Remembering the Emerald Cowboy – An Interview with Author Alan Byrne

A few years ago, I had the great pleasure of reviewing a thoroughly engaging and superbly researched book on the mighty Thin Lizzy titled Are You Ready? Thin Lizzy: Album by Album by author Alan Byrne. Shortly after, I purchased Byrne’s biography on the vagabond of the Western world, i.e. the magnificent Mr. Lynott, appropriately sporting the moniker Philip Lynott: Renegade of Thin Lizzy, which was yet another well-written and captivating piece of literature. To my great joy and surprise, the latter book was recently revised, and a 2024 version published by Sonicbond saw the light of day in late December featuring the abbreviated title Philip Lynott: Renegade. We had a most pleasant and lengthy chat with Byrne in early January about all things Lizzy, Lynott, and the vibrant and inspired study of the celebrated band and its charismatic frontman that is Philip Lynott: Renegade of Thin Lizzy. Are you ready?

Greetings Alan, how are you doing? Many thanks for taking time out of your schedule to do this interview with us – much appreciated. Given that your excellent book on the legendary and sadly missed Philip Lynott of Thin Lizzy fame was recently published in a paperback version by Sonicbond, I thought this would be a great opportunity to have a little chat about said piece of work. Given that the original version of the book sporting a slightly different title originally came out in 2012, what prompted you to revise and re-title it for a 2024 release?

A: The original edition of the book was released in 2012 by an Irish publisher called Mentor. While it was available in online bookstores back then, it was on bookshelves only in Ireland. Ideally for a band like Thin Lizzy the release should be across Europe, so it didn’t get the reach that the other books I’ve done did. Of the three books I’ve written about Lizzy and Phil, they’re out of print now. Until now, with the reissue of Renegade. The plan is to get each back into print.

It is challenging to get these types of books reissued. I’ve tried before over the years without success so when I contacted Sonicbond and they were interested, we discussed the requirements, which included a revision and update. I had gathered material appropriate to Phil’s work beyond Thin Lizzy since the original 2012 release and edited in what I felt was appropriate from the interviews I conducted. Philip Lynott: Renegade is really the story about how Phil used the success of Thin Lizzy to go on and explore other styles of music, writing and recording music that couldn’t really fit into the Lizzy canon. 

In order to be able to market a previously released book, a revision was necessary. Also, it provides any prospective reader with new content so they’re not buying the same book with a different cover. We’re looking to provide value and information that is worth knowing to anyone that cares to buy the book. The challenge is to retain the spirit of the original edition and make the revisions fit into place, sometimes overtly and often covertly. 

The abbreviated title of the book from Philip Lynott: Renegade of Thin Lizzy to simply Philip Lynott: Renegade is a reflection of the fact that this is a new version of the book. Also, I don’t like long, unnecessary subtitles and I’ve endured a few. Phil’s reputation and legacy as Thin Lizzy’s frontman is already firmly established and seemed a pointless reminder to me to include Lizzy in the subtitle. 

I was never keen on the original subtitle, but the publisher back then was adamant about including ‘Thin Lizzy’ for marketing purposes…for an Ireland only release on bookshelves?! I understand why but I always felt it didn’t need anything other than Renegade, and so, eventually it received the subtitle I preferred.

Do you recall your first encounter with rock music (and hard rock for that matter)? Were there any specific bands, historical events, or anything of that sort that somehow changed your perception of what music can do and eventually set you on the path to write incredibly well-researched books such as Are You Ready? Thin Lizzy: Album by Album and of course Philip Lynott: Renegade? Do you recall the first time you ever came across the name of Thin Lizzy and the “where” and “when” of such a pivotal encounter?

A: In respect of my first encounter with rock music: Like anyone really, you gravitate to the albums that are at hand in the house you live in. The entire Lizzy catalogue was at my fingertips, as was that of Rory Gallagher, AC/DC and many more. The bands that became familiar to me growing up were those of what was called the New Romantic era . . . Duran Duran, Wham!, Ultravox. These were the bands that were in the Top Forty during my youth, but I passed them relatively quickly and became obsessed with bands that emerged in the 70’s, particularly Queen and Lizzy. A little while later, I went back further where you have the Stones, Beatles, Doors, Zappa and obviously many others. 

Live Aid was the spectacle of the day for me, which of course Queen used to rejuvenate their own interest and subsequently, their career trajectory. It has cost me, and many others I’d imagine, a significant fortune as personal interest in music elevates. You get your part time job growing up – you spend as much as you can to buy all the albums of the bands you become obsessed with and unlike downloading where you can get an entire catalogue at once, for me it was a piecemeal affair. 

