February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
“We do it to keep the flag flying for Philo,” said John Fitzmaurice, a bartender at the McLean Avenue, Yonkers, establishment.
“We usually pick a local charity or anyone who needs help. We did it for the Aisling Center for a couple of years,” said Fitzmaurice, who hails from Glenamaddy, Co. Galway.
This year Ardee, Co. Louth, native Shane Gorman, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in November 2007, asked for donations at the door at this year’s event. Gorman, who has been raising awareness about the condition in the Irish community, will donate the check to an MS charity.
“It was absolutely fantastic,” he said. “We didn’t expect such a response. I thought we’d get $1,000 at most.”
Fitzmaurice, too, was surprised. “We just threw it together this year,” he said. He had returned from Ireland late in 2008 after living there for 14 months with his wife, a Galway City native. “We just couldn’t settle,” he said. “We were both on the same page about coming back.”
The Heritage bartender, himself a huge fan of Thin Lizzy, credits Dubliner Mick Redmond with starting the annual event. Redmond, who is most famous for his association with the Lookalikes, is a member of Thin Lizzy tribute band Fat Elizabeth, which plays the event every year for free. Also donating its services was the Usual Suspects, a band associated with the Celtic Bike Club.
Fitzmaurice estimated that there were about 300 in attendance, some who came from as far as Maine. “It’s the same crowd every year,” he said. Some are American Thin Lizzy fans with little or no Irish connections. “They just love the band,” he added.
Phil Lynott was born in 1949 in West Bromwich in England to an Irish mother and an Afro-Brazilian father. He was sent as a child to live with his grandmother in Dublin and it was there as a youth that he established himself on the rock scene.
He founded Thin Lizzy in 1970. Although the band had considerable international success, it was never a household name in the U.S. However, Lynott and his band’s work have always been greatly admired in this country by fellow musicians and aficionados of hard rock.
Phil Lynott was 36 when he died.