Philip Parris Lynott was born in the Black Country on August 20, 1949, exactly one year after the Black Country's undisputed rock god, Robert Anthony Plant. The illegitimate son of an Irish mother and an Afro-Guyanese father, he would be brought up a Mancunian long enough to develop an affection for the Manchester United Football Club. When he arrived a few years later to live with his mother's parents in the Dublin suburb of Crumlin, the young Lynott was a bit of an oddity. Almost three, he went across the Irish Sea to be brought up by his strict Catholic grandparents among his mother's younger siblings, a Dubliner by blood if not quite by birth. With his African blood, he would occasionally be the target of discrimination but more often than not, he had a fairly decent upbringing surrounded by an abundance of friends and family.

When a family friend was unable to rope in Lynott's uncle to join The Black Eagles, a group he was managing, he roped in the barely teenaged Philip to sing lead vocals. It was in this teenage group that Lynott first played with his school chum Brian Downey, a year and a half younger than he and just starting out on drums. By the time Philip Lynott reached eighteen, the Black Eagles were finished and he was continuing to refine his frontman routine with the group Kama Sutra. He quickly departed the group for bassist Brush Shiels' better-known Skid Row.

It was with Skid Row that Lynott would make his first recordings, among the last of them appearing on the group's first single for the independent Irish label Song Records. Shortly after the single's May 1969 release, Lynott temporarily left the group to have his tonsils removed in Britain. Upon his return, his band mates informed Lynott that his services were no longer necessary. As a consolation, Shiels sold Lynott one of his basses and gave the 19-year-old rudimentary lessons. Soon enough, Lynott had teamed back up with Brian Downey as half of the groups Sugarshack and Orphanage, all the while continuing his lessons with Shiels, whom he soon surpassed.

Thin Lizzy came about when guitarist Eric Bell, late of Them and Shades of Blue, heard Orphanage and suggested to Lynott and Downey that they join forces. With Lynott on bass and keyboardist Eric Wrixon joining up, the first lineup of Thin Lizzy was forged. Signed in July 1970 to the Irish branch of Parlophone to a one-single deal, the group entered the studio within days and that first single, "The Farmer" / "I Need You", was out on July 31 with the group credited as "Thin Lizzie". By then, Wrixon was out and the remaining trio was left to forge ahead. Five hundred copies of the single were pressed. Little more than half were sold and Parlophone Ireland quietly dropped Thin Lizzy.

Over the next few months, the trio kept plugging away, performing as much as they could wherever possible. By sheer luck, the group got a job backing rising star Ditch Cassidy whom the British branch of Decca Records had the intention of signing. Upon seeing Thin Lizzy, however, the label switched gears and offered the group a contract. Barely a year after their formation, they were signed to their second record deal just before the close of 1970.

As 1971 dawned, Lynott, Bell and Downey crossed the Irish Sea to cut their first LP. Working with producer Scott English, the group cranked out the ten tracks that would form their self-titled debut in under a week at Decca's West Hampstead studios. Upon hearing the rough mixes of the album, Decca had the more seasoned producer Nick Tauber remix the album without bothering to inform the group. Though the group had no problem with the remixing, they were ultimately burdened when the preliminary artwork for the front and back covers were shown to them- the group's name had been rendered "Tin Lizzy". The label subsequently attempted to get the group to change their name, and when the group stood firm on retaining their moniker, the label charged them for having to fix their error. Though influential disc jockeys John Peel and Kid Jensen did their best to promote Thin Lizzy's April 1971 debut, in selling two thousand copies, the album sank like the proverbial stone.

Upon realizing that their debut was a bust, Thin Lizzy unsuccessfully attempted to convince Decca to let them record a sophomore release as soon as possible. A compromise was made to have the group enter the studio with Tauber to record their four best compositions for an extended play. Over three days in June 1971, the group entered the West Hempstead studios to cut what would become one of the rarest Lizzy releases. The extended play, titled New Day, was issued both in Britain and Ireland on Lynott's twenty-second birthday and promptly disappeared.

