AGAINST
THE GRAIN
" When
I
listen to something, I like to be taken out of my seat and thrown
across
the room. I like guts, a good drive, which can include gentle stuff
too.
If it sounds good and feels good, that's it." Rory Gallagher
Quotes
like
that, and a close listen to most of his music, might lead one to think
Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher is some kind of fierce character, a mean
ball of energy likely to explode into malevolent action at a moment's
notice.
The truth is, Gallagher, the person, is almost the complete antithesis
of his aggressive music. He's quiet, friendly, soft-spoken, eager to
please.
But don't stand in the way of the man or his guitar.
Born
in
Ballyshannon, County Donnegal, Rory, moved at an early age to Cork. He
bought his first real guitar at nine, replacing an earlier plastic
model
on which he'd entertained relatives and socials with the hits of Gene
Autry.
At 15, though he had no particular fondness for the form, he joined the
full-scale Fontana Showband ( later renamed the Impact ), with whom he
spent two and a half crowd-pleasing years.
"We
played
all over Ireland, toured Spain and did a couple of English gigs,"
Gallagher
explains. "It turned out to be great fun. We were luckier than most
showbands:
the drummer wanted to do Jim Reeves stuff, but the rest of us wanted to
play "Nadine" and " A Shot of Rhythm and Blues." Rory's rock & roll
heroes had been Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly; when the
showband
broke up, he found himself freed to play his favorite hard rock
exclusively.
With the showband's drummer and bassist, he visited Hamburg in 1965,
returning
to England some months later and forming the nucleus of Taste, the band
with which he was to enjoy his first success. " We played around
Ireland,
went to Germany again, then finally made the big step over to London in
1969."
Taste
made
two critically acclaimed albums, Taste and On the Boards (
both on Atlantic in the U.S.) and built up a considerable reputation on
the strength of volcanic live appearances. Late in 1970, however, Taste
broke up and Gallagher again found himself with time on his hands. He
spent
the early months of 1971 laying the foundations for a new band that
would
continue where Taste left off. With fellow Irishman Wilgar Campbell on
drums and Gerry McAvoy on bass backing him, Rory cut his first solo
album,
Rory
Gallagher, released on Polydor. The set furnished a more in-depth
portrait
of the artist; where Taste's assets lay in the band's ability to
generate
enormous physical excitement, the new album disclosed Rory as a
powerful
performer, even subtle, musical sides.
Around
the
same time, one of Rory's early idols- Muddy Waters- visited London to
cut
his London Sessions album and Rory was one of the first
sidemen
the veteran bluesman chose.
Gallagher
recorded
two more solo albums with Wilgar and Gerry: Deuce in November
of
1971 and Live In Europe in spring of 1972, the latter being
the
record that brought his giant breakthrough in sales. The band had first
visited America in the fall of '71, and made considerable impression on
hard rock-hungry audiences across the country.
Asked
recently
if his music had changed since the days of Taste, Gallagher explained,
"I'm still recognizable, even if the line-up has changed. As far as
style
goes, I don't like playing twelve bars all the time; the blues field
goes
right from Charlie Patton to Lowell Fulson and my aim has been to play
the blues properly and feel them. Basically, I like anything with guts:
Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, The Stones, Johnny Winter."
Gallagher
released three more albums with Polydor ( Blueprint, Tattoo and
the devastating live set, Irish Tour '74 ) before signing with
Chrysalis
in 1975. His first album with the label , Against the Grain,
was
released in the fall of the year, coinciding with a favorably received
American tour.
" I'm
pleased
with the new album," Rory admits. "It's the first studio album in two
years:
we recorded at Wessex, a studio I hadn't used before in London, but it
had a nice feel to it. There are seven new songs which I've written
over
a period of a year. Apart from those, there's a Leadbelly number, 'Out
On the Western Plain,' and James and Bobby Purify's 'I Take What I
Want.'
It's a good record."
This
article
comes from a promotional booklet for Against The Grain in 1975.
reformatted
by roryfan
Thanks
to John Murphy for sharing it.
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