Post by BlueMonday on Jun 29, 2015 21:20:10 GMT -5
I found this nice, lengthy tribute to Rory Gallagher post on the old Skynyrd Frynds Yahoo group. It also contains a biography.
Both links given in the post are dead.
#11178 – June 8, 2005
Rory Gallagher
www.kieran.keegan.btinternet.co.uk/Rory/rory_tributes.htm
"He was such a gracious man, I'm sure everybody tells you this. The most gentlemanly person you could ever meet in this business - or any other business probably. Such a sweet guy y'know, such a completely gentle and generous person with his time and everything. So this couple of kids come up, whose me and my mate and say y'know "How do you get your sound Mr Gallagher" and he sits and tells us - he says "Well mainly its this little box here - this little Rangemaster treble booster. And I just plug my guitar in here and the treblebooster goes into the amp and thats me sound." So I ran straight out and got myself a Rangemaster and a couple of AC30's, second hand of course, all beaten up but they worked. And from that moment on, I had the sound that i wanted. I didnt have his guitar, I'd already made my own guitar. But my guitar just seemed to work perfectly in this setup - so I owe Rory my sound" - Brian May
"Rory had this Celtic approach, which is very similar to mine y'know, where your playing blues but there is always that real, sort of, edge of, in his case, the Irish feeling.....Scottish folk music and Irish folk music obviously are very close - a lot of it's on the Pentatonic scale. A lot of the rhythm's - usually starts off with an eight kind of a feel and suddenly change in the middle and speed up and go into this twelve feel which is very close, the rhythmic feel is very close to a kind of shuffle. It always amazes me when people, sort of, think "Well, if your white and you come from Ireland, you come from Cork in particular, or you come from Glasgow that you can't have that feeling and express that. You can, it's as simple as that. If your just living the music, you can do it. He certainly could do it. He embodied honesty in the music business in the way of playing music and in his life, I think he lived the music and maybe he lived it a little bit too hard, as some of us have been guilty of. But that was because...of the Celtic spirit"......Jack Bruce
" I met him at a gig at a college somewhere. I knew who he was obviously, and he just came straight up. It occurred to me later that he's just that kind of a bloke, he just walks up to somebody and starts talking to them. And he walked up and he gave me a lecture about playing the guitar in other than normal tuning (laughs), and we had a really nice chat. He wasn't offensive at all, he just spoke his mind. Five years later I saw him and he was enthusing about playing guitar in other than normal tuning" ....Martin Carthy
"I remember him coming to a gig at the Troubadour - came to a couple of gigs. He got so excited that he got thrown out (laughs) and he was furious "Oh bugger them blasters, they threw me out I was just having a good time. I was yelling and shouting and they said "Shut up or get out" and they threw him out. But he was just an enthusiast basically about music and he responded to music, and he made people respond".....Martin Carthy
"I'd a lot of old recordings here of Maggie Barry who was a street singer and Joe Heaney, his Irish name was Seosamh O hEanai.....and I used to send Rory tapes of these people, because he was very interested in hearing, y'know, where he came from - which showed that he wasn't just a fella out to get a bit of fame for himself, he didn't play his music to be put on a pedestal. He played it because thats what he wanted to do, and as i said earlier on, followed his talent" ....Ronnie Drew
"About 1975 or 1976, I was about 13 or 14 and occasionally I would come across these records by this enigmatic, mysterious guy. So one time I shelled out 2 pounds 50 or whatever it was for a Polydor sampler and I never looked back really, my world was pretty much sorted out for the next few years because then i had kind of found my man really. He appeared to be like his audience - a lot of people have his idea that he had no image, when in fact he had a really, really strong image - he seemed very street. Seeing him live was quite an eye-opener, particularly if you were very young because it was bordering on terrifying in its intensity. He was a very beautiful man and a lovely gentle presence but when he plugged in and started playing he got this kind of bug-eyed stare going and occasionally if he looked down and I was in the audience half of me wanted him to clock me and the other half was thinking "Oh no, don't" because he was on fire - he was right in the moment., and was the centre of about 2,000 people. As soon as I could, I got the money together to get "Deuce" and that was the first proper, real album that I got and started to try and play along with it. One day I pulled a sicky off school and spent the whole day playing along with that record and it really moved me on as a guitar player massively" ......Johnny Marr
"Here was a man who managed to combine the gift of being an authentic creative genius with the even rarer gift of being a genuinely decent, honourable human being." Hotpress, July 95
"He had this amazing capacity to create riffs and i love those riffs. I am holding it in my hand now, Tastes "On the Boards", "Morning Sun" you know thats a great riff and its very influential on me. You know, if you look at "Tie Your Mother Down", the riff on that is not so dissimilar from "Morning Sun". I'd be the first to acknowledge a huge debt to the man. I wish he here to say that to, I really, really, wish he was here" .....Brian May
"an uncompromisingly serious musician" - The Times
"Rory said to me one time he had a song which he'd like me to sing and its called "The Barley and the Grape Rag", and I was delighted. Rory was doing a concert for the city in Dublin and there were a lot of people there, like maybe 10,000 people and he was such a gentle and quiet man offstage, that when he got onstage it was a revelation to see the metamorphosis if you like, he turned into this aarrrrghhhh!!!!! He said to me, would I sing the song with him, so I was thrilled of course. It was one of the highlights of my life, and I'm a little bit proud too that I sang with Rory Gallagher (laughs)"...Ronnie Drew
"The first Irish rock'n'roller and a unique blues guitar voice rolled into one. Missed by everyone" The Guitar Magazine, August 1995
" Without a Shadow of a doubt, the person who inspired me to become a musician, and who I thought was unbelieveable and magical was Rory Gallagher" - Glen Tipton "I met him again in the early nineties, and that was when I was with BBM with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker and we were in the Conrad Hotel in London. Rory was living there at the time, and I walked into the bar one day after rehearsals or something and there was Rory sat at the bar there..one drink lead to another and we ended up up in his room that night. He had all his guitars up there, he's turned kind of turned it into a little music room and he was showing me his guitars and I was playing him little bits bit I was quite shy to play in front of him and he was going "Now don't be shy, don't be shy" in the way he used to have that real friendly thing and that old kind-of wise look he would give you "Don't be shy now" so I just played him a little bit. and I played him some of the BBM album ...and he said "I'm very jealous you know" and I said why, 'cos he - the fact that I was playing with Jack and Ginger, he was enjoying it and he was saying to me "Ah yeah, you're playing with a lot of space, I like to see that" cos I think he thought I used to overplay - which is absolutely correct!! He was kind of sitting there listening to the music and we ordered some drinks and some sandwiches and he was just telling about a lot of his personal things which I won't go into here, but it was a lovely night. I was really, really glad that we had that little night together y'know because I never saw him again after that, and we just hugged each other at the end and told each other that we loved each other and kind of went our seperate ways...I only ever spoke to him once again after that, on the phone"........Gary Moore
"I was Influenced by the playing of Rory Gallagher and used to listen to him so much that I ended up playing just his licks for awhile!!!" -KK Downing
"Rory Gallagher is the first person I saw who really exploited the harmonic thing. I couldn't understand how he did it when I used to watch him" - Glen Tipton
"He (Rory) was a great man in many ways. I never met him though. You know, some people don't become HUGE because they are too SMART! They hold back a little so they can remain true to themselves, Maybe Rory was like that?" - Pete Townshend
"Rory Gallagher he was a great player. I've seen him perform several times he just used to use a little Fender amp and that beat-up old Strat, but boy, he could make that guitar talk... He was another guitar player who never got the credit he deserved, it's incredible. He either had a bad publicist, or I don't know." - Ace Frehley
"There is a saying in Ireland: First there was Jesus, and then there was Rory." Phil McDonnell - Rory's road manager
www.kieran.keegan.btinternet.co.uk/Rory/rory_gallagher_biography.htm
Rory Gallagher Biography
"He suffered a lot. His health was bad. He had a problem with drink. His relationships with women were all messed up because of his work. And he got a lot of hassle from the authorities and the establishment. But still, he stayed true to what he wanted to do and he laid down the definitive rules for what's become known as the hard-boiled school of writing."
This quote is actually not about Rory - it's a quote by Rory on one of his favourites, Dashiell Hammett.
Rory was one of the world's finest bluesmen, but was also one of the people. Many musicians would have no hesitation in bragging that they had sold 30 million albums in their career. Rory never did.
Rory Gallagher was, believe it or not, born LIAM Gallagher in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, Ireland on March 2 1948. (He jettisoned the name in favour of Rory, because, as he said
"There was no saint Rory and I liked the idea of not having a saint's name. Anyway, I think my mother preferred `Rory' to `Liam' "
Their were four in the family; mom, dad, Rory, and younger brother Donal (who became Rory's manager)
The Gallagher family stayed in Donegal until 1949, when they moved into Northern Ireland, to Derry. The family remained there until 1956 when they moved as far south as they could, to Cork. The Gallagher's moved into their new home on MacCurtain Hill on the northside of Cork city. Rory spent his school years in the city too; first at Saint Kieran's on Pope's Quay, and then after that at the North Mon
(Monastery).
Rory's musical birth came when he, like so many other musicians, first saw Elvis Presley on TV.
At the age of nine, Rory got his first guitar (an acoustic) and began learning to play. Around this time, an interest in blues music started to form (Rorys influences included including Leadbelly, Buddy Guy, Freddie King, Albert King, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker.) This interest came because the Gallagher's had no record player, forcing Rory to scour the wavlenghts with his radio;
"We didn't have a record player when I was growing up," he recalls. "So I spent a lot of time tuning into Radio Luxembourg, BBC and the AFN (Armed Forces Network) from Germany. The first electric blues I heard was Muddy Waters on AFN. It was very late one night and it came across real clear. He was playing a slide Telecaster and that really hit me. So the following weekend, I went into the library in Cork and I got books out on the origins of blues. Then I started getting into Lonnie Donnegan and Ledbelly and Big Bill Broonzy. And then Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and all the rock `n' rollers. The more I heard the more I got addicted.
Soon after this, by the age of twelve, Rory was competent enough to enter and win a local talent contest in Cork City Hall. Inspired, Rory got his first electric guitar. Within a year, Rory was picking guitar in his first band.
1963 was a landmark year for Rory, as he discovered the instrument that would become his trademark for the rest of his life, a 1961 sunburst Fender Strat. (serial no 64351) he bought it second hand for £100 from Crowley's Music Centre, (then Merchant's Quay, but mow on MacCurtain Street) in Cork. It is often said to have been the first Strat in Ireland.
Rory was very attached to this particular instrument, especially as in 1963 it was stolen from him.
"It was the first Stratocaster in Ireland apparently.....for weeks, every morning I'd go over and look at the guitar in the case and treat it like a living being y'know, or some kind of magical thing and even the smell of the case - I mean, I was really standing on my head at that time." ...Rory Gallagher
"We got a call from the showband in Waterford that had bought this guitar, to say that they were changing their uniform in the band and that the manager had suggested that they change the colour of the guitars as well - to a salmon pink colour instead of the sunburst colour that they had. And when that arrived they trading in this particular Stratocaster".....Michael Crowley, Crowleys Music Centre.
