Punctuality is the thief of time. —Oscar Wilde.

This article was supposed to begin with an utterly irresistible bit of backroom decadence—you know the ploy —Phil Lynott, Scott Gorham and yours truly are stretched out on the floor of the penthouse suite at the swank Pontchartrain Hotel in beautiful downtown Detroit, guzzling champagne before Thin Lizzy's gala concert (it's all OLD YELLOW EYES Lynott can drink after his recent bout with hepatitis).

There's just one hitch: Your correspondent was late. In fact, this whole rock travelog has been indelibly shaped by my inability to arrive at even the most convenient, well-planned rendezvous on time.

Apparently, the affliction is congenital [You mean terminal—Ed.]. I was late exiting the womb, was suspended from high school for missing homeroom for a month running. I even kept Lou Reed waiting for an interview— then walked out in a huff after he refused to let me try on his shades. Accordingly, this opus is rendered chronologically, since WILDE SYNDROME could strike at any moment.

Concert time: 8 p.m. (I arrive: 9:23 p.m.) Thin Lizzy's record company has kindly flown me to Detroit for the beginning of their American tour. Unfortunately, the CREEM caravan's departure for Cobo Hall is delayed by a dead battery, a massive expressway traffic jam and a frantic search for a semi-legal parking slot.

"For the new album, both Brian and Scott came up with love songs about their chicks, I decided that was too much lover and wrote anti-love songs...maybe I should do It more often."

We head for our main floor seats. A massive wave of applause echoes backstage. Good, I sign with relief, the set's just begun. (All habitual latecomers take solace in a highly developed sense of unreality.)

Alas, something ha& gone wrong. Before we can beat a hasty retreat, Lynott and mates emerge from stage right, drenched in sweat after the last5 encore of their opening set. I have begun to offer my symphony of glib congratulations when someone tugged at my sleeve. My editor, ever one to notice minor sartorial detail, whispered, "You've got your scarf and overcoat on, stupid! No one's going to believe you!!'

She is right. The Mercury chaperone glares ferociously in our direction. He is still sore about a recent Rush concert in Chicago, which the CREEM team managed to miss completely. That episode grew even more embarrassing when we realized we had not the foggiest notion of what the members of Rush looked like, much less what they sounded like. This minor dilemma was solved by locking a pair of hometown groupies into an abandoned dressing room and persuading them to deliver a detailed account of the proceedings.

The Phil Lynott School of Irish Slang

Gaff: A friend's house Punters: Supporters out in the audience Culchie: Rednecks from the hinterlands Old Flame: An ex-girlfriend Jackeen: A Dubliner Wank: To masturbate Randy: An erection— a hard-on Mate: A friend, chum Fuckin' Eejit: An asshole Bollocks: Bullshit Chips: French fries Go a Storm: A good gig, good performance Bash: A cigarette Bevvy: Alcoholic beverage Blow-through or Bunk-up or Pull: Sexual intercourse Getting it up for you: To make fun of someone, to mock Heave: A fight or brawl Hit and miss: To urinate Mot: Wife or girlfriend Pouf: A faggot Sian leat: Gaelic for "goodbye"

Bar time: 11:15 p.m. (I arrive at 11:28 p.m.—this will prove to be my' best showing). The Thin Lizzy contingent is relaxing at the hotel bar. They have been touring with a replacement guitarist, Gary Moore; an original Lizzy member who replaced Brian Robertson after he was stabbed with a broken bottle in a London barroom brawl. Talk about nerves. Moore is still shaking hours after the gig. "It's weird," he says, nursing a stiff drink. "I still remember a lot of the old Lizzy tunes, but they're non£ of the ones we do on stage. That's all new material."

Phil settles for a constant supply of grapefruit juice (later in the tour this strict diet relaxes to allow champagne). We talk about bass players. Like McCartney, Lynott is no master technician—and he knows it. He's more a bass performer. Most Lizzy licks are framed by Lynott's driving bass lines, but they rarely stray from the beat. * There is none of Stanley Clarke's shimmering improvisatory perfection, none of Jaco Pastorious' technical genius. For the most part, Phil is content to follow his twin guitarists' initiative, echoing the melody line and punching under the beat.

"Patti Smith or Olivia New ton-John..*' they're me two favorites. I could pull'em any night."

"I only became a bass player because of the girls," he admits. "When we were younger the only way to impress the girls was to go down to the local pub and beat everybody else up. Starting a rock band was easier than that. It didn't leave as many scars."

Since Lynott rarely spends an evening alone, the ploy apparently succeeded. Many of his compositions, from early sexist tracts like "The Rocker" and "Rudolph Tango" to a more recent erotic fantasy like "Cowboy Songs" celebrate rock's vulgar, -sexual, passion plays.

