Rory Gallagher nasce il 2 marzo 1949 a Ballyshannan in Irlanda; La sua passione per il blues inizia quando aveva solo 9 anni dopo aver sentito alla radio le canzoni dei garndi maestri americani come Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed ma anche i grandi del folk come Leadbelly e Woodie Ghutrie. Nella seconda metà degli anni '60 il giovane Rory si trasferisce a Londra per intrapprendere la carriera di musicista. Nella capitale fonda i Taste un trio di rock blues sull’esempio della Jimi Hndrix Experience e dei Cream. Con i Taste Galalgher incide 3 album tra il 1969 e il 1971 poi gli altri due componenti ( Charlie McCracken e John Wilson ) decidono di abbandonare il progetto per fondare gli Stud in compagnia di Jim Cregan. Rory inizia così la sua carriera solista incidendo il suo primo lavoro intitolato “Rory Gallagher”. Il disco riscuote subito un ottimo successo di pubblico e di critica tanto che la prestigiosa rivista Melody Maker lo vota “Top Musician of The Year” per il 1971. Tra questo anno e il 1974 il chitarrista irlandese pubblica ben 6 album ,tutti di ottima fattura, compreso il pluripremiato “Irish Tour” (eletto sempre dal Melody Maker come “miglior disco live dell’anno” per il 1974). Proprio le sue esibizioni dal vivo lo rendono celebre e amatissimo dal pubblico. Rory amava definirsi “chitarrista per il popolo”, insisteva sempre con gli organizzatori perché tenessero i prezzi dei biglietti i più bassi possibile e sul palco era una vera furia: Le sue esibizioni non duravano mai meno di 3 ore e il pubblico lo adorava. Nel 1975 quando Mick Taylor lascia i Rolling Stones, Jagger e Richards lo scelgono come suo sostituto. Rory decide di fare un tentativo ma dopo una prima session di appena poche ore decide che quello non era il suo mondo e torna nella sua Irlanda senza rimpianti. Per tutti gli anni ’70 la carriera di Gallagher procede a gonfie vele incentrata sugli incendiari live dove la sua Stratocaster continua a dispensare un rockblues carico di energia intramezzato da set acustici in cui Rory si esibisce anche al mandolino e all’armonica. Egli inoltre in questo periodo si esibisce con i suoi maestri come Albert King ( la performance è immortalata nel cd “Live”) e Muddy Waters nella su celebre “London Session”. Negli anni ’80 il bluesmen irlandese si prende un periodo di riposo causato anche dai continui abusi di alcool. Nel 1988 Rory Gallagher ritorna sulle scene con l’album “Difendere” a cui ne seguono altri 2 accompagnati dagli immancabili concerti. Purtroppo la sua dipendenza dagli alcolici mina gravemente la sua salute, nel dicembre 1994 si sottopone ad un trapianto di fegato che però non ha buon esito, Rory infatti muore per complicazioni nel giugno del 1995 a soli 46 anni. Il giorno della sua morte la tv di stato irlandese interrompe le trasmissioni per darne l’annuncio, la BBC fa lo stesso mandando in onda uno speciale di ben 9 ore a lui dedicato. I suoi funerali vengono trasmessi in diretta nazionale. A distanza di quasi 8 anni dalla sua morte il mito di Rory Gallagher vive ancora nel cuore degli irlandesi e di tutti gli amanti del blues e non solo, la BBC ha reso disponibile una serie di registrazioni che sono andata comporre il bellissimo BBC session un doppio cd uscito nel 1999 e ora suo fratello Donàl ha reso possibile il sogno che Rory non è mai riuscito a portare a termine quello di pubblicare un album acustico, e per chi lo ha amato risentire quella chitarra quella voce vissuta e appassionata provoca ancora una morsa al cuore per un grande musicista che troppo presto ci ha lasciati.



1971 - Rory Gallagher
Studio album

1971 - Deuce
Studio album

1972 - Live In Europe
Live album

1973 - Blueprint
Studio album

1973 - Tattoo
Studio album

1974 - Irish Tour
Live album

1975 - Against the Grain
Studio album

1976 - Calling Card
Studio album

1976 - Take It Easy Baby
Raccolta

1978 - Photo-Finish
Studio album

1979 - Top Priority
Studio album

1980 - Stage Struck
Studio album

1982 - Jinx
Studio album

1988 - Defender
Studio album

1988 - Fresh Evidence
Studio album

1992 - The Bullfrog Interlude
Studio album

1992 - Edged in Blue
Raccolta

1999 - The BBC Sessions
Live album

2003 - Wheel Within Wheels
Raccolta

Live

* 1972 Live in Europe
* 1974 Irish Tour
* 1980 Stage Struck
* 1991 Live in Europe/Stage Struck
* 2001 Let's Go to Work (Meeting with the G-Man + Live in Europe + Irish Tour+Stage Struck)
* 2003 Meeting with the G-Man
* 2006 Live At Montreaux

