If you ever go to Dublin, you should visit here: https://irishrocknrollmuseum.com/ If you are lucky you might have a guided tour around the museum by Alan who is a HUGE fan of Rory Gallagher. Have a chat with him and give him my regards.
Read on!
Blues for you
Rory Gallagher
Hammersmith
Concert Review by Mick Brown
NOBODY PLAYS the blues anymore — not unless they’re black and old.
The blues tradition among young blacks has all but vanished in the mad stampede down to the disco. I mean there are no young white musicians playing the blues anymore, I suppose because the blues are 1965, corny — passe – something like that.
Nobody plays the blues anymore — except, that is, for Rory Gallagher.
Three-quarters of the way through his set at the Hammersmith Odeon Rory heaved into Muddy Waters’ ‘Garbage Man’. It’s the sort of thing Rory probably cut his teeth on, and he played it exactly as it should be played — sweet and dirty, crying out the lyrics as if he was carrying the troubles of the world on his shoulders as a penance for all our sins, spicing the song with those fluid, scalding guitar runs which are pure Gallagher, easing back to let Lou Martin take a slinky piano solo. It was the nearest damn thing to perfection I’ve seen and heard in ages.
Theoretically-speaking, Rory Gallagher doesn’t even have to try any more. Two sold-out houses, an abundance of check-shirts in the audience and the sort of fierce loyalty — no fanaticism — which even the habitues of the Stretford End would be hard put to match testifies to that. Given such a following, a lesser-artist might be tempted to lean back slightly on his laurels, but Gallagher just gives his all — and more. On Tuesday night he played for two and a half hours, and at the end of it the audience were still screaming for more.
Gallagher works hard — no question about it — but his approach is always more than workmanlike. While his music is rooted in essentially the same blues/boogie idiom it has been for the past 10 years, going back to the earliest days of Taste, Rory still has the imagination, talent and above all enthusiasm for his music to keep on developing within that framework, both as a composer and a guitarist.
His band too, incredibly, just keep on getting better, whether clicking with a relentless precision on a high-energy dragster like ‘Souped Up Ford’, or getting to grips with a more subtle, slippery piece of material like ‘Jacknife Beat’ — as dangerous a rock song, that, as you’re ever likely to hear.
The set balanced the old with the new, material from ‘Calling Card’ with established favourites like ‘Tattooed Lady’ and ‘Messin’ With The Kid’. Rory played his customarily exacting acoustic set — five numbers in all, culminating in an irrepressible version of ‘Going To My Home Town’. He did ‘I Take What I Want’ — his fingers skimming the fret-board of a beaten-up old Fender, hair and sweat flying on this, one of the most energising songs ever committed to vinyl in the name of rock and roll, is surely one of rock’s more memorable sights. He did ‘Bullfrog Blues’ ‘Did you enaah?’ — and immediately there were a thousand heads flailing and a thousand imaginary guitars being played in the audience. He took a solo. Lou took a solo. Gerry McEvoy took a solo. Rod DeAth took a solo. The audience took a solo…
He did two encores — or was it three? If you don’t know by now you probably never will.
For those who do, he was just great.
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