Even those of us who lived through Phil Lynottâs high period have trouble believing such a man ever existed. Internationally acknowledged Irish rock stars were, in the years before U2 and the Boomtown Rats, as rare as internationally acknowledged Irish Starfleet commanders.
In that depressingly monocultural era, his mixed-race background only added to the implausibility. And the records he made with Thin Lizzy still sound excellent. Johnny the Fox and Jailbreak merged American street life with Irish mythology in remarkable fashion.
âDown from the glen came the marching men with their shields and their swords,â he sang before moving on to the hustlers and dealers.