A running joke among my friends is, “Hey Alex, tell them what your favorite band is.”, because I’ll admit I’m really passionate about Thin Lizzy. The standard punchline to that seems to be, “Yeah, they did have two hit songs.”, and after some playful “Oh, you wanna go?!” I will also readily admit that Lizzy only had two commercially successful hits in “The Boys Are Back In Town” and “Whiskey In The Jar“, both which the band ironically didn’t want to record at the time.

But behind the hits lies a collection of diverse tunes ranging from ballads and stories to funky beats and wicked shredding. So while I could very easily have started in on the Lizzy trove with either of those hits, I’m instead going with another title from the Vagabonds of the Western World album that hosts “Whiskey In The Jar” which is considered to be both a hit in its own right and one of the great guitar solos in Rock history. From the third and final album of Lizzy’s early years when the band was a trio comprised of Phillip Lynott, Eric Bell, and Brian Downey, here is “The Rocker“.