Fans of the late Rory Gallagher can pay their respects to the blues guitarist and singer/songwriter by signing a book of condolences which has been opened at Music base, East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin. The book may be signed between 10am 5pm at Musicbase and between 5pm and midnight at the Project Arts Centre and will remain open until next Saturday.

Irish Times

Page 4

22 June 95 Appreciation: Blue shades of green - Rory Gallagher

By Brendan  O’Brien

If asked to choose seminal music footage from my teenage 1970s, when my part of Ireland was a single-channel area lacking even Top Of The Pops, I might consider Planxty, Horslips, Bob Dylan or Steely Dan.

But in the end I would choose Rory Gallagher, probably performing in a three-piece band at some festival on the European mainland with the song title miss-spelt on the screen, singing, seeming to play lead and rhythm guitar simultaneously, or acoustic guitar and harmonica, or maybe mandolin. Long hair, check shirt, closed eyes, jeans, sweat, wild rhythm and blues. This was as exciting as music could get. It still is.

Yet I have only ever owned one Gallagher album, which I don’t have now. There was no hype surrounding him, and perhaps people like me are more influenced by hype than we like to think.

I first became aware of him on a visit to Cork when I was about 14. Gallagher, a Corkman, was a local idol and one of my cousins, a Gallagher fanatic, played some tracks for me, loudly. The stuff was a bit frightening. Later my first girlfriend loaned me a tape of Against The Grain. It was more accessible and I liked it. Another friend loaned me Calling Card, with the wonderful acoustic Barley and Grape Rag. Some of my Mends were declaring solemnly that Jimi Hendrix had been the world’s greatest guitar player, with Eric Clapton second and Rory Gallagher third. Now that Hendrix was dead, Gallagher was ranked second. We were proud that an Irishman could be second best. Looking back, we underestimated him.

I moved to Dublin, completed a year at college and got to go to the Macroom festival, and to see him. Two friends and I hitched down separately, and, arriving hours before the other two I had time to kill in a pub. An old man said that he liked Rory but preferred Engelbert Humperdinck, and danced around the bar with a companion, singing The Last Waltz.

It was a good weekend, despite having our sleeping bags stolen. The main thing I remember about the Gallagher set is the extraordinary volume. I went to see him again in Dublin before Christmas, and was with my cousins in a wildly enthusiastic audience in Cork the next year.

But I hadn’t seen him live in 15 years, and only rarely on television. He looked flabby and overweight at the concert in Dublin in 1986, his time seemed to have passed and he apparently made no effort to promote himself I didn’t think of him at all, until his death, but now that he’s gone, I, and thousands like me, will ask for his CDs.

It’s hard to recall how different Ireland was 20 years ago. You took what you were given or you looked for something else. I think my generation was the first to look for something else. We were lucky that Rory Gallagher, one of our own, was there to confirm through his music what some of us already knew: that the world is bigger than Ireland, that faith can’t be contained by a Church, that there is an infinity of ways to think and ways to live. That Churchmen could be famous for playing the blues as well as for playing hurling. But the vast majority of us didn’t thank him, and that’s a shame. Brendan O’Brien

The Guardian

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June 95 Remotely civilised: Only the good die young - Tom Morton claims longevity and a knighthood are no measure of talent

By Tom Morton

SIR Harold Webb is a man whose musical longevity was once ascribed to a basic absence of talent so extreme that gradual improvement was inevitable. This newly-knighted person, operating under the more commonly known name of Cliff Richard, is a tireless worker for his favorite charities and perhaps Britain’s most famous evangelical Christian.

People hang on his every observation about the spiritual state of the nation, the philosophy of despair, the importance of biorhythms, ginseng, speaking in tongues, marriage and his evasion thereof; and the fact that he’s not gay, and lives with a man called Bill who, it is stressed, has a girlfriend. And Cliff has had girlfriends, too, over the last 40 or so years. Three, to be exact. He could imagine living his life without any of them. So he did. Cliff is an oracle on religion, preaching and playing his songs of faith, convincing many that its possible to disguise your wrinkles and your fading looks, wear appalling clothes, be rich, be popular with the brainless, and yet be deeply spiritual. Yet this is a man whose lack of taste, whose apparent stupidity and/or musical cynicism are all on an epic scale.

It was Cliff who recorded the brothel-country song Honey Tonk Angels, and claimed not to know that it concerned prostitutes. How can you trust someone as an interpreter, a singer of songs, a troubadour, when they can say something like that? It was Cliff who stood up and sang the hideously banal Congratulations, a failed Eurovision song, at the VE Day commemorations. This then is what tens of thousands fought and died for. A heavily-dieted, carefully-groomed, if gradually disintegrating, bachelor boy in late middle age, prancing hopelessly about to the strains of a ditty so banal even the denizens of Europe considered it unworthy of winning the world’s most crapulent contest.

Rumours about Cliff have abounded, most hilariously the one in the mid-Eighties about his - non-existent - colostomy bag. At a time when the New Musical Express was teeming with feral, vicious, occasionally funny journalism, post-Parsons, mostly bad- brutal, an absolutely incendiary review of Cliff appeared, claiming that the famously non-existent colostomy bag, well, existed. Instead of doing something sensible like stripping naked for the cover of Melody Maker and proclaiming: ‘look, no bag’, what did the prince of pap do? He took legal action, winning a settlement and loftily gained unsmiling acceptance of his colostomy-free status. When credibility was staring him in the groin, he refused to take off his trousers.

