Dark side of the Thin Man

The Ballad of the Thin Man: The Authorised Biography of Phil Lynott & Thin Lizzy, by Stuart Bailie, Boxtree, 193pp, £15.99 in UK

THIN LIZZY's is a tragic tale and no mistake, a veritable rags to riches to despair story of how an initially all Irish rock band attempted to conquer the world and failed, and of how the unit's virtually incessant parading of male chauvinism and muscularity could never hide the sense of fragility and anguish that lurked underneath.

It's a moot point, but it's quite likely that Thin Lizzy were the first Irish rock band to make it good outside their own country. Van Morrison succeeded in a solo guise years before the band, and Rory Gallagher's Taste made some in-roads into Europe, but Thin Lizzy sold more records in a group capacity, and had a hint of what American success might be like.

The band's triumphs notably paved the way for The Boomtown Rats and U2, but at a price that surely wasn't worth the effort. That said, it is no sop to a tabloid-hungry world when I say that Thin Lizzy's is a great rock'n'roll story, with all the highs and lows that go with such an account. It is also by association a pitiful one, and Belfast-based Stuart Bailie, ex-assistant editor of the New Musical Express, tells it, more or less, like it is.

More or less? Authorised biographies are excellent for one thing only they lead the reader into a world straight from the horse's mouth. The telephone numbers of friends, relatives, and associates are easily accessed. The price an author can pay for such direct entry, though, is an implicit agreement, at very least, not to spill too many of the dirty beans, especially when the copyright of the text belongs to (in this instance) Thin Lizzy Ltd, and not, Stuart Bailie.

It's a perfectly understandable minor, yet very important, point, and one that nags throughout the dreading of the book there is definitely more to this than meets the eye. It's the author's chosen prerogative, of course - but why, for example, does he rarely quote the people he has so obviously interviewed. Not to do so leaves huge contextual gaps in the book. At just over 190 pages it's perhaps the leanest hardback biography (authorised or not) this reviewer has read in years.

Still, Bailie provides an enthralling read. Chronologically, The Ballad Of The Thin Man is concise and circumspect, and the extent of anecdotal and biographical revelation is superb. The story of how Skid Row band member, Brush Shiels, tried to get Lynott to emulate Frank Sinatra's famed lung capacity by holding his head down in a basin of lukewarm water for as long as he could bear it is brilliant. As is a later if somewhat darker, drug-fuelled episode where Lynott loses his temper over an aide taking an ill-advised bite from his personal block of (cheddar cheese.

Bailie's intimation of Lynott as the psychological manifestation of the Cuchulainn legend, cowboy films, and Marvel comic super-he-roe's - each of them fantasy worlds that Lynott was lyrically inspired by band existed within is also spot-on.

However, the accounts of Lynott's increasing reliance on hard drugs, and his accompanying physical and mental fragmentation in both band and personal life seem somewhat understated - he is even termed "the Irish Elvis" on the dust jacket without any sense of irony whatsoever.

One receives the impression that the myth of Lynott as The Rocker with a romantic touch is being pushed here (the final page is far too eulogistic for its own good), whereas his failings as a real person aren't really delved into in any great detail at all.

If you want the nuts and bolts of "the making of Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy, the scene setting of beat group and psychedelia-soaked Dublin in the late 1960s, and the factors that militated against Thin Lizzy's global domination, then look no further. If you're searching for informed analyses of the man behind the mask of rock'n'roll swagger and the music that inspired a further generation of rock acts, then you'd be advised to look elsewhere. {CORRECTION} 97030300069