"The Rocker" (which Lynott had the audacity to reprint in nis book of poetry, Songs For While I'm Away) Captures Lynott's crude sexuality perfectly;

Down at the juke joint, me and the boys were stompin'/Sippin' and a boppin' tellin' a dirty joke or two/in ■walked this chick and I knew she was up to something/I kissed her right there out of the blue,/I said, 'Hey baby, meet me, I'm a tough guy, got , my cycle outside, you wanna try?'/ She just looked at me and rolled them big eyes/And said, 'Ohh, I'd do anything for you, cause you're a rocker'."*

Lynott's "Romeo" character, often cast as a spiritual flip side to the more raucus "Johnny the Fox" persona, achieves a far more intriguing sexual Stance, blending dime-a-dance prowess with a hint of vulnerability. The foreplay in "Cowboy Songs" offers a sense of genuine sexual symmetry. "Roll me over and turn me around" whispers our motel room Don Juan, "And I'll move my fingers [here Lynott neatly pauses, letting a soft bass figure intensity the mood] up and down."

Back at the bar, Phil offers a relatively pragmatic sexual philosophy. "Last tour I just didn't catch on to how groupies operated," he grins. "Now I'm more sophisticated. They have amazing cheek. One came up to my room in the middle of the night, knocked on the dbbr, asking for 'Philip, oh Philip,' [here Lynott affects a Midwestern twang] she came in and we talked and she smiled and we talked some more... then we stopped talking." Here he trails off bashfully. "That's the way most of them end."

Someone at the table mentions that Lynott's song titles never seem to bear girls' names. "It's a funny thing about that," he says, glancing around the bar. 'Tve never mentioned a chick's name. If you see one, it's probably me mother (Philomena) or me grandmother (Sahra). It's just difficult for me."

>*© Pippin Publishers, The Friendly Ranger Music Co., Ltd.

Once I went out with a girl named Gail, but the song ended up being called, 'Look What the Wind Blew In.' For the new album, both Brian and Scott came up with love songs about their chicks. I decided that was too much love, and wrote an anti-love song, 'Don't Believe A Word.' Odd, isn't it, now that's our hit single. Maybe I should do it more often." The idea for "Johnny the Fox" Lynott owes to an old idol, Jimi Hendrix (although Colin Maclnnes' brilliant novel, City of Spades, has a suspiciously familiar punk protagonist named Johnny Fortune). Unlike most rockers of his generation, whose tastes run the gamut from Phil Spector to Bob Dylan, Lynott is still under the spell of black Stagger Lee figures like Sly Sylvester, Miles Davis and Hendrix. "My favorite film of all time," Phil explains, "is of Hendrix at some festival just after Cream broke up where he dedicated 'Sunshine of Your Love' to Ginger, Eric and Jack. He was just unbelievable. It was scary, how good he was. It was like he didn't even have to try, it just came naturally. The same with Sly.

"I only became a bass player because of the girls."

"They were great because they'd broken out of that Motown dress code shit. That was embarrassing to me growing up, watching them have to wear those fooking straight jackets and doing that choreography. Sly and Hendrix were where it was at 'cause they represented freedom.

"That's what inspired 'Johnny the Fox'—Hendrix's 'Foxy Lady.' 'Cause that's what the mates call the groupies, as least when they're cuties. You know, 'foxy' was so feminine. As for 'Johnny,' I'd always used that a lot; Johnny Cool, 'The Boys Are Back' has a Johnny, in 'The Wild One,' Johnny's a rover. It's a very Irish name—and a great rock 'n' roll name, like Johnny B. Goode. So I wanted this guy to be like a foxy lady, you know, with some feminine qualities, so I called him 'Johnny the Fox'."

Although most Lizzy songs have been conceived on tour, Lynott's hospital stay produced at least one near-masterwork, "Massacre," an eerie, holocaustal sermon set in "Devil's Canyon," the echoplexed ballad is reminiscent of a Blonde On Blonde out take, complete with serialistic "bandoleros" and apocalyptic prophesies.

TURN TO PAGE 76.

THIN LIZZY

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 41.

Lynott remembers the day he wrote the tune, "I was still stuck in me hospital bed, going crazy being so confined, and I got all these phone calls from me manager—Chris—he kept asking me if I'd written any songs, and I'd say no, not really. And he'd say 'Well, maybe while you're in 'bed and all—do you need a pad of paper or something?'— he acted guilty, like he was forcing me to work.

"So, of course, I turned on the telly and there was the news with all this film of riots and bombings—you know, from Belfast and those parts. It was so hard to watch all that violence on TV. Even when I turned on other programs, that's all I saw, was blood and guts. Turned me stomach.

"Right afterwards a priest came by to ask if he could help—they do that for all the patients. I really wasn't in the mood, so I had him go away, but the priest and the bombings just all came together. I wrote the song right away."

