Thin Lizzy's Greatest Hits - The Videos.

[apolla]

It’s taken me nearly a week to summon up the necessary to write this post. You can’t say I haven’t warned you it was coming. I imagine it will end up part DVD review and part fan ramblings. A fanview, if you will.

Thin Lizzy - Greatest Hits

was released on DVD on Monday. I forgot about it until that afternoon. My dad took me straight to the big Tesco near where I work to see about getting it. They didn’t have it and the manager man I asked didn’t seem aware of a band called Thin Lizzy at all. Fuckwit.

Anyway, my dad procured it at Luton’s branch of HMV and I was literally hopping around waiting for him to get home that night. I already knew what was going to be on it, and I knew that it would include videos for some of my favourite songs. Not just my favourite Lizzy songs, but favourite songs full stop.

It’s at this point that I’ll tell you that my love for Thin Lizzy grew like no other love before. Slowly, quietly and yet very suddenly and without warning. I can’t remember the first time I heard of the band or of their lanky black Irish singerman. I can’t remember, because it was much too long ago. Much too long ago and perhaps in a different life. I should be so lucky.

My love for Lizzy was helped along by Never Mind The Buzzcocks, which has included them as questions a couple of times. But I already knew them. I even knew of them enough to recognise the joke in ‘The Toys Are Back In Town’ tagline for Toy Story. That was 1995, when I was a shrimp of a thirteen-year-old. It may well turn out that Philip Lynott has been lurking in my life even longer than a Mr Morrison of Los Angeles, CA.

I don’t remember Philip dying. Some of you will say that this is probably because I was four years old at the time. But things I remember from 1986 are many in number. I remember being ritually humiliated at my school or being scared to go too far on the same school’s playing field. Perhaps I had different priorities then, but I knew who Elvis was, who Buddy Holly was, who the Beatles were. Maybe I just didn’t read the tabloid press in January 1986. Maybe I wouldn’t have handled my boy dying back then, just as I can barely manage it now.

I was always meant to find Philip and his beloved band, just as I was always meant to find Jim and his. I know they’ve been there, lurking in the dark corners of my mind, waiting for the moment I was able to accept them. I had to wait until I was seventeen or eighteen to really embrace my Jim, and Philip in his entirety came a little later, just at the time I was searching for my Irishness and was able to accept that sometimes my heroes really can’t stand up to the crushing weight of expectation, could not hold themselves to the same standards I hold myself to. When I was fourteen and in love with a little band from Liverpool, I believed that they must be perfect, unstoppable creatures. When I was eighteen, I knew that my boys had a dark side. When I got my Philip, I was ready to accept that those same boys couldn’t always win the fight against the dark.

But that’s not really what this is about at all. It’s about a DVD full of music videos made before the dawn of MTV.

These are not great videos. Don’t get me wrong, I love things about each and every one of them, but they’re not great. They’re primitive, cheaply-made and in some instances really badly done. Perhaps it’s best we go through them one by one.

The Boys Are Back In Town

- I can forgive the fact that the song has been chopped up a bit, because the same happened to Light My Fire back in the day. I can’t forgive the fact that’s it’s been clumsily done. Even the Doors couldn’t see the join in the single edit of Light My Fire. Even a deaf person could hear it in this. But you know, it’s not a bad little video. A typical ‘band on a stage playing a song’ video. Philip exudes his usual truckloads of charisma, Scott Gorham’s hair is lush and shiny, Robbo’s is not. Nice, simple and just aggressive enough. There’s that mirrored bass guitar, too, shining its way into the annals of rock legend.

Don’t Believe A Word

- One of my favourite songs ever. Once again a typical stage set up, although the stage is bigger and I think we’re meant to believe they’re playing to an audience, which although you can see them, the sound is quite obvious the studio cut. Some of the miming is slightly off as a consqeuence. Boys look beautiful in that 70s rock way- your tight trouser/platform shoe combination, although quite why Philip Lynott needed to make himself taller, I don’t know. Scott Gorham does this thing when he realises the camera is on him, where he does the typical ‘eyes closed, mouth open’ thing. I don’t know why guitarists do this, although I imagine it has something to do with the guitar/phallic symbol/sex thing. Anyway, it’s a great song that I love. Philip basically gets up and says “don’t believe me if I tell you that I wrote this song for you”, because who else would have the guts and hopelessness to stand up and tell an audience that he’s lying to them? I love it because it breaks my heart every time I hear it. No he says, he isn’t singing to me after all and neither were the others. Somehow, I love it, but I can’t bring myself to entirely believe him.

