Although his career was almost 20 years, he was gone too soon. There’s no telling what he would’ve done throughout the remainder of the 1980s or what his band Thin Lizzy would’ve evolved into. The band played bluesy, street-wise hard rock for most of the 1970s while their final album—and my favorite from Thin Lizzy—Thunder and Lightning was their step into heavy metal territory. In each album, Phil Lynott maintained his cool storytelling in tales of drug abuse, crime, love and just life in general. For recommended songs, I’m not going to include their best-known song “The Boys Are Back in Town” since we’ve all heard it already. Recommended Song: “Johnny” (Johnny the Fox, 1976), Opium Trail” and “Dancing In The Moonlight” (Bad Reputation, 1977), “Cold Sweat” (Thunder and Lightning, 1983)