Rory Gallagher - classic or dud

Rory wouldn't have known what rockist meant and if he were around to have it explained to him, he would have dismissed the teller as a moron. But the teller wouldn't have known it because Gallagher appeared to have been, faultlessly, a gentleman.

I, ekkp, keep coming back to the new anthology and, as usual, I'm mixed up as to why what was included, was included. Prob'ly because the anthologist wasn't there, or was there later. No matter, it's hard to hurt yourself seriously sampling from the Gallagher catalog.

What I didn't mention was "Cradle Rock"!!!! Another sig tune of his.
Again, so much to recommend. The remaster series, organized by Rory's brother, Donal, who was his manager, spit out a BBC session double disk. The first disc alone is worth twice the price of admission. Builds from "Calling Card" to OTT boogie rock madness, different from many else of the time in the electric piano of Lou Martin and the velocity with which Gallagher -riffed-, not shredded. "I Take What I Want," from "Against the Grain," and "Cruise on Out" or on fire, as is most of the material from "Calling Card" that's played in the set.

"Lost At Sea" should have been included on the anthology. It's a subtle bolero which a magnificent climax and sounded great on radio. Never played much, but it's one of the reasons I bought the album.

Don't know if the anthology mentions this but Gallagher was tortured by the collapse of Taste and wrote a good number of songs as a result of his anger at that. Often, they were really great songs. According to his brother, he was also indifferent or opposed to the spawning of singles off his records.

If you read some of the histories of the Brit rock bluesmen, many of them were the first of the independents, before the word indie was coined. Gallagher was a true independent. He did his albums, he toured, it was all self-contained. The recordings were issued by majors with seemingly absolutely no control over what he chose to do, the music the better for it.

Another feature of Gallagher's catalog: Much of his high energy stuff was/is way too jacked up for a standard classic rock audience. So while Clapton, for instance, got a lot of mileage with material that made it to FM that indicates he was either asleep or on 'ludes while doing it, Gallagher was, by comparison, ferocious, or not particularly interested in the applying the meaning of the adjective -mellow- to his stuff.

Both on Polydor for a while? Both start with R?

I felt Laughner's few pieces of rock journalism for CREEM were duffer crap. I was doing some reporting writing for a newspaper at the time and was younger than him. But his long feature on Rory Gallagher was way more than halfway decent. He resisted the urge to be Lester Bangsian -- which Gallagher would have in no way deserved and simply brushed off -- and turned in a feature piece which was honest to the man and his art. Might have been the best longish article I ever saw published on Rory Gallagher in the US while he was alive and in his prime. And there weren't many of these.

Supports my suspicion that dudes in Rocket from the Tombs dug hard Brit white boy blooz -- at least the guitarists. And understood you could be reactionary employing variations on the style. Gallagher would have been a good teacher.

(Still haven't heard him m'self - I downloaded "Laundromat" back in '03, right before my computer died, and so never got to hear it.)

He wrote great hooks (check out "Philby" off of Top Priority), and his live albums were blistering.

Such a tasteful lead guitarist too. Great tone. Damn, I wish I had all those LPs still.

Here is a link that has the Peter Laughner article on Rory Gallagher.

Anyway, a guy at work with broad musical tastes recommended "Live in Europe" as the place to start with Rory Gallagher... what do you reckon?

There's something to that. Thanks to Earl Nash's digging up the URL, I went back and looked at it. As a music journalist, Laughner was a cliche. Happily, that's not what we know him most for or where his good creative work was handed in. Bangs imitation on Lou Reed records and Television. The Rory Gallagher assignment broke him out of that mold. Perhaps Gallagher made him nervous because he was totally unlike Lou Reed and Television. Rory Gallagher wasn't dangerous, avante garde or cutting edge, but he was legitimately dangerous -- in all the good ways -- on guitar.

Rory Gallagher was also a total guy thing. I can't remember any young women liking his music when I played. And I can't recall any numbers of note in attendance at his shows. And it wasn't that the guy was macho, or his lyrics were poor, quite the opposite.
It just must have been the fearsome noise of the guitar and the velocity of the band. Pianner player Lou Martin always sounded like he was on speed.

I'd love to see sales stats in the US for 71-78 or so. I'm betting, usually well well less than 70,000/per but still turning a profit because his records were efficiently and cheaply produced. That was a a very good way to make hard rock records distributed by majors, a talent and tradition long lost. Your record would be in stores, one copy, maybe and it would get name recognition, and you would be an adequate draw on the undercard of major tours. Everyone would go away happy and ready to make the next record. It's called a career, something very few within the genre are allowed to have anymore.

Hah. I've been listening to Rory Gallagher this year -- now -- a lot more than I'll have clocked Johnny Winter for 2005. And I just played "Second Winter" & "Johnny Winter And" a month ago.

do you mean when you played his music to them... or when you played in Rory Gallagher's band????

http://shadowplay.hostingisfree.com/

Revive in honor of St. Patrick's day, which is a perfect day to play this guy. I love Rory Gallagher.

Also, a shout out to George Smith and his classic dismantling of the clueless "dirty vicar" nearly six years ago

always wanted to buy a rory gallagher album, never have

always get him confused with roy buchanan

He's pretty consistently great. Im not familiar with Buchanan, so i cant really compare the two.

http://gratefulbreed.blogspot.com/2011/03/rory-gallagher-live-in-sausalito-ca-10.html
smoking show from 1975.

i will have to check something out, assuming like something early 70s vintage be best? see his stuff at used record shops quite a bit....

i hope this isn't a disappointment like when i finally got bridge of sighs by robin trower

this is what you want
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FSqsEtbmL._SS500_.jpg

that's a dude who looks like he wails IMO

wrt roy buchanan i've never heard this but one of my fav album covers ever:

http://www.woundedbird.com/buchanan/9138.jpg

'ello mate!

just 'avin a pint with me guitar ...

The Taste records are pretty cool, too. "blister on the Moon" is a great psych single.

that's a dude who looks like he wails IMO

^ Oh, he does. Irish Tour absolutely kills.Get that one, no doubt.

lol at all the rockist fites going on when this thread began. kinda glad that whole argument has died down around these parts?

absolutely. I never understood that particular battle.

i get not wanting rock music to be the standard by which every other music is judged, but after that ... so what?

kinda glad that whole argument has died down around these parts?

Pretty much. Boy, I'd forgotten about this thread. Well, I'll be listening to my RG collection tonight, I think.

woah this rocks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k4iocWURPk

yeah, that song opens Irish Tour. Gallagher gets introduced, does a little tuning and then nukes the place. One of the best openings to an album ever.

just downloaded irish tour

this is the definition of going ham on guitar. everything wow! hard shit, slow shit, acoustic shit, dude is a fucking master.

robin trower eat a dick

Eagle Records is reissuing his whole catalog; they started with Irish Tour '74 and just last week I got a package that included the s/t debut, Deuce, Live in Europe and Blueprint, plus a new 2CD set called Notes from San Francisco - a previously unreleased studio session from '77 paired with a disc of liveage from '79. I'd never heard the guy until I was flown to Ireland to follow The Answer around for Relix magazine in 2009 - I bought a 2CD The Essential... on that trip and became a casual fan. Now that I've got this much of his stuff, I intend to do some real wallowing.

That's pretty awesome, psyched he's getting reissued.

(nb: I like Trower too)

yeah, dude pretty much goes IN at all times

I think Rory Gallagher's song writing gets a bit undersung in the wake of his instrumental prowess. I really particularly like his Duece LP.

favourite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heD3siavZBg

robin trower eat a dick

― i'm a fucking walking pair of Docs (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, May 17, 2011 4:14 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

the rory documentary "Ghost Blues" is on Netflix instant! pretty interesting! i didn't know how important he was to the sense of Irish rock identity w/kids like The Edge and Bob Geldof etc

johnny marr is in it really briefly and he just talks about how once he say Rory change a string WHILE STILL PLAYING A SONG which marr says "there should be a monument to that somewhere" haha

van, phil lynott and rory are like the holy trinity of irish rock

i didn't know how important he was to the sense of Irish rock identity w/kids like The Edge and Bob Geldof etc

^you wouldnt know by listening to their shit music that either of these clowns were influenced by someone like Gallagher. For kicks i may go back to back on Irish Tour and Rattle and Hum and hear how pathetic the latter fares.

the influence wouldnt have been claimed as directly musical

yeah i mean The Edge was only 15 i think he said when he saw rory w/his older brother and friends

the sense i got was that there just weren't that many bands that really ID'd as "Irish" that were big on the UK/world stage, so the kids there really identified and rooted for them, as michael b. said Van, Them, Thin Lizzy, Skid Row, Rory etc

also in the documentary Rory and his ppl put on some big outdoor Irish rock fest that i guess was a big deal, and he also would tour Northern Ireland when other ppl wouldn't

though i never do understand how people don't get that you can be influenced by ppl musically w/o sounding like them :/

I heard this for the first time a few days ago on the radio. lovely song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25x0OFIEhfA

I've been getting into this dude lately. His appearances on Don Kirshner's shows are pretty great, especially watch the keyboardist and bassist...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqtX8dGHhEs

irish tour right now...his soloing on "Million Miles Away" just stunning

I said some things about Robin Trower on this thread I regret.

Also the exchange in 2011 upthread about the Roy Buchanan album cover "Loading Zone" between me & tyler was a precursor to the "I've Got My Own Album to Do" thread lol

lol rereading this thread i was thinking the exact same thing about that buchanan cover.

I find it endearing just how many RG songs are about being a detective or a spy or a crook/gangster. Interesting way to avoid a lot of trad blues cliches.

man the first few posts on any old ilm thread about a classic rock artist has the most absurd opinions

And there is a general sense that people who like Rory Gallagher are essentially people with a narrow, warped, and failed take on what makes music good or bad.

Postcards From the Popist Past

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/rory-gallagher-remembered-on-new-blues-collection/

The 74 Irish Tour doc is on Amazon Prime. What a fucking player, just pure excitement every time he takes a solo.

Also he's playing Cork and other towns in Northern Ireland and these crowds probably didn't get that many big bands, they are just out of their minds at times

IIRC, there'd been an IRA bombing the morning of one of those shows, and the promoters wanted to cancel, but Gallagher argued that the city needed the show and carried on.

Also, due to the Troubles, they weren't able to get the mobile recording truck to most of the gigs on that tour, so as it ended up that most of the album was taken from Nagra tapes recorded for the movie.

Wow.... had no idea, they do show some bombed out houses in Cork, parts definitely look like warzones

He's so inventive and exciting as a soloist. In a just world he'd be regarded higher than Clapton

There weren't any bombs in Cork, wrong Ireland.

Rory was from Cork! In fact you can see this statue of his guitar outside the station:

https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0b/99/2d/ee/found-rorys-place-in.jpg

And this awesome statue in his birthplace, Ballyshannon:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Rory_Gallagher_Statue_-_Ballyshannon.jpg/800px-Rory_Gallagher_Statue_-_Ballyshannon.jpg

He really was one of the best guitarists, makes Mr J. Bonamassa sound like a beginner

tom may recall this differently (better!) but in the 70s uk rock papers, gallagher was held in fond regard, as a good thing that was also an anomaly: as like the honest and committed flying dutchman of great blues guitarists, who never lets up touring

(which notion i believe i gathered from the EOY awards, where he was year-on-year chosen by the readers for the "annual vasco de gama medal for always being on the road")

iirc this special EOY category vanished with punk, when "blues guitar" was no longer considered necessarily a virtue? but i haven't checked this in all the relevant weeklies tho: nme switched away from what was left of this kind of music and never got on the metal train -- sounds in particular may have remained more loyal to the concept :|

I don't remember much talk about Rory Gallagher at all, tbh! I imagine you're right he wasn't thrown on the scrapheap though.

My confession is that I don't think I'd heard Rory Gallagher until a few years ago and I still have heard next to nothing other than the occasional live thing I might stumble across on YouTube.

Wow.... had no idea, they do show some bombed out houses in Cork, parts definitely look like warzones

Just FYI, Cork is at the opposite end of the island, about as far away as you can get from where the bombs were going off. The footage you saw was probably filmed in Belfast.

oops yeah they seemed to play a little loose with editing

also I'm dumb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvO5OdZgtyM

I love how it's just the jam parts.

I've been listening to so much 70s blues rock lately (latest purchase was Foghat's debut) but had never really given Irish Tour '74 a listen before today. Guitar playing is incredible, but I really wish his keyboardist didn't sound like he was using a Casio.

You might want to check the Live! In Europe album, which was done right before he added keyboards.

I personally like the rinky-dink electric piano, as it adds a unique flavor absent from other acts of the time & ilk. I can see how it could grate tho.

Thanks for the Live in Europe recommendation, this sounds better to me already.

No keys on the 1979 Stage Struck live album either, more in the hard rock direction too if that's your thing.

i'm another one who's grown to love those keys. that guy's on "blueprint," one of my faves. plus i love how he announces his bandmates on the live albums. "rod de'ath rod de'ath." talk about your de'ath metal! (i know he's the drummer but...)

The Beat Club Sessions is great early live stuff if you don't mind it a little raw