Dancing In The Moonlight

- Typical stage set up now interspersed with shots of a bunch of fingers clicking. Same stage as Don’t Believe A Word. Have seen this video before on TL’s website. Philip’s afro seems particularly perfect for some reason, like a thousand perfect corkscrew curls or something. There’s also shots of Philip ‘dancing’ with some girl in white. When I say dancing, I mean that there’s lots of shots of her grabbing his arse. That’s some tight leather, man. A bit extraneous if you ask me, but I guess at least the band are trying to make their videos more than just ‘blokes on a stage’. There’s that Gorham face again. Is he trying to make it look I dunno, like sex or something? The man is one of the most beautiful people who ever bothered to pick up a guitar, but the fact he does it every time the camera is there just gets annoying. But I’ve seen this DVD a few times now, so maybe it’s just me.

Rosalie

- OK, the sound is the live version from Live and Dangerous, there’s an audience but somehow it just doesn’t seem like a live video. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s that Philip is wearing some horrendous knitted sweater that looks really odd. Maybe it’s that when there’s distance shots of the stage it doesn’t look like there’s an audience. Maybe there’s just that something missing that one usually gets from live stuff. Maybe it’s that you can’t actually hear the audience- were they sitting there silent? I might be totally wrong, but somehow it doesn’t seem totally live, man. Also, the morph from Rosalie into ‘Cowgirl Song’ is expected, but when Phil sings about moving his fingers ‘up and down, up and down’, it’s a little less classy when you can actually see the man simulating said action. Nice Philip, very nice.

Waiting For An Alibi

- Along with ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, this is the only Lizzy video I’ve actually ever seen on Vh1 or Vh1 Classic. On there, there was a version with some ‘acting’ of a card game and stuff. That whole thing is missing from this version, and instead it’s just the ‘band playing in a studio in front of a big THIN LIZZY’ sign. This is Gary Moore-era Lizzy, so he’s here in his silver jacket, showboating even more that Philip. Philip’s afro is particularly unruly and even Scott’s perfect, long shiny hair seems to be a bit of a mess. Perhaps the stylist was off that day. Song excellent. And there’s dear Brian Downey at the back on the drums. You know, when he had his hair short, he just looks like any impishly boyish Irishman you’d see down the street, like he’s just come across this set of drums by accident and sat down. A welcome relief from Gary’s showing-off, Scott’s faces and Philip’s fist-shaking. God love you, Mr Downey, and so do I.

Do Anything You Want To

- More Moore-Era. White studio, all the band playing timpani things. There’s an attempt at a storyline involving cuts to Downey dressed as a policeman, some blonde bird as a traffic warden, scenes of Scott as some industrialist, the boys in court up against a lipsticked bird of a judge, Philip in a tweed three-piece suit as a teacher. It’s basic, sub-Benny Hill stuff really. Philip in a jail cell. Sudden picture of Elvis to go with the ‘Just like I do. Elvis is dead’ bits. It’s not a bad video, per se. It’s quite charming in the shambolic Lizzy tradition, but it’s not a good video. Like in any Lizzy video, the women in it are dressed like members of that Hot Gossip lot on The Kenny Everett Television Show. By which I mean that they look like cheap tarts, dressed in PVC, covered in red lipstick and featuring ridiculous perms in some idiot, adolescent 1970s idea of what constitutes sexy. People say I live in the past, but this is one thing where I think there’s a real age gap. Not sexy boys, fucked up.