So, you had this portion of time to obsessively listen to one album intimately. There was no moving onto the next album because that album was outside the budget, so you sat and stewed for a while before being able to afford the next one. It allowed space and time for your current purchase to be enjoyed, deconstructed, reconstructed and chatted about with friends. 

In respect of Lizzy: My abiding memory growing up is being in the car with my dad as he played the Black Rose album and also Chinatown. Another very strong memory was watching Renegade: The Phil Lynott Story broadcast on RTE, which was presented by David Heffernan, who of course was a producer on the ‘Old Town’ video shoot. He also co-presented a popular Saturday Morning television show in Ireland called Anything Goes. The intro music theme for this show was a song by Phil called ‘Together’. So, in England he had the Top of the Pops theme (‘Yellow Pearl’) music played every week, and at the same time in Ireland he had the theme tune for Anything Goes. He was a busy boy.

You and I have discussed Lizzy’s discography in some of your correspondences, but I am curious as to what the first LP by the legendary group that you got your hands on was? And what record do you consider your favorite by them nowadays? As you know, two of my all-time favorite discs are Renegade (1981) and Vagabonds of the Western World (1973) – not exactly the most obvious choices some would say. Feel free to share some of your thoughts on the most outstanding and the least remarkable entries in their catalog from your perspective. 

A: Thin Lizzy was a number of different bands due to line-up changes along the way. You see the graft of their early years as a three-piece with Eric Bell and Brian Downey culminating with a really strong album called Vagabonds of the Western World. Their time on the road and growth as songwriters is evident from their first to last output on Decca. Their life experiences add to the depth of the material, particularly Phil’s lyrics. And then it all goes away. They rebuild as a four-piece and again it takes until the third album under this guise with Robbo and Gorham to really hit their mark with Jailbreak. The journey to Jailbreak isn’t without incident and misstep but both Nightlife and Fighting as albums have got their fair share of music that you can never be without as a Lizzy fan. ‘Spirit Slips Away’, ‘Still in Love with You’, ‘Wild One’, ‘For Those Who Love to Live’, ‘She Knows’. There is something incredibly attractive from a musical standpoint about songs like ‘Banshee’ and ‘Dear Heart’. I sometimes lament that the songs which lasted in their live set for years after like ‘She La la’, ‘Still in Love with You’, ‘Suicide’ and ‘Rosalie’, got a longer live airing than say a song like ‘Wild One’ or ‘For Those Who Love to Live’. It must be very frustrating for a band as they achieve success and try to alter their set-list to accommodate new material and ultimately have to sacrifice older stuff. Perhaps that is a question for ex band members: What song or songs were you sorry to have to let go of as your set lists had to be aligned to promote the newer material. What’s also interesting is how some later songs like ‘Do Anything You Want To’ or ‘Chinatown’ didn’t really last beyond the album tour they were promoting. 

No matter the album, there was always something of significant interest to be found on the Lizzy albums or on Phil’s solo albums. To me, their strongest studio album is Jailbreak. Bad Reputation has more legs on it than one solitary single release. I enjoy Chinatown on certain levels and wish a track, maybe two, were swapped out in favour of others they had recorded at the time. I’m bewildered by how some of the strategies of their releases panned out, particularly the Chinatown album. The title track was released as a single in summer of 1980. A second single is released shortly before the album itself comes out in October of that year and then nothing more to try to help sustain the album. The previous album Black Rose has three singles released from it in the UK: one before the album is issued and two thereafter. They also made a video promo for ‘With Love’ but the song never emerges as a single. In fact, Lizzy shot promos for several songs that never ended up being released as singles. I know ‘We Will Be Strong’ from the Chinatown album was released as a promotional single so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they might have shot something for it on a soundstage. And never released it.

The Renegade album is a lot more sophisticated than Chinatown, to my ears. It has those slightly oddball songs: ‘Mexican Blood’, ‘Fats’ and ‘No One Told Him’. I can listen to those songs and enjoy them, but they are “way out there” when it comes to Lizzy album content. However, when you look at the types of songs they were writing during this period: ‘In the Delta’, ‘For Always’, ‘Kill (Gotta Get a Gun)’ and then the covers ‘Trouble Boys’, ‘Memory Pain’ and ‘Bad is Bad’. . . they were even further out there on the margins. So, Renegade was as cohesive as it could be, given the different types of songs they had recorded by the autumn of 1981. 

