Lynott then left the family home and moved into a flat in Clontarf

Lynott then left the family home and moved into a flat in Clontarf , where he briefly joined the group Kama Sutra. It was in this band that he learned his frontman skills, and worked out how to interact with an audience. In early 1968, he teamed up with bassist Brendan ‘Brush’ Shiels to form Skid Row . Downey was not interested in Shiels’ request to be the drummer, so the job went to Noel Bridgeman . The band signed a deal with Ted Carroll, who would later go on to manage Thin Lizzy, and played a variety of covers including ” Eight Miles High “, ” Hey Jude ” and several numbers by Jimi Hendrix . Because Lynott did not play an instrument at this point in his career, he instead manipulated his voice through an echo box during instrumental sections. He took to smearing boot polish under his eyes on stage to draw attention to himself, which he would continue to do throughout Lizzy’s career later on, and regularly performed a mock fight with Shiels onstage to attract the crowd. In mid-1968, guitarist Bernard Cheevers quit to work full-time at the Guinness brewery in Dublin and was replaced by Belfast-born guitarist Gary Moore .