If pressed to name an artist, primarily associated with the blues, for whom John Lennon, Keith Richards and Bob Dylan had all expressed admiration, most of us would likely trawl our music memory banks in search of elder statesmen born south of the Mississippi.
Founding fathers aside, there’s a less obvious choice: one born in Ballyshannon, Ireland, in 1948, young enough in the 60s to have played Stones and Beatles covers with the Fontana Showband and to have idolised Dylan before forging his own remarkable career, bringing him into close contact with all three legends.
In marked contrast to the unbridled energy he exuded onstage, Rory Gallagher is remembered as a shy, private, gently-spoken man by those who knew him. The impression left by interviews that he gave is of a self-effacing, quietly confident figure, and yet
his accomplishments remain extraordinary: credited as one of Ireland’s first musical emissaries to have made an international impact, Gallagher’s eloquent guitar style remains a source of inspiration for generations of players, to say nothing of album sales totalling 30-plus million.
At the time of writing, the occasion of Rory’s 70th birthday was marked by Irish President Michael D Higgins overseeing
a ceremony dedicating Fender Guitars’ Dublin boardroom to him and will also see the reissuing of his catalogue in newly remastered form. More than two decades since his death, in June 1995, due to complications arising from an infection following a liver transplant, Gallagher’s music and achievements endure.
His brother, Donal, continues to nurture his legacy, as he did his career prior to his passing, and is uniquely placed to give an insight into his life, as one of the few people who knew him intimately. Donal recalls that music was ever-present in the brothers’ childhood, their father a piano-accordion player with a Jimmy Shand-inspired Ceilidh orchestra, their mother a keen singer able to turn her voice to operetta or radio hits.
The family lived for a time in Derry, where the nearby US naval base had its own radio station, with programming tailored to the tastes of service personnel.
Donal remembers, “Rory was working
the radio like a kid would surf the internet nowadays, getting stations where he could
pull out the music that he was trying to grasp. US country music was around, jazz seemed to delight him and, then, Chris Barber came on the BBC; he’d introduce artists like Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. And, of course, his banjo player was Lonnie Donegan.”
But Rory’s interest in making his own music was piqued first via the big screen, rather than the airwaves.
“He’d seen cowboys with guitars, like Roy Rogers,” Donal says, adding that his brother was offered a guitar prior to the family relocating to Cork, as “the carrot at the end of the stick if he settled in school. I was probably offered a Dinky toy.”
Already keen to form a band, Rory found his plans frustrated by school examinations and unreliable bandmates, playing solo dates with his new guitar instead. But with most available live functions presided over by the clergy, his repertoire was limited to tame fare, such as Four-Legged Friend, until, on one occasion, he risked airing a rock’n’roll number, incurring the wrath of the men of the cloth.
“He performed Living Doll – not only did it get him expelled from school, it got
me expelled because I was his brother,”
Donal laughs.
Desperate for the chance to “get on
a proper stage and turn his amp up,” as Donal puts it, the 15-year-old Rory joined the Fontana Showband, adding three years to his age to meet legal entry requirements for the ballrooms that he’d be playing. A restrictive musical environment, the showband circuit nevertheless gave him the chance to introduce early hits by The Rolling Stones and The Beatles; “but then he’d also have to chip in with Jim Reeves,” notes Donal. “It gave him
a huge grounding, a brilliant way to do your musical apprenticeship.”
After enduring the regimented world of the showbands for as long as he could bear, Rory broke out in 1967 with his own Belfast-based outfit, Taste. Free to let loose without restraint, Gallagher fuelled their meteoric rise with an outpouring of the creative impulses and onstage energy he’d been forced to bridle, passing through supports with Cream and Blind Faith, to eventually make an indelible impression alongside Jimi Hendrix and The Who at the Isle Of Wight Festival in 1970. Regarded by eyewitnesses as one of the day’s most potent performances, Taste’s
set would be among their final shows, management shenanigans prompting the band’s decision to split immediately prior to taking the stage that day.
“What bothered him was being dictated to by management as to what you could and couldn’t do,” Donal opines. “The recording sessions, ‘You have no say, this is the producer…’ It was fighting that system: ‘I’m the artist, I’m creating the work the way that
I want it heard.’ To Rory, that was the tougher part of it. And the skullduggery that went on.”
Understandably burned by the experience, Rory subsequently opted to hand the reins of his career over to Donal, originally his road manager, taking on a fuller role as the years passed. Today, he observes that, “You weren’t his manager, you were managing things for him, the way that he wanted.”
