Thin Lizzy - Thin Lizzy

Thin Lizzy - Thin Lizzy

by Jonas Lenberg in Vinyl of the week

The Friendly Ranger At Clontarf Castle streams out of the speakers and flows seamlessly into Honesty Is No Excuse, and I am completely stunned. I am sitting there, wedged into an Eighties sofa, surrounded by cushions, cheap wine, Marinella and fingers sticky with cheese puffs.“Can you play that again?” I say to Tommy. Tommy was from the small town of Habo, just outside Jönköping, and was into tennis, Thin Lizzy and Van Halen. We had met earlier that same year in Kristianstad, where we were doing our military service. The year was 1984. It was Friday night and we were excited after a long train journey back from our posting. Herreys were at the top of the Swedish charts, grating on our eardrums like a Eurovision-winning Swedish entry – three brothers dressed in dance-band outfits with brightly coloured tops. It definitely wasn't our thing. Our world wasn't filled with the gossip press's front pages or the covers of OKEJ magazine.

I knew Thin Lizzy well enough, but I had never heard this first LP in its entirety before. The few songs and fragments I had picked up were minimal, mostly overheard on the radio. My focus was more towards post-punk, Pink Floyd and my musical god David Bowie. By then, my LP collection had already grown to a half-metre-high stack of records in this genre.

I met Tommy again several years later. We talked about music, and he told me that he had developed an allergy to hops. A fate worse than death, he said – he loved beer...

The LP is a blend of Irish folk rock with clear Celtic influences. Here you can hear Lynott's early songwriting, extraordinarily poetic and musically outstanding. Lynott also wrote poetry, which he published in book form alongside his music. Eric Bell was the band's sole guitarist, bringing his own tone and colours to the music. The absence of simple power chords is striking. Instead, it is all about creating atmosphere and nuance around Bell and Lynott's lyrics. I know I've said this before and taken some wallops for it, but I consider the first three LPs to be the most interesting. Precisely because of this combination, where the vocals almost seem to converse with the drums and guitar, in something akin to call and response. In my subjective opinion, there isn't a single second of a dip in this LP. Everything grabs your attention. Five out of five all the way through is my verdict. Perhaps that is precisely why it has now, these days, been reissued as a 50th Anniversary Edition.

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