Rory Gallagher

Rory Gallagher's Irish tour began with two dates in Belfast, on the 28th and 29th of December 1973, moved on to Dublin on the following 2nd of January, and wrapped up with two shows in Cork, the bluesman's hometown, on the 3rd and 5th of the same month. The first and fourth dates were matinées, the rest evening shows.

Decades later, it's clear this was one of the most significant events in the island's musical culture, but even at the time many sensed its importance, particularly given Gallagher's decision to play Belfast, which had gone six months without live concerts due to IRA terrorism.

On the very day of his arrival in the city, around ten bombs went off, fortunately without any casualties. Roy Hollingworth of Melody Maker reported that word behind the scenes reassured organizers that the IRA would let the shows go on without incident (the journalist's article, however, is rather embellished and contains several inaccuracies that don't match the account reconstructed by Daniel Gallagher, Rory's nephew and chief curator of his posthumous releases: one glaring example describes the December 29th concert as if it were the guitarist's only performance in the city, with no mention of the matinée the day before).

Tony Palmer, a celebrated director specializing in rock music documentaries, followed those few dates to make an hour-and-24-minute film, later released in cinemas in a limited run a few months on (today it's easily found on DVD and streaming).

The first two evening concerts were recorded on audio by Palmer using Nagra tapes, while the second Cork date was captured with the help of a mobile studio rented from Ronnie Lane of the Faces.

"Irish Tour '74" was released on July 21, 1974, as a double vinyl LP. Although the liner notes claimed it was a selection drawn from the entire tour, it was later established that the material came exclusively from the final date (the only one recorded using a multitrack rig), with the exception of the fourth side of the record, which contained recordings from January 4th, held without an audience, in order to test the newly arrived mobile studio.

The tracklist is made up of ten songs: six drawn from the two preceding studio albums – "Blueprint" and "Tattoo", both released in 1973 – and four covers, including three blues classics never before recorded by Gallagher ("I Wonder Who" by Muddy Waters, "Too Much Alcohol" by J.B. Hutto, "Just A Little Bit" by Rosco Gordon) and one dug up from the repertoire of American singer-songwriter Tony Joe White ("As The Crow Flies"). The lineup is the same as on the '73 albums, with Gallagher on guitar, Gerry McAvoy on bass, Lou Martin on Rmi electric piano, and Rod de'Ath on drums.

At the time, Gallagher was one of the most important bluesmen around: the band that had made him famous, Taste, had lasted less than five years but left a deep impression on fans, and his solo career, launched in 1971, had taken off immediately. The stage was considered his ideal habitat, and that much is clear right away from the raw sound of the opening "Cradle Rock".

All the tracks here are now regarded as superior to their original studio versions, partly thanks to the excellent recording quality (all the more impressive considering no studio fixes were applied, unlike the common practice of the time).

Although several of the songs on the setlist were already fairly long in their original form, running 6 to 7 minutes, here they're stretched out even further, with "A Million Miles Away", "Walk On Hot Coals" and "Who's That Coming" clocking in between 9 and 11 minutes: torrential jams punctuated by the rhythm and blues groove of the electric piano (occasionally edging toward funk), the jazzy accents of the drums, and the guitar's virtuosity.

A digression on Gallagher's technical level is worth making here, since it's never emphasized enough: misleadingly described as a passionate, instinctive guitarist, in line with the cheap, sentimental rhetoric — so dear to rock journalists — of the musician who plays just a few notes in exactly the right place, Gallagher was in fact a master of his instrument, and he certainly didn't play few notes. His parts were intricate, fast runs held no fear for him, and his tonal range was astonishing, running from the cleanest blues lines to full-on distortion, often without relying on any pedals at all: what sounds like a wah-wah is actually achieved by manually working the guitar's tone knob, while the distortion comes straight from the amplifier, with no overdrive. The only effect he consistently relied on during this period was a Rangemaster treble booster.

Gallagher was, in essence, a musician with a highly refined technique, and he wasn't shy about showing it off: this was well known among his peers, to the point that he received an offer from David Coverdale to replace Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple, which he politely turned down.

Another thing that comes through on these recordings is his stature as a singer: a powerful voice, with soul inflections, which is never overwhelmed by the muscular blues rock arrangements running beneath it, and never shows a hint of hesitation or strain.

It's precisely this remarkable command of his own abilities, this sense of formal perfection across a 79-minute journey, that makes "Irish Tour '74" one of the most legendary live albums of its era — perhaps the most celebrated white blues rock record of all, with the possible exception of the Allman Brothers' "At Fillmore East".

At the time, the double LP reached number 36 on the UK weekly chart and number 110 on the US chart — hardly impressive peaks — but its cult following later grew, and over the years it has gone on to sell more than 100,000 copies in the UK alone.

In 2014, a deluxe edition was released featuring the complete recordings of all three evening concerts: the audio from the two dates prior to the mobile studio's arrival is, understandably, of lesser quality, having been captured by Palmer for the documentary, but it still stands as an important document, one that deserved to be made available to the public.

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06/04/2025