At the outset of Rory’s solo career, he and Donal received vital business assistance from an unexpected source, as Led Zeppelin’s formidable manager, Peter Grant, interested in Gallagher as a client, offered a hand in negotiating his recording contract.
“Peter went in and negotiated the deal with Polydor for six albums,” Donal recalls. “Not only did Rory get a good deal, he got the reversion of rights; very rare in those years.”
The next four years saw Rory maintain
a level of output that remains remarkable in its intensity and consistency, with an unrelenting succession of tours, four studio records (Rory Gallagher, Deuce, Blueprint, Tattoo) and two searing live albums (Live In Europe, Irish Tour ’74), propelling his career and standing among his peers on a steady upward trajectory.
“Polydor were gobsmacked,” laughs Donal. “To their shock, they got six albums in three years!”
Far from feeling pressured, Rory thrived on such momentum. Donal reveals,
“There was no pressure. Rory called the shots entirely. He loved [touring]. Part of the drive was to keep producing new material. He felt that, after one tour, the material might go stale, so he was constantly producing more. In a way, he’d beat the system. He toured
like crazy through the US. It was a happy period for him, with the guys [in his band] around him.”
For a man still in his 20s, Gallagher’s playing displayed a rare authenticity and authority across the range of genres from which he drew the roots of his sound, from the jazz and folk inflections of I’m Not Awake Yet, to the adrenaline-shot blues-rock of Cradle Rock.
His talents would soon draw attention from rock’s aristocracy. In an interview in late 1974, Keith Richards namechecked the two artists that he’d like to sign to Rolling Stones Records: Peter Tosh and Rory Gallagher.
He elaborated that he’d been taken with Gallagher’s treatment of Hank Snow’s I’m Movin’ On, from Taste’s debut album.
As Gallagher enjoyed a rare break between Christmas 1974 and New Year 1975, his brother fielded a late-night phone call from Ian Stewart, inviting the guitarist to audition to replace the recently departed Mick Taylor in The Rolling Stones. Keen, but mindful of a Japanese tour that he was due to start on 30 January, Rory’s audition date was repeatedly delayed, until, on 26 January, he finally got the nod and flew to Rotterdam. He would spend four nights playing with the Stones, prompting the band’s manager Marshall Chess Jr to tell him, “We knew you were the man for the job, welcome to The Rolling Stones.”
However, the Stones’ internal politics and recreational indulgences dictated that the situation wasn’t quite so clear-cut.
“The problem [was],” as Donal relates, “Keith wasn’t necessarily talking to Mick – it seemed to be a bleak period for Keith. He didn’t come down the first night, so Rory did some tracks with Mick, Bill and Charlie. The next night, Keith came down, and it started to move forward for a couple of nights. And then Rory said, ‘I’m due to fly back to London, to catch a flight to Japan tomorrow.’ Mick said, ‘Keith wants to have a conversation with you about things in the band, would you go up to his suite?’ Rory went up, it was already one o’clock in the morning, and Keith was comatose on the bed. Rory went back an hour later, and [they were] still trying to wake him. He stayed up through the night, and Keith was just gone. So, the next morning, Rory just took his bag and guitar and checked out.”
Donal remains unsure as to why the matter wasn’t pursued, and whether any audition recordings survive, but adds, “Some say Ronnie [Wood] was in for the job anyway. My feeling is that Mick admired Rory as well and, later on, he did have Rory play on his solo album, so whether it was more of a Mick decision… But it’s ‘what ifs?’ and ‘maybes’”.
Around the same period, Rory would also encounter another figure who’d shaped the music and culture of the preceding decade – one that he’d been too shy to approach on
a prior occasion. In 1969, as Rory and Donal stood at a London Heathrow Airport baggage carousel, they spied John Lennon and Yoko Ono waiting for their own luggage nearby. Lennon had praised Taste in the press, but Rory “was too shy and petrified to approach them,” Donal notes.
Come the mid-70s, the brothers were invited to a Jerry Lee Lewis show at Los Angeles’ Roxy Club during a stay in the city. Rory had refused a seat in the club’s balcony VIP booth, preferring to watch ‘the Killer’ from the audience. During Jerry Lee’s set, the arrival of a guest in the booth, a certain John Winston Lennon, caused a stir sufficient to distract the crowd’s attention from the stage.
Informed by a stagehand of the source of the disturbance, Lewis began peppering
The Lewis Boogie with improvised lyrics, as recounted by Donal: “‘I can outplay The Beatles and The Rolling Stones/And John Lennon can go and suck my hole!’” He laughs, then continues: “Lennon is loving it, leaning over the balcony, shouting, ‘Jerry Lee, I hate the fuckin’ Beatles, too, that’s why we split up!’ Jerry Lee couldn’t understand
a word, other than somebody having a go back at him. You could see the temper and the drink coming through, and he rammed
a piano right into the audience, and then left the stage.”