Yet none of this filly explains my detestation of everything Cliffish. That, I’m afraid, goes back to my sister’s pre- adolescent love for him, and the fact that as a moody 17-year-old, I had to chaperone her to two of his concerts. Not to mention a lunchtime audience with Clifford in religious mode, when he came to Glasgow University to hey, rap with students about the Big Man. He was, on all three occasions, absolutely devoid of charisma, an awkward cipher, an image only just made flesh. He knew the moves, he knew the words, but he didn’t know what any of them meant. He mocked Mick Jagger’s movements on stage because he couldn’t understand the Stones, the fact that they were real. At least, they were then, back in the decadent Seventies when Keith Richards still had a face. For Cliff the word ‘raunch’ was as alien as the poverty he was so often filmed and photographed amid during his charity work. No-one can knock the cash raised for overseas aid by his concerts and records. Oh, all right then, I will. I’m sorry, but good works alone are not enough to save the soul of a man who has perpetrated such sheer, nauseating honour on the listening public.

Last week, before the knighting of Harry Webb, I opened The Scotsman to find staring out at me a face I knew well from early Seventies’ record covers: long hair, features hard but pretty in an unmistakably Celtic way, that incredibly battered Fender Stratocaster, checked shirt, closed eyes. I was literally chilled to the bone when I realised the photograph topped an obituary. At 47, Rory Gallagher was dead.

Unlike Cliff Richard, Gallagher had talent to burn; he threw on petrol and set it aflame. A great, earthy, wild blues guitar player, melodic songwriter, sometimes wonderful singer, the first rock record I ever owned was by his band Taste. I still have it, and from the extended electric ferocity of Same Old Story to the delicate acoustic version of Hank Snow's Movin’ On, it remains as fresh and fierce as the day my Uncle John bought it for me. Rory Gallagher dreamed of growing old enough to sit on the porch like his beloved bluesmen and pick a benevolent tune for his grandchildren. Instead, an utterly driven on -the-road rock’n’roll life did for his liver, and last week for him and his music.

And then they knighted Cliff Richard. At first I was desperately sad about Gallagher’s death, then angry; then I dug out the records and began playing them, realising that Live in Europe would live forever as one of the greatest live albums ever made. Honest, heartfelt, real, rootsy, inspirational. Eat your heart out, Sir Cliff

The Scotsman Page 13

20 June 95 Guitarist who was music’s ‘ambassador’ buried in Cork: Thousands of friends, fans and colleagues mourn Rory Gallagher

By Dick Hogan

CORK

THOUSANDS of friends, colleagues in the music industry, and fans from all over the country attended the funeral yesterday of Rory Gallagher, the blues guitarist, who died in London last week of liver failure.

Rory Gallagher, who was born in Co Donegal but lived in Cork from an early age, was once voted the world’s best guitarist. During his career, which began in the showband era, he was approached by the Rolling Stones to become the group’s lead guitarist, but he turned down the offer so as to concentrate on the blues.

The burial took place in St Oliver’s Cemetery. Requiem Mass was held in Church of the Descent of the Holy Ghost, in Wilton, on the outskirts of the city, to facilitate the crowds gathered in the city for the funeral. The church in his own parish of Blackrock was considered too small for the funeral service, according to his family.

At the Mass, the playing of traditional Irish airs reflected the guitarist’s love of Irish music, which he maintained was born out of the same experiences which gave rise to the blues.  Sacred music was also played, and at the bringing of gifts to the altar, Mr. Mark Feltham, the harmonica player who toured with the Gallagher band on its last Irish tour, played slow blues. He had played at Mr Gallagher’s bedside last week before his death.  In his homily, Canon Owens Cashman, a friend of the Gallagher family, said that the guitarist was an ambassador for music who lived only for his art. He was a sincere and humble man, despite his fame throughout the world, and he was always proud to declare his faith. ‘He was gentle and unassuming and he never lost touch with reality,’ Canon Cashman said.

Words from the Book of Wisdom were spoken by Ronnie Drew. At the graveside, hundreds of floral tributes awaited the coffin as it was borne to its final resting place. Among the tributes were messages from Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, the American rock band Bon Jovi and the British blues star John Mayall. The Edge, the U2 guitarist, and Gary Moore, the singer and guitarist, were among the 2,000 mourners who packed the church. The chief mourners were Mrs Monica Gallagher, mother of Rory, and his brother, Donal, who for many years acted as his manager.

At the final prayers, Canon Casbman said that the Gallagher family wished to thank the many thousands of people who had sent messages of sympathy during the past week.

Irish Times

Page 7

June 95 Dylan and Clapton send sympathies as thousands say goodbye to Gallagher

By Barry Roche

CORK

Van Morrison and ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore are among the leading figures from the world of rock and blues expected in Cork today for the funeral of leading blues guitarist, Rory Gallagher

Speculation remains regarding who else may attend but already expressions of sympathy have been received from Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, John Mayall, folk singer Martin Carty and American rockers Bon Jovi.  All over the weekend, Gallagher fans and fiends came out in their thousands to pay their respects to the guitarist, who died of liver failure in a London hospital on Wednesday, aged 46.

