2nd March 1948 - 14th June 1995
Commemorating Rory’s 15th Anniversary I came across the piece below on the eve of his free outdoor gig in the Bank of Ireland forecourt, College Green 1992. Reading it sent a chill down my spine… It was the only time I ever saw the man in black and he was amazing! Reading the last bit gives me a lovely warm feeling that he is still around somewhere...God bless you Rory.
Black Cat Blues by Joe Jackson The Times Friday, August 14, 1992
Rory Gallagher is happy to be playing his first major Irish gig in years on the eve of the 15th anniversary Elvis Presley’s death. Elvis was one of his original idols.However,Gallagher is less than blessed by recent reports which suggests that he himself may soon finally keel over and die, from an excess of alcohol.
He knows that,according to the comic-book rock ‘n’ roll mythology, the latter is the least he can do if he wants to be seen as having really paid his dues as a blues singer.But that,he claims, is a comic-book he threw out years ago.Despite his abiding love for the seminal blues figure Robert Johnson who, according to rock mythology, “sold his soul to the devil” to play and sing as he did, Rory Gallagher is not about to dabble with demonic darkness, even for the blues.
“I remember playing Robert Johnson cassettes over and over for about a week once and one night I got a strange feeling of maybe connecting with some evil force which made me switch off the music and I haven’t played Johnson since,” he recalls.”I got that black cat feeling and,blues or no blues, there is a strong post-Celtic,pagan element within the Irish which I don’t think we’ve ever completely shaken off. So, as a superstitious Irish Catholic, I think it’s extra dangerous for us to toy with those forces”Nonetheless, Rory Gallagher admits that while playing the blues he sometimes tunes into those “black cat feeling” in a way that is beyond his control. “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 says.
Gallagher stresses that he is not the kind of musician who believes in taking on “the excesses of a Jimi Hendrix” in the hope of giving his music that “edge”. “I’m not saying Hendrix sold his soul to the devil but he did think: ‘I’m a meteor and I’m going to burn out young, yet even if I do I’m going to play as no one ever played before’. Yet he paid for that aim with his life. He was as demonic as Robert Johnson in his own way but I never, really, was tempted to try those excesses. And the key reason was absolute fear, fear of that darkness taking over,” he says. “The fear was further fuelled by by “seeing people like Hendrix and Kossoff die as they did”
“I’m not saying Phil Lynott went that way, but I saw him weeks before he died and I got a cold feeling of his imminent death. And despite that 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.”
Has Rory ever come close to death as a result of drink or drugs? “I’ve never come close to dying, no, but I have come close to fearing it. Maybe that’s part of the Celtic inheritance, feeling you are immersed in bad luck and death will be the only way out, whatever the cause. But sure I take a drink, yet not to excess. The idea that you can’t play the blues unless you’re an alcoholic may be part of rock ‘n’ roll mythology, but it’s not true. I certainly don’t need to be drunk to play. The idea is nonsense and, potentially, a lethal notion to be selling to young musicians,” he says.
When Rory Gallagher was a ten year old musician playing skiffle in Cork, where he was born in 1948, the most “lethal” message he took from rock ‘n’ roll was that it was“truly liberating”. “I heard ‘School Days’ by Chuck Berry and some Muddy Waters and I was lost forever!” he says, laughing. “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 in those days that if you even listened to this music you were on the verge of sin. But that made it more of an outlaw music, certainly a hell of a lot more exciting than the Gallowglass Ceili Band!”
Little more than a decade later, having graduated through the Fontana Showband and Impact to form his own group Taste, Gallagher became one of Ireland’s first rock stars, a blues musician/composer of world renown. Not surprisingly, he admits it can be “a little annoying” when commentators suggest that Irish rock began later with Thin Lizzy. “It’s especially annoying when what we achieved is glossed over, as though we didn’t open the doors for anyone”, he explains. “Thin Lizzy supported us for four successive nights in Dublin’s Stadium at time when the country was dominated by pop, country and western and showbands. And although I always loved Thin Lizzy when they did ‘Whiskey in the Jar’, I thought it was corny, commercial stuff. We didn’t go for the singles market. That, to me, was showband territory, the market mattering more than the music, the kind of scams and deals that I still find unacceptable.”
What he himself perceives as a purist’s approach to music also makes Rory Gallagher ambivalent in relation to U2. “I admire some of their songs but they seem to change their intent so often. One minute they’re Bible-thumpers, the next minute they’re into decadence. There’s always a programme above the music that seems to matter more. They are certainly more self-conscious than I am,” he says. He denies that he is jealous of U2, but expresses reservations about their influence on the Irish rock industry.” They’ve helped Ireland in terms of the business, but at the same time it’s all made rock so respectable,” he says, pronouncing the last word as though it signified some deadly disease. “I try to stay on the other side of the street to U2 in that respect. We are friends and there’s no animosity, but to me rock ‘n’ roll in Ireland now, is so conservative that when you go to a U2 gig you may as well be going to the Ascot races. And in terms of the dominance of the market, it is all a bit like new wave showbands. I’d love a Number One album again, but not at any cost.
Rory Gallagher latest album “Edged in Blue” , is a compilation of his own favourite blues recordings from his extensive back catalogue. Does he ever fear he may have committed his life to a form of music that could be described as anachronistic in terms of it’s sexist base and, and as such, may be finally dying as we near the close of the 20th century? “The blues can be sexist but that simply reflects a lack of political knowledge at the time most of the songs were written,” he suggests. “But when I write a song like ‘The Continental Op’, although it is a blues song I make sure it is no way connected to what are worrying questions about sexism in blues lyrics and also the violence towards women you find in songs by Big Bill Broonzy and company. As a white European I have tried to take the songs into beyond ‘I am the little red rooster’ department. And I feel proud of having at least attempted that, even if the songs aren’t hits. I do feel I have advanced the blues in that way, politically.”
When it comes to the rarely broached question of his own personal relationships, Rory rejects rumours that he has always shunned emotional involvement, choosing instead his commitment to the blues. “There’s no doubt than when I first got a guitar as a schoolkid in Cork it rounded out my life completely, became an instant friend,” he explains. “and although I have had relationships, I probably did put my career first in terms of touring and my attention to the music. Others may be in a hurry to marry me off but I really don’t 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 my feelings with them.” Rory pauses, then laughs before concluding: “But, as with all those exaggerated stories about my drinking habits, or my physical and mental health, I really have nothing to hide, as the man says”
Rory Gallagher plays a free concert in the Bank of Ireland forecourt, College Green, Dublin, tomorrow night at 7.30 pm
