(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Wed 19 November 2025 19:16, UK
In 1972, ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ landed Thin Lizzy a monumental hit in their native Ireland, and while it travelled just fine, it was rubbing shoulders with strong international competition. Just a month earlier, classic albums like On the Corner, Heavy Cream, Talking Book, and Stealers Wheel had all flooded the chart at once.
While the Watergate Scandal may have been stealing all the headlines and terrorism tragically crept into sport at the Munich Olympics, with David Bowie emerging as a startling force, Led Zeppelin still flourishing, and Lou Reed returning from the dark, the musical world was entering its most diverse chapter.
In fact, music spun out in such a kaleidoscopic blur of colour and quality, like a light show scattered in a spectrum from a disco ball, that monolithic albums such as The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars peaked at a mere 75th in the US charts.
Now, that might seem so incredulous that it could cause the nervous minded to fart, but when you consider that the Rolling Stones released Exile on Main St., Neil Young dropped Harvest, Curtis Mayfield laid down the groove on Super Fly, Bill Withers put out arguably his best with Still Bill and Aretha Franklin unleashed one of the greatest live albums ever with Amazing Grace, people were hardly pining for, well, anything at all.
Thus, Thin Lizzy joined other greats like blessed Bowie in the doldrums and were swamped under the melee of 1970s rock greatness. They were in debt to their label, naive, difficult to manage, and on the brink of being dropped. An ultimatum was given to the band: If the record Jailbreak flopped, then, as they say in America, “they were out on their ass!”
Thin Lizzy in 1983. (Credits: Far Out / Steve Knight / Andy Weaver)
After ongoing roster changes, disputes over “naff” production and various other ailments, the band’s failure to chart was a lingering concern. ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ might have risen to the top spot in their native Ireland and sixth in the UK, but its failure to chart anywhere else and an expenses tab to match any international band left the Lizzy in a perilous tizzy. Almost four years later, in March ‘76, they still had never really mustered a follow-up hit. Jailbreak was a make-or-break moment.
‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ was the first single from the album, and almost instantly, they could happily declare: the rest, as they say, is history. The band were so used to chart failure that the success of such an eponymous rock hit took the band by surprise. As guitarist Scott Gorham told Classic Rock, “We were playing in some club in the US when our manager came in and said, ‘Well, looks like we’ve got a hit.’ We were like, ‘Which song?’ Seriously, we didn’t have any idea at all which song it was that had taken off for us.”
Before adding, “To tell you the truth, we weren’t initially going to put ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ on the Jailbreak album at all. Back then, you picked ten songs and went with those because of the time restrictions of vinyl.”
“We recorded 15 songs, and of the 10 we picked, that wasn’t one of them,” Gorham added. “But then the management heard it and said, ‘No, there’s something really good about this song.’ Although back then, it didn’t yet have the twin guitar parts on it.” But it did have something that seemed distinctly, well, rock ‘n’ roll, in an age when such purity was being subverted by their peers, leaving Lizzy in a lucrative void.
As Hugh Cornwell recently told me, a lot of what determines a hit “all comes down to timing really.” And while competition was still fierce in 1976, with Frank Zappa, ELO, Patti Smith, Wings, and Genesis all also releasing albums that March, none of them can really be said to have been full on boozy, bluesy rock. So, there was a window of opportunity, and they slid in like bandits in waiting. After years of failure, they were still filled with uncertainty, though. But they didn’t need to be for long.
Now, it seems unthinkable to perceive the song as anything other than a sure-fire hit. It is a track full of more testosterone than a bodybuilding contest and more leather-clad ego than a field of the most arrogant cows in Aberdeenshire. It is a drunken track that makes subtlety seem senseless and celebrates cliches, and with it, they hit the nail so firmly on the head that it is still lodged in the legend of weekend rock history to this day.
Their contract was renewed, and they were allowed to rock on.
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