Philomena Lynott
Mother of rock star Phil Lynott who wrote a bestselling memoir
PHILOMENA LYNOTT, who has died aged 88, was an author and hotelier, as well as the mother of the Irish rock star, Phil Lynott; she came to prominence in her own right when she wrote a bestselling memoir.
Philomena Lynott was born in the Liberties, a working class area of Dublin, on October 22 1930, and brought up in Crumlin in the south of the city.
After leaving school she travelled to Leeds to begin a career in nursing, but returned home to care for her mother, who had given birth to Philomena’s brother at the age of 51.
Returning to Britain, in 1947 Philomena met Cecil Parris, a Guyanese immigrant, at a Birmingham dance hall, and in 1949 she gave birth to their son, Philip. She would later have a daughter with Parris and a son by another man, but was persuaded to give up both for adoption.
“The shame was unmerciful,” she recalled in her 1995 memoir, My Boy. “I couldn’t let my mother know I had two more children.” She was later reunited with them after they tracked her down.
She moved to Manchester, where she brought up Philip as a single mother until he was four, when, after he had suffered racist abuse, she sent him to Dublin, where his grandparents took over his upbringing.
She became manager of the Clifton Grange Hotel in Whalley Range, a suburb of Manchester, with her partner, Dennis Keeley. Phil found huge fame as the bassist and singer with Thin Lizzy; meanwhile, the hotel, nicknamed “The Biz” (short for “showbiz”), took a relaxed approach to licensing laws and became a celebrated stop-over for touring rock musicians.
Philomena was the only hotelier who would accommodate the Sex Pistols for the Manchester leg of their notorious 1976 “Anarchy” tour. “They came down to the bar and we had a great night,” she recalled. “They were the nicestmannered: I’ve never forgotten them.”
Fondly remembered by many in the rock fraternity, she would look after performers and even wash their hair before they went
on television. She was, recalled the Thin Lizzy guitarist Brian Robertson, “everyone’s mum rolled into one”.
Although Phil Lynott had spent most of his childhood in Dublin, mother and son remained close; he would often take his friend, the footballer George Best, to the Clifton Grange for drinks, and in 1980 she and Dennis retired to a house in Howth, Co Dublin, that Phil had bought them.
Phil’s career became derailed by drugs and alcohol, and in 1985, Philomena – who was unaware of her son’s heroin addiction – was staying with him at his home in Kew. On Christmas morning she discovered him unconscious, and he died in hospital nine days later. His song Philomena had been dedicated to her: “If you see my mother / Tell her I’m keeping fine / Tell her that I love her / And I’ll try to write some time.”
Philomena dedicated the rest of her life to the memory of her son. She led a successful campaign to have a statue of him erected in the centre of Dublin and was an annual guest of honour at Vibe for Philo, a celebration of his life and music held every January in the city. She railed at the use of the Thin Lizzy song The Boys Are Back in Town
– thought to have been written by Phil about gangsters who frequented her hotel – at US Republican Party conventions.
In 2015 Philomena Lynott discovered she had lung cancer, which was treated but returned two years later. She joked about being reunited with her son in heaven: “I’m sure Phil keeps telling Holy God: ‘Don’t let her come up here because she will batter me’.”
Philomena Lynott, born October 22 1930, died June 12 2019