Thin Lizzy

(b. 20 August 1951, Dublin, Eire, d. 4 January 1986)

As the band’s creative force, Lynott was a  more insightful and intelligent writer than many of his ilk, preferring slice-of-life working-class dramas  of love and hate influenced by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and virtually all of the Irish literary  tradition. Also, as a black man, Lynott was an anomaly in the nearly all-White world of hard rock,  and as such imbued much of his work with a sense of alienation; he was the outsider, the romantic  guy from the other side of the tracks, a self-styled poet of the lovelorn and downtrodden.  — John Dougan, All-Music Guide In 1986, he suffered a drug overdose and, following a week in a coma, died of heart failure, exacerbated by pneumonia.