Two new stamps mark 50 years of Thin Lizzy

Posted in Articles, Arts, Europe, History, Media Archive on 2019-10-24 01:24Z by Steven

Two new stamps mark 50 years of Thin Lizzy

The Journal.ie
2019-10-07

Sean Murray

Thin Lizzy_stamp pair

Queues formed at the GPO earlier for fans to get their hands on the new stamps.

AN POST HAS today launched two new stamps to mark fifty years of legendary Irish rock band Thin Lizzy.

Phil Lynott’s daughters Sarah and Cathleen, his grandchildren and ex-wife Caroline were on hand to unveil the new stamps earlier today.

An Post said that queues formed at the GPO in Dublin today with fans snapping up the collector’s items.

One of them features a portrait of Lynott himself by artist Jim Fitzpatrick while the other features the album artwork from Black Rose

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Phil Lynott: Famous For Many Reasons

Posted in Articles, Arts, Biography, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Europe, Media Archive on 2011-06-24 18:25Z by Steven

Phil Lynott: Famous For Many Reasons

Irish Migration Studies in Latin America
Volume 4, Number 3 (July 2006)
Published by The Society for Irish Latin American Studies

John Horan


Bronze statue of Phil Lynott on Harry Street, Dublin
(by Paul Daly, cast by Leo Higgins, plinth hand-carved by Tom Glendon)

In view of the unique and colourful history of the ties between Ireland and Brazil that date back centuries, it is perhaps surprising that the most famous Irish-Brazilian was a mixed-race rock star from Dublin. Phil Lynott was one of Ireland’s first world-famous rock stars, and definitely the most famous black Irishman in the island’s history, long before the advent of a new era in the Republic that facilitated the immigration of people from various African nations from the 1990s. Lynott’s band, Thin Lizzy, was the first internationally successful Irish rock band, and Lynott himself was considered the biggest black rock star since Jimmy Hendrix.

Phil Lynott: THE ROCKER, a 2002 biography by Mark Putterford, begins with the sentence, “Phil Lynott was one of the most colorful and charismatic characters in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.” This sentence would be considered an understatement by those who knew him through all stages of his life. His family history was typical in some ways, but his mother’s personal history was anything but typical for Ireland in 1949, the year he was born.

Philomena Lynott was born in Dublin in 1930 to Frank and Sarah Lynott. She was the fourth of nine children, all of whom grew up in the working-class Crumlin district on the south side of Dublin. Economic hardships in the Republic prompted her to choose to move across the Irish Sea to Manchester to find work, while many of her friends went to Liverpool. Shortly after her arrival in Manchester, she was courted by a black Brazilian immigrant whose surname was Parris. To this very day, Philomena Lynott has never spoken publicly about her son’s father, so as to protect his privacy. She once said, “He was a fine, fine man, who did the decent thing and proposed marriage to me when I told him I was pregnant.” Philomena and her former boyfriend stayed in contact for five years after their son was born. However, when it became clear that marriage was no longer a possibility between the two, they drifted apart. It is said that Philip Lynott’s father returned to live in Brazil and started another family, which has always been the reason given for Philomena’s refusal to provide any information about the “tall, dark stranger” who was her son’s father, as she never wanted to disrupt his life with his new family. Several sources cite that the Brazilian made some level of financial contribution towards supporting his Irish son in the early years…

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