Compilation

* 1975 Sinner & Saint
* 1976 The Story So Far
* 1976 The Best Years
* 1992 Edged in Blue
* 2005 Big Guns the Very Best of Rory Gallagher
* 2006 Live At Montreaux
2008 The Essential Rory Gallagher

un fior di chitarrista....un peccato che sia morto!

verissimo...purtroppo sottovalutato 8)

vero troppo sottovalutato forse perchè non aveva quella cazzo di etichetta da Rockstar che tanti anno ma non sono a questi livelli.....poi anche il vizio della bottiglia ha fatto la sua parte! che Dio lo benedica....

questo è uno dei dischi più belli che ho, senza timore d'essere smentito!
amo Rory fin da quando vidi la copertina di Irish Tour, un musicista veramente emozionante.
la cosa bella è che litigava spesso e volentieri con i promoter affinchè tenessero bassi i prezzi dei biglietti, e non suonava mai meno di tre ore.
lo amo veramente, è una grande passione

Per continuare a parlare di questo grande chitarrista........

Grandioso!
Ottimo topic!
Io se devo scegliere forse l'album che preferisco è Deuce, ma la scelta è davvero difficile.
Adoro anche Calling Card, l'omonimo primo album, ovviamente l'Irish Tour...
L'elenco sarebbe davvero troppo lungo.
Un artista a mio avviso rimasto forse troppo ai margini del Mainstream per il suo essere un po' schivo e riservato, ma con il talento che aveva merita di sicuro un posto tra i più grandi di sempre.
Se avete curiosità al riguardo non esitate a chiedere...diciamo che sono abbastanza ferrato.
Se non infrango nessuna regola e senza voler assolutamente togliere spazio alla passione per gli Stones se qualcuno vorrà approfondire la conoscenza di Gallagher gestisco anche un forum (che alcuni Vs utenti già frequentano di tanto in tanto) a lui dedicato.
http://rorygallagher.forumup.it

Ah dimenticavo...dovreste sapere che ad un certo punto le vite di Gallagher e degli Stones si sono incrociate...anche se per poco...come già scritto nel post di apertura quando gli Stones deovettero sostituire Mick Taylor Rory fece qualche session con loro prima di decisere che non faceva per lui e continuare con la propria carriera solista

ciao Thomas, perchè non ci racconti tutto ciò che sai su questo argomento?
quanti giorni è stato con gli stones, se esistono registrazion, che pezzi ha eseguito ecc.
per me è un argomento interessantissimo

Ciao

anche per me, ho sempre cercato di approfondire a livello di registrazioni, foto o qualsiasi altra cosa su questa temporanea collaborazione, ma oltre a quanto segue non ho mai trovato nient'altro:


January 22-February 9, 1975:
The Rolling Stones, with Billy Preston, start rehearsing guitarists and resume recording sessions for Black and Blue in Rotterdam, Netherlands, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio.
Guitarists showing up include Jeff Beck, Wayne Perkins and Rory Gallagher.
The Rolling Stones start work on Crazy Mama, Slave, Melody and Worried About You among others.

Vi posto un articolo molto completo, credo una delle poche fonti ufficiali al riguardo.
Un'intervista al fratello Donal che parla, tra le altre cose di questa ipotetica collaborazione; ho messo in grassetto le parti direttamente collegate all'argomento. L'articolo è molto lungo ed era in occasione dell'uscita di un Best of, ma se avete voglia e se masticate l'inglese è davvero molto interessante per capire com'era Rory.
P.S.
tra l'altro pare sia proprio vera la cosa che il riff iniziale di "start me up" era suo!

------------


One of the most iconic Irish musicians ever, Rory Gallagher died ten years ago, on June 14 1995. This month, he is commemorated with a comprehensive retrospective, Big Guns – The Very Best Of Rory Gallagher. His brother, Donal Gallagher, who was both manager and mentor to Rory, talks to Colm O’Hare about the work involved in compiling the album, the guitarist’s legacy – and the fascinating story of how he nearly joined the Rolling Stones.

When Rory Gallagher died unexpectadly after a short illness in 1995, the music world was robbed of a true guitar legend and one of the most genuinely nice guys in the business. The Donegal-born, Cork-raised axe-man remains in many minds one of the best guitar players ever to have graced a stage, especially here in Ireland.

