Live in Europe

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We did a couple of shows in the north of France and only a handful of people turned up,” says McAvoy. “But that was OK. Our attitude was if we put on a great show then next time twice as many people will turn up. And that’s generally what happened wherever we played.” By the time Gallagher recorded his third album, Blueprint, in December 1972, several things had changed. Fired up by de’Ath’s exuberant drumming style, the guitarist had expanded his power trio format to a quartet with the addition of Belfast-born keyboard player Lou Martin.

One thing does worry him. As we speed into the heart of the city, Rory hunches deeper into his seat. He turns slowly to his driver, crinkling his eyes: “That’s a strange town, you know. When did I ever bust six strings in a night before?”

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Rory could have done with a coach to discipline him,” says Donal. “He would work himself into a frazzle and what should have been an enjoyable experience wasn’t.” While the sound quality is variable – partly due to the fact that they couldn’t get insurance for Ronnie Lane’s Mobile Studios in the more troubled areas – the album never loses its primal, raw urgency. It’s the sound of a band leaning out over the precipice – something Gallagher deliberately encouraged, making up the show as he went along. I only joined a showband because there was nowhere else to go with an electric guitar,” he later explained.

Like every young Irish musician who came of age in the early 60s, Gallagher served his apprenticeship on the showband circuit, playing covers of popular hits. I asked Rory before we started working in Tattoo if he could write down lyrics for me so I would have something to work from,” says de’Ath. “But he never did. I don’t know what he was thinking.” He even witnessed the Sex Pistols’ infamous final show at San Francisco’s Winterland in January 1978. Nevertheless, Gallagher’s relentless integrity, combined with the furious immersion in his live performances, won him a staunch following. Working as a solo artist following the somewhat tumultuous dissolution of Taste, it took this iconoclastic musician no longer to document his concert work than when he was with the unsung British power trio: the now fifty-year-old Live in Europe album (released 5/14/72) was his third overall release under his own name after the eponymous debut LP and its sophomore follow-up Deuce. Rory avoided pandering to his audience. He preferred to simply play music and, in so doing with such unabashed abandon, he rendered it with an irrepressible glee that radiated from the stage to his enraptured audiences.

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He’s not worried about the attention he gets. He has it well worked out. “Some people get all worried about this fantasy and reality thing, you know, the stage only being the fantasy. I don’t see it like that. It makes things easier if you treat the stage as reality. Reality is doing the thing you’re best at.”

By the 90s, Gallagher had become marginalised by both the record industry and music fans. Although he gigged constantly, the gaps between albums became longer and longer; he released just two albums in the 10 years before 1990’s Fresh Evidence, his final release. By the time Rory Gallagher was released in May 1971, the trio had played their first live shows, a series of dates in Europe. The first gig, at Paris’s Olympia Theatre, was sold out and filmed for French TV. Other shows in were less successful. I was pissed off because I had made a mistake on Laundromat,” recalls the bassist. “But to Rory it didn’t matter as long as it had the feel. To Rory, feel was everything.”He was very up for the whole punk thing,” says Donal. “He loved the whole attitude and it really hurt him when he got labelled as part of the old guard.” The debut album had been poorly received in some quarters (American journalist Lester Bangs had described it as “one of the most noticeably vacuous releases of the season”), instigating a fractious relationship with the press. But, crucially, both the record and the live show had connected with the public. In fact if the subject didn’t involve music, books or film, Gallagher rarely connected with his band on any deep level. “I remember once we were having a chat in my room and he asked me about spiritual matters,” says Rod. “He asked me what the Godhead means and the whole thing about reincarnation, Buddhism etc, because he knew that I’m really into that stuff. We were both drunk and I remember him getting quite agitated and storming out shouting, ‘That’s blasphemy!’” Live In Europe would be Gallagher’s most successful record yet on both sides of the Atlantic, but the band’s ferocious work rate was taking its toll on Wilgar Campbell. The only member of the band with a family, he found the strain of touring too much and began missing shows. The final straw came when he bailed out on the day the band were to due to fly to Ireland to play a gig that was being recorded for a TV broadcast. The opening rhythmic riff of FOLLOW ME resets the high energy buttons on this song which emphasizes Rory’s awareness of the shortness of time.