'Thin Lizzy' singer's mother blasts Republicans for 'abusing' band's music

The mother of "Thin Lizzy" singer Philip Lynott said this week that she was very offended at the Republican Party's use of her son's song "The Boys Are Back In Town" to introduce Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) during last week's Republican National Convention.

"As far as I am concerned, Mitt Romney's opposition to gay marriage and to civil unions for gays makes him anti-gay – which is not something that Philip would have supported. He had some wonderful gay friends, as indeed I do, and they deserve equal treatment in every respect, whether in Ireland or the United States," Philomena Lynott said in an interview with music magazine Hot Press. "Neither would Philip have supported his policy of taxing the poor and offering tax cuts to the rich, which Paul Ryan is advocating. There is certainly no way that I would want the Lynott name to be associated with any of those ideas."

Philip Lynott died in 1986 at just 36 years old.

It's not the first time the Republican Party's presidential ticket has misappropriated a song. Dee Snider, the lead singer of the flamboyant cross-dressing group "Twisted Sister," said last month that he never authorized the Romney campaign to use "We're Not Gonna Take It" during a Ryan campaign event. "There is almost nothing he stands for that I agree with except the use of the [workout routine] P90X."

Ryan also ran afoul of "Rage Against the Machine" guitarist Tom Morello when he told The New York Times that "Rage" is one of his favorite bands. Morello penned an op-ed in response arguing that Ryan completely missed the point of the band's music.

"I wonder what Ryan’s favorite Rage song is?” the rebel rocker wrote. “Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of ‘Fuck the Police’? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!"

In a similar kerfuffle, a Romney campaign event drew a rebuke from the band "Silversun Pickups" over its use of the song "Panic Switch." The band later told Rolling Stone that Romney was "inadvertently playing a song that describes his whole campaign."

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Photo: Screenshot via YouTube.