Having befriended Lewis previously, during the recording of London Sessions (1973), Rory felt confident enough to brave the dressing room and, as the two chatted, Lewis shared his bottle of liquor with Rory.
And then…
“… in walked Lennon,” Donal recalls. “Rory acknowledged John, and went, ‘He’s calming down.’ Jerry Lee was looking for something in his bag, and Rory began to feel that what he was looking for was a gun.
“So Rory just held his hand, and said, ‘Look, let’s share the bottle with John.’ Meanwhile, our big Irish roadie arrives into all this, and he went, ‘The king of rock’n’roll – John Lennon himself. Can I have your autograph, please?’ Rory was mortified, and Jerry Lee was not happy. Lennon took the pen and paper, got down on his knees in front of Jerry Lee and said, ‘Excuse me, Mr Jerry Lee Lewis, you’re the king of rock’n’roll, could
I have your autograph, please?’ So Rory did connect with John.”
Rather than have his head turned by spending time in such exalted company, Gallagher charged ahead with another series of albums, issuing five more studio sets between 1975 and 1982, including high-watermark Calling Card, and a return to stripped-down power-trio sonics on Photo Finish, along with a third in-concert record, Stage Struck, reflecting his status as a must-see live act. Travelling at such close quarters with his brother, Donal is able to offer an eyewitness perspective on the change which would come over Rory as he prepared for each show.
“He just existed to be onstage,” he reflects. “He was a very quiet character off-stage, but the tension! He was like a boxer anticipating entering the ring: you’d get caught up in the adrenaline. He actually suffered from stage fright. After a while, I realised, it’s that anticipation of the excitement of the transformation into the live musician, the Jekyll & Hyde factor.”
Following the release of Jinx (1982) and
a US arena tour supporting Rush (who’d earlier played their first US dates supporting Rory and remained fervent fans), Gallagher’s recorded output slowed noticeably, and he would release only two further albums, Defender (1987) and Fresh Evidence (1990), before his death in 1995, aged 47.
This issue of Rory’s declining health in later life has been well documented, but Donal has been vocal in recent years in addressing the misconception that his problems were purely attributable to alcohol. Perpetual touring necessitated constant air travel and, in the late 70s, Rory had begun to develop a fear of flying, for which he was prescribed medication that was not only addictive but, in the long term, damaging to his liver.
“It started off with flying. Tranquilisers that were given out then are banned now,” Donal notes. “You’re doing sometimes three flights a day; some of the horrendous journeys we went through, you had to take something to get back on an aircraft. I hadn’t realised the extent of it; it’s something that creeps up on you. You think, ‘Oh, he’s seeing a doctor on
a regular basis, he’s watching his health anyway.’ And we all put it down to… We all took a drink, there’s no doubt about that, and he wasn’t any worse than the rest of us. In fact, he never seemed to show the effects.”
Donal strove to help Rory as the
situation worsened in later years, and recalls,
“A number of times, you’d take Rory off the road, send him back to Ireland for a good spell and get him healthy again. It was very difficult in London. He’d say, ‘I’m going to the guitar stores,’ and disappear.” In the late 80s, at Donal’s urging, Rory agreed to enter
a clinic, and it was at that point that Donal was told of the severity of the situation caused by the medication that his brother had
been prescribed.
“There was a huge row between the hospital and his doctor,” Donal recalls. “And the doctors in the hospital told me clearly what they saw as the problem. You can try and keep somebody out of the pub, but if they have a pill in their top pocket, and you don’t know about it… Then you put the two together, alcohol and prescribed medication. It becomes the devil’s brew.”
Parallel to his health problems, Rory had developed a growing love for the recording process, which, ironically, served to reduce his productivity. Touring commitments had previously required him to rush in and out of studios, but, as he grew older, Donal felt that Rory wished to savour the experience more.
“But the problem was that he couldn’t work with a producer,” he observes. “He’d start off fresh, healthy, in great condition on the first night, and then he’d say, ‘I’ll stay a bit longer.’ By the following morning, he’d been up all night, and he’d be listening to the stuff when he got it home, shattered: ‘I have to go in and re-record that, it’s too speedy.’ He was falling into that studio trap; and so things were taking forever.”
