I'm finding it difficult to write about Philip Lynott. The perceptions I formed as a teenager have hardly changed a bit, and I'm trying to remember what I was like myself in order to really remember what he meant to me. It's a difficult one. There are other heroes from my teenage years that have since become good friends but Phil Lynott remains as he was - the poster on the wall, the drawing on the back of a schoolbook, the impossible long black Dubliner singing The Boys Are Back In Town to a gobsmacked audience in Enniskillen.

I often regret that I never knew the man, and I'm conscious that many people reading this article will have known him very well. Perhaps they will think my observations somewhat innocent - but then I was innocent too, in those days, and a very big Thin Lizzy fan. I was a devoted follower.

I still possess one of his plectrums, I have a signed photograph etc, etc. And so, my only relationship with Phil Lynott remains entirely that of an air-punching fan trying again to confront the image and the myth of someone he very much admired and wanted to be like. There were so many appealing facets to the Lynott persona. First of all, he was very different. He was black, he was Irish and he was extremely cool. He was handsome too, and he dressed well, yet he seemed very much one of the lads and for some reason I always wanted to play pool with him. He had a dog called Gnasher. He was good to his mother and his granny and he was into football.

Teenage girls loved him. Teenage boys wanted to be like him. Somehow he managed to come across as a mixture of a cowboy, a comic-book hero, a gigolo, an American, a rake, a romantic, a hard man and an old softie. I think in those days I wanted to be all of those things - depending on the company.

After my first Thin Lizzy gig I was literally never the same again. As I keep telling people, I went in wearing a brown cardigan and I came out wearing a leather jacket. Ironically (at least according to local mythology) I have the parish priest of Bundoran to thank for Phil Lynott's improbable appearance in my home town. The story goes that Bundoran was the original date, but because the gig was to be on Holy Thursday there were theological objections. And so the venue was switched to Enniskillen. Nobody had ever played in Enniskillen before, and we weren't totally convinced that the real Thin Lizzy would actually show up. But they showed up all right - and it was beyond anything we could ever have imagined. And so it was that after Mass on a Holy Thursday, the youth of Enniskillen were corrupted and the youth of Bundoran were saved. I grew my hair as long as school dogma would permit and I started to affect a brand-new walk.

I was 14 or 15 at the time - and apart from Horslips, Rory, Brady and Van, the only music I listened to was Lizzy. Back then I didn't think I needed anything else. Live And Dangerous satisfied all my crazy teenage moods - the mad stuff, the romantic stuff, the funky stuff and the fantasy stuff - and I knew that if only I could be more like Phil Lynott, those girls in the Convent wouldn't stand a chance. I bought a near-useless bass guitar and we formed a near-useless band and we tried our best to sound like Thin Lizzy. All I wanted to do was play Dancing In The Moonlight, jump around and put my foot up on the monitor. I wore the bass high up the way Phil did and, for the first time in my life, I was no longer embarrassed by my endless skinny legs - although that, unfortunately, was where any resemblance ended.

Phil Lynott undoubtedly possessed that elusive quality called style, and he was perfect subject matter for photographers and artists. He threw all kinds of shapes and he had a great face - one that was easy to capture as a striking image. The bush of hair pulled down over one eye, the thin moustache, the earring and the one visible eye looking very mean indeed. I remember one particularly great shot in Hot Press of Lynott dressed in that Dennis the Menace shirt he liked to wear. He didn't look mean in this one, he just looked like trouble - good-natured trouble. Full of mischief, but ultimately a nice bloke.

Early publicity shots show a man who must certainly have been a head-turner in Grafton Street: someone who, quite apart from his height and the magnificent Afro, was wearing some serious threads - especially in the shoe department. His contemporaries all talk about his style, his charm and his sheer presence. But they insist that he was more than just a striking figure, he was also a very a clever man. He read poetry. He wrote poetry. And best of all, even though he seemed like he had landed from some other world, he had a Dublin accent. It was on those early albums that I heard Irish rock songs for the first time. (I'm afraid it was much later when I finally heard Van sing about Dublin, Cyprus Avenue and Sandy Row.) I wondered who Diddy Levine was. Clontarf was mentioned. Phil Lynott made Dublin seem like the hippest place on earth.

Then there was all that fist in the air, leather-clad rock-star carry-on. I know that sort of thing is ridiculous, but Phil got away with it. He could carry it off. And I must say that we loved it. It was exactly the kind of Marvel comic drama that we wanted - and the more smoke bombs, the better! The mirror ball showering stars around the hall as the coyote called and the howling winds wailed. The sirens and the police lights during Jailbreak and the mirror on Phil's guitar picking us out one by one. He conducted those concerts like he was the benevolent leader of our (only slightly dangerous) gang.

It was all ritual, dynamism, and choreography. It was a show. It was wildly exciting - and the music was just perfect. Very importantly, they were one of the few bands you could actually get to see.

In later years, the first interview I ever did was with Phil Lynott. I was working for the Student Union newspaper at Queens, and Phil's new band Grand Slam were playing at the May Ball. This was the first and only time I ever really got to talk to him. I was nervous, incompetent and without any idea of how to conduct an interview. Phil was friendly, patient and warm and he said that he liked my jacket. I wanted to tell him about the gig in Enniskillen and the priest in Bundoran and about that awful band we had at school - but I never got around to it. Not long afterwards Phil was dead.

I have no illusions about the music business. I'm close enough to it to see a lot of things I don't like. I know that image is a dangerous thing and I no longer punch the air at gigs. Even so, there are some truly great people and Phil Lynott was one of them. His premature death is still shocking and his absence is a very real one - even for those of us who didn't know him at all. As usual, on the way home last night, I was singing Dancing In The Moonlight. The last bus was long gone.

The 12th annual Vibe For Philo takes place in the Temple Theatre on Sunday next. Doors open at 4 p.m. and live music starts at 6 p.m., and a wide range of bands will pay tribute to their inspiration, Thin Lizzy. Tickets from HMV.