From early Saturday morning, a steady flow of fans made their way to O’Connor’s Funeral Home at Temple Hill, fling past the open casket where Gallagher lay. In the afternoon, several thousand people lined the streets of Cork to pay their own private tribute, with hundreds breaking into spontaneous applause as the funeral cortege turned the corner from the Grand Parade into Washington Street.

There was a poignant scene at the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit when undertaker Willie O’Connor removed Gallagher’s favourite Fender Stratocaster guitar from the coffin and handed it to his roadie of 20 years, Tom O’Driscoll from Schull, Co Cork.

Chief among the mourners were Gallagher’s mother Monica, his brother Donal and sister-in-law Cecilia, and his nephews Loin (14) Daniel (11) and Hugh (6) as well as many friends from the Cork music scene of the 1960s. ‘Rory was a quiet, gentle guy and quite shy and reserved off stage but the minute he went on stage he came alive and had a charisma all his own, recalled Norman Daniery, who co-founded Taste with Gallagher back in the mid- 1960s.

Thousands of fans are expected to attend today’s funeral at 2.30 pm at St Oliver’s Cemetery, Model Farm Road.  Gallagher’s harmonica player, Mark Feltham who played some blues for him in his hospital room the day before he died will play at today’s Requiem Mass, while Ronnie Drew of  The Dubliners will read one of the lessons.

Irish Times

Page 5

June 95 Fond farewell to a true blues original: Keith Aitken pays tribute to the integrity and talent of Rory Gallagher

By Keith Aitken

These are melancholy times for the blues fan. There may be a full-scale revival underway, and a whole new generation of listeners and players exploring the poignant vocabulary of the 12-bar form and the seventh scale, but each year the obituary list grows longer.  The first generation is long gone, of course, and most of the second: the past few years have taken Chicago pioneers like Willie Dixon, Albert King and Albert Coffins. They were originals, craftsmen of a sound that no-one else will ever make. But they were also old men.

To the white fans who thrilled to that sound from the 1950s onwards, there is a different, and perhaps sharper, sense of grief at the reaper’s toll of the people like us, the white disciples who strove painfully to learn at the feet of the black masters. That list, too, has grown disturbingly long of late: Paul Butterfield, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Roy Buchanan, Alexis Korner. And now, Rory Gallagher

Anyone who saw Gallagher at the height of his powers in the 1970s will find ft hard to imagine him gone. If ever there was a musician who drew visible life- force from his music, it was Gallagher. Like all great soloists he played for himself and to watch his round face light up when his fingers pulled something special from the fretboard was to forgive him the time he sometimes spent searching for it.

Gallagher was a Donegal Springsteen, proudly proletarian and workmanlike. His style, if such ft may be called, never went beyond tartan workshirts and tattered jeans. He played a famously derelict Stratocaster which looked like he let his road crew hammer the set together with it at each gig. Except that he never had a set: just a couple of ancient Vox amps into which he plugged the guitar without interceding technology, and whatever lights the hall happened to have.

That is one reason why the word integrity keeps cropping up in descriptions of Gallagher. Another, which was a mixed blessing for him, was his unswerving devotion to the blues. Many of the players from the era of the guitar hero started with the blues, but most - the Claptons, the Pages, the Alvin Lees - veered off into the bigger bucks of rock and could later return to the blues revival from a position of commercial strength. Gallagher never did, which condemned him to the small time once fashion moved on. He was not alone in this. Other good players - Stan Webb, Tony McPhee, Dave Kelly - also stuck with the blues through its dog days. But Gallagher, having risen higher, had further to fall. And rise high he did.

Having escaped from the native purgatory of show bands in the mid-1960s, he first caught wider attention with Taste, a power-blues trio who seemed suddenly to appear from nowhere to play landmark events like the Isle of Wight festival (which yielded them a memorable live album) and the Albert Hall farewell of another notable blues trio, Cream.

Taste broke up when the crowds insisted on regarding it as a guitarist plus backing musicians, rather than as a band, and Gallagher’s future bands would bear only his name. But his rise continued unabated, and with early Seventies albums like Deuce and Live in Europe he achieved stardom. The latter album shows the versatility Gallagher could bring to the discipline of the blues, and also a supreme command of his medium. Just about everything you can do with the blues is there.

Eventually ft was not enough. After the late 1970s, Gallagher continued to command respect, but his audience dwindled to the loyalists. He toured endlessly, to the benefit of neither his music nor his health, and was always a popular live act. Yet in a demanding age when musicians are expected to progress, he doggedly didn’t.

With his death at 47, it will be the music of 20 years ago that stands in his memory. But it is a worthy memorial to an engaging character and a great bluesman; and a reminder, too, that for all the absurdity of the guitar hero era, some of these players really could play.