Concerned that Rory had a tendency to become depressed staying in his own house in London, Donal had arranged for his brother to reside in a suite at the Conrad Hotel in Chelsea Harbour, a home-from-home environment that he enjoyed. Rory’s habit of taking his work home with him led to Donal receiving a call from the hotel manager one night. “He said, ‘Your brother’s using his room as a recording studio. If it happens again, I’ll have to move him out.’ They were being very nice about it. I said, ‘No, it won’t happen again.’ Rory said, ‘I didn’t think anybody could hear me.’ A few nights later,
I got the same call: ‘Look, it’s one thing that he’s coming with his own musicians, but he’s actually pinched the piano player out of the bar. He’s got him so pissed up in the room, [he’s] told us we can shove the job, and he’s going to work for Rory Gallagher.’”
The lasting appeal of Rory’s music is centred as much around his artistry as
a songwriter as his skill as a soloist, and in the last year of his life, his craft won him the praise of no less a songsmith than Bob Dylan. Dylan’s office had contacted Donal during preparations for Bob’s all-traditional album, Good As I Been To You (1992), to ask for
a CD copy of Rory’s Live In Europe, which contained Rory’s version of I Could Have Had Religion, a song that Bob was now keen to record. In the event, the song was not included on Dylan’s album. But, two years later, Dylan appeared on the same bill as Rory at the Montreux Jazz Festival and called in to chat with the Gallagher brothers prior to Rory’s set.
“I said, ‘Bob, I sent you the Live In Europe,’” Donal remembers, “and he said, ‘Oh, yeah, Rory, I was going to do that, but
I realised that you’d written most of that song; the verses were yours.’ Rory said, ‘Yeah, I picked up I Could’ve Had Religion in
a poetry book, but there were only one or two verses; it seemed a shame that the song had never been completed. And in all honesty, I put it down as a traditional arrangement.’ And Bob said, ‘Well, you had me fooled.’” The meeting ended with Dylan suggesting that he and Rory might record the song together in the near future, delighting Donal, who felt that such a collaboration might help raise Rory’s profile again.
“I remember going back to the hotel that night going, ‘This is manna from heaven, Rory’s going to be so happy.’ And Rory went back to the hotel room and locked himself in for three days. That was June ’94. He died
a year later.”
Despite his troubled state of mind and failing health, Rory was still looking to the future, and was actively working on two new albums at the time of his death: “One acoustic and one rock album,” Donal reveals. “He felt if the rock stuff was getting too much for him, he could switch over to the acoustic. He wanted to collaborate with Martin Carthy, The Chieftains, a harpist;
I’d had conversations with them, he’d been commissioning people to paint a sleeve for him – he was very keen. He’d so many songs written. I know that one of them was going to be a tribute to John Lee Hooker.”
Asked whether any recordings were made, Donal replies, “The tapes must be around. Because [of] the frailty of tape, I was afraid to check and see. I’d sooner hand it over to a professional, let them break the tape and repair it,” he says, laughing. “From what I understand, the early signs are that it’s showing results.”
In tandem with the recent remastering of Rory’s catalogue, all available tapes of his work have been catalogued and are currently being digitised, and Donal remains cautiously hopeful that there may be some unreleased songs suitable for future release.
“I think so, yeah,” he says. “We’re quite encouraged. You have to be cautious. You think, ‘We’ve found a new track,’ but it might be just a working title, and then you [find], ‘Oh, he just changed the title to Follow Me, or whatever.’”
Rory’s influence on later generations of musicians extends to his own family: his nephew, Daniel, is preparing to record an album with his band Blank Spaces and recalls childhood visits to his uncle’s flat during which “he’d always have guitars lying about, and I’d play away at them. He was always keen to see what I’d do just as a kid attacking the guitar, rather than someone who knows what they’re doing.” Rather than emulate Rory’s style, Daniel has sought to develop his own approach. “I do a lot with delays, [like] Robert Fripp,” he says. “It’s funny, so many guitarists that Rory inspired – The Edge, Slash, Johnny Marr… Maybe Rory’s influence on me has come through those guys being some of my favourite guitarists.”
When asked what Rory might make of his legacy today, and of the high regard in which he’s held by guitar heroes such as Brian May, Slash and Joe Bonamassa, Donal feels Rory would remain characteristically humble.
“It wouldn’t go to his head,” he affirms. “This would always amaze other musicians, like Slash: they had a jam in LA in ’91. When he introduced himself, Rory knew more about his album! Rory was always
a fan of other people. He’d be delighted in
a modest way.”
Rory Gallagher’s complete catalogue of solo albums was recently reissued on remastered CD and 180g vinyl by UMC