" I did actually have the Stratocaster stolen in Dublin in the sixties, and I got it back after two weeks - it was thrown over a ditch, with a few extra scratches from the brambles and things so when I got it back - it had been out in the rain as well - so I mean, I swore I'd never sell it or paint it after that"...Rory Gallagher
As we all know, over the years almost all of the varnish disappeared from the guitar - some of this down to Rory's profuse sweating which stripped much of the finish from the instrument.
1964 saw a very important event in young Rory's life - he saw the Rolling Stones live whilst in London.
When Rory was 16, he joined the Fontana Showband, which later changed it's name to The Impact. In 1965, with Impact, Rory made his first ever TV appearance, performing Larry Williams classic r&b track "Slow Down" on the RTE show "Pickin' The Pops" They played in Britain as the Fontana, and then (after the name change) got a gig at a US airforce base near Madrid. They then returned to Britain for more gigs, as well as shows in Hamburg prior to the band splitting in 1965. At this point Rory wasn't playing blues to an audience - the Fontana mainly drew inspiration from Chuck Berry styled rock and roll.
Mick Moriarty (The Baldy Barber) from Cork's northside remembered;
"He was instantly recognisable, with his long flowing locks, walking across Patrick's Bridge with his guitar. At that time he was playing in the evenings after school"
The end of The Impact left Rory without a band to play in, so he formed a trio in 1966 with Eric Kitteringham (bass) and Norman Damery (drums). The called themselves "Taste". They were to be Rory's first experience of fame. Taste played gigs all over Ireland (as well as in Germany) and secured residencies at both the Maritime Hotel R&B Club in Belfast, and the Marquee Club, Wardour Street, London.
Rory's pals travelled to see him at one of his London gigs, and the MC introduced him as Rory Galla-g-her' ¬ with a hard `g' sound, `From Belfast!" ¬ And Rory's pals yelled back `Galla-h-er, from Cork!'
One night the band held a poll during a gig in Cork City Hall and asked their fan's to vote on which of four songs they should release as their first single. `Blister On The Moon' won, and was eventually being released on the 'Major-Minor' label, with `Born On The Wrong Side Of Time' the `B' side.
Taste evolved as time went on, and personnel changes saw Kitteringham and Damery leave the band, to be replaced by Richard McCracken (bass) and John Wilson (formerly of Van Morrison' band "Them") (drums). This was almost forced on the band, as a contract with Polydor was dependent on this happening. In 1968, the band set themselves up permanently in London.
During these days, Rory gained the nickname "Yakety Sax"due to his sax playing during the Taste era.
The group's self-titled debut album was released in 1969 in England and later picked up for U.S. distribution by Atco/Atlantic, produced (as the subsequent"Taste" albums were) by Tony Colton
1969 brought the biggest gig of Rory's career so far, when Taste toured North America with the Eric Clapton - Steve Winwood - Ginger Baker supergroup "Blind Faith". The band continued to tour Europe through 1970, appearing at the legendary 1970 Isle of Wight festival. Taste's final gig happened not long after, in Belfast on New Years Eve 1970, before Rory left for a solo career.
Rory remained very reluctant, throughout his career, to discuss what happened to Taste, but he did make this remark in an interview some years back; "Yeah, I feel very angry about all of that," he says. "I don't like to think about it that often because it upsets me. I always believe that what I do should be outlaw music. My attitude in a funny kind of way was always a punk attitude. I think all the best artists are outside of the system so I was never into being all wise and clued-up on the financial side of things. But I obviously ignored it too much and allowed people to rip me off. I don't want to get wound up about this. I don't hold grudges and some of the people involved are actually dead since (pause). But, contrary to popular opinion, I never made a penny out of The Taste. There's been legal things going on until this year so it has actually cost me money. The whole thing has made me very wary of music business people. I don't give a damn about the money. It's people who let you down that bothers me most."
From 1970 to 1972, Rory's trio went out under Rory's own name, and the rest of the group comprised of Belfast musician's Gerry McAvoy (bass) and Wilgar Campbell (drums). Rory was receiving more and more recognition. He began 1971, by appearing on the RTE TV show "Bringing it all back home" He was approached to join the Rolling Stones, and also played on both Muddy Waters "London Sessions" album, Jerry Lee Lewis' 1973 album "The Session",and Albert King's ""Live In Montreux" wih another blues legend, Louisiana Red. David Coverdale even wanted Rory to join "Deep Purple" when Ritchie Blackmore left to form Rainbow. (Later on, the "Deep Purple" connection re-appeared when Purple's bassist Roger Glover produced Rory's album "Calling Card")
Rory's 1970 debut album "Rory Gallagher" was picked up for U.S. distribution by Atlantic Records. Within twelve months, a second album "Deuce" appeared. This regularity was to become one of Rory's trademarks for years.
The "Rory Gallagher" album really kick started his solo career when it entered the UK chart at a highly respectable no. 32.
"I had a phone call from London, and it was Rory and he asked me to come over the next day just to have a jam session....so I went over and that was it! The first thing was the "Rory Gallagher" album, and that was finished and I went back to Belfast and didn't hear anything for about three weeks and then I got another phone call "Do you fancy coming around and doing some shows" .... Gerry McAvoy
"The troubles in the North of Ireland were still going on and no bands were travelling there whatsoever, y'know. And Rory decided to go over and do this Irish tour , which was very very dangerous. I remember at the Ulster Hall, the atmosphere - its heard to explain how electric that night was because the people were there, both sides of the community, there just to enjoy themselves and see this guy playing his music yknow, with a band. It was electronic. A couple of bombs went off in the city centre (laughing) but Rory wouldn't have stopped for anything" ....Gerry McAvoy
As always Rory performed loads of shows that year and every year
"We're doing twenty dates I think, in January and we go on to France for two or three weeks. After that we do Amsterdam, do a quick hop-scotch through Scandanavia, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm I think, and we have about a week off, and then we got to the States for four weeks and then we come back and do the British tour, back home for Christmas and do an Irish tour. Do the second half of the British tour in January and then make a record" .............Rory Gallagher
While on one of these tours, Rory first met one of his dearest friends, Dubliners legend Ronnie Drew
" I was in a hotel bar in Hamburg, and this younger man than me come up to me, and he'd long hair and he said "You're Ronnie Drew" and I said "Yeah, yeah, howya" and he said "How are you, what are you doing" and i said "I'm with The Dubliners, we're doing concerts over here and that". He had his trademark Lumberjack shirt and he thought he's probably over here working on maybe some building site or something y'know. I said "What are you doing over here" and he said "I'm doing some gigs as well". "Oh" I said, "Are you? What do you do?". "Sing and play like". I said "Whats your name?" and he says "Rory Gallagher". I grabbed my head and I was so mortified I wished I'd gone down under the ground because I couldn't believe it. So we spent the day together actually, we were both free that day and we were very free in more ways than one!! We were very free with our imbibing, so we got a good sup on board. The next morning I came down and there was a note for me from Rory saying "We had a great day and see you again".....Ronnie Drew
In 1972, Rory's "Live! In Europe" album went platinum, as well as becoming his second US chart album Rory was awarded the "Musician of the Year" award by the UK's Melody Maker magazine (outvoting both Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page in the process)
Rory always seemed to be surrounded by great anecdotes but surely one of the oddest was an early seventies gig in Europe, when he fell off the stage and the crowd erupted into cheering, thinking he'd done it deliberately!!!!
"On the left side of the stage, there was this big hollow pit which I didn't see," he recalls with a shiver. "It was obviously for lifting gear up and so on but I never even noticed it. I was just running across the stage when all of a sudden I began to feel myself falling. I put my hands out to stop myself and I grabbed on to this metal bar and was swinging from it like Tarzan. Of course my guitar started to feedback and, all of a sudden, I realised that the crowd were clapping. They were going wild. They loved it. And there I was, in serious danger of death! Eventually, after several minutes, I closed my eyes and swung up on the stage again. Immediately, I got another round of applause. So I ran across the stage again and played another couple of notes (laughs). I got great reviews, great praise for my `acrobatic' performance.
Another gig in Nottingham, England saw Rory's fanatical fans invade the stage during the gig. Rory's new bodyguard, Corkman Tom O'Driscoll waded in to clear the way - unfortunately one of the people he threw off the stage was his employer - guitar and all!!!
"That was a stage-dive and a half, I'll tell ya," says Rory. "It was one of Tom's first gigs with me and it was a real baptism of fire for him. The crowd was going bananas but I landed among them on my feet so I played a couple of bars and scrambled back onstage before anyone knew what happened. Strange to say, Tom O'Driscoll still works with me (laughs).
Again in Europe, was the time Rory and Co took their lives in their hands at a show in Athens;
"It was just after the Greek coup and they were having the first free elections they'd had for a while," he explains, "A short while into the show, I started to see all these flames, way at the back of the stadium. They were burning down restaurants and shops on the streets outside the gig. I think they wouldn't let enough people into the stadium or else they let too many in but, anyway, the police arrived and started to fire CS gas at us. It was the most frightening gig I've ever done. That CS gas is dangerous stuff. It messes up your eyes and you can't see where you're going or anything.
When we eventually got backstage, there was so much confusion that we couldn't be sure who was going to protect us and who might attack us. There were those semi-militia guys walking around and they looked very threatening. So we just jumped into a car and tried to head back to the hotel. Then, on the way, we ran out of petrol so we had to walk. And there was so much going on, it was a nightmare. We were soaking wet and our eyes were watering and we were all literally trembling. The gig itself had been great by the way. But it was very frightening. I just didn't want to die in a football pitch in Greece, not even knowing what was happening."
One of the event's in his career which gave him immense pleasure, was Rory's involvement on Muddy Water's London Sessions album;
""It was a real honour," he recalls with a smile. "The whole thing has stuck in my memory like a video. I can plug it in at any time and replay it in my head. I only wish I could do it again with my experience now because Muddy taught me an awful lot during those sessions and I came out a much better player than I went in.
"I used to have to play gigs in different parts of the country in the evenings and then, afterwards, I'd drive up to London for those recordings, and they'd hold up the sessions `till I arrived. So I'd finish in, say, Birmingham at 10.30 p.m. and then I'd jump in the car and drive like the devil to get there as soon as I could. Muddy'd give me a glass of red wine when I'd arrive and we'd start playing at midnight or 1 am which is my time of the day. Just watching him tuning his guitar or doing something like "Walkin' Blues" was wonderful for me. And the great thing about that album was that it wasn't just a token black `legend' with a load of Europeans. He had his own musicians as well. He had Carey Bell on harp and Sammie Lowe, lately deceased, God rest him, on guitar. They were magical nights.
"Muddy Waters had great strength of character," continues Rory. "He was always very polite but he could also be very powerful if he didn't like something. He could do it with the click of his fingers, without causing an argument or ruining the vibe. He'd just quietly say to the drummer `pick it up a wee bit there' and it happened.
"He had a lovely Buddha-like countenance, great authority. You knew he was in charge of things but you could also make suggestions to him. Georgie Fame suggested a few things and so did I and he always listened. This was the early seventies and he still had a few years to live but it was after the crash and his back was bad. He was often in great pain but he never got nasty. That wasn't his nature at all."
To this day, Rory has kept a special momento of those sessions.