The Scotsman

Page 9

19 June 95 Obituary Letter: Rory Gallagher

By Sean O’Hagan

Sean O’Hagan writes: I found it baffling that Mike Ellison devoted so much of his obituary of Rory Gallagher (June 16) to probably the only below-par performance the great man ever gave in his 30 years treading the boards. Rory Gallagher was one of the most genuinely humble artists I have ever met and, even over the last few years, when he seemed like a man out of step with the world, his quiet charm and undiminished sense of wonder remained intact. In the early seventies, with Van Morrison in exile, Rory Gallagher was Ireland’s only bona-fide rock hero. For myself and countless others, Rory was a man who changed the way we thought about music and, in doing so, changed our lives. In his check shin and denims, whether coaxing his version of the Blues from his battered old Strat, or, sweat-drenched and chatting to his fans, he was that rare thing in an ego-driven pop culture -a people’s player. Rory was always one of us rather than a rock star.

The Guardian

PAGE 014

June 95 Nobody did it better: John Waters pays tribute to the musician who wrote the soundtrack for a generation of Irish kids

By John Waters

LAST Saturday at the Fleadh in London’s Finsbury Park, I ran into Donal Gallagher It had been few years since I’d met either him or his brother, both of whom Pd known from my Hot Press days, when I’d bad the pleasure of being paid to talk to Rory Gallagher and watch him play. After a minute or two I casually asked after Rory. Donal said that his brother was seriously ill. I got the impression that ft was grievous, probably terminal. And so it proved; we awoke on Thursday morning to the news that Rory Gallagher, one of the finest blues guitarists the world has seen, had died.

People assume you’re exaggerating when you say things like ‘rock’n’roll changed my life’, but I know I wouldn’t be doing any of the things I’m doing now had it not been for artists like Gallagher giving me - us - inspiration to change, and the soundtrack to do it to. That he was Irish was, at first, a little unbelievable, but it was a different sense of unbelief to that which greeted the arrival of Horslips in the ballrooms, or Thin Lizzy on Top Of The Pops. The thing about Rory was not just that he was one of the first Irish rock stars, but that he was the best guitar player in the world.

That was our view of Rory, and I don’t believe that our unassailable pride in him led us far astray. Those deluded graffiti scribblers who scrawled ‘Clapton is God’ on walls during the 1970s couldn’t have had either the manners or the time to listen to 30 seconds of Rory Gallagher Sure, Eric Clapton, or Jimmy Page, or Ron Wood could play a bit, but Rory put them all in the shade. Only Jimi Hendrix could remotely have been considered his peer. And from an Irish point of view, this was an exhilarating and radical notion that one of us could not just mix it with the big shots, but wipe the floor with them and leave a shine you could eat your dinner off of

Given the huge success stories of recent years, ft’s easy to forget what it might have meant in leaner times when the word went out that the Rolling Stones were interested in getting Rory to join. It was the kind of notion that used to inflame the old national inferiority complex. But we at home all knew and this is the important pan - that Rory Gallagher was too good for the Rolling Stones. That was a powerful knowledge to let loose among a generation just coming round to the idea that anything might just be possible after all. There can be no telling how much of the recent success of Irish artists has been due in some measure to the slipstream of confidence created by Gallagher

Rory was an original. There were others who did it before him, and a legion who tried to do ft after him, but there was nobody who did ft better. His music was rooted in the blues, but his playing had qualities of distinctiveness, energy, colour, passion and tenderness that set it apart from any player I’ve ever heard. Yes, he was a brilliant technical guitarist, but he also had soul in the way other guitarists have hard neck He filled his own space ink the rock’n’roll pantheon. He didn’t make statements or take public stances. But he was nonetheless a profoundly influential and meaningful figure in European pop culture. The integrity of his music and being radiated from the quality of his playing and the music he created to give it a voice.

Songs like Bullfrog Blues and Messin’ With The Kid were essential aspects of the formative background radiation for a vast hardcore of his followers. His songs were sensitive, funny, dark and sweet, a strange mix of blues and his own idiosyncrasies and obsessions. His music was the work of a deeply intelligent and sensitive man, who thought profoundly about the world - and who also, incidentally, loved his native country and never lost touch with what he called ‘the mainland’.

His great tragedy was that his form was ultimately too small a vehicle for his genius. There was a strong sense that he, had no space in which to continue to grow. But in performance, his integrity and sheer brilliance as an artist continued to confound all-comers.

A couple of years back he was due to play an open-air gig at College Green in Dublin. My girlfriend, being somewhat younger than I, was sceptical of my enthusiasm: her generation’s perception of Rory Gallagher was of a dry old blueser, a pyrotechnician without soul. I worried a little, I confess, that my memory and enthusiasms were playing tricks. Rory had the capacity to bring out in those who had seen him play responses which sounded like hyperbole to those who hadn’t.

But on the night Gallagher was, if possible, even better than I remembered. He captivated the huge crowd - half curious bystanders, half now-greying lumberjack-shirted hordes - like the angel he was. My girlfriend, like everyone else, was transfixed, and understood at last that it was possible to walk away from a Rory Gallagher concert believing it to have been the best you had ever seen. I believed then that ft could only be a matter of time before, once again, Rory Gallagher received the acclaim that was rightly his. I cannot say how sad it makes me feel to know that, this is not now going to happen.

There is a whole generation out there feeling sad today for all these reasons. Gods bless, Rory. Hope you enjoyed yourself. Thanks a million. Thank you.