Ten years after his untimely death, his popularity remains as high as ever, with a whole new generation of fans discovering his music for the first time.

To commemorate the tenth anniversary of his passing on June 14, the first ever fully comprehensive retrospective collection of his career will be released. Big Guns – The Very Best of Rory Gallagher, will feature 24 classics, drawing on his career as a solo artist and a member of Taste, including favourites like, ‘What’s Going On’, ‘Tatto’d Lady’, ‘Shadow Play’, ‘Calling Card’ and ‘Daughter of the Everglades’. It also includes previously unreleased live versions of two of his best-loved concert numbers, ‘Messin’ With The Kid’ and ‘Bullfrog Blues’ – both recorded at the Brighton Dome in 1974.

All tracks have been re-mastered and re-mixed in 5.1 surround-sound and will be released on SACD hybrid (playable on both SACD and CD players). The package will feature a 48-page booklet with two essays on Rory’s life and many unseen photos spanning his career.

This long overdue compilation was overseen by Rory’s brother and long-time manager Donal, who has devoted much of his time since Rory’s death to ensuring the availability of his recorded legacy in high quality editions.


“The whole programme of restoring the back catalogue was started back in 1998 when I did a deal with BMG,” he explains. “By the end of last year, when the contract had expired, I had restored the entire catalogue and had brought everything out. But the one thing I didn’t want to do prior to that was to bring out a ‘best of’ or a compilation. I felt it might distract from what the catalogue was all about.

“There were so many interesting things on the individual albums, plus the bonus tracks and all the restoration and re-mixing and for others who skirted over Rory’s music and never really got into him, this is a good album with which to re-evaluate his career.”

Gallagher selected 50 tracks to start out with, eventually paring it down to the twenty-four that were finally chosen. It was clearly no easy task deciding what to include and what to leave out, as he explains.

“It was almost like a football knock-out competition. A lot of decisions had to be made but some of the tracks just had to be included on it, there was no possibility of leaving them out. In fact Maurice Byrne in the Sony/BMG offices in Dublin handed me a list of songs and said, ‘If 50% of these tracks aren’t on the album, it ain’t the best of Rory Gallagher’.”

The other consideration with a project such as this was the format in which it would eventually be released. With the growing availabilityof hi-resolution, surround-sound editions of classic albums, the decision was made to release the album on the new Super Audio CD format, mixed for 5.1 surround-sound.

“When BMG merged with Sony, one of the things they wanted was Rory’s back catalogue,” Gallagher explains. “But they wanted anything to be future-proofed for release on one of the new formats. Given that it’s in 5.1 surround-sound we had to go back to the original multi-track tapes, rather than using the stereo mixes, which is the normal way of doing it. It’s a whole new approach in that you have to be more conscious of the surround experience.

“One track, ‘The Loop’, for example was vying for my attention with a track called ‘Alexis’ for inclusion – they’re both instrumentals and both tributes, one to the Chicago transit system and the other to the blues player Alexis Korner. I opted for ‘The Loop’, which has a recording of the actual Loop in Chicago, which we were able to throw around the room. ‘Tatto’ed Lady’ was another one that had to be included. It had fairground sounds at the beginning of the track, which we enlarged for the surround mix.”

Not all of the original tapes were easily found and there were problems with the deteriorating quality of some of the multi-tracks, according to Gallagher.

“We were quite surprised at the fact that some of the tapes still existed at all,” he says. “The first Taste album was recorded on an 8-track and we got hold of that and even for the Isle of White album there was a multi-track available. But Polydor had lost the multi-tracks for the Taste track ‘On The Boards’ – luckily though, there was a copy of it, which had been sent to Germany where the song was released as a single, so we were able to use that.

“It frightens you the fact that some of the multi-tracks have gone missing. You think they’re safe with a big record company but it’s not necessarily the case. You start worrying what would happen if we had a fire at our own storage facility. There are another 400 multi-tracks to get through, so as soon as this project is finished we’ll be tackling those for future versions of the original albums.”

The sequencing of the album was yet another challenge that had to be faced. One of the early – and crucial – decisions Donal made was not to programme the tracks chronologically.

“I was trying to get the tracks to work together in a way that made some kind of sense,” he says. “Disc one is very much the rock side of Rory. It’s all in-your-face, no-holds-barred stuff with tracks like ‘Big Guns’ from the Jinx album ,‘Bad Penny’ from Top Priority and then there’s the live section, which is almost like a live EP’s worth of material. The two obvious live tracks to include were ‘Messin’ With the Kid’ and ‘Bullfrog Blues’. We just happened to have two great versions on multi-track available to us, which were recorded at Brighton. To my ears they were the better ones to use than the ones that had previously been released.”

