{"id":975685,"date":"2020-03-17T07:30:24","date_gmt":"2020-03-17T13:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/uncategorized\/uncategorized-news\/an-ode-to-the-best-st-patricks-day-song-thin-lizzys-black-rose-193200\/"},"modified":"2020-03-17T07:30:24","modified_gmt":"2020-03-17T13:30:24","slug":"an-ode-to-the-best-st-patricks-day-song-thin-lizzys-black-rose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/an-ode-to-the-best-st-patricks-day-song-thin-lizzys-black-rose\/","title":{"rendered":"An Ode to the Best St. Patrick\u2019s Day Song: Thin Lizzy\u2019s \u2018Black Rose\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Irish have put up with a lot of bullshit over the years. There\u2019s England. The Troubles. The kittening of the Celtic Tiger<\/a>. Enya. It\u2019s not been an easy history. And black people, those living in mostly white countries anyway, they\u2019ve put up with a whole bunch of bullshit, too. So if we pretend there\u2019s an iota of depressing truth being bandied about when, in Roddy Doyle\u2019s novel The Commitments<\/em>, the irrepressible yet wee bit na\u00efve protagonist Jimmy says that the Irish are the blacks of Europe, then it\u2019s fair to say that Thin Lizzy<\/a> frontman Phil Lynott<\/a>, a black Irishman, and that\u2019s black as in race, not dark-haired Gaelic phenotype, well, he probably put up with more bullshit than most. As an outsider among outsiders, he found a way to deal by starting an outrageous, sad-boy weepy, myth-steeped, bad-boy bragging, bulldozing rock band, and fair play to him. Born winners play the worst blues.<\/p>\n

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You know, Sigmund Freud said the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis. Er, Matt Damon playing Irish-American in The Departed <\/em>said that Freud said that. As far as anyone can tell, the good doktor<\/em> never actually uttered those words; the line is just a charming bit of cultural mythmaking malarkey, which makes it very Irish, very rock and roll and totally Phil Lynott. So even if you can\u2019t put the Irish on the couch, you can safely surmise that when people are born beneath the underdog, one way to deal is by learning to spin some yarns, and by developing some swag. That\u2019s what Lynott did, and he wrote Thin Lizzy<\/a>\u2019s \u201cR\u00f3is\u00edn Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend\u201d \u2014 found on 1979\u2019s similarly-titled album<\/a> \u2014 and it\u2019s the best Irish rock song of all time.<\/p>\n

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Okay, Thin Lizzy. If you\u2019re a casual music fan you probably know the band\u2019s 1976 single \u201cThe Boys Are Back in Town,\u201d taken from the album Jailbreak<\/em>. That smash hit single and modest hit album, both of which are truly fantastic pieces of roguish hard rock, were Lizzy\u2019s biggest, and pretty much only, noteworthy American successes. They soldiered on as a big U.K.\/European attraction till 1983 (and a version of the band is still on the road today). In 1986, Lynott, dogged by alcohol and drug addiction, died tragically and early, at 36 years old from pneumonia and heart failure, circumstances that, depending on how much of softy you are, either raised him up or relegated him down to the realm of long-ago legend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And \u201cthe legends of long ago\u201d is where \u201cBlack Rose,\u201d a song about songs, a myth about myths, a messily epic, brilliantly exaggerated and melodramatic ode to Ireland by the ur<\/em>-Irish rock band begins. Lynott tells a tale of kings and queens as guitarists Scott Gorham and Gary Moore riff on a modified Irish slip jig, only with hard rock distortion and road dog bite, backed by drummer Brian Downey bouncing around the compound meter. Then Lynott, who always sounded like he was either bashful or boastful and who here is a bit of both, nods to the folk hero Cuchulain<\/a>, dark and sullen, who always won, and who promptly dies in the next line of the lyrics. (Because no one does fatalism like the Irish.) The guitars meanwhile are just ripping through dueling licks in Celtic modes, rapiers slicing through the air, and Lynott, a fatalistic street punk with a head gloriously full of cowboy movies<\/a>, Hendrixian comic book hoo-ha<\/a>, roving vagabonds<\/a> and that perfectly sentimental Irish poetry<\/a>, he taps his temple and turns the key that lets him into the fantasy pub where all those doomed hooligans drink and dance together, which is exactly where \u201cBlack Rose\u201d takes place. Once Lynott\u2019s in there, he tells everyone to shut up and listen. \u201cPlay me the melodies, so I might know,\u201d he sings. \u201cI want to tell my children oh.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly, beautifully, what Moore and Gorham do next. They play the majestic, eternal, sentimental melodies of \u201cDanny Boy,\u201d \u201cShenandoah,\u201d \u201cWild Mountain Thyme\u201d and \u201cThe Mason\u2019s Apron,\u201d the last played so fast and hard that you can just about see the sweaty stepdancers slamming their ghillies into the floor, sending up splinters, absolutely lost in this outlandish heavy metal reeling and rolling.<\/p>\n

Then that music stops, and misty keyboard chords waft in. Lynott\u2019s voice is echoing now, as if he were singing from the top of the mountains of Mourne, his voice carrying down across the valleys of green heather into the hearts of the children who would cover his songs: U2<\/a> and Metallica<\/a> and Mastodon<\/a> and the Smashing Pumpkins<\/a> and Cass McCombs<\/a> and Def Leppard<\/a> and Ted Leo<\/a> and the Replacements<\/a> and so many others<\/a> who heard the romance in hard guitars and tender feelings. Gorham and Moore swirl and drone around their singer, sneaking in snippets from \u201cWhiskey in the Jar,\u201d<\/a> the whole band pulsing with a collective yipping yarragh<\/em>. Heading home, the rhythm section still jigging, Lynott begins a roll call and, in classic Phil fashion, delivers the names in puns he probably found when they fall off a limerick somewhere:<\/p>\n

And it was a joy that Joyce<\/a> brought to me.
<\/em>George<\/a>, he knows Best.
<\/em>Oscar, he\u2019s going Wilde<\/a>.
<\/em>Brendan, where have you Behan<\/a>?
<\/em>Synge<\/a>, playboy of the western world.
<\/em>Van<\/a>, he is the man.<\/em><\/p>\n

And if you don\u2019t want to be Irish by this point in the song, you need another drink. And if, by the grace of God, you are<\/em> Irish, we owe you another drink.<\/p>\n

Ah, but sly Phil frowns and reminds us that \u201cstarvation, it\u2019s running wild,\u201d which is a potato famine<\/a> callback, because life is hard, none of Best, Behan, Synge nor Wilde, let alone the singer, reached old age and it\u2019s a long way from Tipperary. So get your fill, lads and lassies. Sing a song of praise and fight the bullshit with all the blarney you can muster because the fadeout is coming. But before it\u2019s here, raise a glass to telling tall tales, to wild-eyed boys and chicks so cool they\u2019re red-hot<\/a>, to Cuchulain and getting by with what you got, to Phil Lynott, to Thin Lizzy, to the great emerald green part of your heart and to the dispossessed, the drunk and to this:<\/p>\n