(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Fri 2 January 2026 10:25, UK
It sounds counter-intuitive that a rock band be annoyed by the success of a rock single, but in 1972, it turned out Thin Lizzy were. Their take on the Irish classic ‘Whiskey in the Jar’, a souped-up, electrified reimagining of an old folk tale about highwaymen, was only ever intended to be a B-side. Somewhat frustratingly for the band, it shot up the UK and Irish charts, quickly becoming one of their most enduring hits.
They originally palmed it off to their record company as the reverse to ‘Black Boys On The Corner’, but given the runaway success of the earlier Dubliners version from 1968, the executives could sense the universal appeal of the tight guitar lines and Phil Lynott’s iconic vocal. ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ became the single.
Although he seemed slightly embarrassed by its success, the lyrics were a massive draw for Lynott. Written about a betrayed highwayman with a mysterious origin, its narrative arc blended an almost country western sensibility with traditional Irish standards. Scott Gorham, Thin Lizzy’s guitarist from 1974, noted Lynott shared the ability to “bring the story side to fruition” in a song.
“Phil is a lyricist, and you always learn to paint a picture – I’ve noticed this about a lot of Irish writers,” he told Goldmine. “It’s what they do. They’re very vivid in their explanations within the songs without getting corny about it.” That being said, Lynott did feel ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ wasn’t a shining example of the band at their hard rock best.
Gorham, who joined the band a few years after it had become a bona fide hit, said it always felt out of place in set lists. “Especially when we first started out, hearing the kind of songs that we were coming up with in writing and recording and playing,” he explained. It also created an unspoken pressure to veer further away from their bluesy, rock roots and into borderline pop territory to create another massive hit.
Phil Lynott with Thin Lizzy in concert. (Credit: Harry Potts)
“We’d get to ‘Whisky in the Jar’, and it just seemed to be the oddball song. It just seemed to be out of order. I said to him one day: ‘Hey, how about if we drop ‘Whiskey in the Jar’? It’s not really an original song. Let’s just stand on our own two feet of things that we had written, not from songs that other people had written.’” And Lynott surprised him, instantly agreeing to drop it from then on.
“Now, if I had got somebody new in the band,” he joked, “and they said to me, ‘Hey Scott, maybe we ought to drop ‘The Boys Are Back in Town,’ it’s a bit old. I would have said, ‘Okay, you’re fired.’”
Did Phil Lynott hate the song?
If you are to believe the director of Phil Lynott: Songs for While I’m Away, Emer Reynolds, it wasn’t just Lynott that disliked the track, but the whole band. “Thin Lizzy always hated it and yet it’s one of their biggest hits. The curse of the great hit!” he told the Express.
“Phil says in the film that they recorded it almost as a joke,” he continues. “They were shocked by its success and continued to be shocked by how much the audience loved it.”
It’s not an unexpected feeling. So often can a band’s greatest hit become an albatross around their neck. Kurt Cobain hated Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, Radiohead detest ‘Creep’, and the less Oasis hear ‘Wonderwall’, the better. But for Thin Lizzy it seemed to resonate more from the fact that the tune was a cover and not their original work. Either way, it has become an iconic moment in their legacy.
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