FRESH EVIDENCE
RORY’S NEPHEW, PRODUCER DANIEL GALLAGHER, DESCRIBES THE PAINSTAKING DETECTIVE WORK BEHIND BRINGING DOZENS OF PREVIOUSLY UNHEARD RORY TRACKS INTO THE LIGHT OF DAY…
Sitting in London’s historic 100 Club, with Rory’s gigworn guitars in cases behind us, Daniel Gallagher talks us through the foundations of the new Rory Gallagher record: “We signed a deal for Rory’s catalogue with Universal/UMC and I wanted the first release that they got to be something special, rather than a ‘best of’ kind of thing.”
A resident of New York, Daniel is a seasoned producer who has overseen many acclaimed, posthumous Rory Gallagher releases, including remasters, that have brought the guitarist’s rich and varied musical legacy to new audiences.
“One of the brilliant things about signing with Universal/UMC is that they have this huge archive space and a great archive team,” Daniel explains. “We moved over a thousand multi-tracks and master tapes from our lockup to their huge, very fancy fire-proof, gas-proof, end-of-the-world-proof storage facility. So the genesis of Blues was moving the tapes and seeing all the tape covers and noticing things that hadn’t been pointed out before. And we started making a list.
“We might find, say, an electric version of Nothin’ But The Devil and it’d be like, ‘Okay – that sounds interesting.’ Similarly, we found a full-band version of
As The Crow Flies. That track is on Irish Tour with Rory playing it on the National on his own – so my guess is he’d done this electric version for an album [at an earlier date] but then, for some reason, didn’t take to it and ended up doing it as a solo piece instead.”
As well as alternate takes, Daniel also discovered powerful, previously unheard tracks that even Rory’s family and bandmates had been unaware of until they were unearthed among the hundreds of tapes that were sent to be digitised. Such was Rory’s feeling for country blues that it was sometimes hard to tell if Rory had penned the songs himself – or if they were age-old traditional pieces.
“All these things were jumping out at me,” Daniel says, “like Prison Blues. I saw that name on a Blueprint tape. When I got the multi-tracks of it back, I was thinking that it had to be some old blues song that Rory was doing a cover of. But no, it’s a Rory original that no-one knew about – I asked my dad [Donal Gallagher] and he wasn’t aware of it and I also went to see Band Of Friends in New York. Gerry McAvoy [a member of Rory’s band from 1970 to 1991] plays bass with them and I asked him about it and he had no recollection of it, either.
“So these were things that only Rory and [late keys player] Lou Martin would have known about – just them playing a barrelhouse kind of blues, with a story about a man getting arrested because his best friend dropped him in it during a jewellery store heist. It’s like a lovely little blues. These songs would appear and you’re scratching your head thinking, ‘How did this not go on an album?’ There are some real treasures. We digitised a couple of hundred tapes, but there’s still quite a lot to get through.”
“These songs would appear and you’re scratching your head thinking, ‘How did this not go on an album?’ They’re real treasures”
on the top of them, so you couldn’t quite use them. That’s curious to me, because [playing slide] meant a different tuning and tuning the guitar was an art in itself just to get it right.
“He studied so much, though. In a sense, I lost my brother once he’d got so devoted to learning all the various chords. I remember, after getting his initial chord book, he was already down to the piano company, getting his next one. He’d gone from the majors, the minors to the flattened D7 [sic] and what have you – I mean, that’s where I lost interest, to be honest!
“This would have been when he was around 10 or 11. He’d come in from school, lock himself away in the bedroom and that was it. He didn’t come out to play football anymore. I’d go off with the other pals, or whatever. He seemed to take it in huge bites, you know? His progress was so rapid at that point.
“It was a very modern route that he was taking because, obviously, music around the world was exploding with Bill Haley, then Elvis and Lonnie Donegan. There were so many different ways to go. Then the Shadows came through with their Strats and that was another thing. But he was sticking very much to the blues.”
The new record, Blues, sees Rory pay tribute to Peter Green on the track
Leaving Town Blues. What did he think of the British blues trailblazers like Green, clapton, Beck and Page? “He felt a huge connection to them. I mean, Rory’s first exposure to that music came via The Yardbirds. Rory would have gone to London around 1965. In the black days of Ireland, when Lent came, ballrooms were shut by the church, so there was no dancing or music and all the work dried up, because if you were a professional band you couldn’t be seen to be [performing] around town. That’s the way they felt back then and so musicians would go to the UK, to play the Irish dance halls in North London, Coventry and Birmingham. And they’d get enough work to keep them going through the six weeks of Lent.
“That gave Rory the opportunity, staying in a B&B in London, to go down to [influential Soho music venue] The Flamingo. I remember, he’d write to me and say, ‘We’re seeing Steampacket and John Baldry,’ and, obviously, that had an amazing line-up of Elton John on piano with Rod Stewart on vocals. Another time, he was out in Hamburg and I remember him writing a card saying he’d gone to see Cream at the Star-Club, and had a very pleasant conversation with Jack Bruce afterwards.