Next day: 11a.m. The band meetsin the hotel lobby, bound for an outlying Detroit radio station. Your correspondent wanders in some twenty minutes late. He is greeted with combined groans and yawns. My Mercury chaperone contributes a withering stare. He has obviously been watching too many George Sanders movies. "If you miss another show," he hisses, "I won't send you to the bathroom, much less Detroit." Profuse apologies are offered—with little effect.

Lynott, pleased to learn that grapefruit juice consumption lessens the probability of a hangover, enthusiastically joins in on the tail end of this sordid panorama. As we begin our drive, he regales us with the hot poop on British punk rock escapades and his favorite tourist activity, bondage store shopping sprees ("Honey," as Wayne County might say, "he has the studs to prove it").

Lynott is openly contemptuous of the British punk media darlings. "I don't take them too seriously," he says, "Sid Vicious' only claim to fame is that he smashed Nick Kent [English journalist and our fave Keith Richard lookalike —Ed.] in the face with a chain. They're really arrogant little fuckers. Rat Scabies, who has a dead rat hanging in front of his drums, once walked up to the guys in Bad Company and said, 'You farts are too old—you should hang it up while you're still ahead!' That's pretty strong stuff coming from someone who doesn't even know how to play an instrument yet. You'd think they could be a little bit more humble." Lynott's favorite scene-stealer is a more intriguing London urchinette, the Cat Woman, a British-style Baby Jane Holzer who wears purple and blood orange striped lipstick and jet black eyeliner along her cheekbones. Her hair is coiffed like a Cecil B. DeMille Pawnee savage; shaved down the center with two tufts of starched yellow hair rising majestically up along the sides (hopefully, this won't start any new trends) .^hil has donned a recent gift from the feline fashion plate: an Average Oscar Wilde button.

Our Mercury chaperone asks if they're an item. "You mean me girlfriend?" Phil sputters, recoiling against the seat in mock horror. "Only one of many. I take her out when I'm feeling a bit kinky." His idea of a dream date? "Either Patti Smith or Olivia® Newton-John. They're me two favorites. I could pull 'em any night."

Another day: 1:30 p.m. We're attending a photo session in a frigid little Chicago loft, your correspondent arriving somewhat after the main entourage. Lynott is already stripped to the waist, though he suggestively draped his silver-studded belt around his shoulder. "Can you touch these pictures up?" he wonders, "I'd hate for me pimples to show." He blinks repeatedly; the fill lights are too bright. "Me eyes are for lovers only," he jokes. "Another thing, me fly's not working so well, so I don't have to take me trousers off, do I?" He plucks some fur from his chest. "Jeez—even me hairs are frozen from the cold. Do you have a dryer?"

Most of these flirtations are directed to a comely young photographic assistant who blushes every time Lynott hitches up his jeans. Between shots, he rubs his torn shirt against her shoulder. "I wish I knew a woman who could sew," he sighs, eyes fluttering towards the ceiling. "You know, fill me holes." The photographer hustles Lynott back into the spotlight. "There, that's the pose, " the technician says, "Now just do whatever feels right..."

"How 'bout if I do a movie scene?" Phil suggests brightly. "Maybe Stardust. I could get on me knees, throw away me crutches—have Chris O'Donnel [his manager] begging me to crawl on stage." Later, this fantasy shifts abruptly into Stepin Fetchit routine. "Yess, big wamba, we be blood brothers" (here Lynott jokingly attempts to sever my thumb with a butter knife). The photographer asks him to look up at the ceiling. "Oh jess, boss man/' he drools. "I'm rollin' my eyes right now, massa."

After a few more minutes of this foolishness, we take a break. Lynott boasts about his photographic prowess. "I always send in pictures to this British magazine that runs readers' wives shots. The mates arid I take Polaroids of our girls in the hotel rooms each night. We're having a contest to see who gets accepted first."

"Are they naked?" the buxom phototrix asks. Lynott laughs, "Well, honey, they're not wearing evening gowns."

An hour later we adjourn to a local record outlet, where the band has been promised for an in-store appearance. Since your reporter is driving, we arrive a wee bit late. There is a gigantic crowd of kids jammed inside. Fortunately, for me at least, the rest of the Thin Lizzy contingent has not arrived. Lynott is pissed off. He wants this to be a group effort.

"Where are those lazy grafters?" he grumbles, eyeing the Lizzy posters lining the store windows. "They're probably still sleeping it off, the slackers." His star's temperament disappears as quickly as it surfaces. He slips on his cat glasses, unbuttons the top of his shirt, and plunges into the fray. A high-pitched chorus of squeals and shouts greet his entrance. I hang back. It looks like a good time to be late.