![\"Phil](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Phil-Lynott-Thin-Lizzy-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Alamy)<\/p>\n
Tue 3 March 2026 1:00, UK <\/p>\n
Thin Lizzy<\/a> bagged their first, and only, top 20 hit in the US with the 1976 classic, \u2018The Boys Are Back in Town\u2019.<\/p>\n That one catchy refrain should\u2019ve been enough to send them across the pond and into the stratosphere, finally providing the fuel they needed to all but break America, yet the dreary convolutions of the universe sleuthed against the Irish rock band, who never quite managed to see their name in neon lights next to that star-spangled banner.<\/p>\n Thin Lizzy\u2019s co-guitarist Scott Gorham deemed the unfortunate occurrences that led to this failure \u2018The Curse of Thin Lizzy\u2019. For him, out of anyone in the band, making ground in America was of the utmost importance, as it was his hometown they were desperate to prove themselves in. The Beatles had done it with ease in 1964, running incessantly from hordes of fans who had never seen scousers up close before, so they too could dream it.<\/p>\n Was it really a curse, which can be defined as a cause of harm or misery, often invoked through supernatural power? A tour can feel \u2018cursed\u2019 if, say, a natural disaster stops the ferry from making it across the channel on time, or the tour van mysteriously stops driving in the middle of a freeway, the inexplicable and unexplainable charged with an unforgiving potentiality. <\/p>\n The year of the unparalleled success of \u2018The Boys Are Back in Town\u2019 should\u2019ve seen them touring every place, popping up in any up-and-coming rock venue that\u2019d let them in the back door. Thin Lizzy lined things up nicely, firming up a tour with Ritchie Blackmore\u2019s Rainbow<\/a>, but, out of nowhere, vocalist and bassist Phil Lynott was struck down. <\/p>\n As Gorham explained, \u201cWe were on the bill with Ritchie Blackmore\u2019s Rainbow, and we were absolutely convinced we were gonna just kill. Then Phil gets hepatitis and, boom!, we run into another USA brick wall. The tour just stopped there.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1977, the year of the Queen\u2019s Silver Jubilee and the year that snow fell in Miami for the first-ever time, Thin Lizzy were afforded another chance. Hepatitis behind them, they had another ticket to the US big leagues, a co-headline tour with Queen: the real deal. Could the curse really reach the band when they were on the precipice of such stardom? And the real question here is whether we really believe that then-guitarist Brian Robertson, also known as Robbo, getting into a fight at London\u2019s Speakeasy Club on the night before the Queen tour was also the paranormal work of a curse in motion. <\/p>\n In defence of Robbo, his involvement in the dispute was allegedly down to his gallantry, where his friend, Frankie Miller, drunkenly found himself in a dispute with Gordon Hunte, the guitarist from the reggae band Gonzalez. Hunte didn\u2019t play nice and attacked Miller with a bottle in the dressing room, and with barely a moment spare to think, Robbo dived in, extending a hand to defend against the weapon, or so the story goes. Naturally, Robbo sustained severe artery and nerve damage to his fretting hand. <\/p>\n Belfast-born Gary Moore stepped in to replace Robbo on the upcoming Queen tour, which simply couldn\u2019t be deferred. Severe artery and nerve damage wouldn\u2019t stop the wheels from turning, and the band thankfully managed to make it to some seriously impressive places, including a night at Madison Square Garden, plus reviews deemed Thin Lizzy wild and impressive, giving Queen a run for their money<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, their music never reappeared on the US charts again; Thin Lizzy never cracked America, in reality, America cracked them. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Alamy) Tue 3 March 2026 1:00, UK Thin Lizzy bagged their first, and only, top 20 hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3936],"tags":[6207,77,269,91263,16,15],"class_list":["post-800342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-america","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-thin-lizzy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116163084791984152","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}