(Credits: Alamy)
Tue 3 March 2026 1:00, UK
Thin Lizzy bagged their first, and only, top 20 hit in the US with the 1976 classic, ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’.
That one catchy refrain should’ve been enough to send them across the pond and into the stratosphere, finally providing the fuel they needed to all but break America, yet the dreary convolutions of the universe sleuthed against the Irish rock band, who never quite managed to see their name in neon lights next to that star-spangled banner.
Thin Lizzy’s co-guitarist Scott Gorham deemed the unfortunate occurrences that led to this failure ‘The Curse of Thin Lizzy’. For him, out of anyone in the band, making ground in America was of the utmost importance, as it was his hometown they were desperate to prove themselves in. The Beatles had done it with ease in 1964, running incessantly from hordes of fans who had never seen scousers up close before, so they too could dream it.
Was it really a curse, which can be defined as a cause of harm or misery, often invoked through supernatural power? A tour can feel ‘cursed’ if, say, a natural disaster stops the ferry from making it across the channel on time, or the tour van mysteriously stops driving in the middle of a freeway, the inexplicable and unexplainable charged with an unforgiving potentiality.
The year of the unparalleled success of ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ should’ve seen them touring every place, popping up in any up-and-coming rock venue that’d let them in the back door. Thin Lizzy lined things up nicely, firming up a tour with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, but, out of nowhere, vocalist and bassist Phil Lynott was struck down.
As Gorham explained, “We were on the bill with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, and we were absolutely convinced we were gonna just kill. Then Phil gets hepatitis and, boom!, we run into another USA brick wall. The tour just stopped there.”
In 1977, the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and the year that snow fell in Miami for the first-ever time, Thin Lizzy were afforded another chance. Hepatitis behind them, they had another ticket to the US big leagues, a co-headline tour with Queen: the real deal. Could the curse really reach the band when they were on the precipice of such stardom? And the real question here is whether we really believe that then-guitarist Brian Robertson, also known as Robbo, getting into a fight at London’s Speakeasy Club on the night before the Queen tour was also the paranormal work of a curse in motion.
In defence of Robbo, his involvement in the dispute was allegedly down to his gallantry, where his friend, Frankie Miller, drunkenly found himself in a dispute with Gordon Hunte, the guitarist from the reggae band Gonzalez. Hunte didn’t play nice and attacked Miller with a bottle in the dressing room, and with barely a moment spare to think, Robbo dived in, extending a hand to defend against the weapon, or so the story goes. Naturally, Robbo sustained severe artery and nerve damage to his fretting hand.
Belfast-born Gary Moore stepped in to replace Robbo on the upcoming Queen tour, which simply couldn’t be deferred. Severe artery and nerve damage wouldn’t stop the wheels from turning, and the band thankfully managed to make it to some seriously impressive places, including a night at Madison Square Garden, plus reviews deemed Thin Lizzy wild and impressive, giving Queen a run for their money.
However, their music never reappeared on the US charts again; Thin Lizzy never cracked America, in reality, America cracked them.