Irish Times

Supplement page 2

16 June 95 Gallagher funeral to be held in Cork

The funeral of acclaimed blues guitarist, Rory Gallagher, will take place next Monday in Cork.

Gallagher’s body will be removed from the Temple Hill funeral home, Boreen Manna Road, Cork at 4.30 pm on Saturday. Requiem Mass will be held at 2.30 pm, on Monday at the Church, of the Holy Spirit in Dennehy’s Cross, West Cork, with burial afterwards at St Oliver’s cemetery, Cork. Gallagher (47), died in a London hospital on Wednesday while recovering from a liver transplant which he underwent earlier this year.

Irish Times

Page 6

June 95 Arts: Lest we forget - Joe Jackson pays tribute to the blues guitarist Rory Gallagher, who died this week

By Joe Jackson

Rory Gallagher may be on the minds of many people this morning, following his premature death at 47 in a London hospital on Wednesday, but how many of them were thinking about him on Tuesday? Sadly, it is still possible that, in time, Gallagher will become on of the great but forgotten names in Irish rock music.

Why? Largely because of the revisionist rewrite of Irish rock history, which dogmatically states that very little music of worth was created in Ireland before U2, or, perhaps, Thin Lizzy. The artists who suffer from the imposition of this form of cultural fascism are mostly pop stars of the rock era, such as solo singers like Brendan O’Dowda; showbands like the Miami; traditional musicians such as The Clancy Brothers and other similar, seminal acts.

Pre U2 rock groups like Gallagher’s Taste are also, too often, written out of history in relation not only to their music but also - maybe more importantly - to their cultural significance during the late 1960s and early to mid Seventies. That, too, is seriously wrong. In fact, as the founder member of Taste, which was formed in 1968, Rory Gallagher was one of Ireland’s first rock icons.

Yet there is no doubt that, by staying resolutely true to the blues, he himself added to the process which led to his eventual marginalisation from the mainstream of Irish music. Not only stylistically, but in terms of the way he lived. And, some would say, the way he died - reportedly as a result of the failure of a liver transplant which was deemed necessary when doctors discovered his liver had been damaged by ‘accidental overdoses of medication’ in recent years.

Paradoxically, Rory Gallagher himself believed in genre distinctions when ft came to music - differences rooted acutely in primal sources such as the soul. The last time I interviewed him, roughly three years ago, he laughingly recollected how, when he was 10 years old, he discovered the likes of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. Listening to him talk, in a dark warehouse office in London, one could easily perceive the purest possible traces of the boy within the man, the child who had found blues and rock’n’roll ‘truly liberating’, which is how he defined his epiphany as a musician. Though, with his early death, one can obviously read the following from another perspective.

‘I heard School Days by Chuck Beny and some Muddy Waters and I was lost forever!’ he explained. ‘And Presley's singles, like Too Much, were positively primal. He was the bad boy of rock, seen by some in Ireland as ‘the devil himself. There was no question that if you listened to this, music you were on the verge of sin.

But that made it more of an outlaw music, certainly a lot more exciting than the Callowglass Ceili Band!’ on how he graduated from the Fontana Showband through Impact to Taste, Rory also addressed that question of how he had been largely forgotten in relation to Irish rock, something he described as ‘a little annoying’, in tones that suggested he was definitely understating his anger, on this issue.

‘It’s especially annoying when what we achieved is glossed over, as though we didn’t open the door for anyone,’ he explained. ‘Thin Lizzy supported us for four successive nights in Dublin’s Stadium at a time when the country was dominated by pop, country and western and showbands. And although I always loved Lizzy, when they did Whiskey In The Jar I thought it was corny, commercial stuff We didn’t go for that singles market. That, to me, was showband territory, the market mattering more than the music. Indeed, it was this blues purist’s perspective which shaped the defining sense of integrity in the best of Gallagher’s recordings from those days of Taste albums, such as On The Boards, right up to more recent solo albums like Defender. Music also apparently dominated his life, even to the exclusion of close personal relationships. ‘No woman, or man, ever got as close to Rory Gallagher as his guitar, I was told before I interviewed him in 1992.

I decided not to push this issue, since Rory had originally contacted me because he was already distressed by the thought of how his friends and family were responding to media reports ‘which suggest that he may finally keel over and die from an excess of alcohol, as I wrote at the time. But he did address the issue of his emotional life, which was normally a no go area in terms of interviews. However, this he did, not with a proviso, but with the request that I ‘be careful of what you say, and how that may affect my family; a comment which clearly highlights the sensitivity that was an intrinsic part of his nature and which distinguishes his music from the more macho school of blues singers and musicians.

‘There’s no doubt that when I first got a guitar as a schoolkid in Cork it rounded off my life, became an instant friend,’ he claimed. ‘And although I have had relationships, I probably did put my career first in terms of touring and attention to the music. But I don’t really like discussing my private life. Not just in terms of the media, but with my friends. I am a private person. I don’t even discuss, my relationships, or feelings, with them.’

