It wasn't always a type of make-up

Trouble, glorious trouble! A rocker is only a rocker if he's causing it, threatening it or feeling it, and Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott was one of the best.

Not that you might have thought so before the release of Jailbreak in 1976.

The street-savvy mixed-race Irishman and his bandmates had failed to summon up much in the way of malevolent hard-rock spirit with their first five albums, with only 1975's Fighting hinting at the winning formula they would strike on their next release.

Jailbreak powered Thin Lizzy into the UK Top 10 and US Top 20 for the first time, fuelled by a brace of singles that celebrated exaggerated masculinity and its potential for thrills.

The title track spells it out: The gang is intent on busting out and swaggering into your city with a hunger for action and a no-tomorrows attitude.

Second and best-known single The Boys Are Back In Town repeats the threat: The wild-eyed rabble is returning to where the "drink will flow and the blood will spill".

And if they want to fight, you'd better let 'em.

Lyrics tumble from Lynott in a style that borrows from Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger, with whom the band had toured in 1975.

But none of these artists possess his hooded-eyed sensuality or his leather-clad alley-cat leanness, and none would deny him his all-too-brief time in the spotlight.

Flat lyrical and musical spots in Running Back and Romeo And The Lonely Girl risk knocking a star off any review of the album, but high points in Warriors and Emerald earn it its place among a clutch of essential hard-rock releases.

The twin-guitar attack of Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson, while not the first example of its kind, certainly alerted the rock world to the myriad hook-building possibilities inherent in such melodic interplay.

The boys were just having a bit of dangerous fun.