"After the recordings, I drove him back to his hotel a few times," he explains. "I've kept that car ever since as a sort of shrine because Muddy sat in it. It's an old Ford Executive, a real Hawaii 5-0 car with stars and stripes down the side, and it's sitting at home in front of our house in Cork. It's falling apart at the seams but I refuse to scrap it or anything. I can still see Muddy in the front seat, smoking these cigars with a big plastic tip on them.
"I only wish I'd had a Super 8 camera to capture all that stuff. I know one of the guys from Chicago took some shots and I'd love to get them for my grandchildren, if I ever have grandchildren. It's a beautiful memory for me."
From 1972 - 1976, Rory's band changed personnel again. Out went Wilgar Campbell, with the band now comprising of Rory, Gerry McAvoy , Lou Martin (piano) and Rod De'Ath (drums)
1973 proved that Rory was truly a musician's musician. That year, Mick Taylor left the Rolling Stones and Rory was offered his place in the band. Although he did record with them for a couple of nights in Rotterdam, Holland, he declined the opportunity.
"Well it was before Ronnie Wood joined and they were auditioning lots of players. I did a little stint with them and I think Mick Jagger liked me and wanted me to join. But Keith was in a pretty bad way at that time so I wasn't sure if they were going to get it together at all. There was a lot of uncertainty. Then, I'd been booked to do some gigs in Japan so I headed off and that was the last I heard. It just wasn't to be I guess."
One of Rory's standout records was released in 1974 - "Irish Tour '74 was the soundtrack to the film of the same name by producer Tony Palmer. "Irish Tour '74" became Rory's most successful US album and
resulted in a mammoth tour to promote it, even taking in the Far East.
This tour was filled with great concerts, something which Rory always enjoyed reminiscing about
I've got so many favourite gigs," he enthuses. One of the best has to be a show we did in Belfast in 1973. It was at the height of the troubles and we just didn't now how it was going to go. There was a lot of trouble out on the streets but the atmosphere inside was electric, it was a real we-shall-overcome kinda night. With all due respect to audiences we've had in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway, there was something really special about the crowd in Belfast that night. A gig we did in Cork where we recorded most of the "Irish Tour" album in 1974 was fantastic too. I also remember Hamburg… I probably sound like Marlene Dietrich but there have been some really great moments. Great memories."
Rory's appearance on a double-album by Jerry Lee Lewis followed, as well as the Montreux album with Albert King, performances with jazz legend Chris Barber, and appearing again with Muddy Waters on his "London Revisisted" album.
Rory's memories of working with Jerry Lee had a completely different feel than his days recording with Muddy Waters;
"There was a strange sense of violence and madness around whenever Jerry Lee was in the room," he says. "Whenever anyone annoyed him, he'd immediately pull up his left trouser leg and go for his sock as if he had a gun in it. I never actually saw him with a gun in the studio but I'm sure if he'd had, he'd have shot somebody. There was always a borderline of danger about him which I think is necessary for real rock `n' roll."
Not long after the release of the album, Rory recalls being invited to play a US show with Jerry Lee. At the gig appeared John Lennon, which immediately upset Jerry Lee;
"Lennon was going through his LA phase at the time and his hair was really short but everyone still recognised him and they all turned around to look at him as he took his seat in the balcony," recalls Rory. "Needless to say, the fact that he was being upstaged drove Jerry Lee wild. He started to do the "Jerry Lee Rag" but everybody was still looking up at Lennon and whispering about him. All of a sudden, Jerry Lee stopped and started on about how The Beatles were shit and The Stones were shit and there ain't nobody could play real rock `n' roll the way Jerry Lee could. Lennon loved this. He had his boot up on the balcony and he started egging Jerry Lee on, shouting (adopts convincing Lennon voice) `yeah, you're right there man, The Beatles are shit!' People started laughing but Jerry Lee thought that Lennon was shouting abuse at him so he freaked out altogether. He just pushed the piano across the stage and stormed off."
Rory, being Rory, obviously had a back stage pass, and had decide that he wanted to go to Jerry Lee's dressing room and cheer him up - and yet, he was fully aware that Jerry was probably armed. Rory's manager (and brother) Donal, was pleading with him to stay away. Enter, at this delicate juncture, Tom O'Driscoll;
O'Driscoll is a brick-shithouse of a man from Schull, Co. Cork. A fisherman by trade, he has acted as Rory's unofficial bodyguard for almost two decades and still travels most places with him today. Donal Gallagher agreed that Rory could go backstage provided that O'Driscoll went with him. "I wasn't too afraid of Jerry Lee because I had worked on the sessions with him," says Rory. "But everybody else was obviously very scared because there was nobody else in the dressing room when Tom and I went in."
It took considerable diplomacy and tact on Gallagher's part but gradually he managed to coax Jerry Lee out of his sulk. "We actually got to the point where we were just chatting away, reminiscing about the sessions and that kind of thing." Rory recalls. "Then, all of a sudden, the door opened and in walked Lennon. There was dead silence for a couple of seconds. I just stared at Jerry Lee to see how he was going to react. But Tom O'Driscoll couldn't resist this opportunity. He was a huge Beatles fan and he just went over to Lennon, dropped down on his knees, kissed his hand and said `I've been waiting twenty years to get the autograph of the king of rock `n' roll'!
"Of course, this drove Jerry Lee completely wild. He went for his sock, thinking that he had a gun in it and then he started looking around for something to throw or break. Lennon could see all this so he quickly signed Tom's piece of paper and then, to diffuse the situation, he took the pen and another piece of paper from Tom and went across the room to Jerry Lee. He did exactly what Tom had done to him. He went down on his knees, kissed Jerry Lee's hand and said `I've been waiting twenty years to get the autograph of the real king of rock `n' roll'. Jerry Lee was delighted. He signed the scrap of paper and they started talking then and everything was fine. It was a wonderful moment."
Once Rory';s contract with Polydor expired in 1975, he signed with Chrysalis and released "Against The Grain". This resulted in a successful World Tour, and his headlining the Reading Festival that year (Rory appeared at the Reading Festival more times than any other artist).
Although undoubtedly a star, Rory never lost his "one of the people" persona. A shop assistant, Dolores Quinlan remembered
"We would see him going upstairs to the record department where Sheila MacCurtain worked. We would know through eye-contact where he was going. We'd make excuses to go there, then follow him downstairs when he went to get his New Musical Express magazine. He always had the correct money, so we never had to give him change. We'd all be giggling to each other, but he was oblivious to all this. I never tried to strike up a conversation with him, although he was unfailingly polite and friendly. We even knew that he went to 6.30 Sunday evening Mass at Saint Augustine's on Grand Parade with his mother, so we'd go there too."
1976 saw a new first for Rory when he became the first artist to perform on a Eurovision television transmission to over one hundred million people. He also toured the US again, for the tenth time.
In 1976, both Lou Martin and Rod De'Ath left Rory's employ, with Ted McKenna coming in as drummer. The same year, Gallagher recorded "Calling Card" at Musicland Studios in Munich, with Roger Glover producing. He also became the first artist ever to appear on legendary German music show Rockpalast.
1977 had Rory appearing on the comeback album by his hero, Skiffle legend Lonnie Donegan.
In 1978, Gallagher disbanded his then current four piece band and pared his sound back to a threepiece to record the hard driving "Photo-Finish" album, with Iong time bassist Gerry McAvoy and former Sensational Alex Harvey drummer, Ted McKenna in support. They cut the record at Dieter Dierks' studios in Cologne.(This lineup lasted until 1981, when it changed again, this time to Rory, Gerry McAvoy,and Brendan O'Neil (drums) This lasted for ten years until 1991, when McAvoy left. The final lineup (until Rory's death) was Rory, David Levy (bass), Jim Levaton (keyboards), John Cooke (keyboards), Richard Newman (drums), and regular guest: Mark Feltham (harmonica).).
After leaving Rory, both O'Neill and McAvoy went on to play with Nine Below Zero.
Rory had another close encounter with yet another rock legend, which happened after a gig in The Shrine Auditorium in LA in late 1978. Gallagher had played a stormer of a show and the capacity crowd had loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, the jet lag and the general rigours of touring were catching up with him and he was too exhausted for any post-show meeting and greeting. Conscious of this, Donal positioned himself outside Rory's dressing room and proceeded to turn all visitors away.
Most of the well-wishers understood the situation and left without any hassle but there was one strange-looking guy with straggly hair and a scarf around his face who wanted to talk to Rory and just wouldn't take no for an answer. When he became too insistent, Donal started to get more forceful and told him in no uncertain terms that Rory wanted to be left alone.
Eventually, this over zealous fan relented and turned to leave but not before telling Donal that he was a musician himself and that he was impressed with Donal's reslove and dedication to `looking after the man'. It was several minutes later that somebody pointed out to Donal that the person he had just chased away was actually Bob Dylan.
"This threw poor old Donal into a panic `cause he knew I was a huge Dylan fan." laughs Rory. "So he ran out after him and looked everywhere for this fella with the scarf. Eventually he found him and put out his hand to shake Dylan's hand. Then, he literally grabbed him and dragged him back to the dressing room. Dylan was very nice. He said he liked the show and all the rest and we talked a bit about the blues and that. I'm usually not starstruck by any of these people but it really was great to meet Dylan. He's one of my all-time heroes.
During '78, Rory was invited to guest on yet another album by another artist, this time fellow Irishman, Van Morrison on his "Wavelengths" album
A date was arranged, studio space was booked and Rory turned up at the appointed place and time, rarin' to go. Unfortunately, Van proved only too true to type and lived up to his reputation for being, shall we say, unpredictable. While Gallagher and the other session musicians waited around the studio and played pool to pass the time, Van flitted nervously about the premises for awhile and then disappeared altogether. As evening and then night arrived, he was still totally unlocatable and the session was eventually aborted in the early hours of the morning.
Rory:
"We won't go into all that, let's just say I was kept waiting so I left. We're still relatively good friends and we get on well when we meet. He's older than me, not that that matters, but if we do work together, it can't be under Van's conditions all the time. I've always been very proud that if someone books me and expects certain things, I turn up on time and give then what they want. It's a principle. I'd love to have done the "Wavelengths" tracks `cause Dr. John was producing and it could've been very good. But Van and me, it's like the meeting of the waters, we'll have to work together sometime. Maybe if he reads this we can get together soon. But it can't be just on Van's terms."
After the Photo-Finish World Tour,Rory returned to Dierks' Studios in 1979, to record "Top Priority". One of the gigs during that year was to become the first concert ever performed at the famous Birmingham
NEC venue.
The album was released and followed up with an extensive touring schedule which produced, in 1980, the landmark live album "Stage Struck".
Rory's final album for Chrysalis, "Jinx" came out in 1982, and Rory then disappeared from the recording studio for five long years. In 1985, Rory started his own label and publishing company, which he called "Capo". He then cut an album called "Torch", but having completed it decided against releasing it and binned it !!This resulted in his first album on the label, "Defender" which he released in 1987. However, due to various complications with distribution, the album never really saw the light of day in the US - it was, however, a strong performer for Rory, in Europe, going straight to number 1 on the UK Independent chart.
