I'll burn it all down....

It’s a song about highwaymen so it’s only fair to borrow a link from the great Nightly Moth’s youtube channel (it’s worth subscribing for that and for the treasury of curated Dylan content).

Thin Lizzy never wanted to record ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ but their manager Ted Carroll heard them doodling around it in a rehearsal and thought it would be a livesaver for the band. It meant their next planned single ‘Black Boys on the Corner’ was relegated to the B-side, much to Phil Lynott’s fury: “I hated it that for years that was the only song we were known for. It was like a novelty song. Like Yellow Submarine. Would the fuckin’ Beatles have played that?” Even after all of that the single was stalling until Carroll customised some whiskey miniatures to entice British DJs into playing it on air.

The single was released on 3 November 1972 and despite Lynott’s misgivings about the song as a novelty, it resonated on a more subliminal level partly because of his attitude when singing it. 1972 was the worst year for casualties in the troubles and the year had opened in January with Bloody Sunday in Derry. ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ had an air of revolt, mostly due to Lynott’s voice and while he preferred the B-side, that recording now sounds much more dated and debt laden despite the importance of the subject to the lead singer.

“Whiskey in the Jar’ also transformed Thin Lizzy’s career. It’s worth remembering that Ted Carroll had also found them a side gig where, under the pseudonym of Funky Junction, they recorded an album’s worth of Deep Purple covers: