Go Ask Rory Gallagher

Last night I dreamed that Brian May was at a family reunion of mine, which is a touch odd given that he is unable to claim any relation to me. Anyway, he was very nice, my cousins certainly liked him a lot and at the bar I asked him ‘Is it bad form to ask one guitarist about another one?’ You see I was going to ask him about Rory Gallagher, but then I got a bit side-tracked and it didn’t happen.

True story.

‘Jimi Hendrix, how does it feel to be the best guitarist in the world?’

‘I don’t know, go ask Rory Gallagher’

Rolling Stone Magazine

I am not about to argue with the ex-paratrooper from Seattle, on the contrary I think more folks should share his opinion.

Some folks never quite get their due, Rory Gallagher definitely being one of them, despite Hendrix’s views. There are a few factors at work here, first off being the man’s own unflashy, humble manner*. Secondly, he never made a classic studio LP, good though his are at times. Lastly, there is something a little too blue collar and unfashionable about his chosen field of rocky blues in this day and age, too many mediocrities ploughing those self-same furrows have muddied the metaphors.

Irish Tour ’74 is a pretty compelling exhibit for both Gallagher’s untrammelled virtuosity and decency.

Gallagher was always best sampled live, several older chums of mine cite him as the best they ever saw, as the excellent booklet in this release puts it he needed that feedback and energy from a live crowd to really take his playing as far as it could flow.

Rory liked to play shows in Ireland once a year at least, schedules permitting and by late ’73 his band and he were a burnished rock and roll blues machine, almost 200 gigs to the good in the year including tours of duty opening for Deep Purple and the Faces stateside**. Dates were set up straddling Christmas and New Year at Belfast, Dublin and Cork.

1973 into 1974 was a violent time in terms of the Irish ‘troubles’^, almost nobody played gigs in Belfast any more and in the lead up to Christmas things intensified further. Everyone thought Gallagher would have to cancel his dates at Belfast Ulster Hall. He didn’t of course and played by all accounts two of his best ever gigs.

I am simplifying, of course, the generous booklet included in Irish Tour ’74 tells you a lot more and better.

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My version of Irish Tour ’74 is a 3LP 2014 reissue and is really excellent quality. Tracks are not tied down to individual dates – the notes from the producer explain why this was impossible^^, as in the best live LP tradition we get an approximation of a gig across the whole LP.

Pop the needle on the record and after a brief intro the band just leap into ‘Messin’ With The Kid’ and it isn’t until two tracks later during ‘I Wonder Who’ that my rictus grin wears off and I can actually start to comprehend the sparks flying around me as notes.

What really surprises me is just how full the band sound, on tracks like the revved up ‘Tattoo’d Lady’ you get none of that drop out when Gallagher takes off, listening and relistening to it just confirms that he has an incredible ability to solo along with the song, in parallel to it and not away from it like so many guitarists do. So when he is lashing the notes out in this track we lose none of the momentum of the tune, as the other three band members pound out a rhythm to anchor his extemporizing.

Rory Gallagher has that incredible ability to sound almost orchestral when he plays in terms of the fullness, sweep and grandiosity of his sound, the only other two axemen^* I can think of who can are Neil Young and Jimi Hendrix; that’s pretty rarefied company.

Take another example the extended ‘Walk On Hot Coals’ where Gallagher smashes through the song, alighting on extended tapping-y bits, which would normally grate for me but he somehow suborns everything to the song, never giving us virtuosity for its own sake – always the biggest turn off for me.

There are some great changes of pace on Irish Tour ’74 too, I love a good bit of acoustica and Rory excels on a cover of Tony Joe White’s ‘As The Crow Flies’ and we get the ragtime ‘Unmilitary Two Step’ and ‘Pistol Slapper Blues’ in a brilliant feel-good section.

Needless to say it all cranks up again for a rousing finale across the last record, culminating in ‘In Your Town’, which just sizzles. Time and again these perfectly serviceable songs are lifted into the stratosphere by the whole band’s playing and Gallagher’s sense of joy radiates hot from the vinyl, giving it all a very real feel; despite the audience being mixed so far down as to be totally negligible most of the time.

The band also need to be given their full due here Gerry McAvoy on bass, Lou Martin on keys and the incredibly monikered (and Welsh!) Roderick Morris Buckenham de’Ath on drums; okay so Rod de’Ath. They play everything here brilliantly and subtly giving the rhythmic structure of every track here the high tensile strength needed to foreground Gallagher’s playing.

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Give Irish Tour ’74 a listen, it won’t disappoint; pyrotechnics with true soul is a rare combo.

A cautionary note needs to be sounded here though, my 3LP rerelease bears almost no relation at all to the original release, tracks added (sure), reordering (to be expected) but there are tracks missing? Spotify carries the original LP and the deluxe edition only, which really does bear no resemblance to anything else. So I will give a caveat, I love my version of Irish Tour ’74, which may well differ from yours and definitely will from the 50th anniversary edition they will inevitably release next year*^.

1186 Down.

PS: Because I love you.

PPS: Didn’t he just have a lovely face?

*I think he’d even have beaten Hendrix in a self-deprecateathon.

**blowing them both away quite often by all accounts too. I mean, who would want to go on after Rory?

^I really don’t like that euphemism, it seems belittling to me but I struggle to find a more concise term.

^^although weirdly the 7CD set also released for the 40th anniversary in 2014 does exactly this.

^*I can’t quite use the term with a straight face, but I’m trying.

*^which is not a dig, Rory’s brother Donal curates and caretakes his brother’s legacy in exemplary fashion.