It has been said that half of all Irish songs are about fighting, the other half are about drinking, and all of them are about dying. The late Philip Lynott, best known as the impossibly charismatic leader of the rock bank Thin Lizzy, was of mixed ethnic heritage, but his soul was passionately Irish. On more than a few occasions he devoted his considerable poetic gifts to condemning the foolishness of war, and lamenting the toll it took on soldiers and the mothers who loved them.
The title track of Thin Lizzy’s 1977 album “Soldier of Fortune” describes a mercenary who is soul-sick over being “trained to kill,” and destined to “keep on marching” and “carry on, when all hope is gone”:
“Black Rose” celebrates the life of the semi-mythical Celtic warrior Cu Chulain, “whose eyes were dark, his expression sullen,” whose eventual battlefield death left the entire kingdom bereaved. Not content merely to recite an oft-repeated tale of valor, Lynott also rebukes the rulers who contrive wars, and chides those willing to do their bidding: “Tell me the story of the queen of this land; and how her sons died at her own hands — and how fools obey commands.”
“Emerald,” the incendiary closer on Thin Lizzy’s most successful album, “Jailbreak,” describes war from the perspective of those on the receiving end — in this case, the residents of an Irish village overrun by Vikings who brought “plunder, sword, and flame…. When they left the town, it was empty, and children would never play again.”
Following the breakup of Thin Lizzy in 1983, Lynott produced two unflinchingly anti-war songs with his long-time collaborator, guitar virtuoso and fellow Irishman Gary Moore.
“Military Man” takes the form of a letter written by a recruit to his mother in which the anguished young man expresses horror over what he has become, and the understandable desire to return to his home:
Mama, take a look at your boy — he’s a military man;
Mama, take a look at your boy — he’s crying.
Mama, take a look at your boy — he’s a soldier;
Mama, take a look at his eyes — they’re colder…
They have trained your boy to kill; kill someday he will.
They have trained your boy to die — and ask no questions why.
One of the last songs Lynott recorded prior to his untimely death in January 1986 was “Out In The Fields,” which scraped away the pretense that war is in any sense a noble and romantic exercise. Dispense with the trappings of the enterprise — the flags, the appeal to ideology, religious conviction, or national identity — the unyielding fact is that for each of us “death is just a heartbeat away.” For those who had known Philip as the athletic, irrepressibly energetic frontman, his ravaged, weary appearance in the video obliquely underscored his message of human frailty.
Gary Moore likewise recorded several high-impact anti-war songs. The most memorable was End of the world, which began with Gary all but destroying his Strat in a jaw-dropping cadenza and featured Jack Bruce (who recently joined Lynott and Moore in eternity) on lead vocal:
The leaders are waiting for blood on their hands.
Playing with weapons they don’t understand.
Could it be this time we’ll see the end of the world.