"More and more time was spent in the studio, refining, refining, refining. He'd start an album with great gusto in the first couple of days - pure adrenaline, excitement. Your body can only take so much of that, so in effect. by the end of the first week he would be so adrenalised and exhausted that he'd start listening to playbacks that would sound speeded up to him. A lot of the troubles were of his own making"...Donal Gallagher
"The first album was Defender...he spent months and months and months on that because then he had the luxury of his own budget. I must say that in the UK, "Defender" came out, it was straight to the top of the Independents charts. The next album, "Fresh Evidence" again was a long time in the studio. Very much if you listen to the end of these albums he's wearing his heart on his sleeve - you can hear a lot and it could be quite disturbing - there's so much, kind of, questioning of how fragile life is - y'know you listen to "I ain't no Saint", "Heavens Gate", "The Devil made me do it", "Ghost Blues"..Donal Gallagher
The US had to wait another three years before Rory appeared again, this time on (unknown to us all) his last studio album "Fresh Evidence".
Rory's real backyard was always playing concerts around Europe, but he did occasionally play tours in the US, his last two being in 1985 (when he also toured the Eastern Bloc), and then again in 1991.
In 1989, Rory appeared a guest guitarist on Davy Spillane's "Out of the Air" album, and also on "The Scattering" by The Fureys and Davey Arthur.
In the early nineties, Rory was even approached by Alan Parker when he was casting members of the band for his film of "The Commitments".
The gigs continued, with 1993 opeining with Rory's latest (and last) touring band lineup.
Rory's last recordings were two tracks ("Leaving Town Blues" and "Showbiz Blues") on the album "Rattlesnake Guitar - The music of Peter Green". Peter Green himself said that his favourite parts of that album were those that Rory played on. After Rory's death, the album was released, and dedicated to him.
For most of his thirty year career, Rory was based in London, but he often seemed so very homesick, and yet he never actually managed to move back to Ireland
During the recording of a track for a Dubliners album, Rory recalled
I loved meeting Ronnie and the lads again," he says. I've always had a soft spot for The Dubliners since I first met them in the sixties. We were playing a show with Dickie Rock and The Miami Showband in the Savoy in Cork. And because we were way down the bill, we weren't even allowed to change in the dressing room. So we were out in the hall changing when Ronnie opened the door - The Dubliners were second on the bill so they had a room to themselves - and he said come on in and use our room with us. Luke was there and Ciaran Burke and all the rest and they were very nice. It was a small gesture but I'll never forget it. So I loved meeting them and playing with them again this week. And they're still nice lads. Ronnie gave me a present of a book of little short stories, "The Irish Bedside Book" it's called. And all of this has made me feel really homesick.
I'd love to go back and live there if I could get myself together," he adds. If I can get organised enough to get out of here, I will be back. I'm constantly thinking mentally of Ireland. I listen to RTE radio most nights on my little gadget, a drum machine cum radio cassette that I take everywhere. In Europe you can pick up RTE as far south as Munich. I was in Paris one night during the last general election and it was great to be able to pick up John Bowman doing his broadcasting. Like I say, I get the Irish papers, especially the Sundays - tell Liam Mackey. I read his soccer column in the Sunday Press and I don't agree with him. (laughs).
"I also try to keep up with Irish albums. I just got Sharon Shannon's and Maire Ní Braonain's new albums and I'm looking forward to them. All that stuff is very important to me. I'd really love to go back. It could be good for me. I have one or two friends in Ireland and I'd like to get up to Donegal as well and get me old mind sorted out. It's probably what I really need right now.
"Donal was very aware of it (Rorys poor health) and was doing his best to sort it out y'know, but Rory was his own man...he was a very headstrong human being. Just like anything, if your trying to tell someone something that's not good for them, sometimes it can be seen as a threat. Because sometimes Rory wouldn't listen, I mean even to Donal and it made me angry..because I could see Donal trying his hardest. I remember seeing Donal nearly in tears some nights from trying to rectify the situation - it just makes you feel destitute and lost"...Gerry McAvoy
"Personally, I have a huge and terrible distain for some private doctors who possibly didn't understand Rory as a patient...who introduced Rory to medications he should never have been allowed....Rory from a kid was, I wouldn't say he was a hypochondriac but he'd a tendency to that...we had a couple of terrible flights...so what were perceived to be simple medications that would help him fly, get a nights sleep or whatever, were substituted for other medications - a lot of these medications were addictive, had terrible side effects, and of course any medication with alcohol will have unknown consequences....Then we could see that the medication had a far more dulling effect on his personality. In fact, it made him more reclusive, which wasn't a great thing for Rory. He was a reclusive person, very private person and the bit of getting Rory out into a larger environment was necessary to get him from completely retiring into himself. I feel very betrayed by some of the doctors who I had gone to, behind Rory's back, to say "For God's sake, please ...you don't have to deal with this patient".....Donal Gallagher
"He'd been out of commission for a while, and he was going back on the road and I got a whisper from a friend of mine called Nick Flynn, whose a songwriter, saying "Look, Rory's very very nervous". I was on the road in Scotland at the time , and I understood it perfectly - well, I understood a BIT of it - because I'd been off the road at one point for about seven months as a soloist and then gone and done a 10 day tour on my own in Belgium and nearly fell to bits about 15 times on the first gig, so he was scared at the prospect. For about a week, I would just go into a station. cos I travel on trains, I would go into a station somewhere in Scotland and buy a phonecard - I'd deliberately get there about 45 minutes beforehand - I'd just pick up the phone and talk to Rory. I couldn't tell Rory what to do, except to say to him "You can do this, you've done it before. You've got the wherewithal, you're a great player, you're a great singer - what do musicians do? Musicians make music, so stand up and make music. When I got home I found out that he'd had an absolute blast of a time, because people showed up because they loved him, they wanted to see him. They didn't care if he made a mistake every now and again. They wanted - they willed him - to give it his best and that's exactly what he did"...Martin Carthy
Rory continued to play very regularly, (including the 1993 Jazz Festival in the town he was brought up in, Cork) particularly through Europe. In '94, he appeared on the TV show Rock'n The North. He also played at the Templebar Blues Festival in Dublin to 50,000 people. In late 1994, on tour in Holland, he fell seriously ill. At one of his final shows, a clearly ill Rory (who was now suffering badly from his drinking habits combined with the medication he was on) was horribly abused by a very unpleasant audience, who shouted abuse at him for his declining abilities and even threw things at him. Rory never played in Britain again after this.
For six months, Rory waited for a liver transplant, and his prayers were answered when a donor became available. Unfortunately things went badly wrong, and on June 14 1995, Rory Gallagher passed away at
Kings College Hospital, London.
"It was gone past the eleventh hour, and I went in on the Saturday and was approached by a transplant team at 2 o'clock and said "I think he'll require a liver transplant". He recovered rather quickly. He was out of intensive care after a few days actually - has was doing very well and ....was at a point where I was told y'know can you arrange to...he can leave this hospital and go to convalesce. The day I was to collect him, they said "We're going to keep him another day or two, he's got a bit of a temperature, he's picked up a bit of a bug and we'd sooner get him well ,,,and he deteriorated from there, was in a coma and died, and just ... just didn't come out of it"...Donal Gallagher
Rory died without ever having married or had children.
Rory went home to Cork to be buried, and fifteen thousand of his adoring fans lined the streets as his body was carried to the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit. Three days later, a requiem mass was held in Cork and Rory, after leaving the church to his song "A Million Miles Away", was finally laid to rest in St. Oliver's Cemetery.
"When he died, I mean it was a terrible, terrible thing you know, the way he did and I was honoured because his brother Donal, as the coffin was leaving the church, he asked me to help carry the coffin. I felt a little bit embarrassed because there were all these jazz men there and all these blues guys there, but then I said "Well no, I'm honoured to do it and I'm very gratified to be asked" because I felt so respectful and so much friendship towards Rory"......Ronnie Drew
" Always the same guy, never became starry. Only had an ambition to play - the purest kind of musician he was. And I don't know if this sounds trite or corny or whatever but its the absolute truth - I never met anybody like him - never. He taught me humility and dedication and I supposed reinforced my belief that this really was a proper job"....Brian May
"For me it's just that little private thing that I know that I spent that time with Rory, and it was a great thing for me musically. Just the fact that me and Charlie and Rory got to play music together for what, two or three years nearly every night of the week is just something else"....John Wilson
"He's a really graceful man, and wide open to music - he just wanted to hear everything, he just wanted to hear music. The word I used then was "Grace" and I'll stick by that word "....Martin Carthy
"What he stood for was integrity, it ran through everything he did. Integrity and following your music".....Johnny Marr
"He was a very private man. Very focussed on his music, I mean that was first and foremost in his mind - his music came before anything, whether its romance, whether its this, whether its that .... whether he missed the boat as far as that's concerned because he was focussed so much on his music I'm not here to judge".....Gerry McAvoy
"There was a romance about everything he did. Music and the life of a musician was his salvation. What it was his salvation from, you never really got to the bottom of. ".....Johnny Marr
"It really was an enveloping sound, a bit like Jimi Hendrix live to me. But the legacy is the spirit...and it's in us all. It's a great river that flows and I'm very proud that I'm in that river and I've been able to put my bits in it".....Brian May
A very special headstone was designed for Rory's grave, the right hand 'finger' of the monument is made to the scale of a Stratocaster neck, and has correctly scaled frets along its inside edge.
Rory is remembered primarily as an ace picker, but don't forget that he also could sing so very well, and played mandolin, saxophone and blew harp with some flair as well.
From 1996 to 1998 Carlsberg beers, (a franchise of Guinness Brewers), sponsored "The Bowling Green Festival", a June Weekend blues festival based around a number of Southside Cork taverns, honouring Rory's memory. The driving force behind this was Mick Healy, of "Mojo's Blues Bar". With his retirement the event has been discontinued. Rory has a large fan base, especially amongst his contemporaries; Slash, Gary Moore, Brian May, Johnny Marr, Martin Carthy, Ronnie Drew, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, ZZ Top, U2, Judas Priest Guitarists K.K. Downing and Glen Tipton and Ace Frehley of Kiss are all Rory fans.
1996 saw the introduction of the Rory Gallagher Rock Musician Award - it's first recipient was U2's The Edge. The award continues to be presented in Rory's name to this day.
In 1999, Ballyshannon County Council decided to mark Rory's birthplace in County Donegal with a commemorative plaque. The plaque was officially unveiled in 2000.
In 2002, Rory was awarded the rare honour of being featured on an Irish postage stamp.
Rory products have continued to appear since his death, with the latest being his acoustic "Wheels within Wheels" album featuring a host of guests like Ronnie Drew and The Dubliners.
Rory Gallagher toured the British Isles and Europe incessantly, playing sometimes over 300 shows per year, a stressful feat that cost him many a band member. He annually made his way through small farm communities in Ireland performing Christmas shows, that are now considered legendary.
Even though he is no longer with us, Rory Gallagher's legacy remains through his formidable recorded output. Rory also left his mark in other ways, such as being a founder of "The Registry of Electric Guitar Tutors" along with Squeeze member Glenn Tilbrook, and Shadows legend Hank Marvin. This establishment has helped serious students of the guitar to gain the first ever fully accredited qualifications on the electric instrument. It was a development which Rory was very proud to be associated with.
"The blues is bad for your health," he says with a shrug. "It's as simple as that. Look at the list, Jimmy Reed was epileptic, Howlin' Wolf ended up on a kidney machine, most of all the other big names were alcoholics. Muddy Waters was one of the few guys that got that under control. People like Skip James never could. And when Howlin' was on dialysis and he stopped drinking, it affected his performance, strangely enough. So drink and the blues are closely linked, one feed off the other. It goes with the territory." ..........Rory Gallagher
Both links given in the post are dead.