One of my personal favourites continues to be the Fighting album. They are right on the cusp of something magic around this time. They did that big and very important tour with Bachman-Turner Overdrive. The songs were coming together, the identifiable image was falling into place, the songwriting shift was about to climax and perhaps it’s the album that preceded the breakthrough. Everything after this needed to adhere that much more to the breakthrough formula.

How did you initially come up with the idea of conducting such an extensive and detailed study of Phil’s story and then compose a book outlining your discoveries? Was there a particular source of inspiration that made you turn your attention to his life and work? One of the things that I truly cherish about your latest book is your focus on (and analysis of) Phil’s musical activities outside of Thin Lizzy, be that his underrated solo albums, the short Grand Slam era, the countless collaborations with renowned figures such as Gary Moore, Huey Lewis, Junior Giscombe, and so on and so forth. I feel that Phil did some truly captivating work outside of the Lizzy framework – a lot of which is testament to just how varied and diverse his musical tastes were. Do you find it frustrating that Solo in Soho and The Philip Lynott Album are so overlooked and underappreciated?    

A: The first book I did was called Thin Lizzy: Soldiers of Fortune, released in May 2004. I’ve seen release dates for this book online as 2003 and 2005 which are wrong. It was issued on 31st May 2004, my sister’s birthday. I used to write for my local newspaper in the 1990’s – usually music-orientated pieces. I found myself wanting to try the types of pieces that wouldn’t be suitable for a weekly newspaper. In fact, they weren’t suitable anywhere really. They were too long and while the ideas for the pieces were okay, the execution was not. I needed to speak with the people who were there at the time, if they were willing. After an initial splurge of Lizzy-related books in the mid-nineties everything went relatively quiet. While I had heard about Phil’s post-Lizzy work, I didn’t really know much, and I thought this period was ideal to write about. Now, I just wanted to know about the work he did with Grand Slam and beyond. Did he work? Did he do much work? Was he still writing, despite little to no official output etc. 

It’s probably not the best era to begin writing about as he was on a slippery slope personally but initially, I wanted to write a feature called ‘Life after Lizzy’. In time that was written and rewritten and never published. I did have some good material though and felt that maybe I should push for something more substantial – like a book. I think like anyone writing about their chosen subject, there exists a personal interest in finding out a little more. Plus, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of coverage about this period in Phil’s career.   

Also, his solo work was by and large sidelined. From time to time a Lizzy compilation would make chart inroads. I can understand why a lot better than I was able to. Simply put, his solo albums never scaled any significant commercial heights. Yes, some of the content is pretty good on both albums but any singles released were only minor hits. It would take time and money to refocus people toward his solo work and perhaps that time and money is better invested in the lush Lizzy legacy rather than Phil’s solo work. However, given that members of Lizzy played across both solo albums it’s not that much of a stretch to consider his standalone work worthy of a box set treatment. There is a version of Scott playing lead on ‘Ode to Liberty’, before Phil repeated the Mark Knopfler cameo from ‘King’s Call’. I think it’s also very possible that you might find Scott playing on an earlier version of ‘King’s Call’ come to think of it. 

Given that there was very little coverage of this era in Phil’s career documented in books it became a challenge to find out how this period unfolded, so I researched it in diary form. In the earliest days of the internet there were various gig listings available online. There were also sincere collectors who collected clippings advertising gigs or reviews of gigs and sometimes interviews. From these sources I could build a timeline and figure out when Phil was on the road gigging and when he wasn’t. So, once you establish that timeline it’s then a case of trying to fill in the gaps. In many cases on the albums you could often find the dates and location of the recordings. This was another way of finding out where and when and what people were doing. Unfortunately, with such little output during this later period with Phil, this proved to be difficult. He did make several TV appearances throughout 1984 and 1985, so this was another source to add to the timeline. I was also able to find musicians that worked with Phil online, a name that stands out: Steve Johnson. He gave me a guideline of when he met and worked with Phil and knew the date he left his home in Kew shortly before Christmas 1985 as it was his birthday. So, through this I was at least able to establish the last time Steve spent in the studio with Phil working on that demo, ‘Revolution’.

The same applies really for all the people that Phil worked with during this post-Lizzy period such as Junior Giscombe. For some reason it was always accepted that Phil worked with Huey Lewis on those tracks they did in November 1985. But, Laurence Archer who was with Phil for the sessions confirmed he flew out in January 1985. The fan club letters issued at this time also confirmed Phil was due to fly in January and thereafter reported his return in early 1985. Phil however did return to America in November 1985 to shoot his last video. He stayed on after the shoot was completed but was back in London within a couple of days. He had to be, he had promotional work to do.

