They covered it back in 1989 on a charity CD that I’ll cover another time. “Boys Are Back” is one I discovered initially through Bon Jovi. I don’t really need to talk “Jailbreak” and “The Boys Are Back In Town”, do I?Īlright, I will. They go together like peanut butter and jam. In my mind, the two songs are one in the same now. One of the true classics on Jailbreak was “Cowboy Song”, a song that melded live with Lizzy’s cover of Bob Seger’s “Rosalie”. This really anticipates where Iron Maiden were going to go later on. Once again, I feel that Steve Harris probably studied this song intensely. “Emerald” is another Phil historical epic. This is the kind of thing that Phil had done so well on albums like Nightlife. “Fight Or Fall” is a great ballad, acoustic and soulful. Multiple sections collide, thundering drums roll, and solos rage. It’s a classic heavy rocker that I am sure people like Steve Harris studied meticulously to learn the mysterious art of songwriting. But it works, because it’s Phil, and everything he did sounded sincere and cool. The lyrics are kinda cheesey: “Whoah-oh, poor Romeo, sittin’ all on his own-e-o”. “Romeo and the Lonely Girl” is another one of Phil’s romantic classic rockers. It rides on top a rhythmic, rolling guitar riff, but it’s also one of Phil’s more memorable compositions. I think the second track, “Angel From the Coast”, is one of Lizzy’s greatest album cuts. It’s a sweet little love ditty as only Phil can do it, romantic but classy all the way. Until I got this deluxe, I hadn’t played Jailbreak in a while, and I had completely forgotten about great album cuts like “Running Back”. An entire disc’s worth in fact! The remastering sounds good enough to me. Jailbreak‘s been given some cool bonus tracks. Underappreciated? Sure, while everyone knows at least two songs from this album, how many friends of yours actually own a copy? This classic underappreciated masterpiece of rock goodness has finally been expanded with bonus tracks. Either one would make it a classic, but both qualities in one record makes it a truly exceptional album.THIN LIZZY – Jailbreak (2011 deluxe edition) This gives Jailbreak a dimension of richness that sustains, but there's such kinetic energy to the band that it still sounds immediate no matter how many times it's played. Thin Lizzy is tough as rhino skin and as brutal as bandits, but it's leavened by Lynott's light touch as a singer, which is almost seductive in its croon. This gives his lovingly florid songs, crammed with specifics and overflowing with life, a universality that's hammered home by the vicious, primal, and precise attack of the band. Lynott loves turning the commonplace into legend - or bringing myth into the modern world, as he does on "Cowboy Song" or, to a lesser extent, "Romeo and the Lonely Girl" - and this myth-making is married to an exceptional eye for details when the boys are back in town, they don't just come back to a local bar, they're down at Dino's, picking up girls and driving the old men crazy. Lynott no longer let Gorham and Robertson contribute individual songs - they co-wrote, but had no individual credits - which helps tighten up the album, giving it a cohesive personality, namely Lynott's rough rebel with a heart of a poet. If anything, the album was more of a culmination of everything that came before, as Phil Lynott hit a peak as a songwriter just as guitarists Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson pioneered an intertwined, dual-lead guitar interplay that was one of the most distinctive sounds of '70s rock, and one of the most influential. Unlike the leap between Night Life and Fighting, there is not a great distance between Jailbreak and its predecessor. Thin Lizzy found their trademark twin-guitar sound on 1975's Fighting, but it was on its 1976 successor, Jailbreak, where the band truly took flight.
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