The chorus rocks balls, and things get really wild when Lynott cries “Break out!” and somebody imitates a siren and the twin guitars slash ferociously away until the song returns to its opening melody. That said, he’s not so busy making his getaway to proposition a bonnie lass (“Hey you!/Good lookin’ female/Come here!”).
#Thin lizzy running back lyrics tv
And let’s not forget (although he goes uncredited on the LP) Tim Hinkley, who plays keyboards on the song “Running Back,” which is NOT about American football running back Brian Piccolo of the Chicago Bears, whose life and death from embryonal cell carcinoma were turned into a 1971 TV movie, which still makes me cry when his bestest pal Gale Sayers says, “I love you, Brian Piccolo.” Editor, that’s one extraneous sentence, and feel free to take it out if you want.Īnyway, Jailbreak opens with its lithe and fast title cut, which begins with a mighty guitar explosion after which the paired guitars of Gorham and Robertson enter, one from stage left and the other from stage right, to play a monstrous riff (and one very cool whammy bar) while Lynott sings threateningly about a jailbreak about to happen somewhere in this here town. And speaking of the band, in addition to Gorham, Robertson, and Lynott (lead vocals, bass, and acoustic guitar), it included Brian Downey on drums and percussion. Jailbreak rawks thanks to Lynott’s great songwriting and the band’s stellar musicianship (especially the dual-guitar interplay of Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson). Gorham and Robertson put any guitar work The Boss put out to shame, and beats hell out of the guitar playing of that U2 dude who inexplicably named himself after a shaving gel. “The proof of how desperate people are for new Springsteen is that they’ll settle for this-even “The Boys Are Back in Town” is the sort of thing that ends up in Bruce’s wastebasket.” But fuck Robert Christgau (I’ve always wanted to say that) if he doesn’t know great music when it burrows its way into his earholes (bet he loves all of Janis Ian’s albums). It seems everybody has heard Jailbreak but yours truly, and everybody who has heard it has liked it except for muzcrit/cantankerous dotard Robert Christgau, who wrote. 6) became its big commercial breakthrough, thanks to the title cut and the ubiquitous “The Boys Are Back in Town.” Anyway, Thin Lizzy basically released an album per year until 1976, when Jailbreak (LP No. Thin Lizzy may well be the least Irish-sounding band in Irish history. Thin Lizzy’s first break came when their 1972 cover of the hoary Irish traditional “Whiskey in the Jar” scored big, even though the band itself was pissed by its release, believing it didn’t fit the band’s image. The band moved permanently to London in 1971, and recorded their eponymous debut LP that same year. Thin Lizzy was founded in 1969 in Dublin by two former members of Van Morrison’s Them and two members of the band Orphanage (which reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s quip about orphans, to wit: “To lose one parent is misfortune to lose two parents is sheer carelessness.”). Too sci-fi for my decidedly earthbound tastes. Turns out I love the damn thing! Just as I love everything about the LP, except for its cover. “Cowboy Song” may start slowly, but its guitar solos are tremendous and Lynott’s vocals are impassioned (especially when he sings, “It’s okay amigo/Just let me go/Riding in the rodeo”) and the jam at song’s end is a bono fido guitar marvel. So here I am making up for atoning for my inexplicable oversight, and listening to Jailbreak which mixes tremendous twin-guitar hard rockers with sweeter fair, all of which I love with the possible exception of “Cowboy Song”-in which Lynott, a black Irishman, plays rodeo cowpoke.īut I take that back.
But there’s no point in crying over guilty milk, and it’s never too late to make up for past mistakes, that is unless you’re Lee Harvey Oswald or that chimpanzee (name: Travis) who ripped a woman’s face off in 2009, and I’m neither of those personages. I would love to be able to say I simply wasn’t into hard rock back then, but I owned albums by Bad Company, UFO (UFO? Me? Inexplicable!), Robin Trower, and Foghat, so that’s sheer bunk. If Debbie Gibson’s middle name been John, I would have listened to her too. Here vocalist/bassist and chief songwriter Phil Lynott and his Irish compatriots put out a truly tremendous LP in America’s Bicentennial Year, not to mention a parcel of other great LPs, and what was I doing? Listening to Elton John and John Denver and England Dan and John Ford Coley, any band basically with a guy named John in it. You wanna hear a miracle? I lived for almost five-and-a-half decades without ever hearing Jailbreak, or any other Thin Lizzy album for that matter.
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