“They were loud – REALLY LOUD – and the big rockers like The Boys Are Back in Town, Waiting For An Alibi, Jailbreak and Rosalie went down a storm.” A ticket for the Thin Lizzy gig at the Caird Hall in 1980. “Lynott was wonderful, keeping up a good-natured and occasionally slightly lewd banter with the crowd between songs, and the atmosphere was fantastic. “I’d been a fan of the band for a few years and the album Black Rose, which came out not long before they came to Dundee, featured as one of my ‘top ten albums that influenced your musical tastes’ Facebook things during lockdown. “My memories are slightly hazy due to the passage of time and the fact that I had discovered the delights of drinking,” he admits. “A roadie from Dundee, Tam Parks, also worked with Thin Lizzy at one stage, and it was this crowd who were having the booze up with Lynott before the pub then emptied to head down to Caird Hall for the show.” Thin Lizzy at the Caird Hall in December 1981.įormer Courier and Evening Telegraph reporter Ralph Barnett was 19 when he went to the gig. “The pub was run by Clarke Robertson who used to be in Dundee act, Sleaz Band, and had supported Thin Lizzy in the late 60s and early 70s and so had become friends,” he says. The man who runs the Retro Dundee website – who wishes only to be known as GG – remembers singer Phil Lynott enjoyed a couple of drinks in rock music pub, Foreigners, ahead of the 1980 gig. They played again at the Dundee venue the following year, on December 4 1981. Tickets cost £4.50 and support was from fellow Dublin band The Lookalikes. Dundee gigįorty years ago, on May 3 1980, Thin Lizzy rocked Dundee’s Caird Hall. The band enjoyed a string of hits including The Boys are Back in Town, Jailbreak and a cover of Whiskey in the Jar. Tin Lizzie, as featured in The Dandy.įor some of their early gigs, the band were mistakenly promoted as “Tin Lizzy” or “Tin Lizzie”. They adjusted this to Thin Lizzy as a playful reference to the local Dublin accent, in which “thin” would be pronounced as “t’in”. The band’s name Thin Lizzy came from a robot character called Tin Lizzie, which featured in DC Thomson comic The Dandy. While Lizzy’s music went down a storm, nobody could have predicted their rapid, meteoric rise to fame. The band were joint headliners with another local Dublin act called Purple Pussycat. The recently-formed four-piece played to an audience of around 100 people and were paid around IR£25.ĭublin-born frontman Phil Lynott was just 20 years old when he took to the stage with original Lizzy members Eric Bell, Eric Wrixon and Brian Downey.Īmong the songs performed were If 6 was 9 by Jimi Hendrix and All Right Now by Free. The venue was a school hall in Cloghran, near Dublin.Ī hard rock band named Thin Lizzy were waiting in the wings, preparing to put on their very first gig. The date was Friday the 13th, February 1970. Gayle Ritchie looks back at the band’s north-east of Scotland legacy. It’s 50 years since Thin Lizzy performed their first ever gig. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Information An icon of an information logo. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo.
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