And so it all came out in the music. This was apparent to anyone who ever saw Gallagher play live, be it at Dublin’s Stadium with Taste, more recently during that final Irish gig in Dublin’s College Green in 1992, or at any of his concerts across Europe where he still has a loyal and considerable following among blues fans who are clearly less besotted by pop rock value systems than their Irish counterparts.

Watching him perform, many of these fans must surely have asked themselves whether Rory had ‘sold his soul to the devil to play that war, as is claimed of another of his idols, Robert Johnson. It’s a question that is as central to blues mythology as ft is to the story of Rory Gallagher It is also a question he was, at first, reluctant to address on that day we met. Yet he did, finally, in the context of those claims that his death, from alcohol abuse, seemed imminent.

He knew, he said, that according to comic book rock’n’roll mythology the latter was the least he could do if he wanted to ‘be seen as having really paid his dues as a blues singer’. Yet he stressed, with the pounding of his fist on an office table, that ‘the idea that you can’t play the blues unless you re an alcoholic is nonsense and, potentially, a lethal notion to be selling to young musicians’. He also claimed that he had ‘never come close to dying’ as a result of drink or drugs but had ‘come close to fearing it’. Looking back at that article on this, the morning after his death, his words echo like a blues riff tragically left unfinished. I make no apologies for quoting him verbatim, again, or for hoping that when people read these words they will hear the sound of his guitar and the sound of his voice for what definitely must not be the last time, If we forget Rory Gallagher we may as well forget Irish rock.

You have to step over a certain line, not necessarily to connect with evil, but to take yourself as close to the brink as you can to give the music that essential edge. It’s a dangerous balance you have to try to maintain’ he said, measuring each syllable as though trying to decide whether to tell the absolute truth or not.

‘But, blues or no blues, there is a strong Celtic pagan element within the Irish which I don’t think we’ve ever completely shaken off So, as a superstitious Catholic, I never really was tempted to try those excesses. Sure I drink, but not to excess. And the key reason was the absolute fear of the darkness taking over. And despite the rock’n’roll line, die young and leave a good looking corpse, to me, there’s nothing glamorous about, dying young - even if the journey makes you the greatest musician in the world.

Irish Times

Page 14

June 95 Arts: ‘We’ll miss him very much...’ - Colleagues pay tribute to the musician and the man

‘The first show I ever went to was Rory Gallagher at The Carlton in 1975. I’ll always remember his blues and acoustic guitar playing. RIP.’ Adam Clayton. I’m very saddened by the news of his death - he seemed like such a young guy. I used to meet him a lot when I opened the shop in Cork - he had just bought a house in Douglas for his mother, and we used to go up there and listen to records. ‘When his first solo album came out, we sold at at £1.99, well below the retail price, and Rory said, ‘Good on you!’. He never got married or had kids, so there was a boyish quality about him. He was a quiet, shy type, but he always had time to stop and talk to people. Pat Egan.

‘A beautiful man and an amazing guitar player. We’ll miss him very much.’ The Edge.

‘One of the top 10 guitar players of all time, but more importantly one of the top 10 good guys. Taste was my first experience of a real rock band.’ Bono. ‘He was my number one hero in the early Seventies, and when I came into RTE in the late Seventies. I got a Christmas card from Rory, and I just thought, ‘this is a great job!’ I got so annoyed that he was labelled a blues artist, when Blueprint and Tattoo were such great, rock albums. He was a total inspiration, even to people who don’t realise how much they’ve been influenced by him. He was painfully shy, and one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met in my life.’

Dave Fanning. ‘I was very shocked and saddened when I heard about it. Rory and I got together in the 70’s and had a few good times. He was an inspiration to me in the 60’s, because he was the first Irish guitarist to go out there and do it. He was held in high esteem among guitar players - everybody respected him. Rory had a great knowledge of the blues, and he played with all the greats.

He was also a real gentleman.’ Johnny Fean (ex Horslips guitarist). ‘My reaction is the same as anyone else’s who knew Rory: it’s sad and shocking, and it’s no way for anyone to go out, knew him in the early days, when I was in Skid Row and he was in Taste, and there was always healthy competition between the two bands. Rory took it a bit further, and he deserved all the success he got in Europe, but he found it very hard to crack it in the US. Eric Clapton could only do it when he was with Cream which was more heavy metal, but Rory stuck to his guns he was very single minded. Rory only really came to life when he was playing guitar, and if he’d kept on playing, he’d probably be still alive.

Brush Shiels

Irish Times

Page 14

June 95 Obituary: Blues star dies

Rock guitarist Rory Gallagher - one of the world’s leading white blues musicians - has died in a London hospital, aged 47. Born in Ballyshamton, County Donegal, Gallagher sold 14 million records over a career lasting 30 years.

He died on Wednesday at King’s College Hospital, where he had undergone a liver-transplant operation earlier this year.  Gallagher formed the group Taste in 1965 while a teenager but went solo in 1970 after the band broke up.

Bono, leader of U2, yesterday described Gallagher as one of the top 10 guitarists of all time, adding: ‘More importantly, he was one of the top 10 good guys.

The Herald

Page 5

6 June 95 Obituary: Rory Gallagher

THE IRISH rock guitarist, Rory Gallagher, regarded as one of the world’s leading white blues musicians, has died in a London hospital. He was 47.

