The Boys Are Back in Town (1976)

Performer: Thin Lizzy                                            Writer: Phil Lynott
Highest US Chart Position: #12                            Label: Mercury
Musicians: Phil Lynott, Brian Robertson, Scott Gorham and Brian Downey

Though it would literally be impossible for me to pick my favorite song from the summer of 1976, this song would easily be in the top three. But more than that, it would probably be in the top five of my favorite rock songs of all time. That bicentennial summer was incredibly rich with good music, and while I had heard Thin Lizzy’s tune when it was first released there was a moment when it became something more that simply another Top 40 hit. We had an industrial road in the town where I grew up that ran along by the water past the port. One day I was sitting in the car near the start of the road and, while I was waiting for someone, there was a small, second floor apartment nearby that was blasting out the local radio station from a speaker near the window. “The Boys Are Back in Town” was playing and I had the chance to simply listen with no other distractions, and what I head was impressive. The overwhelming greatness of the tune lies in its melodic sensibilities, something that has been completely lost in the last thirty years with rock music gradually becoming the musical equivalent of the drone on a set of bagpipes.

The Irish band Thin Lizzy had been around since 1969 and began playing Celtic music, with Phil Lynott on bass and vocals, Eric Bell on guitar, and Brian Downey on drums. They had recorded albums and singles but had failed to even dent the U.S. charts. After Eric Bell and his replacement Gary Moore left in 1973, Lynott decided to go with a two-lead guitar lineup and eventually hired Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham. Opening for acts like BTO and Bob Seger in the U.S., the band honed their sound and by the time they had released their fifth album, Jailbreak, in March of 1976, they managed to break into the charts getting as high as number eighteen. The first single off the album was this song with the rocker “Emerald” on the B-side. It peaked in mid summer at number twelve on July 24th, and its success let to two more singles being pulled from the album. The song tells a very engaging story of a group of anonymous guys who obviously cut a large swath through town, partying and fighting and generally causing major disruption. The leader is Johnny--a character Lynott would write about later when “Johnny the Fox Meets Jimmy the Weed”--and when the girl slaps his face it sends the rest of the guys into hysterics. The song ends at Dino’s bar and grill with booze and blood and summer on the horizon.

The song begins on an eight-beat sustained chord hitting on the offbeat, with Lynott’s bass and one of the guitars providing a tasty lick before two more offbeat chords. Once the verse comes in the chord progression is striking, especially for mid-seventies rock, not only in the specific chords but the way they are played, alternately up the neck and down in open position almost providing a counterpoint to the mono-tonality of Lynott’s vocal melody. The quality of the distortion is also worthy of comment. Unlike the later saturated sound of Boston or Van Halen, the distortion doesn’t seem to be coming from a pedal but the overdrive on the amp and as a result it’s loose, like Joe Perry on Aerosmith’s first album. The chorus has Lynott answering himself in overdubs and is sung over the intro chords. After the second chorus comes the distinctive twin lead guitars playing a wonderful melody that finishes with a staccato series of sixteenth notes leading into the bridge. After the third verse comes another twin guitar section over a more subdued backing that leads into the earlier two guitar melody and on into the fadeout. “The Boys Are Back in Town” is a melodic masterpiece and one of the greatest rock songs of the seventies. Thin Lizzy never again achieved this kind of chart success, but they didn’t need to as this song permanently cemented their place in rock history.