Rory Gallagher was the best guitar player in the world. But this hot artist from Ireland was shy and not cut out for the glad-handing part of being a rock star. In fact, as we learn from Rory Gallagher: Calling Card (RTÉ One, 6.30pm, June 3rd), he was perhaps one of the most important Irish rockers of the 20th century.
“The most amazing musician. One of the main reasons I do what I do is because of Rory,” says Queen’s Brian May early in this gripping, authoritative and moving film. “It always struck me as weird that a kid who came out of a showband could play the blues,” says Bob Geldof. “Not the Mississippi Delta but the Leeside Delta.”
Gallagher appeals to all types of musicians Johnny Marr of The Smiths is a fan, as is Slash from Gun’ n’ Roses and even The Rolling Stones tried to recruit him after Mick Taylor left in mid-1970s (he wasn’t particularly taken with them or their circus and went off to tour Japan instead).
There have been many documentaries about Rory Gallagher and this one comes close to being definitive. It celebrates him, it accepts that there were sad aspects to his story and it tells us where he came from: Ballyshannon in Co Donegal; MacCurtain Street in Cork city centre where he fell for blues music and got his first guitar.
He found his way to London where he fronted power trio Taste at Marquee Club one-time Queen noodler in chief Brian May saw them there: “You can hear him turn it up, you hear that distortion kick in It sings. That’s what I wanted.”
So did Bob Geldof. He remembers seeing them at Isle Of Wight festival 1970 on same bill as Jimi Hendrix (whom by Geldof’s reckoning Gallagher overshadowed). “I was completely blown away. I saw Hendrix later. This sounds like heresy I’d take Rory on that day. Exceptional just exceptional. ”
Rock stories often end in tragedy and this one is no different Rory petered out in middle age, never settling down and having little to live for outside live performance. “He was just a music man,” says Clannad’s Moya Brennan. “That was his life. He never got involved with many people. Everything was around music.”
“He had his dark times,” acknowledges his older brother Dónal, also manager of the estate, who believes music fed them: “There was a melancholy there.
In the blues idiom, everything is negative. You are adding to the situation.”
He was like other rock stars in that he had addiction problems. His fear of flying led to a dependence on prescription drugs which, combined with heavy drinking, destroyed his liver. He died in June 1995 after contracting MRSA while in hospital for an organ transplant. He was 47. “To die of MRSA,” says Hot Press editor Niall Stokes, “it was just terribly unlucky.”
Gallagher’s story could have been told as a warning from the heights and depths of fame: instead Calling Card is about his music and legacy being celebrated. “You always believed in Rory,” says broadcaster Dave Fanning, who got a Christmas card from the guitarist every year. “He communicated through his music; he got lost in it and we got lost with him it was as simple as that.”
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