RORY GALLAGHER
On the 50th anniversary of Gallagher’s recording debut, Guitarist delves into the legacy of his guitars and the music he left behind
RORY GALLAGHER WAS THE ORIGINAL IRISH GUITAR HERO – BUT HIS PLAYING WAS DEEPLY ROOTED IN THE RICH SOIL OF AMERICAN BLUES, WHICH HE STUDIED FROM BOYHOOD. NOW, ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS RECORDING DEBUT, A TREASURE TROVE OF PREVIOUSLY UNHEARD TRACKS SHEDS LIGHT ON HIS RARE GIFTS AS A PLAYER AND LIFELONG DISCIPLE OF THE BLUES. WE LIFT OPEN THE CASES OF SOME OF RORY’S BEST-LOVED GUITARS TO LEARN HOW THEY HELPED HIM TRANSPORT LISTENERS A MILLION MILES AWAY…
When the guitar world learned of Rory Gallagher’s death in 1995, he was mourned almost as one might a friend, even by those who only knew him through his music. At 47 years of age, he was too young to leave the stage with such finality. Witnesses to Rory’s electrifying live shows knew what a formidable performer he was – coming back for encore after full-tilt encore, letting fly with his battered ’61 Strat as long as the crowd cheered and stamped their feet for more. It was all the more saddening, then, that there could be no more curtain calls for a man who was humble by nature but whose guitar playing was loved by millions for its ecstatic energy and unaffected eloquence.
Rory was also a prolific recording artist and left behind a back catalogue as thick as a phone book. Like the wheels of his tourbus, the tape was always rolling, so there was always going to be more to be discovered in the vaults. Now, on what would have been the 50th year of his
recording career, Rory’s family has unveiled a host of previously unreleased recordings, all linked by his lifelong love for blues guitar.
More than 90 per cent of the tracks featured on the new 36-track collection, entitled Blues, are previously unheard. Some show off Rory’s haunting affinity for old-time country blues, played on his National resonator, while others are full-flight rockers that send showers of sparks flying with every incandescent slide lick. The collection also documents rite-ofpassage encounters between Rory and the American bluesmen who’d been his childhood heroes, like Muddy Waters and Albert King.
It’s an occasion worth marking, so we take a close look at Rory’s best-loved guitars to learn how each earned its place in his extensive collection – and discover how he used them to craft songs that still leave listeners spellbound today. But first, we join Rory’s brother and long-time manager, Donal Gallagher, to hear how Rory grew from a boyhood blues disciple to a master of its many forms…
When did Rory first show an interest in blues guitar? “I remember it as being when we were living in Derry, in the north of Ireland. We were in the Bogside, which was where my father came from. That was just post-war, and the Port of Derry had been given over to the American navy. That was their base for Europe, which had been through the Second World War, and the Americans had lingered on because of the Cold War.
“They had built a massive antenna to transmit AFN [American Forces Network] radio and, basically, the early radios couldn’t keep out the signal. Sometimes the radio was almost on without it being switched on. When my folks would go round to visit the neighbours – because it was one of those sorts of streets – Rory would get out the radio and dial up the station.
“He’d somehow gotten the schedule of the programs, because I remember he’d tune in for the Jazz Hour. It was like an obsession for him. I mean, it used to freak me out because of the introduction to it, you know? The big deep, baritone voice was like the Devil coming through the radio saying, ‘This is the Voice of America… The Jazz Hour.’ It was so trippy and abstract that I’d run out of the room, but Rory would listen to the jazz.
“But during that program they would also introduce some blues music. I can’t be specific as to who the blues players were, but I guess it would be very early Muddy Waters and stuff like that. There was also a parallel to that on the BBC, which was the World Service. Once a week, you’d got the Chris Barber jazz and blues show, and he would introduce guys like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee as guests on the show and, of course, Lonnie Donegan. They’d do their little skiffle set in the hour.
“These were the initial places that Rory fed off for the blues. Then we moved from Derry down to Cork City. He’d go in and grab books out on the blues at the library there… anything that referenced blues music. I suppose he saw parallels with the traditional music in Ireland and, coming from the background that we were coming from, there was a growing civil rights movement as well. So he’d sort of taken blues on as his adopted music.”
Was Rory learning primarily by ear, from records, or was there anybody locally who taught him how to play blues guitar? “No, it was entirely by ear with Rory. I do remember him, once he got a wooden guitar for the first time, taking it over to the School Of Music in Cork and asking if they’d give him lessons. They politely said, ‘Oh, no. You have to learn the piano first and then you can learn the guitar.’ They didn’t see it as proper instrument, you know? Guitars were a rarity. They weren’t a common thing.
“When Rory was trying to express himself to my parents, as to what he wanted, they were very confused. Was it a banjo? A banjo would have been more in the traditional Irish idiom. Guitars weren’t in. It was really only when The Dubliners came along that a guitar was seen with a folk band in Ireland. It was a new breed of thing.
“I remember the first time he was trying to tune a guitar, and this customer in my grandmother’s bar offered to do it for Rory – and broke the string. What a catastrophe! It was, like, ‘That’s going to cost the price of the guitar to replace, almost,’ you know. So, across the road we had this pal, and his dad had an ice-cream parlour. He was a violinist and he used to tune Rory’s guitar for him, very precisely, which was quite a task. So, it really was a novelty to have a guitar.”
How did Rory’s slide playing develop? “It was there around the start, because of Hawaiian guitar… He’d read that they played with bottlenecks, so he was always going through the empty bottles in my grandmother’s bar to look for bottles that might be suitable. But they all had big lips
“My folks would go out and Rory would get out the radio and dial up the [American Forces Network] station. He’d tune into Jazz Hour – it was like an obsession for him”