Born in County Donegal, Gallagher sold 14 million records over a career lasting 30 years and was seen as the first of Ireland’s rock superstars. He died on Wednesday at King’s College Hospital, where he underwent a liver transplant operation earlier this year.  Gallagher formed the group Taste while still a teenager and later pursued a solo career.

Bono, the leader of Ireland’s U2 rock group, described him as one of the top ten guitarists of all time, adding: ‘More importantly, he was one of the top ten good guys.’  The Edinburgh-based keyboard player, Lou Martin, who performed with Gallagher’s band for seven years, said last night: ‘I’m totally gobsmacked. It was a privilege for me to play with him. He was the finest.

‘The man was a true blueser, all he wanted to do was play the music as earthy as possible. I jammed with him last year at a festival in Cork at an unplugged session with piano, harmonica and acoustic guitar. He was so relaxed, performing blues standards from the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, especially Muddy Waters’s numbers. ‘We sparked off each other and played solidly for several hours. It was like the old times.’

Martin, who joined Gallagher in 1971 after Taste split up, played piano with him on several albums until 1977. ‘I can’t believe it, the memories are flooding back, we went round the world twice, played Japan and did 15 tours of the United States, where he had a massive following.’

The Scotsman

Page 12

16 June 95 Rory Gallagher; Obituary

Rory Gallagher, guitarist, died from complications after a liver transplant operation, on June 14 aged 46. He was born on March 2, 1949.

Rory Gallagher was a gritty Irish blues guitarist and singer, who had a considerable influence on guitar playing over the last two decades. He was an uncompromisingly serious musician, and was dismayed at the way in which the pressure to produce another hit single inevitably watered down a performer s style. For this reason he rarely cut singles himself, preferring to reach his audience Through albums and concerts.

This was fortunate, for if there was ever music which demanded live conditions it was Gallagher’s. He usually played in smokey pubs and clubs, drinking Guinness with fans while the support band played. Twenty minutes before going on, he would take refuge in his dressing room for a concentrated tuning-up. He was a shy man who suffered badly from nerves before each performance, but once he began to play he lost himself. He worked furiously for an hour-and-a-halt barely taking a break from song to song except to retune the overheated strings on his battered and peeling Stratocaster guitar.

This was a working band and Gallagher was confident enough never to slide into unnecessary pyrotechnics. He was notoriously scruffy’ on stage, favouring lumberjack shirts, jeans and trainers. But neither this nor his unkempt hair could detract from what was, in his youth, an angelic face. Jerry Gallagher was born in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, though he later moved south to Cork. He started playing guitar at the age of nine, when skiffle was the fashion, and formed several groups at school before leaving when he was 15. The Irish music scene was then dominated by the big showbands with little demand for groups, so Gallagher joined The Impact Showband. Each of the band was asked to sing in the manner of a particular star and Gallagher chose Chuck Berry.

In 1965 he started his own blues-based rock group, Taste, which made a name for itself when it moved to London in the late l960s, though it only broke into the album charts with Live Taste after the band had officially broken up. Meanwhile Gallagher had formed another band with two Irish musicians, Gerry McAvoy on bass and Wilgar Campbell on drums.

Initially, the concert going public had no idea who plain Rory Gallagher as he now billed himself was, though he had the support of a handful of enthusiastic managers and bookers. He was asked to play gigs in huge halls like the Philharmonic in Liverpool, and would find himself performing to only a few hundred people. But Gallagher had charisma, playing the blues like a man possessed, and the news spread fast.

The idea of a blues guitarist from Cork, amusing to journalists as it was at first, was less of an anachronism than it seemed. Gallagher was a courageously honest performer, writing his own material, and he considered the blues to be the most personal form of musical expression.

His first two albums were small hits and the following year, after international tours, his third, Live In Europe (1972), reached the Top Ten. Personnel changes followed with Rod d’Ath replacing Campbell on drums and Lou Martin coming in on keyboards.

By the mid- l970s, Gallagher had become a huge live draw not lust in Britain but in America where he was routinely filling 5,000-seat concert halls. His live albums tended to be more exciting than his studio work but Against the (lain (1975) broke the studio jinx.

He rode triumphantly against the pop music fashions of the late 1970s, unsullied by punk or new wave though there were some nights when his blues had more of a jazz influence, or was more rock-based or folksy. His stage shows remained purist, the only effect coming from music and audience no bangs and whirling lights and no fancy dress.

Gallagher released fewer albums in the 1980s, and, having made some unwise business decisions, he tended to get slightly lost among younger artists who rode in on the blues revival. Eventually he was forced to record on his own label, having no contract with any of the big companies. None of this worried him as much as the diminishing opportunities for impromptu jam sessions in London, and his concerts continued to draw the crowds. Gallagher was a quiet, friendly man, the ultimate musical anti-hero. While he was happy talk to fans after a concert, he was reluctant to go along to the big showbusiness events.

He never married and had no children.

The Times

Issue 65295.

16 June 95 Obituary of Rory Gallagher

Rory Gallagher, the Irish guitarist who has died aged 46, was the epitome of the unpretentious, hard-working blues-rocker.

