Bad Reputation

The Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on "Bad Reputation," the title cut from Thin Lizzy's 1977 album of the same name, and if you Zoo Freaks have been riding with us over at THE ZOO, you already know this one does not ease into the room. It kicks the door. Scott Gorham had the riff in his pocket first. Phil Lynott heard it and told him they needed an off-time thing on it, then sat down with drummer Brian Downey and bent the groove into a 6/4 that does not feel like the usual Lizzy strut. Gorham said later that the second that off-timing tag line locked in, the harmony guitars and the lead just fell into place. Lynott looked at the riff and said something along the lines of, man, this could give us a really bad reputation. That was the title. The song was written fast, the way the good ones sometimes are.

They cut it in Toronto between May and June of 1977, at Toronto Sound and Sounds Interchange, with Tony Visconti in the producer's chair, and the album hit the street on September 2. The song runs a little over three minutes, co-written by Lynott, Downey, and Gorham, and it is one of the nastiest things Phil ever put his name on. Most of his songs sneak in a little tenderness. This one does not. The lyric dresses down some unnamed wide boy who plays too hard and has already used up his luck. You got a bad reputation, that's the word out on the town. You've had bad breaks, well tough luck. Turn yourself around. Plenty of folks hear guitarist Brian Robertson in those lines. Plenty more hear Phil talking to the man in the mirror.

The album title was not just a cool phrase. It was a sideways jab at the band's standing with American promoters and record-company people, who had pretty much thrown in the towel after a stretch of bad luck. Scott Gorham later called the record important because of all the trouble they had been through. Pull it together, or go down in a ball of flames. Robertson had missed most of the previous tour after a hand injury from a brawl, and Phil figured Scott could carry the guitar work alone. Gorham did not buy that. He believed in what he called the magic circle, two guitars, and he left solos open on "Opium Trail" and "Killer Without a Cause" so Robertson could come back and play them. Robbo is only credited on three tracks. The sleeve even shows three-quarters of the band. It was his last studio album with Lizzy.

Downey owns this song on the drums. He remembered the riff knocking around for a good while before they recorded it, and he said the odd time signature was Phil's idea while he and Scott filled in the rest. On the road it replaced "Sha La La" as the spot for his drum feature. "Dancing in the Moonlight" and "Bad Reputation" went out as a double A-side that summer, the album climbed to number 4 in the UK, and the band headlined Reading with Robbo back in the lineup. Oddly enough, the song never made the cut for Live and Dangerous, the live album a lot of rock people still rank among the best ever pressed. The Foo Fighters later cut their own version. The reputation stuck.

There is a small travel story attached to the sleeve, too. Jim Fitzpatrick, the artist who usually painted Lizzy covers, sat this one out after a mix-up with Phil. Deadline closing in, Lynott flew to the States to meet him at home in Madison, Connecticut, and landed in Madison, Wisconsin instead. Wrong Madison. The cover still looks like a wanted poster, which fits the song just fine.

Philip Parris Lynott was born on August 20, 1949, in West Bromwich, near Birmingham, to Philomena Lynott, a Dublin woman, and Cecil Parris. Philomena raised him in Manchester until he was about four, then sent him to live with his grandparents, Sarah and Frank Lynott, on Leighlin Road in Crumlin, Dublin. She stayed in England to work and stayed close to her son. Mixed race in 1950s Dublin, he caught the odd hard look, but he was a lively kid and well liked on the street. He went through the Christian Brothers and a technical college, thought about architecture, then took an apprentice fitter's job at Tonge and Taggart's foundry in 1967. He hated it and quit after a few weeks, with his mother's blessing.

Music had already gotten him. Elvis, then Hendrix. In his teens he sang with a local group called the Black Eagles, where he first played with Brian Downey, a school friend a couple of years younger. After that band folded he bounced through a few outfits until Brush Shiels pulled him into Skid Row in 1968, one of the sharpest rock bands in Ireland at the time. Tall, thin, Afro out to here, he looked like a frontman. The rest of the band was not sold on his singing, and in 1969 they let him go while he was hoarse with tonsillitis. Shiels figured he had no future out front and taught him the bass instead. That turned out to be the whole plot.

Lynott and Downey started a band called Orphanage. Late in 1969, Belfast guitarist Eric Bell came down to the Countdown Club on Mary Street with keyboard player Eric Wrixon. Downey has said he was against the idea at first. Phil told him Eric was joining whether he liked it or not. They split Orphanage and, early in 1970, became Thin Lizzy, Phil on bass and vocals and most of the songs, Downey on drums, Bell on guitar. The name came out of a stoned suggestion from Bell, riffing on the old Tin Lizzie comic and a Ford Model T. Say "thin" in a Dublin accent and you hear it. They signed to Decca, moved to London, and put out their first album in April 1971. The hit did not arrive until they reworked the old folk song "Whiskey in the Jar" in 1973. Bell left soon after. The twin-guitar years, Gorham and Robertson, Jailbreak, and the rest of the ride came after that.

Phil kept writing like a poet who also knew how a bass should walk, right up until January 4, 1986, when the hard living caught him. The records did not go with him. If you want the whole shelf, the band's own pages still keep the story straight. The official home is Thin Lizzy Official, and the discography over there still lists Bad Reputation right alongside the expanded edition. They post as Thin Lizzy on Facebook, Thin Lizzy on Instagram, and Thin Lizzy on X. For the fans who never clocked out, the public group THIN LIZZY FAMILY is still trading stories and old photos, and Thin Lizzy Fans Club is another room full of people who still turn it up. Turn yourself around, Zoo Freaks. Or don't. The song works either way.