Sarah

- Philip’s little love song to his daughter was never going to have a great video, but scenes of a little blonde girl (surely older than Sarah actually was when the video was made) being sung to by Philip on a stool on a nightclub stage are sappy in the extreme, topped only by the video running behind them of the little girl playing with a little golden puppy thing, followed by a scene of Philip dancing with a blonde woman with large teeth in some place with golden candelabras and dry ice. Then we’re back to the nightclub, and the young girl leaves, replaced by a slightly older version, who is replaced by a strikingly pretty teenage version, who then gets replaced by the blonde woman from earlier, who attempts to bop a little. All in all a really duff video... until the blonde woman is then replaced, unexpectedly, by Scott Gorham! An arm goes round Phil’s shoulders, he pisses himself laughing, nearly falls off the stool when Scott kisses his fingers and attempts to press them to Phil’s lips. Phil leaves the stage giggling and M. Gorham takes over the miming. Very funny stuff, methinks, although I wonder how bored they were at that point to come up with it. Scott Gorham is pretty and charming and mimes very well, even throwing in a few Philip moves. Nice one, and saves the video from being totally shite.

Chinatown

- Things have moved on at this point. Scott Gorham’s hair has been cut (not well, in my opinion) and Snowy White, a man I believe to have no charisma at all, is in the other guitar spot. Mind you, the video actually takes place on a pretty cool ‘Chinatown’ set and it’s all sufficiently moody. Philip looks quite old (this is in 1980) but that might just be the beardy growth going on. It’s actually a pretty good video for the time, and the song pretty good. Actually, Philip looks pretty rough. This might be intentional for the video or it might be his own lifestyle. I hate the fact that I have to sit here and wonder about it.

Killer On The Loose

- This song caused a certain amount of outrage at the time it was released thanks to a little thing called The Yorkshire Ripper filling Britain’s minds with fear and dread. Bad timing, but it’s a decent song and I think more of a warning than anything approaching glorification of serial killers. Nice grotty alleyway set, Philip still looking rough, but again, probably intentionally so for the video. Still hate the fact that there’s doubt in my mind about it. Why can’t I love healthy, clean-living bands? Like Chinatown, it also features a few perfunctory special effects, but nothing great and frankly the video could live without it. The cheap tart women make themselves known once more and they’re really starting to piss me off. I don’t know whether they piss me off because they’re a terrible stereotype or whether I’m jealous that they got to hang with Lizzy, even for a minute. I actually do think it’s the former. Maybe they’re meant to make the videos seem charmingly boyish or mischievous, but to me they just make it seedy.

Thunder And Lightning

- Oh, how the wheels were starting to come off. Another new second guitarist (John Sykes, complete with Hair Metal hair). Philip’s put on weight. Scott’s hair is still quite short. These are not important things by any means, but man, they’re symptoms of the cause. It’s my personal opinion that while Thunder And Lightning is decent paint-by-numbers hard rock, it’s still just paint-by-numbers hard rock, and Lizzy could do better than this. Much fucking better. As for the video, some basic ‘lighting’ effects and a typical 80s rock set cannot hide the fact that this isn’t great. Very blah as far as I’m concerned. Not so much the beginning of the end, but the middle of the end.

Bad Reputation

- We’re back to Robbo-era Lizzy for this one. I’ve always felt this one is a bit paint-by-numbers, so I’m not surprised to see it next to Thunder and Lightning. But we’re back to long hair Gorham and Downey, rake-thin Philip and the excellent guitarist/not-great human being Robbo. Video much the same as every other video before it- stage set, blokes playing a song. I woudln’t mind, but it’s not the first of these on the video. Won’t be the last, I’m sure.

King’s Call

- Aha! Solo Lynott! Philip Lynott, Brian Downey and er, Mark Knopfler (Yes, Philip Lynott did as much as anyone else to give that bloke a career kickstart). Song about Elvis. Typical blokes playing instruments, but the set is dressed up a bit. Hang on... I NEVER WANT TO SEE MARK KNOPFLER IN LEATHER TROUSERS EVER AGAIN. Some people *cough* Philip *cough* were born to wear them. Some were born NOT to and Knopfler is one of them. Already losing his hair in this video, but the sweatband nonsense is mercifully not yet present. I have always liked this song a lot, and it has always made me felt that at least Philip felt about another rock star (Elvis) the same way I do about him. One day I’m going to manage to write a song about Philip that’s as good a tribute as this is to his hero. Also, he’s wearing Cuban heeled boots as he has been for many of the other videos. He’s actually wearing something (leather trousers, white shirt, black blazer, Cuban heeled boots) that I could put together myself. Some weirdness though: I don’t know if it’s the way it’s shot or what, but he looks so pale. I don’t care what fucking colour Philip was, but it’s odd because in this video he looks so pale that it’s about the same as when my little brother (a fairhaired Irishman if ever there was one) spends too long in the sun. It’s not important, but it made me wonder for a second.

