Parisienne Walkways

On the face of it, "Parisienne Walkways" is a straightforward slow ballad written to showcase Moore's guitar playing, but this is actually an enigmatic song with a concealed, and intensely personal, message. The sheet music was published by Mr Sam Music, Administered by Heath Levy Music of London, copyright 1978. Recorded by Gary Moore on MCA, it is credited therein to Donna Campbell, while in the Gary Moore Chord Songbook published by Imperial Music Publications of London in 2000, words and music are credited to Gary Moore and Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott, copyright 1978 and 2000 by Maxwood Music of London.

The original sheet music contains the line "I remember Paris in the fall tonight", however, on the record, lead vocalist Lynott actually sings "I remember Paris in '49." According to Peter Nielsen of the Sweden-based Thin Lizzy Guide website, Donna Campbell appears to have been Gary Moore's girlfriend; Nielsen said of Moore's first solo album that songs credited to Moore/Campbell on the sleeve are credited solely to Moore on the album label, though why she should have been credited at all is a mystery. Be that as it may, "Parisienne Walkways" has Phil Lynott written all over it; the words were unquestionably written by him in their entirety, and the music by Moore or by the two of them. In The Ballad Of The Thin Man, Stuart Bailie's authorized biography of Lynott and Thin Lizzy, the song Chris O'Donnell of the band's management regarded as a joke is said to have been written in a private code. The evidence for this is compelling. Philip Parris Lynott was born in Birmingham in 1949, the illegitimate son of an Irish Catholic teenager. He grew up in Manchester and Dublin, and appears to have constructed an elaborate mythology about the father he never knew, and after whom he was named, Cecil Parris. In January 1976, Lynott was featured in the weekly Titbits magazine (Moore first worked briefly with Thin Lizzy in 1974 when he replaced Eric Bell in the middle of a tour). The story came to the attention of Cecil Parris, and led to the two meeting for the first time, but if Parris was pleased to find he had a rock star son, to Lynott his newfound father was a bitter disappointment. "Parisienne Walkways" appears to be an attempt to reconstruct the lost romance of the enigmatic figure he never knew.