For reasons
passing understanding, for many years I only owned two Rory Gallagher albums – Against The Grain, which I absolutely cherished, and the live album Stage
Struck (with bonus 7”). And
disappointingly, I never managed to see the great man live. But I still have a few fond memories of him
from my teenage years, principally a terrific Old Grey Whistle Test ‘In Concert’ performance from
the BBC Television Theatre (aka the Shepherds Bush Empire), which was what sold me on Against The
Grain. The energy displayed on ‘Souped
Up Ford’ - which I can now enjoy again, courtesy of YouTube - was a key ingredient for me, and the line-up with Rod de’Ath on drums
and Lou Martin on keyboards continues to be my favourite even now. I also remember broadcasts of him doing ‘Rock
Goes To College’ (I think) and the Montreux Jazz Festival, but that first encounter
still stands out.
But I also
remember reading, in Melody Maker if memory serves correctly, about a celebrated
incident relating to a performance by Rory at Birmingham Town Hall. He’d arrived there a day ahead of the band and
crew, apparently because of some publicity commitments, only to find on the
night of the gig that band and gear were all stranded on the motorway because
of fog.
So what did
the bold Rory do? He went on stage with
an acoustic guitar, apologised for the problem and promised to come back and do
a full gig for free – and then delivered a set that brought the house
down. There are various accounts of this
performance, such as these from the forum on the Rory Gallagher website. Oh, to have been in the audience that night!
This story
came back to me last year, after going to see Eric Clapton play at the SSE
Hydro in Glasgow. Notoriously, Clapton
found the sound not to his liking, and walked off stage in the middle of ‘Cocaine’,
which turned out to be the last song in his main set. When he came back he offered a quick “Sorry
about that”, did an encore, and that was that - not even a reprise of ‘Cocaine’. And you ask yourself, would Rory Gallagher
have done that?
Happy
birthday Rory – a class act.
at that concert. rory asked anybody in the crowd, if anybody could help him out by coming up on stage and have a go at playing the drums with him, i recall
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately the link to the Rory Gallagher website that I included in this article no longer works. But I've found an account of the show by a chap called Chris Morrison - an audience member and music student who had played with Gerry McAvoy before, and had met Rory a few times. When it became apparent that there was a problem, Morrison managed to get backstage to say hello, where he heard that the band were stuck on the motorway (though evidently their gear had arrived). It was then suggested - to his horror, apparently - that he might join Rory on stage, though he didn't at first. Instead Rory went on and played an hour of acoustic blues. Then he strapped on his Strat, waved Morrison on, and they started on some generic electric blues, gradually getting into some Rory tunes, and eventually being joined by Rory's brother Donal on drums. A unique experience for all concerned!
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