Ballad of a Thin Man: Philip Lynott 75

Thin Lizzy - Got to Give It Up

Happy Tuesday and happy milestone woulda been birthday to another of those one-off icons that defy stereotype and easy polemics.

This guy was a really dastardly one to cover on here, because all the best tidbits are issued in these giant, super deluxe versions and the remainder of the ROIOs often sounds like death warmed over.

Speaking of death, today's superstar of the eternal firmament didn't do much to avoid an early one -- as so often is the case, via the twin demons Herr Owen and Al Cohol -- and didn't give people the easiest time when those guys were visiting.

It's a terrible shame on its own, but when you take into account the caliber of legendary figure he's become since -- even in America, a place he never could seem to crack when alive -- and the vast treasure chests of lucre he'd now possess had he been able to stay any sort of reasonable distance from the party favors, it amplifies the cries of suffering sad.

That said, is Phil Lynott the most beloved, revered and imitated musical figure in the history of Ireland?

Van Morrison? Too weird and crusty, unhappy a lotta the time and unambassador-esque. U2 dude -- I can't stand him, but people do love them -- would not exist were it not for Phil, and would tell you so, so he just stands on the shoulders of. Bob Geldof would say the same: without Phil Lynott building and paving the road, he'd not have bothered to learn to drive.

Let's say this: I haven't ever been to Ireland -- if I went, they'd likely have to tranquilize me and kidnap me back to The States against my will -- and I don't mean to racialize it too much, but I don't imagine there are too many statues of Black, or even nonwhite, people there. And not a whole lotta Rock musicians either.

I can think of one, though.

As charismatic and poetic a figure that will ever stand in leather trousers in front of tens of thousands of adoring lunatics at once and make a Fender Precision bass guitar look like an accessory of armament, I'm not even sure that Dublin likeness is the only statue of this guy that stands in some city somewhere on the globe.

What do you say about Thin Lizzy, even? Did they ever make a song that didn't combine sharpwitted, observational intelligence with pelvis-pounding, tonnage-heavy Rock And Roll?

Did Phil Lynott ever write a crappy, toss-off song, or at least one that he didn't pour whatever effort he had available into every single line? "They don't make 'em like this anymore" is the best I can do in the way of twee cliché, I'm afraid.

Anyway he's dead decades and largely by his own doing, but whilst here he made a kind of impact that very few humans do. And, you can dance to it.

So, action figures.... are you ready to rock? Are you ready to rip it up? Are you ready to hit the floor? This ridiculous two hours of intensity and sincerity has been issued on a couple of official DVDs but never as lossless audio, and never as anything that sounded halfway listenable, at least to me. So I extracted what I thought was the best existing iteration of it -- in this case, DTS 5.1 audio -- and messed around to make the sonix at least halfway worthy of the music and its architect.

Thin Lizzy

Rockpalast Festival

Freilichtbühne Loreley

St. Goarshausen, Germany

8.29.1981

01 introduction

02 Are You Ready?

03 Genocide

04 Waiting for an Alibi

05 Jailbreak

06 Trouble Boys

07 Don't Believe a Word

08 Memory Pain

09 Got to Give It Up

10 Chinatown

11 Hollywood

12 Cowboy Song

13 The Boys Are Back In Town

14 Suicide

15 Black Rose

16 Sugar Blues

17 Baby Drives Me Crazy

18 Rosalie

19 announcements and applause

20 Angel of Death

21 Emerald

Total time: 1:50:31

disc break goes after Track 11

Phil Lynott - bass & vocals

Brian Downey - drums

Scott Gorham - guitar & vocals

Snowy White - guitar

Darren Wharton - keyboards & vocals

6-channel, 5.1 DTS 48k audio extracted from the 2009 EV Classics DVD "Are You Ready?"

downmixed to 16/44 CD Audio, slightly edited and very remastered -- with repeating applause portion removed -- by EN, August 2024

729 MB FLAC/direct link

Yes, you read that right... the official DVDs of this have some sort of issue where a section of the applause and announcements at the encore break repeats! It doesn't matter, it's got its obvious flaws but it's still a great show -- these guys rarely offered less than that in a concert context -- and it makes a great introduction to these guys and to the birthday boy, if you've been living under the bus for the last 50 years and somehow have never heard of them.

If that's you, Phil has a message for you! I'm just kidding. I'll be back at the end of the month with more, but you better welcome The Boys and their twin-harmony guitars back to town as we celebrate the great Philip Lynott, born this day in 1949 and still thundering despite being gone since the rainy, slate-gray Reagan '80s.--J.

8.20.1949 - 1.4.1986