The New Day EP was intended as a farewell to their homeland for the supposedly greener pastures of Britain. After its failure, the group was forced to abandon their plans as it was clear that there was still a lot of work ahead of them if they wanted to break through across the sea. It was still necessary to tour Britain but doing so wasn't bringing the group anything worthwhile. Touring Ireland kept them afloat to a degree but the band's finances were still shaky at best. They were like big fish in a small pond back home, but being stars in Ireland didn't help them out when it came to proving their worth to their British record company.

Compounding their problems was the fact that the group were due to enter the studio in late 1971 to record their second album. Having already recorded and released the four best tracks they had after the ten that had graced their first album on a non-starter of an extended play, they had to come up with new material as they continued to perform on a grueling circuit. The results were mixed at best, a portrait in time of a group in transition, not quite the folky rhythm and blues-infused rockers their debut had exhibited and not quite the great rockers whose breakthrough was still years off. Shades of a Blue Orphanage, the title coming from the former groups of the three, had a number of fine compositions but they were occasionally hampered by the hasty recording schedule. Another failure upon its March 1972 release, Shades of a Blue Orphanage is a classic example of what a sophomore slump is. Unfortunately for Thin Lizzy, the sales for their debut hadn't come anywhere close to reaching the point where a sophomore slump was acceptable.

In short, it was do or die for the group. The record industry is a business, after all, and after three releases failing to make a dent on the British charts, Thin Lizzy was at risk to lose their record deal. Something had to be done, so a day's worth of studio time was booked in October 1972 at Decca's Tollington Park studio for the purpose of recording a single. When it came to material, Lynott's upbringing had inspired numerous songs on the group's first three releases for Decca. For the group's first Decca 45, Lynott turned inward to his own ethnic identity in writing "Black Boys on the Corner". An unabashed rocker of a song, "Black Boys on the Corner" was a story song about Lynott telling about a world that he may not have actually experienced firsthand growing up but I'll be damned if the listener could have known it without research. Blistering guitar parts from Bell, percussive madness from Downey and Lynott's bass beefing up the arrangement and his voice riding on top of all in delivering a vocal track harder than any that had preceded it, Lynott was convinced that after so much disappointment that he, Bell and Downey finally had a hit on their hands. He was right and he was wrong…

Prior to the single's release, the label decided that "Black Boys on the Corner" was better suited for the B-side. Along with "Black Boys on the Corner", the group had cut a folky arrangement of the traditional Irish number "Whisky in the Jar" at the October session, which they had intended for the B-side. It was a fine arrangement, sure, but one that seemed less Lizzy-like than "Black Boys on the Corner" was. Bassist Lynott didn't even add a bass line to the song, the group arrangement only features his strummed acoustic rhythm part. It turned out that the record company was right in flipping the sides, for it would be "Whisky in the Jar" that would give the group their first top-ten hit in Britain (it topped the charts at home), staving off starvation and providing a scintilla of success.

Success, however, would be fleeting. Another non-album single, this one more in the Lizzy style, "Randolph's Tango" / "Broken Dreams" came out and promptly bombed everywhere but at home. A third album, Vagabonds of the Western World, fared little better, as did the single accompanying it (the first pulled from an album), "The Rocker" (alternately issued with the non-album tracks "Here I Go Again" and "A Ride in the Lizzymobile" on the reverse). By the dawn of 1974, a ragged and deteriorated Eric Bell had departed the group.

Thin Lizzy soldiered on, briefly taking on Lynott's old mate Gary Moore on guitar before settling on the twin guitars of Brian "Robbo" Robertson and Scott Gorham, with whom the group would finally break through in the States. After the April 1974 release of the blistering A-side "Little Darling" (alternately issued with "Buffalo Gal" and "The Rocker" on the back), Decca and Thin Lizzy went their separate ways. The group signed with the Mercury-distributed Vertigo Records that July, under whom the group (furthermore to always officially feature Lynott, Downey and Gorham with a rotating group of others after Robertson's 1978 departure) would remain signed until their disbanding nearly a decade later.