The Rocker

- We’re right back to 1973 now, back in the days when Lizzy were a trio with Eric Bell. Philip’s moustache is new, he’s really really thin and very very young. My dear boy looks awfully nervous at the beginning with the pretty complicated bass line. The self-assured cockiness of legend isn’t quite there yet and it’s a sight to see! Here he is saying that he’s such a rocker, such a hard man, but he isn’t, not quite. He’s singing not about what he is, but what he will be. Nice Rickenbacker bass, too. Wonder how much one of those would set me back... Oh, some nice bits of driving through town, too. Nice video, actually. Basic, simple, rousing, even if it looks like it’s being done in someone’s living room.

With Love

- Now, this was one I was REALLY looking forward to. 1979’s Black Rose album is the one that really made me fall in love with Lizzy, and With Love, something I thought was just an album track but something I’ve loved so dearly. To me, it is one of the saddest rock and roll songs I’ve ever heard. It’s fast and sounds like it should be upbeat, but the words prove otherwise. Suffice to say I was so looking forward to the video being some great, moody, sad bit of film. Not so. Band playing instruments again. Gary Moore in his silver jacket. Some attempt at a story that made me a bit miffed until I realised what was going on. “It’s a tedious existence, laying your love on the line,” sings Phil. Cut to Philo carrying a struggling girl and some rope. Look closer. A cardboard train behind him, he’s laying her down on train tracks. Literally, on the line. “She’s broke my heart and made me sad,” cues the band bursting through a giant paper heart. It’s so cheekily funny that I just can’t help liking it. Cheeky, shambolic, funny and absolutely what’s brilliant about this band. More cheap tart looking women for each member of the band, which is really starting to grate on my nerves. Weren’t there any normal chicks available? No wonder charges of misogyny get levelled at the band occasionally- the music itself isn’t, but the videos don’t help their cause. Still, it’s a funny little video and so maybe the band were nervous/scared of making a straight up video. Maybe they just wanted to be funny. And man, that Scott Gorham was beautiful. In any other band, he’d probably be the sole focus of attention, but he was in a band with Philip Lynott, and that’s hard to combat!

Dear Miss Lonely Hearts

- Now this is a solo song from Philip’s first solo album, Solo In Soho. However, the video has Snowy White era Lizzy with him in a typical band playing instruments thing interspersed with scenes of Philip in a fake alley with two cheap tarts. Snore, Philip, snore. Funny thing is, it’s something of a melancholy song, but he looks so cheerful the whole way through. Really smiley and cheerful in a way he isn’t in any of the other videos. It’s so weird, man. He looks lovely all in white and smiling, but I wonder why. Drug induced, I wonder? I hate that I end up wondering, you know.

That Woman

- We’re back to the same set as Don’t Believe A Word and a few of the others for a decent but hardly classic song. I have nothing to say about it that hasn’t already been said. Philip’s hair lovely, Scott’s even lovelier, Philip very charming, beautiful and charismatic. Brian Downey cute, Brian Robertson a mad Scots kid. I really can’t find anything else to say.

Johnny The Fox Meets Jimmy The Weed

- What a great song, man. Funky drumming, funky guitar, great lyrics, moody and dark, from Johnny The Fox, I do really dig this song. Some searing guitar from Robbo and Gorham.

Wild One

- One of my favourite Lizzy songs and one of the best examples of Lynott’s great talents for really weaving a tale in the thousand year old tradition of the Irish bards, it still only rates a ‘band playing instruments’ video. However, Robbo is wearing a fabulous pair of tight purple and silver sparkly trousers that I simply must have because they are purple and spangly and I am in love with them. Mucho kudos to the man for wearing them, too. And yes, there’s Scott Gorham’s “I’m practically shagging this guitar, you know’ expressions again, just like in every other bloody video. Seriously man, give it a rest! It’s a beautiful song and it’s made even more beautiful but seeing Philip singing it. Poet Lynott at his most brilliant, I think.