#11178 – June 8, 2005
Rory Gallagher
www.kieran.keegan.btinternet.co.uk/Rory/rory_tributes.htm
"He was such a gracious man, I'm sure everybody tells you this. The most gentlemanly person you could ever meet in this business - or any other business probably. Such a sweet guy y'know, such a completely gentle and generous person with his time and everything. So this couple of kids come up, whose me and my mate and say y'know "How do you get your sound Mr Gallagher" and he sits and tells us - he says "Well mainly its this little box here - this little Rangemaster treble booster. And I just plug my guitar in here and the treblebooster goes into the amp and thats me sound." So I ran straight out and got myself a Rangemaster and a couple of AC30's, second hand of course, all beaten up but they worked. And from that moment on, I had the sound that i wanted. I didnt have his guitar, I'd already made my own guitar. But my guitar just seemed to work perfectly in this setup - so I owe Rory my sound" - Brian May
"Rory had this Celtic approach, which is very similar to mine y'know, where your playing blues but there is always that real, sort of, edge of, in his case, the Irish feeling.....Scottish folk music and Irish folk music obviously are very close - a lot of it's on the Pentatonic scale. A lot of the rhythm's - usually starts off with an eight kind of a feel and suddenly change in the middle and speed up and go into this twelve feel which is very close, the rhythmic feel is very close to a kind of shuffle. It always amazes me when people, sort of, think "Well, if your white and you come from Ireland, you come from Cork in particular, or you come from Glasgow that you can't have that feeling and express that. You can, it's as simple as that. If your just living the music, you can do it. He certainly could do it. He embodied honesty in the music business in the way of playing music and in his life, I think he lived the music and maybe he lived it a little bit too hard, as some of us have been guilty of. But that was because...of the Celtic spirit"......Jack Bruce
" I met him at a gig at a college somewhere. I knew who he was obviously, and he just came straight up. It occurred to me later that he's just that kind of a bloke, he just walks up to somebody and starts talking to them. And he walked up and he gave me a lecture about playing the guitar in other than normal tuning (laughs), and we had a really nice chat. He wasn't offensive at all, he just spoke his mind. Five years later I saw him and he was enthusing about playing guitar in other than normal tuning" ....Martin Carthy
"I remember him coming to a gig at the Troubadour - came to a couple of gigs. He got so excited that he got thrown out (laughs) and he was furious "Oh bugger them blasters, they threw me out I was just having a good time. I was yelling and shouting and they said "Shut up or get out" and they threw him out. But he was just an enthusiast basically about music and he responded to music, and he made people respond".....Martin Carthy
"I'd a lot of old recordings here of Maggie Barry who was a street singer and Joe Heaney, his Irish name was Seosamh O hEanai.....and I used to send Rory tapes of these people, because he was very interested in hearing, y'know, where he came from - which showed that he wasn't just a fella out to get a bit of fame for himself, he didn't play his music to be put on a pedestal. He played it because thats what he wanted to do, and as i said earlier on, followed his talent" ....Ronnie Drew
"About 1975 or 1976, I was about 13 or 14 and occasionally I would come across these records by this enigmatic, mysterious guy. So one time I shelled out 2 pounds 50 or whatever it was for a Polydor sampler and I never looked back really, my world was pretty much sorted out for the next few years because then i had kind of found my man really. He appeared to be like his audience - a lot of people have his idea that he had no image, when in fact he had a really, really strong image - he seemed very street. Seeing him live was quite an eye-opener, particularly if you were very young because it was bordering on terrifying in its intensity. He was a very beautiful man and a lovely gentle presence but when he plugged in and started playing he got this kind of bug-eyed stare going and occasionally if he looked down and I was in the audience half of me wanted him to clock me and the other half was thinking "Oh no, don't" because he was on fire - he was right in the moment., and was the centre of about 2,000 people. As soon as I could, I got the money together to get "Deuce" and that was the first proper, real album that I got and started to try and play along with it. One day I pulled a sicky off school and spent the whole day playing along with that record and it really moved me on as a guitar player massively" ......Johnny Marr
"Here was a man who managed to combine the gift of being an authentic creative genius with the even rarer gift of being a genuinely decent, honourable human being." Hotpress, July 95
"He had this amazing capacity to create riffs and i love those riffs. I am holding it in my hand now, Tastes "On the Boards", "Morning Sun" you know thats a great riff and its very influential on me. You know, if you look at "Tie Your Mother Down", the riff on that is not so dissimilar from "Morning Sun". I'd be the first to acknowledge a huge debt to the man. I wish he here to say that to, I really, really, wish he was here" .....Brian May
"an uncompromisingly serious musician" - The Times
"Rory said to me one time he had a song which he'd like me to sing and its called "The Barley and the Grape Rag", and I was delighted. Rory was doing a concert for the city in Dublin and there were a lot of people there, like maybe 10,000 people and he was such a gentle and quiet man offstage, that when he got onstage it was a revelation to see the metamorphosis if you like, he turned into this aarrrrghhhh!!!!! He said to me, would I sing the song with him, so I was thrilled of course. It was one of the highlights of my life, and I'm a little bit proud too that I sang with Rory Gallagher (laughs)"...Ronnie Drew
"The first Irish rock'n'roller and a unique blues guitar voice rolled into one. Missed by everyone" The Guitar Magazine, August 1995
" Without a Shadow of a doubt, the person who inspired me to become a musician, and who I thought was unbelieveable and magical was Rory Gallagher" - Glen Tipton "I met him again in the early nineties, and that was when I was with BBM with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker and we were in the Conrad Hotel in London. Rory was living there at the time, and I walked into the bar one day after rehearsals or something and there was Rory sat at the bar there..one drink lead to another and we ended up up in his room that night. He had all his guitars up there, he's turned kind of turned it into a little music room and he was showing me his guitars and I was playing him little bits bit I was quite shy to play in front of him and he was going "Now don't be shy, don't be shy" in the way he used to have that real friendly thing and that old kind-of wise look he would give you "Don't be shy now" so I just played him a little bit. and I played him some of the BBM album ...and he said "I'm very jealous you know" and I said why, 'cos he - the fact that I was playing with Jack and Ginger, he was enjoying it and he was saying to me "Ah yeah, you're playing with a lot of space, I like to see that" cos I think he thought I used to overplay - which is absolutely correct!! He was kind of sitting there listening to the music and we ordered some drinks and some sandwiches and he was just telling about a lot of his personal things which I won't go into here, but it was a lovely night. I was really, really glad that we had that little night together y'know because I never saw him again after that, and we just hugged each other at the end and told each other that we loved each other and kind of went our seperate ways...I only ever spoke to him once again after that, on the phone"........Gary Moore
"I was Influenced by the playing of Rory Gallagher and used to listen to him so much that I ended up playing just his licks for awhile!!!" -KK Downing
"Rory Gallagher is the first person I saw who really exploited the harmonic thing. I couldn't understand how he did it when I used to watch him" - Glen Tipton
"He (Rory) was a great man in many ways. I never met him though. You know, some people don't become HUGE because they are too SMART! They hold back a little so they can remain true to themselves, Maybe Rory was like that?" - Pete Townshend
"Rory Gallagher he was a great player. I've seen him perform several times he just used to use a little Fender amp and that beat-up old Strat, but boy, he could make that guitar talk... He was another guitar player who never got the credit he deserved, it's incredible. He either had a bad publicist, or I don't know." - Ace Frehley
"There is a saying in Ireland: First there was Jesus, and then there was Rory." Phil McDonnell - Rory's road manager
www.kieran.keegan.btinternet.co.uk/Rory/rory_gallagher_biography.htm
Rory Gallagher Biography
"He suffered a lot. His health was bad. He had a problem with drink. His relationships with women were all messed up because of his work. And he got a lot of hassle from the authorities and the establishment. But still, he stayed true to what he wanted to do and he laid down the definitive rules for what's become known as the hard-boiled school of writing."
This quote is actually not about Rory - it's a quote by Rory on one of his favourites, Dashiell Hammett.
Rory was one of the world's finest bluesmen, but was also one of the people. Many musicians would have no hesitation in bragging that they had sold 30 million albums in their career. Rory never did.
Rory Gallagher was, believe it or not, born LIAM Gallagher in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, Ireland on March 2 1948. (He jettisoned the name in favour of Rory, because, as he said
"There was no saint Rory and I liked the idea of not having a saint's name. Anyway, I think my mother preferred `Rory' to `Liam' "
Their were four in the family; mom, dad, Rory, and younger brother Donal (who became Rory's manager)
The Gallagher family stayed in Donegal until 1949, when they moved into Northern Ireland, to Derry. The family remained there until 1956 when they moved as far south as they could, to Cork. The Gallagher's moved into their new home on MacCurtain Hill on the northside of Cork city. Rory spent his school years in the city too; first at Saint Kieran's on Pope's Quay, and then after that at the North Mon
(Monastery).
Rory's musical birth came when he, like so many other musicians, first saw Elvis Presley on TV.
At the age of nine, Rory got his first guitar (an acoustic) and began learning to play. Around this time, an interest in blues music started to form (Rorys influences included including Leadbelly, Buddy Guy, Freddie King, Albert King, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker.) This interest came because the Gallagher's had no record player, forcing Rory to scour the wavlenghts with his radio;
"We didn't have a record player when I was growing up," he recalls. "So I spent a lot of time tuning into Radio Luxembourg, BBC and the AFN (Armed Forces Network) from Germany. The first electric blues I heard was Muddy Waters on AFN. It was very late one night and it came across real clear. He was playing a slide Telecaster and that really hit me. So the following weekend, I went into the library in Cork and I got books out on the origins of blues. Then I started getting into Lonnie Donnegan and Ledbelly and Big Bill Broonzy. And then Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and all the rock `n' rollers. The more I heard the more I got addicted.
Soon after this, by the age of twelve, Rory was competent enough to enter and win a local talent contest in Cork City Hall. Inspired, Rory got his first electric guitar. Within a year, Rory was picking guitar in his first band.
1963 was a landmark year for Rory, as he discovered the instrument that would become his trademark for the rest of his life, a 1961 sunburst Fender Strat. (serial no 64351) he bought it second hand for £100 from Crowley's Music Centre, (then Merchant's Quay, but mow on MacCurtain Street) in Cork. It is often said to have been the first Strat in Ireland.
Rory was very attached to this particular instrument, especially as in 1963 it was stolen from him.
"It was the first Stratocaster in Ireland apparently.....for weeks, every morning I'd go over and look at the guitar in the case and treat it like a living being y'know, or some kind of magical thing and even the smell of the case - I mean, I was really standing on my head at that time." ...Rory Gallagher
"We got a call from the showband in Waterford that had bought this guitar, to say that they were changing their uniform in the band and that the manager had suggested that they change the colour of the guitars as well - to a salmon pink colour instead of the sunburst colour that they had. And when that arrived they trading in this particular Stratocaster".....Michael Crowley, Crowleys Music Centre.
" I did actually have the Stratocaster stolen in Dublin in the sixties, and I got it back after two weeks - it was thrown over a ditch, with a few extra scratches from the brambles and things so when I got it back - it had been out in the rain as well - so I mean, I swore I'd never sell it or paint it after that"...Rory Gallagher
As we all know, over the years almost all of the varnish disappeared from the guitar - some of this down to Rory's profuse sweating which stripped much of the finish from the instrument.
