Phil Lynott on stage with Thin Lizzy at the Manchester Apollo in 1983
Phil Lynott’s solo career gets the full archive treatment on Friday 30 October, when UMR/Mercury releases The Story of My Life, an eight-CD box set compiled by Thin Lizzy archivist Nick Sharp with the full support of the Philip Lynott estate. It holds both of his solo albums, 1980’s Solo in Soho and 1982’s The Philip Lynott Album, alongside demos, remixes, rehearsals and collaborations, many of them available officially for the first time.
The headline item is an album that has never been officially released. Fatalistic Attitude was Lynott’s original second solo record, finished and then shelved, and it appears here in the running order he intended. The set arrives 40 years after his death in 1986, and it treats the solo years as a body of work in their own right rather than a footnote to Thin Lizzy.
The Album That Was Too Dark for 1982
According to Super Deluxe Edition, Fatalistic Attitude was prepared for release in January 1982 but was considered “too dark” for release. It was reworked and came out eight months later as The Philip Lynott Album. Ultimate Classic Rock puts it more bluntly, describing it as the LP “his label rejected for its dark vibe”.
The version in the box is sourced from Lynott’s personal acetate copy of the original album, now in a private collection, and it restores his intended running order, including two songs that were removed. Super Deluxe Edition calls it effectively an early version of the album that did come out. It is also being released on its own as a vinyl LP, so the lost record can be bought without the rest of the box.
Fans were given a glimpse of the shelved album at the time. In April 1981 Lynott performed “Somebody Else’s Dream” on The Old Grey Whistle Test as an early preview of Fatalistic Attitude, BraveWords reports. When the album was held back and reworked, that song was dropped. Footage of the 1981 performance is now streaming as part of the campaign for the box.
What Changed Between the Two Versions
Set the two tracklists side by side and the edit is easy to see. Fatalistic Attitude runs to 11 songs and opens with “Somebody Else’s Dream”. The Philip Lynott Album has 10 and opens with “Fatalistic Attitude”, the song that shares the shelved record’s title. Two songs disappeared between the versions, “Somebody Else’s Dream” and “Hate”, and one arrived: “Together”.
“Hate” has a longer history. The box includes an unreleased solo version of the song, which Thin Lizzy first recorded as a demo in 1978. “Somebody Else’s Dream” did not vanish completely either. It was later issued as the B-side of “Together”, the one song on the released album that the shelved version did not have.
Some of the shared songs changed too. Several tracks were re-recorded or remixed, most notably “Ode to Liberty (The Protest Song)”, which features Thin Lizzy’s Scott Gorham on guitar, according to Super Deluxe Edition. Hearing the two versions back to back is the closest fans will get to sitting in on the decision. Restoring an intended running order can change how a familiar record reads, as the recent reissue of Sad Wings of Destiny in the running order Judas Priest wanted showed.
Can’t Get Away and the Last Recordings
The first track to appear from the set came from the other end of Lynott’s life. “Can’t Get Away” is a previously unreleased ’80s-style power ballad that he recorded weeks before his death, Ultimate Classic Rock reported in September. It features Huey Lewis, Lynott’s “longtime friend and sometime colleague”, on backing vocals and Chris Hayes on guitar. The demo has been bootlegged in the past, but this is the first time an official version has appeared.
It sits on disc seven alongside demos by Grand Slam, one of Lynott’s post-Thin Lizzy bands: “I Don’t Need This”, “Crazy”, “Hot and Spicy”, “Dedication” and “Harlem”. The same disc closes with demos of “I’m Still Alive” and “One Wish”. The set also includes material recorded by Blackmail, another of his post-Lizzy bands, Super Deluxe Edition notes.
Knowing it was recorded weeks before he died, it is hard to hear a title like “Can’t Get Away” without that context. Like the rest of disc seven, it is presented as a demo, a working recording by a songwriter who was still writing, not dressed up as a finished master or a lost final album.
Gary Moore, Huey Lewis and the Friends on the Tapes
Several of the unreleased recordings involve Lynott’s collaborators. Super Deluxe Edition lists previously unreleased collaborations with Gary Moore, Junior Giscombe, Paul Brady and Huey Lewis. Brady’s name appears on disc seven, on “Together – Paul Brady Version”, a different version of the song that made it onto The Philip Lynott Album.
Gary Moore features too. A demo of “Parisienne Walkways”, released as a preview in September, was recorded in 1978 during sessions for Moore’s album Back on the Streets, with Moore, Lynott, Thin Lizzy drummer Brian Downey and Huey Lewis, according to Prog Rock Journal. The demo sits on disc six, and disc five adds “Parisienne Walkways” itself alongside “Out in the Fields”, “Military Man” and “Still in Love With You”.
Disc five also carries three live recordings: “Stop Messin’ Around” and “Parisienne Walkways” from Belfast’s Ulster Hall on 18 December 1984, and “Out in the Fields” from the Manchester Apollo on 23 September 1985. For a set built mostly from studio and demo tapes, they are a reminder that Lynott spent those years on stage as well as in the studio.
Eight Discs, From Soho to the Rehearsal Room
The tracklist published by retailers such as Recordstore runs to 98 tracks, and Prog Rock Journal counts 29 of them as previously unreleased. The box shares its title with a demo on disc six, “The Story of My Life”. Here is how the eight discs break down:
- Disc one, Solo in Soho (10 tracks): the 1980 album, including “Dear Miss Lonely Hearts”, “King’s Call” and the first version of “Yellow Pearl”.
- Disc two, Fatalistic Attitude (11 tracks): the shelved alternate album, every song in its Fatalistic Attitude version.
- Disc three, The Philip Lynott Album (10 tracks): the album as released in 1982.
- Discs four and five (14 and 12 tracks): non-album mixes, B-sides and official rarities, among them four versions of “Yellow Pearl”, one of them labelled “TOTP Theme”, and four mixes of “Nineteen”.
- Discs six and seven (15 and 14 tracks): demos, from rough mixes of Solo in Soho songs such as “Tattoo” and “Jamaican Rum” to the Grand Slam recordings.
- Disc eight (12 tracks): rehearsals by Lynott’s solo band in 1982.
The rehearsal disc is the least expected inclusion. Super Deluxe Edition describes it as previously unheard rehearsals for Lynott’s 1982 solo tour, and it runs through songs from both albums, among them “Yellow Pearl”, “Solo in Soho”, “Old Town” and two takes of “The Man’s a Fool”. It is a rare chance to hear the solo material in the hands of a band getting ready to play it live.
Who Put It Together, and What It Costs
Nick Sharp’s compilation comes in deluxe packaging with an extensive booklet of new sleeve notes by Mark Blake of Mojo, plus rare photographs and images of memorabilia. The press release calls it “the most comprehensive collection of Philip Lynott’s solo recordings ever released”, and the scope is wide: both albums, the shelved one, two discs of non-album mixes and B-sides, two discs of demos and a disc of rehearsals.
UK retailers are listing the eight-CD box at between £86.99 and £91.99. The standalone vinyl LP of Fatalistic Attitude was listed at £25.99 on Amazon UK in Super Deluxe Edition’s price round-up, which makes it the cheaper way in for anyone who mainly wants to hear the lost album.
For Phil Lynott fans, that lost album is the reason to pay attention. A record judged too dark in 1982, sourced from his own acetate, gets its first official release on 30 October, more than 44 years after it was first readied for the shops.
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