cover image Thin Lizzy: Soldiers of Fortune

Thin Lizzy: Soldiers of Fortune

Alan Byrne. Firefly Publishing, $30 (222pp) ISBN 978-0-946719-57-0

Philip Lynott, the vocalist, bass player, primary songwriter and driving force behind Thin Lizzy, is the principle player in this account of one of Ireland's most successful rock bands. Byrne breezes through Lynott's childhood and teenage years before touching on Lynott's important early bands, Skid Row and Orphanage, and the ever-changing Thin Lizzy, which arguably reached its apogee with the release of Live and Dangerous in 1978. The pages devoted to Lynott's post-Lizzy group, Grand Slam, are welcome, as is the coverage of Lynott's final solo work of 1985. (Lynott's long destructive drug habit culminated in his death in 1986.) What emerges from these pages is a colorful picture of Lizzy's life on the road, their relationships with record companies and the internal conflicts that produced creative tension. However, Byrne's analysis is shallow, and he misses numerous chances to explore Lynott's character. He suggests that the lyrics of""Angel from the Coast"" enable people""to glance behind Lynott's facade a little too much,"" then drops the subject without discussion. Byrne misses again when he notes that Thin Lizzy were disappointed with their second album, Shades of a Blue Orphanage, but neglects to explain why. Cobbled together primarily from interviews conducted by Byrne, the book is more a string of reminiscences than a biography, and two-thirds of any given page is quoted material. Byrne's prose is inelegant at best and painfully diffuse at worst, and because there is no index, one must troll carefully through the fluff of the quotes and Byrne's cumbersome verbiage to find useful bits of information. 8 pages of b&w photos.