1964 saw a very important event in young Rory's life - he saw the Rolling Stones live whilst in London.
When Rory was 16, he joined the Fontana Showband, which later changed it's name to The Impact. In 1965, with Impact, Rory made his first ever TV appearance, performing Larry Williams classic r&b track "Slow Down" on the RTE show "Pickin' The Pops" They played in Britain as the Fontana, and then (after the name change) got a gig at a US airforce base near Madrid. They then returned to Britain for more gigs, as well as shows in Hamburg prior to the band splitting in 1965. At this point Rory wasn't playing blues to an audience - the Fontana mainly drew inspiration from Chuck Berry styled rock and roll.
Mick Moriarty (The Baldy Barber) from Cork's northside remembered;
"He was instantly recognisable, with his long flowing locks, walking across Patrick's Bridge with his guitar. At that time he was playing in the evenings after school"
The end of The Impact left Rory without a band to play in, so he formed a trio in 1966 with Eric Kitteringham (bass) and Norman Damery (drums). The called themselves "Taste". They were to be Rory's first experience of fame. Taste played gigs all over Ireland (as well as in Germany) and secured residencies at both the Maritime Hotel R&B Club in Belfast, and the Marquee Club, Wardour Street, London.
Rory's pals travelled to see him at one of his London gigs, and the MC introduced him as Rory Galla-g-her' ¬ with a hard `g' sound, `From Belfast!" ¬ And Rory's pals yelled back `Galla-h-er, from Cork!'
One night the band held a poll during a gig in Cork City Hall and asked their fan's to vote on which of four songs they should release as their first single. `Blister On The Moon' won, and was eventually being released on the 'Major-Minor' label, with `Born On The Wrong Side Of Time' the `B' side.
Taste evolved as time went on, and personnel changes saw Kitteringham and Damery leave the band, to be replaced by Richard McCracken (bass) and John Wilson (formerly of Van Morrison' band "Them") (drums). This was almost forced on the band, as a contract with Polydor was dependent on this happening. In 1968, the band set themselves up permanently in London.
During these days, Rory gained the nickname "Yakety Sax"due to his sax playing during the Taste era.
The group's self-titled debut album was released in 1969 in England and later picked up for U.S. distribution by Atco/Atlantic, produced (as the subsequent"Taste" albums were) by Tony Colton
1969 brought the biggest gig of Rory's career so far, when Taste toured North America with the Eric Clapton - Steve Winwood - Ginger Baker supergroup "Blind Faith". The band continued to tour Europe through 1970, appearing at the legendary 1970 Isle of Wight festival. Taste's final gig happened not long after, in Belfast on New Years Eve 1970, before Rory left for a solo career.
Rory remained very reluctant, throughout his career, to discuss what happened to Taste, but he did make this remark in an interview some years back; "Yeah, I feel very angry about all of that," he says. "I don't like to think about it that often because it upsets me. I always believe that what I do should be outlaw music. My attitude in a funny kind of way was always a punk attitude. I think all the best artists are outside of the system so I was never into being all wise and clued-up on the financial side of things. But I obviously ignored it too much and allowed people to rip me off. I don't want to get wound up about this. I don't hold grudges and some of the people involved are actually dead since (pause). But, contrary to popular opinion, I never made a penny out of The Taste. There's been legal things going on until this year so it has actually cost me money. The whole thing has made me very wary of music business people. I don't give a damn about the money. It's people who let you down that bothers me most."
From 1970 to 1972, Rory's trio went out under Rory's own name, and the rest of the group comprised of Belfast musician's Gerry McAvoy (bass) and Wilgar Campbell (drums). Rory was receiving more and more recognition. He began 1971, by appearing on the RTE TV show "Bringing it all back home" He was approached to join the Rolling Stones, and also played on both Muddy Waters "London Sessions" album, Jerry Lee Lewis' 1973 album "The Session",and Albert King's ""Live In Montreux" wih another blues legend, Louisiana Red. David Coverdale even wanted Rory to join "Deep Purple" when Ritchie Blackmore left to form Rainbow. (Later on, the "Deep Purple" connection re-appeared when Purple's bassist Roger Glover produced Rory's album "Calling Card")
Rory's 1970 debut album "Rory Gallagher" was picked up for U.S. distribution by Atlantic Records. Within twelve months, a second album "Deuce" appeared. This regularity was to become one of Rory's trademarks for years.
The "Rory Gallagher" album really kick started his solo career when it entered the UK chart at a highly respectable no. 32.
"I had a phone call from London, and it was Rory and he asked me to come over the next day just to have a jam session....so I went over and that was it! The first thing was the "Rory Gallagher" album, and that was finished and I went back to Belfast and didn't hear anything for about three weeks and then I got another phone call "Do you fancy coming around and doing some shows" .... Gerry McAvoy
"The troubles in the North of Ireland were still going on and no bands were travelling there whatsoever, y'know. And Rory decided to go over and do this Irish tour , which was very very dangerous. I remember at the Ulster Hall, the atmosphere - its heard to explain how electric that night was because the people were there, both sides of the community, there just to enjoy themselves and see this guy playing his music yknow, with a band. It was electronic. A couple of bombs went off in the city centre (laughing) but Rory wouldn't have stopped for anything" ....Gerry McAvoy
As always Rory performed loads of shows that year and every year
"We're doing twenty dates I think, in January and we go on to France for two or three weeks. After that we do Amsterdam, do a quick hop-scotch through Scandanavia, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm I think, and we have about a week off, and then we got to the States for four weeks and then we come back and do the British tour, back home for Christmas and do an Irish tour. Do the second half of the British tour in January and then make a record" .............Rory Gallagher
While on one of these tours, Rory first met one of his dearest friends, Dubliners legend Ronnie Drew
" I was in a hotel bar in Hamburg, and this younger man than me come up to me, and he'd long hair and he said "You're Ronnie Drew" and I said "Yeah, yeah, howya" and he said "How are you, what are you doing" and i said "I'm with The Dubliners, we're doing concerts over here and that". He had his trademark Lumberjack shirt and he thought he's probably over here working on maybe some building site or something y'know. I said "What are you doing over here" and he said "I'm doing some gigs as well". "Oh" I said, "Are you? What do you do?". "Sing and play like". I said "Whats your name?" and he says "Rory Gallagher". I grabbed my head and I was so mortified I wished I'd gone down under the ground because I couldn't believe it. So we spent the day together actually, we were both free that day and we were very free in more ways than one!! We were very free with our imbibing, so we got a good sup on board. The next morning I came down and there was a note for me from Rory saying "We had a great day and see you again".....Ronnie Drew
In 1972, Rory's "Live! In Europe" album went platinum, as well as becoming his second US chart album Rory was awarded the "Musician of the Year" award by the UK's Melody Maker magazine (outvoting both Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page in the process)
Rory always seemed to be surrounded by great anecdotes but surely one of the oddest was an early seventies gig in Europe, when he fell off the stage and the crowd erupted into cheering, thinking he'd done it deliberately!!!!
"On the left side of the stage, there was this big hollow pit which I didn't see," he recalls with a shiver. "It was obviously for lifting gear up and so on but I never even noticed it. I was just running across the stage when all of a sudden I began to feel myself falling. I put my hands out to stop myself and I grabbed on to this metal bar and was swinging from it like Tarzan. Of course my guitar started to feedback and, all of a sudden, I realised that the crowd were clapping. They were going wild. They loved it. And there I was, in serious danger of death! Eventually, after several minutes, I closed my eyes and swung up on the stage again. Immediately, I got another round of applause. So I ran across the stage again and played another couple of notes (laughs). I got great reviews, great praise for my `acrobatic' performance.
Another gig in Nottingham, England saw Rory's fanatical fans invade the stage during the gig. Rory's new bodyguard, Corkman Tom O'Driscoll waded in to clear the way - unfortunately one of the people he threw off the stage was his employer - guitar and all!!!
"That was a stage-dive and a half, I'll tell ya," says Rory. "It was one of Tom's first gigs with me and it was a real baptism of fire for him. The crowd was going bananas but I landed among them on my feet so I played a couple of bars and scrambled back onstage before anyone knew what happened. Strange to say, Tom O'Driscoll still works with me (laughs).
Again in Europe, was the time Rory and Co took their lives in their hands at a show in Athens;
"It was just after the Greek coup and they were having the first free elections they'd had for a while," he explains, "A short while into the show, I started to see all these flames, way at the back of the stadium. They were burning down restaurants and shops on the streets outside the gig. I think they wouldn't let enough people into the stadium or else they let too many in but, anyway, the police arrived and started to fire CS gas at us. It was the most frightening gig I've ever done. That CS gas is dangerous stuff. It messes up your eyes and you can't see where you're going or anything.
When we eventually got backstage, there was so much confusion that we couldn't be sure who was going to protect us and who might attack us. There were those semi-militia guys walking around and they looked very threatening. So we just jumped into a car and tried to head back to the hotel. Then, on the way, we ran out of petrol so we had to walk. And there was so much going on, it was a nightmare. We were soaking wet and our eyes were watering and we were all literally trembling. The gig itself had been great by the way. But it was very frightening. I just didn't want to die in a football pitch in Greece, not even knowing what was happening."
One of the event's in his career which gave him immense pleasure, was Rory's involvement on Muddy Water's London Sessions album;
""It was a real honour," he recalls with a smile. "The whole thing has stuck in my memory like a video. I can plug it in at any time and replay it in my head. I only wish I could do it again with my experience now because Muddy taught me an awful lot during those sessions and I came out a much better player than I went in.
"I used to have to play gigs in different parts of the country in the evenings and then, afterwards, I'd drive up to London for those recordings, and they'd hold up the sessions `till I arrived. So I'd finish in, say, Birmingham at 10.30 p.m. and then I'd jump in the car and drive like the devil to get there as soon as I could. Muddy'd give me a glass of red wine when I'd arrive and we'd start playing at midnight or 1 am which is my time of the day. Just watching him tuning his guitar or doing something like "Walkin' Blues" was wonderful for me. And the great thing about that album was that it wasn't just a token black `legend' with a load of Europeans. He had his own musicians as well. He had Carey Bell on harp and Sammie Lowe, lately deceased, God rest him, on guitar. They were magical nights.
"Muddy Waters had great strength of character," continues Rory. "He was always very polite but he could also be very powerful if he didn't like something. He could do it with the click of his fingers, without causing an argument or ruining the vibe. He'd just quietly say to the drummer `pick it up a wee bit there' and it happened.
"He had a lovely Buddha-like countenance, great authority. You knew he was in charge of things but you could also make suggestions to him. Georgie Fame suggested a few things and so did I and he always listened. This was the early seventies and he still had a few years to live but it was after the crash and his back was bad. He was often in great pain but he never got nasty. That wasn't his nature at all."
To this day, Rory has kept a special momento of those sessions.
"After the recordings, I drove him back to his hotel a few times," he explains. "I've kept that car ever since as a sort of shrine because Muddy sat in it. It's an old Ford Executive, a real Hawaii 5-0 car with stars and stripes down the side, and it's sitting at home in front of our house in Cork. It's falling apart at the seams but I refuse to scrap it or anything. I can still see Muddy in the front seat, smoking these cigars with a big plastic tip on them.