Phil did quite a bit of experimentation musically with people during this later period and I was glad to have been able to document it in the new version of the book. The Junior songs, Steve Strange duet, Huey Lewis sessions, Clann Eadair folk album, Gary Moore duets, the movie soundtrack he was engaged to work on, his solo album. There was a lot of stuff going on but the forward trajectory of some of those projects was very slow. 

Solo in Soho has such a random selection of songs without a connecting thread. He obviously felt the need to get these songs out there and off the back burner. But he couldn’t promote it properly due to his commitments with Lizzy. So, I’m not sure it ever got the support it needed in order to make a bigger wave. ‘Dear Miss Lonely Hearts’, complete with a video promo featuring Lizzy band members doesn’t seem like a good idea. Perhaps had he been braver he might have chosen a different lead single, even ‘King’s Call’. Or, kept ‘Sarah’ off of Black Rose and instead used it for Solo in Soho. To my ears it would sit in quite well with the other songs. The second solo album is far more experimental and for me, some of the songs just aren’t strong enough. ‘Gino’ will never hold an interest for me. ‘Don’t Talk About Me Baby’, in its various demo guises, is more interesting than the final outcome. That ‘Old Town’ was such a modest success is something I’ll never understand. There are other things that can be factored into play with the second solo album. It was, at one stage, filled with some different songs or could have featured more interesting and stronger songs: ‘Somebody Else’s Dream’, ‘Beat of the Drum’ and ‘Mystery’. There is a strong case to release what was the first version of the album, before things got tangled up and delayed. There is also additional material that could have been considered using and, for me, would have been a stronger album as a result.

There is reportedly a wealth of unreleased material in the Thin Lizzy and Phil Lynott vaults and archives – much more than most people probably know. Some of the deluxe editions and box sets feature some of that stuff, but your book mentions quite a few tracks and titles that have yet to see the light of day. Any idea why that is? I would assume that they could potentially make some absolutely stunning deluxe editions of his solo LPs packed to the rafters with outtakes, demos, finished songs etc. Or am I just imagining things here?

A: Over the years the Lizzy album catalogue deluxe editions began appearing. There was that BBC multi-disc set which was superb. We then got various box sets with the largest being Rock Legends. These various sets are all Thin Lizzy related but Phil’s solo albums remain untouched. There is certainly sufficient material to present a perspective on Phil at work on his solo work – multiple demos of all the songs exist across both official releases, ‘Sleeping Child’ comes to mind as the work in progress title of ‘A Child’s Lullaby’. ‘Talking’ or latterly ‘Talk in ’79’ exists as a Lizzy outtake from the Bad Reputation album sessions. In the book it is noted about the songs that Phil chose to bypass such as the collaborations with Jerome Rimson and Gus Isidore (‘I’ve Heard Lately’ and ‘Someone Out to Get Ya’). Interestingly, in 1982 Phil brought a bass player named Deon Estus to Dublin to do some work on his solo album. I don’t have the 1982 Irish sessions that Phil completed to hand, but he was working quite a bit at Windmill Lane during this period. As I don’t have the information to hand, I can’t identify which sessions and songs he might have played on. Little is known of their work as Deon returned to England and took up an offer to become part of Wham! He remained by George Michael’s side for a large part of his career.

As I mentioned, there is plenty of material from demos, studio outtakes, finished and unreleased songs such as ‘Dirty Old Town’. In-studio rehearsal recordings for his solo tour in 1982 exist as well as different mixes of officially released songs. Moving ahead in time and you have the Junior collaborations, the Grand Slam period which probably yielded in the region of 20-25 songs, not all originals and then you have this later period in 1985 which produced another batch of songs as well as re-imaginings of songs he wrote and recorded since the end of Lizzy. 

I don’t have the answer as to why Phil’s solo work is overlooked for re-release in a more expanded format. In much the same way as I couldn’t understand why so little was done with the Lizzy legacy for so long after his death. It takes money and time and record label interest. It also takes the right people with the right concepts on how to release such projects. Nothing moves particularly fast in this sphere so I can see a submission of an idea for a release before it goes through the wringer, and it may or may not come out the other side. To me, it would be an opportunity lost not to consider utilising Phil’s solo recorded legacy in much the same way as they have with Lizzy’s.

