Until, that is, Carroll had another brainwave. “And a few other ‘specialist DJs’, as they called them, like Kid Jensen and Stuart Henry, loved us, but you would never hear us on the radio in the day.” “John Peel liked the band and would play us on his show,” Lynott recalled. But despite Decca chopping the track down from five minutes-plus to three-and-a-half by editing out most of Bell’s dappled, Gaelic-lilt guitar solo, it looked like its chances of breaking the band in the UK were slight.

It got us out of a jam so we could carry on going as Thin LizzyĪfter that album, a rocked-up version of Whiskey In The Jar represented a massive step forward – at least in terms of profile in Ireland where it reached No.1. “It was an embarrassment,” says a cringing Downey. With Jon Lord-style keyboards by Fudd’s Dave ‘Mojo’ Lennox, and a photo of another band completely on the cover (Hard Stuff, also managed by Carroll), the album Funky Junction Play A Tribute To Deep Purple went on sale in Woolworth in January 1973, priced just 50p. “Phil saw himself as more of a Rod Stewart than an Ian Gillan,” says Downey, “so he did the bass and some backing vocals, and Ted got in Benny White, the singer from another Irish band he managed called Elmer Fudd, who was like a copycat Gillan.” So desperate were the band, in fact, that they had just accepted £1,000 (around ten grand in today’s money) to record an album of Deep Purple covers, under the fictional aegis Funky Junction. Decca wanted Whiskey as the A-side, so we went with it, and the band began playing it live.” Lizzy were really in debt at the time and things were getting desperate.

“He’d put so much into Black Boys, seeing it as the band’s first big statement single. “But Eric worked up this fantastic electric guitar version, with that brilliant intro of his, and the first time I heard it I said: ‘This is a hit!’” Decca head honcho Dick Rowe agreed, and unilaterally switched the tracks around, making Whiskey the A-side and Black Boys the B-side. So we put it together a little more solidly.” Ted Carroll heard us fooling around on it and started enthusing about how good it sounded. Until the South comes back again, beneath the Starry-Banner Īnd if John Bull should interfere, he'd suffer for it truly įor, soon the Irish Volunteers would give him Ballyhooly.As Bell recalled in 1973: “We were rehearsing in the Duke Of York pub in King’s Cross in London, and Phil picked up the Telecaster and just began singing Whiskey to his own accompaniment, and I found that little riff which announces the song and runs through it now on the disc. Och, sure, we never will give in, in any sort of manner, Och hone! the slaughter that we made, bedad, it was delighting!įor, the Irish lads in action are the devil's boys for fighting. The Rebel blaggards soon gave way: they fell as thick as paynuts. We soon got into battle: we made a charge of bayonets: Whoo! says I, the Irish Volunteers the devil a one afraid is,īecause we've got the sugar bowl, McClellan, to lead us. I bid good-bye to Biddy dear, and all the darling children Ora, once in regimentals, my mind was bewildher. Till I 'listed for a Soger-boy wid Corcoran's brigade, sir. I used to cry out: Soap fat! bekase that was my trade, sir, Not long ago, I landed from the bogs of sweet Killarney I am a modern hero: my name is Paddy Kearney The song appeared in wording very close to its modern version in a ballad called 'The Sporting Hero,' or 'Whiskey in the Bar,' in a mid-1850s broadsheet.ĭuring the American Civil War the famed Fighting 69th, composed of almost all Irish, adopted the song as their own anthem but changed the lyrics and called the song “We'll Fight for Uncle Sam.”

Thin lizzy whiskey in the jar