Whiskey In The Jar

- Top Of The Pops, 1971. Philip, Downey and Bell rockify a trad. Irish ballady thing that involves, as usual, drink, women and the police. I love this song in almost any form- the Dubliners doing it the traditional way on their own or with the Dubliners, or my Lizzy boys with their new version. I like the full length version with the new verse. It’s also got one of the greatest opening riffs ever, even when Mark Lamarr spoofs it on a kazoo. But Metallica’s version fucking sucks. Anyway, this is on TOTP, so there’s lots of 70s teens dancing badly and I’ve never seen Philip’s hair so huge. I’ve seen snippets of this video before thanks to Never Mind The Buzzcocks when Eric Bell was in the line-up. A good, triumphant place to end the DVD.

So, what have I learned? That I’m utterly, utterly in love with Thin Lizzy? Yes. That their videos were very much a product of their time? Yes. That they’re videos only a fan could really love? Certainly all in one go. This is something to dip into. Watching them all in one go doesn’t work- many of the videos are from the same shoot or are simply too similar. Scott Gorham’s guitar-shagging act is perfectly fine for the three minutes of a video, but man does it get boring over the course of an hour and a half. The songs, which are why we’re really here, are without exception excellent, even the paint-by-numbers stuff.

And I’ve never wanted so much to go back in time and look after them. I was watching the other day and started crying, because I’m a bit of a sap when it comes to them. I couldn’t work out why they weren’t TOTALLY MASSIVE because they’re almost perfect. I mean, Philip’s the perfect rock star. Scott’s so pretty that he should’ve been a teen pin-up to rival DonnyfuckingOsmond or DavidsoddingCassidy. I was sat there, the occasional tear streaking down my face, missing the shit out of them and wondering why they weren’t the biggest band of the 70s (behind Zep, of course. Nothing compares to that phenomenon). And I realised. It’s not that the music’s bad, because it’s great. It’s not that they’re ugly or otherwise inferior, because they’re really not. They did get famous... and then they cocked it up for themselves. This band were... I think Scott himself said that they were the unluckiest band or something, but I don’t think it WAS bad luck. It was themselves. They cocked it up for themselves. How did Philip get hepatitis just before their meant-to-be-world-conquering American tour? Was it from sitting in his hotel room reading Enid Blyton books? I know I’m starting to sound harsh, but a lot of it was their own damn fault! I hate that.

You know something? I don’t know what heroin addicts ‘look like’, but surely they don’t look like Philip Lynott? According to Philomena Lynott, someone told her as Philip was dying that he’d been taking it for ten years. Does that make Philip a junkie? Because he doesn’t look like the heroin addicts you see in the media. He doesn’t look strung out. He doesn’t look like an emaciated wreck in any of these videos. He doesn’t look like he’s dying, not even in the later videos. And you know, my current wallpaper is of a picture of him in May 1985, less than a year before he died. He doesn’t look like whatever it is addicts are meant to look like. I can absolutely understand why it never occurred to Philomena that her son might be on heroin. I mean, how are you supposed to know if there are no outward signs? How are you supposed to see it? I don’t know... so how are you supposed to try and help someone if you don’t know they need help and if they don’t ask for it?

You know, I’ve probably just spent like, six pages going on about how pretty Scott Gorham was/is. He was a heroin addict too. He left the band just before the end in order to seek help. He’s nothing less than very pretty in any of this. How are you meant to tell? I guess it’s true that if someone really wants to hide their secrets, they’ll manage it. Which I guess means that even if God in his infinite wisdom and grooviness sent me back in time before the end of today, I’d still have no help of looking after my boys, or helping them or saving them. Because if they couldn’t do, how could I? Am I meant to go back and beat the shit out of them? Beat the shit out of anyone who tries to deal to them? Lock them away? Watch them every second of every day?

I really just got totally off the point (which was Thin Lizzy ROCK!) didn’t I? I think this DVD just helped break my heart a little bit more. That boy died and there’s absolutely fuck all I can do about it. Might be nice to go back in time and try, anyway.

So yes, to conclude and try not to be some insane fangirl, I’d recommend this DVD to any friend. It’s something a casual fan might enjoy dipping into occasionally and is, I will admit, an excellent account of their career. I mean, I’d recommend the Greatest Hits CD that came out a year ago (this accompanies it) first, but the videos all have a lot of charm. And you know, I’m not sure a single member of the band took any of it seriously at all. Cool.