As regular listeners will be aware, Tom Dunne is fascinated with vinyl. Is it the nostalgia of the older format? Is it the warmth of sound which vinyl achieves? It is a mixture of these factors. Beyond this, when the opportunity arises to play the personal collection of a rock ‘n’ roll icon, the meaning of vinyl takes on a new meaning.

This week the Tom Dunne Show made a return visit to the home of Philomena Lynott, mother of the late, great Phil Lynott. A true friend of the show, Philomena once again welcomed the team with open arms. Her home is truly a museum to the former Thin Lizzy frontman. Upon making one’s way up the driveway, you catch a little glimpse of the singer peeping out from behind a curtain - there are life-sized cutouts of Lynott everywhere. He stands on the top floor peering out of his former Sutton home, scanning the Irish sea and greeting his still-loyal fans.

Philomena maintains a room which is devoted to memorabilia related to the life and career of her son. His personal jukebox takes pride of place in the corner, the hand-written song cards hazy from decades of tobacco smoke. Tom dons the great man’s stetson for a photograph.

 

A sizeable chunk of the room is taken up by Phil’s personal vinyl collection. Having borrowed some of these records back in October 2013, Tom has returned in order to have another root and see what delicacies he can unearth. Most of these records were last played in the 1980s by Phil himself. We show one particular treasure, an acetate, to Philomena. She studies it in great detail before realising  that she can see her son’s fingerprints on the surface.

The big find, so to speak, on this trip, were the original vinyl test acetates of some of Phil’s and Thin Lizzy’s singles and albums. These are first issue recordings that a band are required to sign off on before a record is mass produced. Upon discovering this trove in the collection, Tom explained, “They’ve never been played since Philip okayed them; since he listened to them, rang the record company and said ‘yes, these sound great’ or he might have said there’s too much top or there’s too much base”.

Among the other vinyl that Tom spotted during the trip were records by The Runaways, Radiators from Space, Elvis Presley and David Bowie.

Philomena has kindly allowed the show to borrow another slice of the collection, which Tom will be playing live on air throughout the month of March.