My pal Michael Halloran and I thumbed a lift into Clonmel (Co Tipperary) one Saturday night in early January 1973 with a few other mates from Cahir.
We were picked up by Pat Slattery and sat the 10 miles from Cahir to Clonmel in the open back of his pick up van on a bitterly cold night – not a night I could ever forget.
Initially the plan was to go to the Collins Hall, the main ballroom in Clonmel to see Horslips who were much more of a draw than Thin Lizzy – things would VERY shortly change.
However Mike and I had seen Horslips a few times before and someone in a pub mentioned that this other group were playing in the Morton Hall – Lizzy!
I’d heard of them as Whiskey in the Jar was just starting to get some airplay on Luxembourg so we decided to go there instead. What a night.
The Morton Hall was tiny – probably 150 people packed in MAX and Mike and I were pushed right up against the stage and were very nearly deafened but to this day, it was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. Amazingly, after they stopped playing, they hung around chatting and handing out band souvenirs to anyone left –
I remember getting about half a dozen oval shaped light blue Thin Lizzy stickers and sending a few to my girlfriend who was a boarder in a convent school down in Fermoy.
If only I’d kept even one of them. Looking at the gig dates on your website, I’d guess it was on either the 6^th or 13^th of January – I know I wasn’t long back in college after the Christmas holidays.
We got a lift back out to Cahir with the same guy who took us in – in the back of his open pick-up in the early hours of a freezing January morning. I spent most of the next week in bed with flue – or was it pneumonia?!
Within a couple of weeks, Whiskey in the Jar took off and I doubt if Lizzy ever played in any place like the Morton Hall again! I left Ireland in early ’74 to work in England and have been here since. I never did get to see Lizzy again –sad to say. But that night with me rocking literally in touching distance of the mercurial Phil Lynott will stay with me forever.


Thanks to Sean Lonergan and Nick Sharp