There are countless key players in the Thin Lizzy/Philip Lynott chronicle and your latest work does a brilliant job balancing a seemingly endless supply of different perspectives, opinions, thoughts, and recollections of those who were associated with Lizzy and/or Lynott and their (musical) endeavors. Phil’s (and by extension Thin Lizzy’s) final few years of existence were riddled with monumental problems, and things eventually fell apart. Disputes, drugs, bad decisions, conflicting agendas, lack of structure and strategy, and too many other things to list here. As a reader, one is expertly guided through a maze of drama, tragedy, triumph, creative highs, devastating personal lows, and arguably even comedy when digesting your latest book. I take it that composing and crafting Philip Lynott: Renegade must have been an emotional ride for you in a certain sense? Personally, I was greatly moved by it. Phil must have felt utterly alone at times, or outright lonely, if you will.   

A: Assembling the first version of Renegade was quite difficult. I wanted to write a book about everything Phil did beyond Thin Lizzy before settling on the idea that he could only do these other projects because of the success of Thin Lizzy. So, I had to get the book up to a certain point (Jailbreak era) before I could branch out and discuss these other projects he was involved in. 

I had also written random pieces in 2008 and 2009, which weren’t really intended for a new book. Initially they were written as alternative options for a planned new edition of my first book, Soldiers of Fortune. I completed the revisions for a new edition of that book, but the publisher went out of business in 2009, so that work went unused. I began working on the framework of the Renegade book during the summer of 2009. Once this was established, I began reaching out for interviews, which were done and continued intermittently. However, things didn’t go well in 2010 while looking for a publisher and by the following year I made the decision that if nothing happened by the end of 2011, I would need to forget about it and move on. I don’t normally put deadlines like that in place, but I just wasn’t getting the type of response I had hoped for. Certainly, as we entered the last few months of 2011, I had resigned myself to having to shelve the idea. Until, I got a call on my birthday in November and agreed to meet a publisher to discuss the project on December 30th where a deal was struck. That was how I started to work with Mentor Books. So, with about 36 hours to spare, the book was rescued, and work began again until it was eventually released in October 2012. You never know with these things really – which way it can play out. It took three years to find a publisher with the Soldiers of Fortune book. For the Are You Ready book with Soundcheck Books: I initially approached them about re-issuing the Soldiers book, but they wanted something new and ready for shelves in September 2015. I started work on that book in October 2014 and sure enough, we had it ready for the following September. You just never know really. 

I’ve always enjoyed writing about Phil and Lizzy when they were struggling to establish themselves: when they were up for the fight, when Phil was upright and relatively healthy and hungry. There’s little joy in documenting anyone’s descent really. I do and always have tried to keep the books musically focused, a lot of the tales are in the songs, embellished to some extent. Whenever Phil should have been taking a break, for some reason he looked for excuses to keep working. Example: A break in the Lizzy schedule never seemed to mean going home and chilling out to recharge the batteries. He’d end up doing solo gigs or producing some local bands in Dublin. He didn’t seem to know how to be still for any reasonable amount of time. I think his writing suffered because of that. He personally suffered, because of that, and as time wore on, his health deteriorated. 

Looking back on all the research you did and the many people you interviewed along the way, what are some of your most cherished memories from that period? Were there any revelations along the way, say for instance someone close to Phil and/or Lizzy sharing some anecdotes and recollections that truly startled or surprised you in a positive way, or something that you did NOT see coming?

A: I did my first interview for my first book in 1999, and I’ve done many since. What has always struck me is how open and willing people were to sit down with someone who really had zero calibre and was just hoping to get this thing done. I don’t think there’s too many bands who get a knock on the door, listen to a guy plead his case and say, okay, let’s chat. I loved chatting with Kit Woolven, Will Reid Dick, John Alcock, Chris Tsangarides: I’m glad to have been able to include their memories of working with the band. They were very warm and welcoming to me. I’ve met most of the band members but not interviewed all of them. For some reason my interview with Gary Moore never got moving and I regret not chasing down for his input. Anyone I’ve acknowledged in the books gave their time and I had a great time chatting with them. That a few of the people I’ve chatted to over the years are no longer around is upsetting. I do feel that a genuine relationship was established and respected as well. I sometimes need to check myself when I’m reviewing audio material from people that are no longer around. I know why and I don’t know why. I don’t really have an answer to that. I’m glad I was able to meet them, chat with them and laugh loudly. 

What would you say is Philip’s legacy? I would love it if you could share a few thoughts on the subject and perhaps approach it from both a personal angle and then also from a more general perspective as in how much his words and music still mean to legions of fans today.  

