A number of veteran artists have recently demanded that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan stop using their music at their campaign stops, but now we have the first case where the family member of a late musician has chimed in.
Ireland’s Hot Press has talked with the mother of the late Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy and she has said that her son would not have approved of Ryan’s use of her son’s song The Boys Are Back in Town at the Republican Convention.
Philomena Lynott told the site “I am really upset at Philip’s music being used in Mitt Romney’s campaign in a political way that Philip would not have approved of. 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.
“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.”
Lynott admits there isn’t much she can do about it, although she added “There is a black President of America, which to me – as it would have been to Philip, as a proud, black Irishman – is wonderfully symbolic. I have a lot of time for Barack Obama, so to hear The Boys Are Back in Town being appropriated by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in their campaign against him is deeply upsetting.”
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