Disc two features a more acoustic, mellower collection of songs and includes tracks like ‘Out On The Western Plain’, ‘Just A Smile’ and ‘I’m Not Awake Yet’.

“It’s a more melodic, laid-back sequence of songs – showcasing another side of Rory’s playing,” says Gallagher. “It’s a side to him that not everyone is aware of – the fact that you could chill out to his music as well as rock to it.”

Donal Gallagher worked with his late brother since they were both teenagers. He went on to become road manager for Taste and continued to work with him through the solo years.



“Rory joined The Fontana showband at just 15 years of age and I ended up going to the ballrooms and helping putting in the equipment,” he recalls. “The Fontana later became The Impact and they supported bands like The Animals, The Kinks, The Who – any band who was in the top ten in England always got good money to come to do the ballrooms in Ireland. I learned a lot about equipment just by watching these bands and helping out whenever I could. I can even remember looking after the spotlights for an Everly Brothers gig at the Arcadia Ballroom in Cork.”

After having success with the power trio Taste, who released two studio albums and their legendary Live At The Isle of Wight album in 1970, Gallagher went on to a spectacularly successful solo career. He released 11 studio albums and 5 live albums between 1971 and 1990. The consummate live artist and self-confessed road animal, Gallagher toured relentlessly, playing literally thousands of dates around the world, including 25 full US tours. At one point he was headhunted by the Rolling Stones to replace Mick Taylor – though he famously turned them down to concentrate on his own career. Gallagher toured right up until his death. Ironically, his final Irish concert at College Green in August 1994 saw him perform before his biggest ever home audience.

Donal Gallagher remembers the glory years in the ‘70s when Rory’s popularity was at its peak.

“With every album the gigs just got bigger and the tours got longer,” he says. “Rory was very prolific in those days – he’d got a six album deal out of Polydor in 1970 and by the end of ‘74 had delivered all six of them. He was in a very strong position by then, coming out of the recording contract having delivered Irish Tour ’74, his biggest album to date. Suddenly the Stones are on the phone looking for a new guitarist.”

The story of Rory Gallagher and whether he might join The Rolling Stones as a replacement to Mick Taylor is one of the great “what-ifs” in rock lore. But as Donal Gallagher recalls it wasn’t as straightforward a proposition as it might have sounded.

“A couple of nights before heading out on a Japanese tour at the end of ‘74 the phone rang, and it was Ian Stewart [the Stones piano player],” he remembers. “I ran up to Rory’s room and said ‘the Stones want you’. He thought it was a wind-up – we used to joke about things all the time. But they wanted him to go over to Holland and record with them for a night to see how it would go. We packed our kit and got back to London but the date was deferred and then deferred again.

“It ended up being four nights before the Japanese tour. Rory thought it was just a jam session. ‘If they ask me to join I’ll give you a call,’ he said to me. When he got there he was greeted by the Stones manager who said something like, ‘Welcome to the Rolling Stones – we knew it would be you Rory, everyone’s ready for you. They set up that night and they were waiting for Keith to arriveJagger said, ‘I have this new song – can you give me a riff for it? It was ‘Start Me Up’. Rory had his own song and had this riff, which became the intro to ‘Start Me Up’.

“As things would turn out, there was no dialogue internally within the Stones. Rory spent the whole time talking about Brian Jones, whom he’d adored – that wouldn’t have gone down too well with the Glimmer twins. Rory had said to Mick, ‘Look, I have this Japanese tour to do’. Mick said it was Keith’s call, so he went to his room to find him comatose. He waited up all night trying to wake him, but he couldn’t. I met him off the Rotterdam flight with his bag packed ready to go to Japan. He told me that Keith took a break.

“We went off to Japan and then Australia and the story broke while we were there and there was a big story. It was a bizarre set of circumstances. It would have been interesting to see what might have happened. Then it became this scenario where they were trying out all these guitar players including Steve Marriott, Ry Cooder, Jeff Beck – a whole list of them. I think they felt, ‘Oh we’ve been turned down by Rory Gallagher, this can’t happen. No-one turns The Stones down!’ So they were saying, ‘Well, we’re the Stones, we’ve turned down Jeff Beck and Ry Cooder etc.’

“It probably was a fait accompli that Ronnie Wood would join. For what the Stones wanted… Rory might have turned the clock back a little – maybe that’s what some people would have liked. The four days experience of waiting around for someone to get their act together would have been frustrating for Rory.”

While he was a major live draw and a consistent album seller, one of the features of Rory Gallagher’s career was that he never made any concessions to commercial fashions or trends, always preferring to stick to the basic blues template. Was there ever any pressure for him to be more commercially minded?