A: Phil really helped Irish bands. He got them tour slots (for free) during a time when support bands had to pay their way onto a tour. He offered advice when asked and he gave his time for nothing helping local bands in Dublin. He’d bring back presents when on tour as he did for his cousin, when he was in Japan. Knowing his cousin was getting into photography he brought back a camera to help him along. I love how his pal Tex Reid remembered talking to his own mother after Phil had died and she told him that Phil would phone her from time to time to let her know that he was doing okay. He was a considerate guy in a lot of ways. I’m not sure we need reminding – perhaps we do – but there are hints across his work where you can hear him leave off the leathers and the studded belts and just hear him for who he really was. He was such a soulful singer and a lot of that gets washed away somewhat when it is married to the instrumentation used in Lizzy. The version of ‘Fight or Fall’ on the most recent boxset Thin Lizzy 1976, which is heavily pared back, spotlights a singer in full control of his phrasing and delivery. I can imagine more such Lizzy songs being stripped back so we can hear the richness in his voice, particularly during this mid-seventies period.

Legacy is such an important thing to properly handle. I love how the American band ‘The Doors’ responded to their fans in the late nineties when asked about professionally recorded concerts which lay dormant in their archive. Essentially, they petitioned the band to review their legacy and consider making them available. The band established the ‘Bright Midnight’ label and began issuing (in limited numbers) their recordings archive. They’re still doing it to this day. 

Phil’s legacy is also each Lizzy member’s legacy. It’s such a precious thing to be able to go back, review and consider making recordings available for the first time. I think it’s incredibly brave to be comfortable in putting demos officially out there. It’s a great thing for fans to be able to hear these works in progress as it offers an insight into how the band evolved their songs before settling on a final version. It’s also a great way to satiate older fans’ thirst with those that are newer to the equation. When used in the right context, particularly box sets- they work superbly as additional content.

In retrospect, what was the most valuable thing that putting Philip Lynott: Renegade together taught you?

A: If anything, my experience on working to get the Renegade book finished (first time in 2012) reminded me to keep going. You’ll have ups and downs and even a few what the fuck sideways thrown in there as well. Keep going!

Have you ever consulted on any documentary films or TV shows on Thin Lizzy or Phil? Let me phrase that differently; have you ever done some work related to Lizzy that was neither for a book nor an article.

A: I was involved with the documentary Songs for While I’m Away. I met the director at a hotel in Cork and was in front of a camera in November 2018 in a studio outside Dublin that was fucking freezing. The ceiling of the place seemed to reach into the sky. The request was for me to speak about Lizzy’s history, and they would then use my voice for various links in the documentary, to move the story along. So, while it was filmed, only parts of the audio were used in the finished film. I quite like that because I don’t think my name comes up on screen. It’s just a voice that emerges and pushes the story along. Good experience, nice documentary, a bit naive but I like its spirit and worth a look if you haven’t seen it.

I produced a radio documentary in 2017 called Life after Lizzy – I’d need to re-cut it to be comfortable with putting it out commercially.

Just out of curiosity, what was the last truly great music-related book that you read? No, scratch that, just go with any book regardless of topic. I would love to hear what we might find in your personal library.

A: I’m currently reading Frank Zappa’s autobiography from the late eighties. I found it hard to get a reasonably priced copy until recently. I think it’s out of print, which is a shame as it’s really good. I recently read a book about George Michael called A Life by James Gavin. I hadn’t realised his descent was quite as severe as what it was. Depressing as fuck as the book wore on. I also recently finished a book by John Densmore called The Doors Unhinged – highly recommend that. The Hard Way, Paul Hardcastle’s autobiography: the pages dedicated to the Synclavier will have you rolling around the place. Rory Gallagher – The Later Years wore me down a little, but it does also contain worthwhile information about Rory. Sometimes the balance of emphasis seems a little off when discussing his role in various sessions. Needs a good fucking edit. One of my favourite reads or re-reads from last year was From Here to Obscurity by Jon Roseman: It’s just brilliant. Tom Selleck’s autobiography: a bit disappointed with that. Andrew Ridgeley’s autobiography is a fun read. 

What does 2025 hold for you and what projects and ideas are you currently working on?

A: I’m currently interviewing for a book about Rory Gallagher in Cork. I take a break from that in the spring and begin revising my first book Soldiers of Fortune.

Thanks once again for your time, Alan.

A: Hope the above is useful, Jens.

ALAN BYRNE – Philip Lynott: Renegade

https://www.sonicbondpublishing.co.uk/other-books/phil-lynott-renegade