The desire to reclaim Thin Lizzy's reputation from the clutches of the beer-boys and the advert soundtrackers and set Phil Lynot's rock group up on a more vaunted pedestal is understandable, even laudable. But it is a quest that is doomed to failure. Not because the music doesn't merit considered reflection and the records aren't worth the places they never seem to be awarded in all-time great lists. But because this was a band too adept at making music that works on levels where sophistication is the one thing that it never required of their audience.
The 36 tracks here contain all manner of greatness, but a nudge to the cerebral is not among their charms. This is music of heightened, possibly calculated unpretentiousness made by people who never forgot that the function of a rock'n'roll band is to deliver a series of killer musical punches at high volume and, preferably, considerable speed. Indeed, so refined was Thin Lizzy's approach, that a convincing case could surely be made for them being perhaps the best hard rock band of all time. But they were never the sort of outfit that the gatekeepers of cool have ever been keen on letting into the hallowed portals.
Then there's Lynot's brilliant songs, too derivative of Dylan and Springsteen to be accorded that rock snob gold star and occasionally too wilfully stupid to pass muster as poetry (the only response to the lines "Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak/Somewhere in this town" is surely to shout "We're betting it'll be at the prison, Phil"). But those are precisely the reasons songs like "Jailbreak", "The Boys Are Back In Town" and "Waiting For An Alibi" still resonate: Valentino and his bookmakers' shop, Geno's bar and grill – these are characters and places drawn with an economy of detail that's almost miserly. Purists can scoff, but those are the elements that mean that otherwise sane and well-adjusted middle-aged men get dewy-eyed and bellow along to Lynot's songs whenever someone drops a few coins in a pub jukebox to hear them, perhaps, depending on inebriation levels, while playing back-to-back air guitar with a friend, in homage to Lizzy's twin lead sonic signature.
Despite its size, this package is far from complete: there's not enough from "Live And Dangerous" and the omission of "Johnny The Fox Meets Jimmy The Weed", TL's contribution to the canon of rock breakbeats, is unforgivable. "Yellow Pearl", the collaboration with Midge Ure that showed Lynot would probably have gone on to pioneer a rock-dance collision/fusion had he lived, closes an excellent first disc, and, truth be told, the second half can't hope to compete. You don't really need this if you've already got a Best Of, but if not, it's essential, despite its imperfections.
And, in a way, perhaps this is the perfect tribute: resolutely imperfect, not entirely recommendable, "Greatest Hits" is an album peppered with greatness, doomed to be overlooked in those end-of-year polls. But its pleasures are undeniable, considerable, and far from guilty.
