Noah x Thin Lizzy

Words by Brendon Babenzien

Music was always important to me, even as a very young boy. While other kids were still listening to nursery rhymes, I was hearing Foghat, Jim Croce, Kansas, and Black Sabbath. The Beatles’ White Album would have been my favorite at that time. It was the ’70s, and the music that would come to define me was still a few years off. New wave and hip hop were still in my future. I was hearing whatever the older people around me were playing, so I wasn’t yet in control of my own musical journey.

There was one band, though, that I could never get my head around: Thin Lizzy. I couldn’t tell you what it was about them that I couldn’t connect with at the time. I assumed they were American. They were Irish. I thought they were heavy metal, but thankfully I eventually learned that, like all great bands, they were so much more. There were great rock songs, of course, but there were melodies and ballads alongside the influence of their Irish heritage, all topped off with the amazing grooves of Phil Lynott’s bass playing. The word “groove” is not often in my vocabulary, but there is no other way to describe what he brought to rock and roll. Listening closely, you can hear the influence of disco coming through, which rock fans should have found offensive, but it is so seamlessly and masterfully natural to the songs that you have to accept it and just enjoy. The greatest musicians do not think in terms of categories. They break down barriers musically. Everything I thought I knew about Thin Lizzy was wrong.