the wind coming in from the sea. By the graveside, festooned with flowers, Clann Éadair’s Leo Rickard sat and piped his friend into the soil with ‘The Brendan Voyage’, a beautiful air from the Howth Suite by Irish composer Sean Davey. ‘Jesus, it was terrible,’ says Rickard. ‘Just terrible.’

  The wake was held in the Royal Hotel, Howth. ‘It was like we were just waiting for Philip to walk in: “Jaysus, lads, what’re youse up to?”’ says Tim Booth. ‘Everyone said that.’

  U2 manager Paul McGuinness laid on a limousine for some of Lynott’s oldest friends, and they travelled back into town. ‘We got together at a bar and we had a kind of requiem for him,’ says Jim Fitzpatrick. ‘There were seven or eight of us, his close friends, and we just wanted to be on our own. We still couldn’t quite believe it.’ That sad smile again. ‘Still can’t, sometimes.’

  Philip Lynott has now been gone for some thirty years, but at times he feels remarkably present. Very few artists, particularly those who never quite made it to the top of the ladder or, conversely, are not endowed with the enduring cool of cult status, have enjoyed such a potent afterlife.

  In Dublin, he shares with James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh and James Connolly the distinction of having a statue erected in his honour. Unveiled in 2005, the life-sized bronze sculpture stands outside Bruxelles in Harry Street, funded by the Róisín Dubh Trust, set up by his mother.

  And while Joyce has Bloomsday, the annual celebration of his life and work held on 16 June, Lynott has the Vibe for Philo. The bitter-sweet musical tribute has been held on the anniversary of his death each year since 1987, established and organized by Smiley Bolger and featuring live performances from friends, admiring artists and virtually every musician who ever played in Thin Lizzy or with Lynott.

  In 2011, a wonderful and warm exhibition of his life and work, Still in Love with You, opened in Dublin and later travelled to London. It has since returned to Dublin again, and has been viewed by over 100,000 people.

  On the global stage, a band that split up at a low ebb and which was relatively unfashionable through much of its existence is now regarded as one of the great rock groups. ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ belongs to an exclusive canon of songs that instantly raise a smile of pleasure and recognition in bars all over the world. ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ and ‘Jailbreak’ have been passed down through generations. Thin Lizzy’s reinterpretation of ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ is now the standard, a unique blend of the modern and traditional which, somehow, reflects back some of the spirit of Lynott. These songs have entered the bloodstream of popular music.

  In Ireland, the ‘little black boy’ who landed in Crumlin aged seven succeeded in his quest to write himself into the history of his country. He has become another Irish folk hero, the Bold Philo, who lived fast and loved hard and died young, as folk heroes must. And like all folk heroes, he left behind a comet-shower of barely credible exploits destined to forever fill the air of Dublin bars, lavishly embellished with each retelling.

  There is much myth and sentiment surrounding this version of a very complicated, conflicted man. ‘I never saw any fear in the guy,’ says Mark Nauseef. ‘There’s a beauty in that – but you need a little fear, sometimes.’

  In the year before he fell ill, Lynott imagined a future away from the hurly-burly of rock stardom and constant touring. ‘I’d like to think that at a certain age, I’d have written a book, have a nice little place in Howth,’ he said. ‘On Sundays I’d go down and play in the jazz band, you know? Have two very exuberant daughters, one an athlete with a gold medal …’1

  He would have found his place, with or without Thin Lizzy. He was a young man when he died and he would not be old even now. Rock music is not the youthful preserve it once was. It grew up, and so did its practitioners. The best of Lynott’s contemporaries – Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Graham Parker – stayed true to their course. ‘If only he had known,’ says Chalkie Davies. ‘I don’t think he ever really understood how loved he was.’

  Afterword

  I met Philip when I was eighteen and he was twenty-seven. I am now fifty-seven, I have remarried, have two more children, and the children I had with Philip have children of their own. Time has moved on, and my life now could not be more different than the life I shared with Philip.

  I do not dwell in the past and reading this book has re-immersed me in a period of my life which was turbulent, confused and ended very very sadly. I recognize the man in this book – which I think is accurate and very well-researched – and I mourn his loss all over again.

  Who knows what it is that draws people to one another? For me Philip was a challenge, a powerful man with an air of mystery. He was shy and sensitive and the soft voice and those big eyes drew me in. But he was such a mass of contradictions – a man who loved to seduce women but seemed afraid of intimacy. We spent so little time alone together. Invariably one of his male friends/employees/coterie would be there too.

  He laughed like Muttley and had a wicked and sometimes very silly sense of humour, but his mood could change without warning and he could be dark and frightening when he was unhappy. He was a Catholic who loved to go to church with his family while maintaining his own moral compass that perhaps didn’t quite conform to the tenets of the religion!

