In 2012, Classic Rock's sister magazine The Blues put Rory Gallagher on the cover and told the story of his 1974 Irish Tour, a legendary run of dates that united fans from both sides of the sectarian divide. In the same issue, modern-day guitar hero Joe Bonamassa, who would later honour Gallagher with a live tribute album and film titled The Spirit Of Rory: Live From Cork, paid tribute to a man he calls "the Stevie Ray Vaughan of the rest of the world."
We're running a Rory Gallagher tribute issue: do you think he’s a worthy cover star?
Oh, absolutely. The thing is, when you ask somebody over here in the States for a working-class guitar hero, they’ll go, Stevie Ray Vaughan. But if you ask someone from the UK, or Ireland, or Holland, the same question, then you’re gonna get Rory Gallagher. I’ve always said that Rory is the Stevie Ray Vaughan of the rest of the world. Yeah, I’m glad he’s going on the cover.
How did you first discover Rory Gallagher?
It was my dad. I remember that he put on Irish Tour ’74. And I think the American cover of that album just had Rory with the beat-up Strat, and of course, me being the guitar geek to end all guitar geeks, I immediately fixated on that, like, ‘Whoa, that’s a cool guitar’. So my dad goes, ‘Well, check out this guy, he plays really well, and he’s from Ireland’.
At that point, living out in New York State, he might as well have said Mars. But, from the moment you hear Cradle Rock – y’know, right from the first downbeat – you’re hooked. It was a special performance, that record. It changed my world. I really liked that take on the blues – you know, it was uptempo and raw, but there was some melody to it, and then it was just his songs.
What did Rory have that your other blues idols didn’t?
He was the guy who would just pour out of the van after he drove 17 hours, set up his own amp, plug in, play the best show you’d ever seen in your life, pick up his amp and guitar, get back in the van, drive to next city – another 10 hours – and not blink an eye. He had that nomadic working-class thing about him that endeared him to me.
You watch Live At Montreux or Live At The Cork Opera House… and he was that guy. There wasn’t any put-on there. He dressed that way, in the flannel shirt, on and off the stage, take it or leave it, and he did it with conviction. I think that kinda separates him [from other blues icons] a little bit, in the sense that he never changed his image or his style, right from Taste to his very last day.
He was that guy. I mean, we all change, y’know? Hell, I look back 10 years in my own career, and I was this awkward, geeky moron playing bad versions of Rory Gallagher songs… and now I’m still that guy, only dressed in a suit! So we all change. But Rory Gallagher never did. So that was cool.
Rory passed away in June 1995: how did the news hit you?
I remember reading about it in, I think it was Guitar World or something. This is before the internet, or at least before our town had a computer, you know, so we didn’t get all the news all the time. One month, the news was, ‘Rory Gallagher goes in for a liver transplant.’ The next month, it didn’t go so well, and he’s struggling, and then a couple of months later, he’s dead.
It was definitely a shocker because I would love to have seen him live, at any stage. It’s one of my big regrets that I never did. He didn’t tour America very much. It was mainly over in Europe.
How did it feel to play Rory’s iconic Strat at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2011?
My girlfriend, Sandi [Thom], she set up the whole thing. She’d met Donal Gallagher, and she told me, ‘They’re gonna bring the guitar down.’ I was like, well, just to see it is enough for me. But then Donal said that Bernie Marsden had played it in a tribute, and if I’d like to play it onstage… y’know, they had me at hello. But in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, ‘I’m gonna take so much shit for this’, because you just know that everyone on the internet will go, ‘Who do you think you are?’ But anybody would have done it.
So I said, ‘Well, here’s the problem: these are Rory’s strings.’ The thought of breaking one of them was too much to bear. They said, ‘No, no, we took Rory’s last set of strings off.’ So I put a new set on this thing. It hadn’t been played for almost 17 years. We plugged it in and it was just magic. I could see why Rory played it as much as he did.
Having owned a whole bunch of vintage Strats over the years myself, finding that magic one that has the right weight, balance, sound and dynamic, so that when you turn it up, it roars – that’s difficult. I could see why he loved it. Because even taking his name and prominence off it, it’s just a great ’61 Fender Stratocaster, that works. There was a moment in time, for about 30 minutes before I went on at the Hammersmith Apollo, when it was just me and the guitar in the dressing room. It was like,‘This is a big responsibility!’
I watched the video again about a month ago – it probably came up on some random thing that I was checking out on the computer – and I said to myself, ‘Man, you are a lucky dude, Joe Bonamassa.’ How many people could say they were able to do that? It’s one of the thrills of my career, being able to play Cradle Rock on that guitar. That was the thrill of a lifetime.
What are your favourite Rory moments?
Well, I grew up on the stuff he did with the battered Strat and Irish Tour ’74. But what I’ve been really getting into lately is the acoustic stuff. In the 90s, there were a couple of live bootlegs and some weird releases of him and Béla Fleck where he’s doing Walking Blues from Robert Johnson, just sitting there with an acoustic guitar. You can tell it’s not even plugged in. It’s just a microphone. And he just kills.
Rory had a unique style, both on the electric and the acoustic guitar. He’s the only guy, in my book, that made a Stratocaster sound like a Gibson. And when he plays the acoustic, he’s so heavy-handed, it’s almost like a lessbluesy version of John Hammond Jr. You know, because John Hammond really plays it just like Robert Johnson, or just like Son House, whereas Rory kinda puts more rock ‘n’ roll into it.
As a guitarist, Rory’s intonation on the slide really blew me away, because at that point, I was dabbling a bit in that. I know now how difficult it really is to effortlessly sing in tune, pitch-perfect, and then to put down a slide solo that doesn’t have any sharp or flat notes. And then he could just riff, just normal. Rory was the total package like that.
This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock presents The Blues, published in November 2012. Rory Gallagher is the cover star of the new issue of Classic Rock, which is out now.