One of the first Irish rock celebrities, Gallagher toured Europe and America for 25 years playing the same heart-felt hard rock on the same battered Fender Stratocaster guitar, wearing his trademark uniform of what seemed like the same faded Levi jeans and tartan shirt.

He neither sought nor found stardom but always stuck to his musical guns, choosing to refine rather than to expand his formula; he was never swayed by such trends as glam or punk rock. His audiences responded to his emotional honesty, eagerness to please and untheatrical approach.

Rory Gallagher was born at Ballyshannon, County Donegal, on March 2 1949.

His breakthrough came as singer and guitarist of Taste, a blues-rock trio in the vein of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience but without the psychedelic trappings. After Taste released its first album in 1969 the band became firmly established on the club, college and festival circuits. The best of their subsequent recordings were ‘live’ albums. Gallagher dominated the group to such an extent that when he left to lead his own eponymous band it made no audible difference.

At its best, his music was informed by an erudite appreciation of the Anglo-Celtic folk stylings of Martin Carthy and the pre-war Mississippi Delta country blues of Son House and Robert Johnson; it was also influenced by the electric Chicago blues of Buddy Guy, Freddie King and Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’Wolf's great guitarist. At its worst the qualities of Gallagher’s music were submerged in bombast, bluster and over-extended soloing. At a time when his contemporaries surrounded themselves with stacks of high-powered amplifiers and walls of speakers, Gallagher preferred a simple 30-watt Vox amplifier, as elderly but well-preserved as his guitar, which he had bought new while in his teens and carted around the world until every square inch of finish was worn away.

In later years he blossomed as a songwriter, developing an enviable knack for back-alley film-noir lyrics. His off-stage excesses leant more towards alcohol than sex or drugs. A genial, generous and good-natured man, Gallagher was well-regarded among fellow rock musicians, and appeared as a guest artist on records by such artists as Muddy Waters, Albert King, Lonnie Donegan and Jerry Lee Lewis. Gallagher died of complications after a liver transplant.

The Daily Telegraph

16 June 95 Rock Idol Dies; Rory Gallagher

IRISH rock legend Rory Gallagher has died after a liver transplant. Gallagher, 47, considered one of the world’s best blues guitarists, died from complications after the operation in King’s College Hospital, London. Bob Dylan and Van Morrison were among stars who sent messages of sympathy to his family.

Today

16 June 95 Guitarist dies

Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher, one of the world’s leading white blues musicians, has died aged 47. Obituary, page 13

The Guardian

PAGE 004

16 June 95 Roaring Rory in denim: Obituary of Rory Gallagher

By Michael Ellison

Rory Gallagher’s name was mentioned routinely in the same breath as guitar heroes like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page 25 years ago. They all took their inspiration from the blues and had backgrounds which seemed similarly inappropriate for careers based on a black American art form. But while the boys from the Home Counties developed their celebrity by switching to other styles, Gallagher, from Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, stayed much the same.

He was never to wrestle with the dilemma of whether it was time to switch from Armani to Versace, never to wonder if the Princess of Wales would come backstage. Gallagher, who has died of pneumonia at 47 a few weeks after a liver transplant, was cut from a different cloth - denim A typical show with Taste, the trio he led in the sixties and with which he made his name, would start with Gallagher in jeans, lumberjack shirt, long dark hair almost masking his face, stamping a baseball-booted foot. His old Fender Stratocaster would be screaming under his fingers, nearly all the sunburst paint chipped off after years of gigging.

He got his start in Cork with an outfit called The Impact, firstly in the Irish showband tradition, which meant everyone wearing the same outfit and covers of the hits of the day. Gallagher’s job was to perform the Chuck Berry role. Next, in 1965, came a rock band which evolved into Taste with Richard McCracken on bass and John Wilson on drums. Gallagher was the creative force of the local heroes building their reputation with small gigs around Ireland. Their first album, with the same name as the band, majored on his extended blues work-outs and tortured vocals. But the next record, On The Boards, was the band’s biggest commercial and critical success and showed how his songwriting had progressed.

One of Taste’s finest hours came at the Albert Hall in 1968 when they were chosen to share the bill for the final performance by Cream, the supergroup containing the combustible talents of Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. Taste also broke up acrimoniously, after the 1970 Isle of Wight festival, with Gallagher claiming the other two were being greedy and Wilson saying he was being held back. He was rarely heard of again.

By then, Gallagher was a star, with Van Morrison the only other genuine article Ireland had to offer, before Thin Lizzy and long before The Boomtown Rats and U2. Bono, U2’s lead singer described him as one of the top 10 guitarists of all time. ‘More importantly, he was one of the top 10 good guys.’ Gallagher received messages from Morrison, Bob Dylan, and the folk guitarist Martin Caithy after his operation.

John Lennon was an admirerer in the sixties, Slash of Guns’n’Roses in the nineties and Gallagher recorded with heroes Muddy Waters, Jerry Lee Lewis and Lonnie Donegan. He forced Clapton into second place in Melody Maker readers’ polls. Gallagher had always been an outstanding live act and his 1972 album Live In Europe made the top 10, and broadened his audience. Gallagher was a shy and modest man whose love of the blues was matched only by his interest in the movies. ‘There wasn’t a movie made that Rory hadn’t seen,’ said a friend. ‘He could talk knowl