I want to describe a scene onto which I stumbled in the pool
table room of the American Youth Association (AYA) building on Spangdahlem, Air
Force Base, Germany. The scene took place in 1978, when I was twelve years old.
My family, after living for a few months in a German town called GroBlittgen, had just moved into a fourth floor apartment on Spagdahlem Air Force Base. I knew that the AYA was a place for teenagers to hang out, so I headed over there the first chance I got.
The first floor was dominated by a basketball gymnasium, a room of ping-pong tables, and a few rooms used for sports banquets. I looked around the gym for anybody I knew, watched a pick-up game for a few minutes, then headed upstairs, where I'd heard there was a snack bar and pool tables.
I could hear the pool table room while climbing the stairs. Not the clacking of pool balls, but rock music. Loud rock music. In fact, it was Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak" album, and I felt drawn to it like a moth to a light bulb.
I stepped into the pool table room and this is what I saw: Two long haired teenage boys were playing pool while listening to Thin Lizzy on a large boom-box. The closer boy, the one with dirty blond hair, had on bell-bottom jeans, hiking boots, and a leather vest. The farther one had dark brown hair. He also wore bell-bottoms and hiking boots, with a button-up blue jean shirt unbuttoned two-thirds of the way down.
The guys were really having a good time. Occasionally, they'd lower their pool cues into the position of a guitar and play along with the song. Whenever it was time to shoot, the guy shooting would lean over the table with a cigarette dangling from his lips, with his eyes squinted just a bit from the heat.
After I'd watched them for a few minutes, their girlfriends showed up. Both girls wore blue jeans tucked into moccasin boots. The blond guy's girlfriend wore a red tube top and a floppy leather hat, while the other guy's girl wore a loose white blouse and had a bandanna tied around her head. As I watched, each girl went to her respective guy and kissed him like they hadn't seen each other in ten years. It was quite a romantic moment. Then, the guys went back to their Thin Lizzy and pool and the girls sat on bar stools against the wall and adored them.
Watching all of this from against the wall near the door, I was certain that up until that moment in my life, I'd never seen cooler people.
Also, I became a fan of Thin Lizzy.
My brother bought a copy of "Jailbreak" a few months later and we both kept it spinning on the turntable in the living room. Besides obviously classic tunes like "The Boys are Back in Town" and "Jailbreak," I found "Jailbreak" contained hard rock brilliance like "Warriors" and "Emerald," as well as the minor-classic "Cowboy Song." Recorded in London between late 1975 and early 1976, the album put the band into the spotlight in the United States and elevated singer/bassist/songwriter Phil Lynott into one of the most recognizable characters in rock and roll.
The product of an Irish mother and an Afro-Brazilian father, Lynott cut an exotic figure in rock and roll. With a wild afro offering a stylistic counterpoint to European leather pants and jackets, Phil also defied convention by serving as a strong and dynamic front man while playing the bass.
Thin Lizzy had been around for almost ten years by the time I encountered those cool dudes playing pool in the AYA. They'd been releasing albums since 1970 and "Jailbreak" was their sixth effort. After "Jailbreak," they pretty much released an album a year until their final album in 1983.
I can't say that I followed their career closely. I saw a live concert on television in Germany and I was suitably impressed with Lynott's charisma and the precision of guitarists Brian Downey and Scott Gorham. There was no question that they had the status of a respected band in my worldview, but, spending most of my scarce late-seventies allowance money on Manfred Mann's Earth Band or AC/DC, I was not able to pursue a taste for Thin Lizzy. "Jailbreak" and the rare occasion when "Whiskey in the Jar" got played on rock radio would have to suffice.
Then, in 1982, I bought a copy of their album "Black Rose: A Rock Legend." I could easily afford it because, though the album is one of Thin Lizzy's most successful efforts, I found it priced to sell in the cut-out bin of an El Paso, Texas, Sound Warehouse. That's right, the cut-out bin. My copy has a small rectangular cut in the album cover.
The winds of change are constantly blowing across the musical landscape, and few bands can stay on top for long. Most bands from the early seventies were viewed as dinosaurs by the early eighties, and while Thin Lizzy continued to admirably adapt throughout their career, it's no surprise that a record store in El Paso would be looking to sell-off their excess Thin Lizzy albums. And at times like that, I was a rock and roll vulture.
Recorded in Paris and London, "Black Rose: A Rock Legend" is sometimes referred to as the last "great" Thin Lizzy record. It certainly sold well. When it was released in 1979, it debuted on the UK album charts at #2.
Brian Robertson had been replaced with Irish blues-rock wizard Gary Moore and the result was a heavily distorted edge to the trademark guitar harmonics. The new guitar tones, combined with some of the band's best songwriting in years, places "Black Rose: A Rock Legend" in a close race for Thin Lizzy's best.
Really, there's a lot to admire about "Black Rose: A Rock Legend." I could go on and on about rockers like "Toughest Street in Town," and "Waiting for an Alibi." And I could sell my high regard for this album by discussing the heartrendingly confessional nature of the lyrics to "Got to Give it Up"----Lynott suffered with an addiction to heroin, an addiction which eventually contributed to his death. I could even base my review on the tender lyrics of "Sarah," which Lynott wrote for his daughter. These are all great qualities, but my view of this album is framed and focused by the song for which the album is named.
"Black Rose: A Rock Legend" is a song written by Phil Lynott and Gary Moore that strings together the American Traditional tune "Shenandoah," with the traditional Irish songs "Will You Go Lassie Go," "Danny Boy," and "The Mason's Apron." The result is seven minutes and six seconds of audible adoration for Ireland, which Lynott compares to a black rose. In the last half of the song, Lynott sings a who's who list of famous Irish artists, from William Butler Yeats, to Oscar Wilde, and on to Van Morrison. Clearly, Lynott loved his country.
As for now, while I probably don't hold the guys in the AYA with the same amount of esteem as I did all those years ago, I still bring out "Black Rose: A Rock Legend" every now and then and give it a spin. I don't want to go back to when I was twelve, but I'd like to visit Ireland someday.
Peace!
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