THROUGH THICK AND THIN

In 1976, Thin Lizzy were touring Jailbreak in the US and were breaking big. Then disaster struck. Band manager Chris O'Donnell details the roller-coaster year in which they were cruelly robbed of their American dream.

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It was raining as I drove west along the A40 motorway that December morning. I was on my way to meet with Thin Lizzy to talk about recording a new album. They had been writing and rehearsing new songs in a residential studio facility situated almost 20 miles west of London. It would be the last day they would all be together before everyone left for the Christmas break.

There was a song they were unsure about, but they played it for me anyway. It was very basic, just an idea and a chord structure that set it apart from all the other songs I was to hear that day, but even then I knew I was listening to something you might wait a whole lifetime to hear. That song would become The Boys Are Back In Town.

As I drove home, I thought back to a conversation I’d had with Philip, almost a year ago, when he asked me what it was going to take for Thin Lizzy to make it in America. I told him that he needed a song that as soon as people hear it on the radio, they know it’s Thin Lizzy. Was it possible that I had heard that song today?

I’d had a recent late-night phone call with Mike Bone, the new head of radio promotion at Mercury Records. He called to tell me he was getting airplay on Wild One, a track from the current album Fighting, and that it was beginning to sell in the markets where stations were playing it. The message couldn’t be any clearer: if the company was going to get behind the band, Bone needed a track on the new album that he could take to radio.