"I only wish I'd had a Super 8 camera to capture all that stuff. I know one of the guys from Chicago took some shots and I'd love to get them for my grandchildren, if I ever have grandchildren. It's a beautiful memory for me."
From 1972 - 1976, Rory's band changed personnel again. Out went Wilgar Campbell, with the band now comprising of Rory, Gerry McAvoy , Lou Martin (piano) and Rod De'Ath (drums)
1973 proved that Rory was truly a musician's musician. That year, Mick Taylor left the Rolling Stones and Rory was offered his place in the band. Although he did record with them for a couple of nights in Rotterdam, Holland, he declined the opportunity.
"Well it was before Ronnie Wood joined and they were auditioning lots of players. I did a little stint with them and I think Mick Jagger liked me and wanted me to join. But Keith was in a pretty bad way at that time so I wasn't sure if they were going to get it together at all. There was a lot of uncertainty. Then, I'd been booked to do some gigs in Japan so I headed off and that was the last I heard. It just wasn't to be I guess."
One of Rory's standout records was released in 1974 - "Irish Tour '74 was the soundtrack to the film of the same name by producer Tony Palmer. "Irish Tour '74" became Rory's most successful US album and
resulted in a mammoth tour to promote it, even taking in the Far East.
This tour was filled with great concerts, something which Rory always enjoyed reminiscing about
I've got so many favourite gigs," he enthuses. One of the best has to be a show we did in Belfast in 1973. It was at the height of the troubles and we just didn't now how it was going to go. There was a lot of trouble out on the streets but the atmosphere inside was electric, it was a real we-shall-overcome kinda night. With all due respect to audiences we've had in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway, there was something really special about the crowd in Belfast that night. A gig we did in Cork where we recorded most of the "Irish Tour" album in 1974 was fantastic too. I also remember Hamburg… I probably sound like Marlene Dietrich but there have been some really great moments. Great memories."
Rory's appearance on a double-album by Jerry Lee Lewis followed, as well as the Montreux album with Albert King, performances with jazz legend Chris Barber, and appearing again with Muddy Waters on his "London Revisisted" album.
Rory's memories of working with Jerry Lee had a completely different feel than his days recording with Muddy Waters;
"There was a strange sense of violence and madness around whenever Jerry Lee was in the room," he says. "Whenever anyone annoyed him, he'd immediately pull up his left trouser leg and go for his sock as if he had a gun in it. I never actually saw him with a gun in the studio but I'm sure if he'd had, he'd have shot somebody. There was always a borderline of danger about him which I think is necessary for real rock `n' roll."
Not long after the release of the album, Rory recalls being invited to play a US show with Jerry Lee. At the gig appeared John Lennon, which immediately upset Jerry Lee;
"Lennon was going through his LA phase at the time and his hair was really short but everyone still recognised him and they all turned around to look at him as he took his seat in the balcony," recalls Rory. "Needless to say, the fact that he was being upstaged drove Jerry Lee wild. He started to do the "Jerry Lee Rag" but everybody was still looking up at Lennon and whispering about him. All of a sudden, Jerry Lee stopped and started on about how The Beatles were shit and The Stones were shit and there ain't nobody could play real rock `n' roll the way Jerry Lee could. Lennon loved this. He had his boot up on the balcony and he started egging Jerry Lee on, shouting (adopts convincing Lennon voice) `yeah, you're right there man, The Beatles are shit!' People started laughing but Jerry Lee thought that Lennon was shouting abuse at him so he freaked out altogether. He just pushed the piano across the stage and stormed off."
Rory, being Rory, obviously had a back stage pass, and had decide that he wanted to go to Jerry Lee's dressing room and cheer him up - and yet, he was fully aware that Jerry was probably armed. Rory's manager (and brother) Donal, was pleading with him to stay away. Enter, at this delicate juncture, Tom O'Driscoll;
O'Driscoll is a brick-shithouse of a man from Schull, Co. Cork. A fisherman by trade, he has acted as Rory's unofficial bodyguard for almost two decades and still travels most places with him today. Donal Gallagher agreed that Rory could go backstage provided that O'Driscoll went with him. "I wasn't too afraid of Jerry Lee because I had worked on the sessions with him," says Rory. "But everybody else was obviously very scared because there was nobody else in the dressing room when Tom and I went in."
It took considerable diplomacy and tact on Gallagher's part but gradually he managed to coax Jerry Lee out of his sulk. "We actually got to the point where we were just chatting away, reminiscing about the sessions and that kind of thing." Rory recalls. "Then, all of a sudden, the door opened and in walked Lennon. There was dead silence for a couple of seconds. I just stared at Jerry Lee to see how he was going to react. But Tom O'Driscoll couldn't resist this opportunity. He was a huge Beatles fan and he just went over to Lennon, dropped down on his knees, kissed his hand and said `I've been waiting twenty years to get the autograph of the king of rock `n' roll'!
"Of course, this drove Jerry Lee completely wild. He went for his sock, thinking that he had a gun in it and then he started looking around for something to throw or break. Lennon could see all this so he quickly signed Tom's piece of paper and then, to diffuse the situation, he took the pen and another piece of paper from Tom and went across the room to Jerry Lee. He did exactly what Tom had done to him. He went down on his knees, kissed Jerry Lee's hand and said `I've been waiting twenty years to get the autograph of the real king of rock `n' roll'. Jerry Lee was delighted. He signed the scrap of paper and they started talking then and everything was fine. It was a wonderful moment."
Once Rory';s contract with Polydor expired in 1975, he signed with Chrysalis and released "Against The Grain". This resulted in a successful World Tour, and his headlining the Reading Festival that year (Rory appeared at the Reading Festival more times than any other artist).
Although undoubtedly a star, Rory never lost his "one of the people" persona. A shop assistant, Dolores Quinlan remembered
"We would see him going upstairs to the record department where Sheila MacCurtain worked. We would know through eye-contact where he was going. We'd make excuses to go there, then follow him downstairs when he went to get his New Musical Express magazine. He always had the correct money, so we never had to give him change. We'd all be giggling to each other, but he was oblivious to all this. I never tried to strike up a conversation with him, although he was unfailingly polite and friendly. We even knew that he went to 6.30 Sunday evening Mass at Saint Augustine's on Grand Parade with his mother, so we'd go there too."
1976 saw a new first for Rory when he became the first artist to perform on a Eurovision television transmission to over one hundred million people. He also toured the US again, for the tenth time.
In 1976, both Lou Martin and Rod De'Ath left Rory's employ, with Ted McKenna coming in as drummer. The same year, Gallagher recorded "Calling Card" at Musicland Studios in Munich, with Roger Glover producing. He also became the first artist ever to appear on legendary German music show Rockpalast.
1977 had Rory appearing on the comeback album by his hero, Skiffle legend Lonnie Donegan.
In 1978, Gallagher disbanded his then current four piece band and pared his sound back to a threepiece to record the hard driving "Photo-Finish" album, with Iong time bassist Gerry McAvoy and former Sensational Alex Harvey drummer, Ted McKenna in support. They cut the record at Dieter Dierks' studios in Cologne.(This lineup lasted until 1981, when it changed again, this time to Rory, Gerry McAvoy,and Brendan O'Neil (drums) This lasted for ten years until 1991, when McAvoy left. The final lineup (until Rory's death) was Rory, David Levy (bass), Jim Levaton (keyboards), John Cooke (keyboards), Richard Newman (drums), and regular guest: Mark Feltham (harmonica).).
After leaving Rory, both O'Neill and McAvoy went on to play with Nine Below Zero.
Rory had another close encounter with yet another rock legend, which happened after a gig in The Shrine Auditorium in LA in late 1978. Gallagher had played a stormer of a show and the capacity crowd had loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, the jet lag and the general rigours of touring were catching up with him and he was too exhausted for any post-show meeting and greeting. Conscious of this, Donal positioned himself outside Rory's dressing room and proceeded to turn all visitors away.
Most of the well-wishers understood the situation and left without any hassle but there was one strange-looking guy with straggly hair and a scarf around his face who wanted to talk to Rory and just wouldn't take no for an answer. When he became too insistent, Donal started to get more forceful and told him in no uncertain terms that Rory wanted to be left alone.
Eventually, this over zealous fan relented and turned to leave but not before telling Donal that he was a musician himself and that he was impressed with Donal's reslove and dedication to `looking after the man'. It was several minutes later that somebody pointed out to Donal that the person he had just chased away was actually Bob Dylan.
"This threw poor old Donal into a panic `cause he knew I was a huge Dylan fan." laughs Rory. "So he ran out after him and looked everywhere for this fella with the scarf. Eventually he found him and put out his hand to shake Dylan's hand. Then, he literally grabbed him and dragged him back to the dressing room. Dylan was very nice. He said he liked the show and all the rest and we talked a bit about the blues and that. I'm usually not starstruck by any of these people but it really was great to meet Dylan. He's one of my all-time heroes.
During '78, Rory was invited to guest on yet another album by another artist, this time fellow Irishman, Van Morrison on his "Wavelengths" album
A date was arranged, studio space was booked and Rory turned up at the appointed place and time, rarin' to go. Unfortunately, Van proved only too true to type and lived up to his reputation for being, shall we say, unpredictable. While Gallagher and the other session musicians waited around the studio and played pool to pass the time, Van flitted nervously about the premises for awhile and then disappeared altogether. As evening and then night arrived, he was still totally unlocatable and the session was eventually aborted in the early hours of the morning.
Rory:
"We won't go into all that, let's just say I was kept waiting so I left. We're still relatively good friends and we get on well when we meet. He's older than me, not that that matters, but if we do work together, it can't be under Van's conditions all the time. I've always been very proud that if someone books me and expects certain things, I turn up on time and give then what they want. It's a principle. I'd love to have done the "Wavelengths" tracks `cause Dr. John was producing and it could've been very good. But Van and me, it's like the meeting of the waters, we'll have to work together sometime. Maybe if he reads this we can get together soon. But it can't be just on Van's terms."
After the Photo-Finish World Tour,Rory returned to Dierks' Studios in 1979, to record "Top Priority". One of the gigs during that year was to become the first concert ever performed at the famous Birmingham
NEC venue.
The album was released and followed up with an extensive touring schedule which produced, in 1980, the landmark live album "Stage Struck".
Rory's final album for Chrysalis, "Jinx" came out in 1982, and Rory then disappeared from the recording studio for five long years. In 1985, Rory started his own label and publishing company, which he called "Capo". He then cut an album called "Torch", but having completed it decided against releasing it and binned it !!This resulted in his first album on the label, "Defender" which he released in 1987. However, due to various complications with distribution, the album never really saw the light of day in the US - it was, however, a strong performer for Rory, in Europe, going straight to number 1 on the UK Independent chart.
