WHEN Phil Lynott was once asked, “What’s it like to be black and Irish?” he famously quipped, “Like a pint of Guinness.”
No doubt many Thin Lizzy fans toasted him last week with a pint of stout during The Dedication to Phil Lynott concert at Dublin’s 3Arena to mark the 40th anniversary of his untimely death on January 4, 1986.
In 2010, the singer’s late mother, Philomena, warmly welcomed me into her home as we did a series of interviews over two consecutive days for an exclusive story about two other children she had secretly given up for adoption.
After the first day, we shared a couple of drinks while listening to Thin Lizzy songs on her beloved son’s jukebox. “They love the man, the music,” she said, with tears welling in her eyes.
On the second day, she insisted on driving me to her son’s grave. The octogenarian put her foot down hard on the accelerator and, with my heart in my mouth, I clutched the grab handle and tried to focus on the Thin Lizzy album blaring on her car speaker.
With one hand on the wheel, she certainly lived up to her nickname, the Queen of Irish Rock, as she passionately sang the lyrics between puffing on a cigarette and fist-pumping alongside the anthems her son wrote.
The Irish Post's Jason O'Toole with Philomea LynottShe affectionately kicked the grave on our arrival. “I always do that to tell him he was a naughty boy for taking drugs. But I give a second kick out of love,” she told me.
“Philip is the most visited grave in the whole of Ireland,” she added proudly. “I’ll always find letters waiting for me and beautiful things as I tidy up. I say a little prayer.”
Though Philomena was no stranger to smoking marijuana with her son, she insisted that she had no idea he was using hard drugs, which ultimately led to his tragic death in 1986.
Philip had been ill for a considerable period before he was rushed to the hospital on Christmas Day in 1985. However, Philomena never expected that her son wouldn’t survive. “I thought, ‘No way was the Lord going to take Philip’. God, it was awful because the press were outside with television cameras,” she said.
She recalled telling the nurse, “Philip hasn’t gone to the toilet.” They were short-staffed during the festive season, but she noticed that “Philip hadn’t even asked for a bottle or anything”.
“That’s when they went into overdrive. They brought in a dialysis machine, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting with him surrounded by all these machines, and I started to panic,” she said.
It was soon discovered that he was suffering from an acute kidney and liver infection. Then, out of nowhere, someone said, “The priest is coming to see Philip.”
Philomena protested, “No! Don’t bring a priest in here. You’ll frighten him. He’ll think he’s dying.”
But when they told her, “Philip has asked for the priest,” she went up to her son and asked, “Are you alright?’”
He replied, “Merciful Jesus! What have I done to you?” Those were the last words he ever said to her. Philomena added, “They still make me cry.”
Did she say anything to him?
“I couldn’t,” she said softly. “I was floored. I was speechless. Tears stung my eyes. I didn’t want him to see me crying, so I left the room. The priest went in, and I think that was the moment I realised I was going to lose him. I was destroyed.”
Original member of Thin Lizzy, Eric BellThin Lizzy’s legendary guitarist Eric Bell told me he left the band in late 1973 because he feared ending up in an early grave.
“A voice inside my head said, ‘Listen, you’ve got to leave this band, or you’re going to end up dead, an alcoholic, or a junkie – but you’ve got to get out!’” he said. “If I hadn’t left, I don’t know what would have happened. I saw the warning signs earlier on, and I listened to them. But Philip Lynott, he thought he was indestructible.”
But while fans lambast the way in which he left us, the musical genius’s songs will be first and foremost on their minds when they celebrate his 40th anniversary in January.
As the frontman of Thin Lizzy, Lynott became the first Irishman to break into the top ten on Top of the Pops with Whiskey in the Jar.
It’s perhaps hard to imagine in today’s cosmopolitan Ireland, but Phil Lynott was one of the very few Black Irish people living in Dublin at the time. He always cherished his Irish roots. “Living in Ireland gave him his background. It gave him the essence of being an Irishman. He loved Ireland,” his mother said.
Despite getting on in years, Philomena dedicated herself to keeping her son’s legacy alive. She would often pose for pictures with fans at his statue on Harry Street, off Henry Street.
Philomena even used to open the doors of her house — which her son bought for her 50th birthday — to the fans who dropped by unannounced to pay homage to their rock hero.
“They come here and bring their babies. They come here when they’re pregnant, and then I get the pictures of their babies with Philip’s name. They’ve called a cat after me!” she said.
“What also brought me out of my grief was the letters I got when he died. They came from all over the world. And I wrote back to them — each one, in my grief, it kept me going. The letters came and came and came.
‘People do say, ‘How can you have all these people in your house?’ Sure, I ran a hotel. They come and I go, ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ Then put the kettle on. I’m very relaxed that way. They say, ‘Thank you’. I say, ‘Thank me? I’m thanking you for travelling across the world to visit my son’s resting place’. That warms me. That kept me going.
‘You’d want to see them cry here. A chauffeur brought millionaires from Norway the other day. They cried solid tears. And they’re coming back for his birthday. I got a letter from a prisoner in America and he said, ‘I play your son’s music morning, noon, and night here in the prison — especially Jailbreak!’
She would even talk to prisoners to urge them to kick their drug addictions. “I visit Wheatfield Prison regularly and I tell them that I only want to talk to the drug boys. And I go in with a big picture of Philip and I say to them, ‘Do you know who that is?’” she said.
“And they go, ‘That’s Phil Lynott’. And I go, ‘Where is he now?’ And they all lower their heads. I say, ‘I’ll tell you where he is — he’s up there [in heaven]. Look at you lot of mugs, you’re all stuck in here at Christmas. You should be out there with your mothers and your girlfriends!’”
Phil Lynott pictured with his Thin Lizzy band membersPhilomena held the annual Vibe For Philo concert in Dublin close to her heart. The event was started in 1987 by Phil Lynott’s friend Smiley Bolger, but sadly ended in 2023.
“It was warming me. I was going through hell at the time, with the grief and missing him,” she remembered.
However, it wasn’t until 1989 that she felt up to finally attending the annual commemoration. “On the third year, [the artist] Jim Fitzpatrick came up on the anniversary. We had a drop of brandy, and he said that I was going down [to the gig]. He scooped me up, put me in the car, and drove me down to it.
“As we’re driving, I saw little posters with pictures of Philip along the lamp posts, and my heart leapt. That used to happen when I was going to his gigs all over the world when he took me.
“I get to the place, and the crowd is outside. They all moved back and said, Phil’s mum is here’. I was crying, and the tears were stinging me. I walked into the pub, and I heard his music playing – and my heart leapt.”
See More: Phil Lynott, Thin Lizzy