“There was always that pressure to put Rory in a studio with a producer. But because he owned his own copyright and was licensing in what they called ‘finished product’, the record company had no say in the matter. But slowly I was getting Rory around to the notion of a single. I was thinking if I go to a jukebox I play singles – not albums. But he found that hard to rationalise. He was afraid of his career being taken in a different direction and of being mis-interpreted.

“I’d say to Rory, 'Messin’ With The Kid’ is a single or ‘Bullfrog Blues’ – that’s a single. I remember the head of Polydor in America arrived down to a gig in Washington with an edited version of ‘Going To My Hometown’ and he said, ‘We’d guarantee you a number one with this’ – but Rory was so incensed that they’d taken the tape and edited it. It left me in the position of being delighted that the head of the record company would come down and see the gig but embarrassed that Rory wouldn’t talk to him. Then they’d recoil and wouldn’t come back. For Rory his big fear was getting a hit single just for the sake of it.”

Either way, it was not to be. Rory was a huge star, to a degree that may not be fully appreciated at times in Ireland. That he might have been so much bigger if he’d worked the business differently is, in the end, essentially academic.

Rory passed away at only 48 years of age, following complications after he underwent a liver transplant. His death came as a huge shock to the music world.

“The biggest difficulty was getting him to go into hospital in the first place,” Donal remembers. “Rory and a sticking plaster wouldn’t be in the same room together. He seemed to be immune from all those late nights – we’d be wrecked but he’d want to stay up all night jamming in some club even after playing his own gig. I’d say to him ‘what about your hands – you’ve another gig to do tomorrow’ but he wouldn’t listen.

“He fell ill in January of that year and from the critical time where he had to be hospitalised to the time he died it was six months of pressurised intensity. There were some tabloid stories, which were completely ludicrous. My own view of it was that Rory was a private person and it was his own business medically. My main concern at the time was his recovery. And after that I thought the last thing he needs is to become more famous for his transplant than he is for his guitar-playing.

“It was a shock when he died. He’d gone into a coma so I had to make all the decisions from there on. We spent most of the first year after he died tidying up the legal end of things. It was only after that that we could concentrate on looking at the back catalogue and what needed to be done to bring it up to date.”

What’s most certainly not academic is the magnificent raw power of Big Guns – The Very Best Of Rory Gallagher. For those unfamiliar with the G-man’s genius, it is a chance to catch up with some of the greatest Irish rock’n’roll cuts of all time – and then some.

The legend lives on…

Grazie Thomas, veramente interessante!
non sapevo di questo aneddoto su Start Me Up, non vorrei passare per credulone ma sia Rory sia suo fratello Donal hanno fama di persone sincere e che non raccontano (o raccontavano nel caso di Rory) balle, dopotutto non mi pare impossibile che un musicista fantastico come Rory abbia dato uno spunto per la canzone in questione.

Lo ammiro sempre di più, era davvero un grande!

Ho appena letto anche io, per adesso solo la parte in grassetto, qualcosa ricordo di averla ascoltata in un'intervista a Donal Gallagher pescata su youtube.
Anche io credo che su Start Me Up Donal abbia detto la verità. Peccato che non esistano registrazioni, sarebbero state molto interessanti!

complice lo sconforto che mi ha dato il Milan, nemmeno a fine primo tempo ho chiuso e ho messo il dvd 'Rockpalast', che contiene tre differenti shows, rispettivamente degli anni 1976, 1977 e 1979.
per me è un documento eccezionale, sopratutto lo show del '76, c'è tutta l'essenza di Rory, blues, folk, rock'n'roll, acustico ed elettrico, mandolino, vecchie acustiche, la famosa stratocaster che pare cadere in pezzi, telecaster ecc., una sezione ritmica coi controcazzi e Lou Martin al piano che è un fiume in piena, e che tra un pezzo e l'altro beve birra scura.
nello show del '79 da segnalare la presenza come ospite di Frankie Miller, visibilmente sbronzo e che riesce a malapena a cantare, ma molto bello e divertente.
Io lo preferisco al cofanetto 'Montreaux', ugualmente bello, ma questo lo trovo più caldo.
chi ama Rory se lo procuri con urgenza, o a limite mi scriva e glielo copio.

Ne vale davvero la pena, garantisco io per lui

Domanda: Gallagher ha utilizzato per primo qualche accordatura aperta.... ho letto qualcosa da qualche parte ma non mi ricordo. Se qualcuno magari l'esperto Thomas"Rory" G potesse aiutarmi e spiegare brevemente la tecnica di Gallagher sarebbe perfetto