"More and more time was spent in the studio, refining, refining, refining. He'd start an album with great gusto in the first couple of days - pure adrenaline, excitement. Your body can only take so much of that, so in effect. by the end of the first week he would be so adrenalised and exhausted that he'd start listening to playbacks that would sound speeded up to him. A lot of the troubles were of his own making"...Donal Gallagher
"The first album was Defender...he spent months and months and months on that because then he had the luxury of his own budget. I must say that in the UK, "Defender" came out, it was straight to the top of the Independents charts. The next album, "Fresh Evidence" again was a long time in the studio. Very much if you listen to the end of these albums he's wearing his heart on his sleeve - you can hear a lot and it could be quite disturbing - there's so much, kind of, questioning of how fragile life is - y'know you listen to "I ain't no Saint", "Heavens Gate", "The Devil made me do it", "Ghost Blues"..Donal Gallagher
The US had to wait another three years before Rory appeared again, this time on (unknown to us all) his last studio album "Fresh Evidence".
Rory's real backyard was always playing concerts around Europe, but he did occasionally play tours in the US, his last two being in 1985 (when he also toured the Eastern Bloc), and then again in 1991.
In 1989, Rory appeared a guest guitarist on Davy Spillane's "Out of the Air" album, and also on "The Scattering" by The Fureys and Davey Arthur.
In the early nineties, Rory was even approached by Alan Parker when he was casting members of the band for his film of "The Commitments".
The gigs continued, with 1993 opeining with Rory's latest (and last) touring band lineup.
Rory's last recordings were two tracks ("Leaving Town Blues" and "Showbiz Blues") on the album "Rattlesnake Guitar - The music of Peter Green". Peter Green himself said that his favourite parts of that album were those that Rory played on. After Rory's death, the album was released, and dedicated to him.
For most of his thirty year career, Rory was based in London, but he often seemed so very homesick, and yet he never actually managed to move back to Ireland
During the recording of a track for a Dubliners album, Rory recalled
I loved meeting Ronnie and the lads again," he says. I've always had a soft spot for The Dubliners since I first met them in the sixties. We were playing a show with Dickie Rock and The Miami Showband in the Savoy in Cork. And because we were way down the bill, we weren't even allowed to change in the dressing room. So we were out in the hall changing when Ronnie opened the door - The Dubliners were second on the bill so they had a room to themselves - and he said come on in and use our room with us. Luke was there and Ciaran Burke and all the rest and they were very nice. It was a small gesture but I'll never forget it. So I loved meeting them and playing with them again this week. And they're still nice lads. Ronnie gave me a present of a book of little short stories, "The Irish Bedside Book" it's called. And all of this has made me feel really homesick.
I'd love to go back and live there if I could get myself together," he adds. If I can get organised enough to get out of here, I will be back. I'm constantly thinking mentally of Ireland. I listen to RTE radio most nights on my little gadget, a drum machine cum radio cassette that I take everywhere. In Europe you can pick up RTE as far south as Munich. I was in Paris one night during the last general election and it was great to be able to pick up John Bowman doing his broadcasting. Like I say, I get the Irish papers, especially the Sundays - tell Liam Mackey. I read his soccer column in the Sunday Press and I don't agree with him. (laughs).
"I also try to keep up with Irish albums. I just got Sharon Shannon's and Maire Ní Braonain's new albums and I'm looking forward to them. All that stuff is very important to me. I'd really love to go back. It could be good for me. I have one or two friends in Ireland and I'd like to get up to Donegal as well and get me old mind sorted out. It's probably what I really need right now.
"Donal was very aware of it (Rorys poor health) and was doing his best to sort it out y'know, but Rory was his own man...he was a very headstrong human being. Just like anything, if your trying to tell someone something that's not good for them, sometimes it can be seen as a threat. Because sometimes Rory wouldn't listen, I mean even to Donal and it made me angry..because I could see Donal trying his hardest. I remember seeing Donal nearly in tears some nights from trying to rectify the situation - it just makes you feel destitute and lost"...Gerry McAvoy
"Personally, I have a huge and terrible distain for some private doctors who possibly didn't understand Rory as a patient...who introduced Rory to medications he should never have been allowed....Rory from a kid was, I wouldn't say he was a hypochondriac but he'd a tendency to that...we had a couple of terrible flights...so what were perceived to be simple medications that would help him fly, get a nights sleep or whatever, were substituted for other medications - a lot of these medications were addictive, had terrible side effects, and of course any medication with alcohol will have unknown consequences....Then we could see that the medication had a far more dulling effect on his personality. In fact, it made him more reclusive, which wasn't a great thing for Rory. He was a reclusive person, very private person and the bit of getting Rory out into a larger environment was necessary to get him from completely retiring into himself. I feel very betrayed by some of the doctors who I had gone to, behind Rory's back, to say "For God's sake, please ...you don't have to deal with this patient".....Donal Gallagher
"He'd been out of commission for a while, and he was going back on the road and I got a whisper from a friend of mine called Nick Flynn, whose a songwriter, saying "Look, Rory's very very nervous". I was on the road in Scotland at the time , and I understood it perfectly - well, I understood a BIT of it - because I'd been off the road at one point for about seven months as a soloist and then gone and done a 10 day tour on my own in Belgium and nearly fell to bits about 15 times on the first gig, so he was scared at the prospect. For about a week, I would just go into a station. cos I travel on trains, I would go into a station somewhere in Scotland and buy a phonecard - I'd deliberately get there about 45 minutes beforehand - I'd just pick up the phone and talk to Rory. I couldn't tell Rory what to do, except to say to him "You can do this, you've done it before. You've got the wherewithal, you're a great player, you're a great singer - what do musicians do? Musicians make music, so stand up and make music. When I got home I found out that he'd had an absolute blast of a time, because people showed up because they loved him, they wanted to see him. They didn't care if he made a mistake every now and again. They wanted - they willed him - to give it his best and that's exactly what he did"...Martin Carthy
Rory continued to play very regularly, (including the 1993 Jazz Festival in the town he was brought up in, Cork) particularly through Europe. In '94, he appeared on the TV show Rock'n The North. He also played at the Templebar Blues Festival in Dublin to 50,000 people. In late 1994, on tour in Holland, he fell seriously ill. At one of his final shows, a clearly ill Rory (who was now suffering badly from his drinking habits combined with the medication he was on) was horribly abused by a very unpleasant audience, who shouted abuse at him for his declining abilities and even threw things at him. Rory never played in Britain again after this.
For six months, Rory waited for a liver transplant, and his prayers were answered when a donor became available. Unfortunately things went badly wrong, and on June 14 1995, Rory Gallagher passed away at
Kings College Hospital, London.
"It was gone past the eleventh hour, and I went in on the Saturday and was approached by a transplant team at 2 o'clock and said "I think he'll require a liver transplant". He recovered rather quickly. He was out of intensive care after a few days actually - has was doing very well and ....was at a point where I was told y'know can you arrange to...he can leave this hospital and go to convalesce. The day I was to collect him, they said "We're going to keep him another day or two, he's got a bit of a temperature, he's picked up a bit of a bug and we'd sooner get him well ,,,and he deteriorated from there, was in a coma and died, and just ... just didn't come out of it"...Donal Gallagher
Rory died without ever having married or had children.
Rory went home to Cork to be buried, and fifteen thousand of his adoring fans lined the streets as his body was carried to the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit. Three days later, a requiem mass was held in Cork and Rory, after leaving the church to his song "A Million Miles Away", was finally laid to rest in St. Oliver's Cemetery.
"When he died, I mean it was a terrible, terrible thing you know, the way he did and I was honoured because his brother Donal, as the coffin was leaving the church, he asked me to help carry the coffin. I felt a little bit embarrassed because there were all these jazz men there and all these blues guys there, but then I said "Well no, I'm honoured to do it and I'm very gratified to be asked" because I felt so respectful and so much friendship towards Rory"......Ronnie Drew
" Always the same guy, never became starry. Only had an ambition to play - the purest kind of musician he was. And I don't know if this sounds trite or corny or whatever but its the absolute truth - I never met anybody like him - never. He taught me humility and dedication and I supposed reinforced my belief that this really was a proper job"....Brian May
"For me it's just that little private thing that I know that I spent that time with Rory, and it was a great thing for me musically. Just the fact that me and Charlie and Rory got to play music together for what, two or three years nearly every night of the week is just something else"....John Wilson
"He's a really graceful man, and wide open to music - he just wanted to hear everything, he just wanted to hear music. The word I used then was "Grace" and I'll stick by that word "....Martin Carthy
"What he stood for was integrity, it ran through everything he did. Integrity and following your music".....Johnny Marr
"He was a very private man. Very focussed on his music, I mean that was first and foremost in his mind - his music came before anything, whether its romance, whether its this, whether its that .... whether he missed the boat as far as that's concerned because he was focussed so much on his music I'm not here to judge".....Gerry McAvoy
"There was a romance about everything he did. Music and the life of a musician was his salvation. What it was his salvation from, you never really got to the bottom of. ".....Johnny Marr
"It really was an enveloping sound, a bit like Jimi Hendrix live to me. But the legacy is the spirit...and it's in us all. It's a great river that flows and I'm very proud that I'm in that river and I've been able to put my bits in it".....Brian May
A very special headstone was designed for Rory's grave, the right hand 'finger' of the monument is made to the scale of a Stratocaster neck, and has correctly scaled frets along its inside edge.
Rory is remembered primarily as an ace picker, but don't forget that he also could sing so very well, and played mandolin, saxophone and blew harp with some flair as well.
From 1996 to 1998 Carlsberg beers, (a franchise of Guinness Brewers), sponsored "The Bowling Green Festival", a June Weekend blues festival based around a number of Southside Cork taverns, honouring Rory's memory. The driving force behind this was Mick Healy, of "Mojo's Blues Bar". With his retirement the event has been discontinued. Rory has a large fan base, especially amongst his contemporaries; Slash, Gary Moore, Brian May, Johnny Marr, Martin Carthy, Ronnie Drew, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, ZZ Top, U2, Judas Priest Guitarists K.K. Downing and Glen Tipton and Ace Frehley of Kiss are all Rory fans.
1996 saw the introduction of the Rory Gallagher Rock Musician Award - it's first recipient was U2's The Edge. The award continues to be presented in Rory's name to this day.
In 1999, Ballyshannon County Council decided to mark Rory's birthplace in County Donegal with a commemorative plaque. The plaque was officially unveiled in 2000.
In 2002, Rory was awarded the rare honour of being featured on an Irish postage stamp.
Rory products have continued to appear since his death, with the latest being his acoustic "Wheels within Wheels" album featuring a host of guests like Ronnie Drew and The Dubliners.
Rory Gallagher toured the British Isles and Europe incessantly, playing sometimes over 300 shows per year, a stressful feat that cost him many a band member. He annually made his way through small farm communities in Ireland performing Christmas shows, that are now considered legendary.
Even though he is no longer with us, Rory Gallagher's legacy remains through his formidable recorded output. Rory also left his mark in other ways, such as being a founder of "The Registry of Electric Guitar Tutors" along with Squeeze member Glenn Tilbrook, and Shadows legend Hank Marvin. This establishment has helped serious students of the guitar to gain the first ever fully accredited qualifications on the electric instrument. It was a development which Rory was very proud to be associated with.
"The blues is bad for your health," he says with a shrug. "It's as simple as that. Look at the list, Jimmy Reed was epileptic, Howlin' Wolf ended up on a kidney machine, most of all the other big names were alcoholics. Muddy Waters was one of the few guys that got that under control. People like Skip James never could. And when Howlin' was on dialysis and he stopped drinking, it affected his performance, strangely enough. So drink and the blues are closely linked, one feed off the other. It goes with the territory." ..........Rory Gallagher
