Rosalie

The Zoo Crew has got "Rosalie" spinning right now, the opener off Thin Lizzy's 1975 album Fighting, and if you have been riding with the Zoo Freaks for any length of time you already know this one does not sit still. Phil Lynott takes a Bob Seger tune and turns it into a hard-rock charge, twin guitars locked in, Brian Downey kicking the drums like he is trying to wake the whole street. Over on THE ZOO we treat a cut like this the way it was meant to be treated, loud, in the clear, no talking over the solo.

Seger wrote "Rosalie" for his 1973 album Back in '72, and the woman in the title is not a girlfriend. She is Rosalie Trombley, the music director at CKLW, the Big 8 out of Windsor, Ontario, whose playlist could make or break a record across the Midwest and far beyond. Seger had good reason to tip his hat. Trombley had been one of the people who kept his early singles alive when he was still a regional name. The lyric paints her as the teen queen with the power, the one who knows music and decides what the kids hear. There is a twist the old radio hands still tell. Trombley was not flattered. Word from the stations is she never played the song on CKLW. Seger's own album never got a proper CD issue for years because he did not like the sound of his vocals on it, so a lot of American listeners met "Rosalie" through the Irish band instead of the man who wrote it.

Thin Lizzy cut their version in May 1975 at Olympic Studios in London, with Lynott producing and Keith Harwood engineering. It opens Fighting, released on Vertigo that September, and it is the only cover on the record. Ian McLagan from the Faces sits in on piano, and Roger Chapman from Family adds backing vocals, which tells you the room was full of people who knew a groove when they heard one. Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson were still new as a pair, and this is where that twin-guitar snarl starts to sound like the band the rest of the world would meet a year later. Gorham has said Wishbone Ash got to the twin-lead idea first, but Lizzy put more aggression under it. Fighting was the first Thin Lizzy album to chart in Britain, a modest number 60, and the sleeve carried Jim Fitzpatrick's band logo on the front for the first time. The title was not a joke. The group had been grinding for years, lineups shifting, and they were still fighting their way toward a hit.

The studio take runs a little over three minutes. The one the road made famous runs longer. On the 1978 double live album Live and Dangerous, Lizzy welded "Rosalie" to "Cowgirl's Song" and let the crowd carry the middle. That medley came out as a single in Britain and climbed to number 20, hanging around the chart for thirteen weeks, while the album itself stopped at number 2 and stayed on the list for the better part of a year. Setlist counters have the song among the band's most played live numbers across decades of shows. Black Star Riders, Grand Slam, and even Motörhead have taken a swing at it since. On Fighting the track sits next to Lynott originals like "Suicide," "Wild One," and "Fighting My Way Back," plus Robertson's "Silver Dollar" and Gorham's "Ballad of a Hard Man." It was one of the rare Lizzy albums where the guitarists got sole writing credits of their own. The cover was a door-opener, a nod to American radio from a band that still needed a door.

The man out front did not arrive with a road map. Philip Parris Lynott was born in West Bromwich, England, in August 1949, son of Philomena Lynott from Dublin and Cecil Parris. He was raised in Crumlin by his grandparents, went to the Christian Brothers school, and for a short spell tried life as an apprentice fitter at a foundry. He hated it and quit. Music had already got hold of him. As a teenager he sang with the Black Eagles alongside a younger drummer named Brian Downey, mixing Elvis with whatever else the Dublin clubs would stand. Brush Shiels pulled him into Skid Row, one of the hotter Irish rock bands of the late sixties, then let him go. Shiels did him a lasting favor on the way out by teaching him bass and pushing him to write. Lynott and Downey put together a group called Orphanage. Late in 1969, Belfast guitarist Eric Bell and keyboard player Eric Wrixon, both lately of Them, walked into a dressing room at the Countdown Club on Mary Street and the pieces started to move.

Downey has told the story more than once. He was not sure about the new lineup. Lynott told him Bell was coming in whether the vote went that way or not. They split Orphanage and started Thin Lizzy around the turn of 1970. The name came from a stoned suggestion of Bell's, a play on the Beano comic's Tin Lizzie, which in a Dublin accent lands as Thin Lizzy. Wrixon did not stay long. The trio signed to Decca, and their first single, Lynott's "The Farmer," came out on Parlophone in July 1970. Five hundred copies were pressed and fewer than three hundred sold. Their debut album followed in 1971. Bell later said they were bombed for most of those sessions. A reworking of the old folk song "Whiskey in the Jar" finally gave them a British hit in 1973, then Bell left, Gary Moore passed through, and the classic four-piece settled in with Gorham from California and Robertson from Glasgow. Fighting is the album where that band stops sounding like a work in progress.

Lynott kept the poet streak he had shown around Dublin. He wrote about cowboys, outlaws, lost girls, and the road, and he sang it in a voice that could go tender or mean without changing keys. By the time Jailbreak and "The Boys Are Back in Town" broke them open in 1976, "Rosalie" was already a set piece, the song they used to light the fuse. If you want the records, the stories, and the gear straight from the camp, the band's own site is Thin Lizzy Official, and the rock and roll history page there walks through the Dublin days and the Fighting era in their own words. Their official Facebook page is Thin Lizzy on Facebook, the official Instagram is @thinlizzy, and the official account on X is @ThinLizzy_.

Fans have kept their own lights on for a long time. The long-running supporter site thin-lizzyfan.com has been online in one form or another since 1995, full of biography, tributes, and links for anyone still chasing Lynott and the band. On Facebook, the active groups Thin Lizzy Fans Club and THIN LIZZY FAMILY are where the road stories and the old gig photos still get passed around. That is the company this song keeps. A Michigan writer's salute to a Canadian radio boss, recut by a Dublin band that was still scrapping for a chart position, then turned into a live staple that outran the album it came from. The Zoo Crew will leave it up loud for the Zoo Freaks. Turn it up and ride with it.