Phil Lynott Statue

Best known as the frontman for the band Thin Lizzy, Phil Lynott’s too-short life has been memorialized by a life-size bronze statue erected in central Dublin, just outside one of the famed bass player’s favorite pubs.

Lynott wasn’t born in Dublin, but he grew up there for most of his childhood. Although born in England to an Irish mother and English father, he was raised in Dublin by his grandmother, his parents never having married and his mother earning their keep by managing a hotel in Manchester. As a kid, Lynott followed American music closely, especially the music of Motown and the Mamas and the Papas. An early bandmate taught him to play the bass, and Lynott turned his natural musical ability to songwriting, eventually leading the band Thin Lizzy to stardom. Sadly, drugs and alcohol got the better of him, and he died of complications from an overdose. It was 1986, and he was only 37.

In 2005 the statue to Lynott went up in central Dublin in a ceremony attended by his mom and several former bandmates, all to pay homage to one of Ireland’s own. The statue has suffered a couple of times since then, once in 2013 when vandals knocked it off its pedestal, and again this past September when a van driver inadvertently ran into it, snapping the bass in half.  But it was restored once, and is once again in the capable hands of a foundry to put him all back together. Soon, Dubliners hope, the Boy will be Back In Town.