  I think we both cherished a dream of a traditional family life together. It seems bizarre to me now, remembering the reality of our existence. But there were sometimes hints of the normal life we yearned for in his beloved Dublin – bicycle rides and walks along the beach with the dog. There were Sunday roasts and friends with children who came over to play. There were big family Christmases – he loved to buy presents and was very generous.

  But drugs have a way of spoiling everything, even while they’re telling you they’re going to make it all better. As life became crazier and crazier, I managed to pull myself out of there and start over. For Philip that was not possible. Which remains an enduring sadness for me.

  When I think of Philip I think of the man rather than the musician. For me his legacy is not just the great catalogue of music he created, but the two beautiful, strong, funny, creative and loving girls we made together, of whom he would be so very, very proud.

  Caroline Taraskevics, November 2015

  Bibliography

  There is an enormous amount of audio, visual and written material available on Philip Lynott and the career of Thin Lizzy. Among several film and television programmes dedicated to his life, David Heffernan’s Renegade: The Phil Lynott Story, made in 1982 for RTÉ, remains easily the best and most incisive, not least because it was made during Lynott’s lifetime and with his participation. Shay Healy’s documentary from 1996, The Rocker: A Portrait of Phil Lynott, is also of value.

  On the web, Peter Nielsen’s online fan-site, www.thinlizzyguide.com, is a vast and an admirable resource. Among the acres of magazine and newspaper reportage on this subject, special mention goes to the archives of Hot Press, and the feature writing of Harry Doherty and Chris Salewicz, whose pieces written during Thin Lizzy’s heyday, for Melody Maker and New Musical Express and Creem respectively, provide particularly vivid accounts of Lynott, the band and the wider culture at that time.

  The following short list mentions just some of the many biographies, reference works, novels, anthologies and history books that proved useful during my research.

  Baillie, Stuart, Balla
d of a Thin Man (London, 1996).

  Behan, Brendan, The Complete Plays (London, 1978).

  Byrne, Alan, Philip Lynott, Renegade of Thin Lizzy (Dublin, 2012).

  _____, Thin Lizzy (London, 2004).

  Curtis, Maurice, The Liberties: A History (Dublin, 2013).

  Donnelly, James, Jimmy the Weed: Inside the Quality Street Gang (Preston, 2011).

  Doyle, Roddy, The Commitments (London, 1988).

  Dunphy, Eamon, Unforgettable Fire: The Story of U2 (London, 1987).

  Gantz, Jeffrey, Early Irish Myths and Sagas (Harmondsworth, 2000).

  Geldof, Bob, Is That It? (London, 1986).

  Gorham, Scott and Harry Doherty, Thin Lizzy: The Boys are Back in Town (London, 2012).

  Heaney, Seamus, Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 (London, 1998).

  Lynott, Philomena with Jackie Hayden, My Boy: The Philip Lynott Story (Dublin, 2011).

  O’Connor, Ulrick, Brendan Behan (London, 2014).

  Putterford, Mark, Phil Lynott: The Rocker (London, 1994).

  Stokes, Niall, Still in Love with You (Dublin, 2014).

  U2 with Neil McCormick, U2 by U2 (London, 2005).

  Visconti, Tony, Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy (London, 2007).

  Wall, Mick, Getcha Rocks Off: Sex & Excess, Bust-Ups & Binges, Life & Death on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Road (London, 2015).

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank everyone who spoke to me about Philip Lynott between 2010 and 2015. Their memories and insights are the heart of this book.

  They include: John Alcock, Robert Ballagh, Peter Bardon, Eric Bell, ‘Smiley’ Bolger, Tim Booth, Noel Bridgeman, Eamon Carr, Ted Carroll, Tom Collins, John D’Ardis, Chalkie Davies, Brian Downey, Martin Duffy, Roy Esmonde, Peter Fallon, Hugh Feighery, Jim Fitzpatrick, Bob Geldof, Jeffa Gill, Scott Gorham, Nigel Grainge, Kevin Horan, Macdaragh Lambe, Johnny Lappin, Steve Lillywhite, Søren Lindberg, Philomena Lynott, Gary Moore, Chris Morrison, Frank Murray, Mark Nauseef, Liam O’Connor, Sean O’Connor, Chris O’Donnell, Michael O’Flanagan, Graham Parker, Ivan Pawle, Suzi Quatro, Fran Quigley, Pat Quigley, Leo Rickard, Brian Robertson, Helen Ruttle, Chris Salewicz, Paul Scully, Brush Shiels, Chris Spedding, Mark Stanway, Carole Stephen, Caroline Taraskevics, Nick Tauber, Chris Tsangarides, Brian Tuite, Midge Ure, Tony Visconti, Darren Wharton and Kit Woolven. Thanks also to those who preferred to speak off the record.