"Thin Lizzy"

Thin Lizzy was a band that lived life to the full. In their hey-day, they mixed lilting Celtic melodies with a rock 'n' roll edge and had a reputation as one of the seventies' best live acts. A hard drinking, drug-taking, lady-killing gang, they went on the rampage across the world's stages, often blowing away the opposition in the process. Phil Lynott's six-foot-plus wiry frame and the label of "the only black man in Dublin" ensured that he stood out from the crowd. Thin Lizzy soon became the vehicle for him to play a range of characters - the vagabond, the romeo, the streetfighter, the reckless lover. Backed by some of the best heavy rockers - Brian Downey, Scott Gorham, Brian Robertson and the transient Gary Moore - Lynott was the archetypal rock 'n' roll rebel. In many ways a hopeless romantic, Lynott was a man of many contradictions, but he crafted some of the seventies' greatest pop songs. Sometimes sensitive, sometimes bullying and arrogant, his workaholic tendencies often drove himself and those around him beyond the limit. In January 1986 he finally succumbed to the lifestyle he had so doggedly clung to. His reluctance to abandon the recklessness that haunted many of the characters in his songs finally meant the difference between life and death. What emerges in this book is a portrait documenting the rise and fall of the wild men of rock, whilst never losing sight of the lyricism inherent in Lynott's Irish roots.