“By the time Rory had cemented Taste into position, he had gone up to Belfast in ’67, and was resident there. His then-new manager was the agent for Robert Stigwood. He’d bring various bands from the UK across, so you had John Mayall, of course, and we would do about a week’s worth of gigs around the north of Ireland. At that time, that would have been Mick Taylor on guitar. So there would be friendships and conversations.
“Then Cream came over, and Taste were due to support Cream at the Ulster Hall. But the gig got cancelled because Cream pulled out. They came back a few months later and did three shows in the north of Ireland. I mean, they were in the oddest places. One was a ballroom in Portstewart, so they were playing a seaside town in the winter and everything that goes with it.
“So there were links and contacts that grew from that. And then Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac came over – and, yes, Rory would have been very taken with Peter’s personality. Some of the guys would have a very cocky attitude, but Peter didn’t and he was very good. In fairness, Rory’s ambition was to get a gig at the Marquee and it was very much a word-of-mouth scenario back then, you know, so [if you had a good reputation among other leading bands] you’d get a trial. Then, as that kind of music broke out into Europe and beyond, we ended up doing festivals. Very gratefully, we also ended up doing the two shows of the Cream farewell concert at the Albert Hall along with Yes. So all that gave Rory his first opportunity to get to the stage with Taste.
“Rory adored anyone who could play guitar. Jimmy Page was another favourite of his and Rory would send me postcards from America saying, ‘Oh, we’ve supported The Byrds…’ and so on. Meanwhile, back in Ireland, I’m stuck taking my American aunt down to Shannon airport, as she was going back to the States. While I was waiting at the airport, the doors opened and in walked these guys with long hair, who I thought were The Byrds – they looked very similar. But it was Keith Relf [of The Yardbirds], and they were on their way to America for the first time. I went up and said, ‘Excuse me, are you The Byrds?’ and they thought I was being really hip and said, ‘Hey, man, how did you know we’re The Yardbirds?’
“I just said, ‘Oh!’, and then I counted them – because I knew who The Yardbirds were – and I said, ‘But shouldn’t there be five of you?’, because I was getting their autographs, and they said, ‘Our guitar player left last week.’ That was Eric Clapton. I was looking for his autograph, and they said, ‘Oh, but we’ve got this really amazing new guitarist, Jeff Beck. He’s in Duty Free. Once he comes out, we’ll get you his autograph. You’ve really got to check this guy out…’
“The layover they would have had would have been a couple of hours, maybe, while they refuelled the plane. They felt very alien, I think, in the west of Ireland. They were astounded that somebody had actually heard their records, and knew For Your Love. So I wrote back to Rory and said, ‘Guess who I met?’”
Tell us about the session that Rory played on with Muddy Waters. That must have been quite a big moment for him... “Oh, absolutely. That was Rory’s badge of honour. We’re talking ’71 there. Taste split up at the end of 1970, so Rory was out trying to re-establish himself as a solo artist. We were up in Leicester at the De Montfort Hall. So Rory gets the call: would he play guitar? He said, ‘Yes, I can do it, but I have a gig in Leicester.’ So they said, ‘Oh, well, the session wouldn’t start until the evening anyway.’
“So, Rory is on stage at the De Montfort Hall and the session was starting at 10pm, but with maybe an hour’s leeway. Of course, as an American promoter used to say to me, ‘You know, your brother never threatens you with not going on stage. He threatens you with not coming off.’ The next thing, it’s 10.30pm and he’s still on his fourth encore, or something, and I was at the side of the stage going, ‘Rory!’
“Eventually, he comes off the stage and he jumps into the car, which was the old Ford [Zephyr] Executive. I mean, it was boot-to-the-board to get to the session. In fact, we drove so fast that the following day I found that we were running on the canvas; the tyre had actually eaten itself away with the speed we were doing on the way down. In the end, it must have been after 11pm when we got to the session. Rory thought, ‘I’m going to be fired from this,’ and he was getting, ‘You’ve only yourself to blame,’ sort of thing [from me]. But when he got in the door, Muddy just poured out a glass of champagne for him. Rory was all apologetic, but Muddy was saying, ‘That’s what musicians do. They work at night time. So, don’t worry about it. Relax. I want you to enjoy the session.’ He was so genial and polite, and no pressure whatsoever, you know.
“That first night went great. There were no record company people there on Muddy’s behalf, though. It was very much Muddy and the band. They were in a hotel in Kensington, as I remember, and there were a couple of nights off and they didn’t seem to know where they were. There was no-one to take them out, so Rory sort of dispatched me to drive Muddy. Muddy travelled in [our] Ford and loved the car because it was, as he described it, the first American-style car he’d been in in Europe. It wasn’t too long after the accident he had, so his leg was a bit lame, and he could stretch it out in the Ford.
“I remember taking Muddy and the band down to the old Speakeasy on their night off and at the time being a bit apprehensive about who the Speakeasy might allow in, or not allow in. I went down in advance and they said, ‘Muddy Waters is coming down here?’ It was fantastic. So Muddy came down, and then, of course, all the musicians in the club swamped him and the band, you know. A wonderful couple of days.”
“The word ‘musician’ was key to Rory since he was a kid… His life was about perfecting his musical ability, whether that meant the studio skills or learning other instruments”