By: Brady Lavin
Rory Gallagher was a rarity. He was so completely all about the music that he refused to release an album because he didn’t like the mix. He was a guitar hero who sold over 30 million records worldwide, but you will never hear him brag about it. While he never attained huge star status in the U.S., as he had only a few radio hits, his extensive touring and marathon live performances have made him a legend in his home country of Ireland and throughout the guitar community.
After moving on from Taste, the blues-rock band he founded in 1966, he went solo, putting out ten albums during the ’70s, including two live albums. Another album was recorded in the late part of the decade, but was never released… until now.
Notes From San Francisco
Throughout all Rory’s touring and recording, his brother Donal has been at his side, managing and supporting everything he did. Having such an inside view of Rory’s life and music, Donal was the perfect person to shed some light on how this album came to be.
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Brady Lavin: It seems like with every posthumous release, it’s done the way Rory would have wanted. How important is that for you?
Donal Gallagher: Oh, it’s essential. There’s no other way to do it. I feel like it would come back and haunt me if I didn’t.
Brady: Why were the songs that make up Notes From San Francisco not released when they were recorded?
Donal Gallagher: At the end of the recording, when Rory completed it, he just had a turn against it for different reasons. I think one was that the mixes of the recording at the time, he just wasn’t content with or happy with. Also, directly after that, he split his band up. Rory, musically, was harboring the notion that he wanted to go back to his three-piece roots. So he basically set that album aside and rerecorded some of the material, but by and large, that album just stayed there.
He had, himself, thought about remixing the tracks later on, but he just didn’t get around to it. It was a complete album. It was one that he kept getting requests from people to make available. I still resisted that, and it just stayed in storage.
It was largely due to my son Daniel, who is a guitar player, who asked me if he could take them into the studio and see what assistance he could get for the technical difficulties Rory felt at the time. I was quite impressed with he had fixed, as it were, in the recordings.
And then coupling it with the live album, so it basically tells a story of where Rory’s head may have been with respect to the musicians and the lineup. Also, Rory was working, which he didn’t usually do, with a producer, and I think that was something he found difficult. To allow somebody else full control in the studio.
So then by putting that together with the live recordings, which were done less than a year after that album with the three-piece, it demonstrates the direction he wanted to go.
Brady: So it was Daniel who asked to remix the album, it wasn’t your idea or anyone else’s?
Donal Gallagher: No, it was very much Daniel. I mean, I was fully aware that the album was there because we even had it complete on a vinyl issue [that didn’t happen], but this version has more of the tracks than the vinyl would have had.
Brady: Do you remember what gear Rory was using when he recorded Notes From San Francisco?
Donal Gallagher: Obviously all the usual, the Strat, his favorite guitar. But he was using a Les Paul as well, and he was using a lot of the old Fender Tweed amps. He was collecting these on the road as he would go. For the “Wheels Within Wheels” acoustic version he used a Martin.
Brady: With all the lawsuits we hear about with people suing managers who screw them out of money, how important was it for Rory to have, in you, someone he could trust managing his affairs?
Donal Gallagher: Rory had been ripped off during his time with Taste, so in effect, when he came out of Taste, he didn’t trust anybody too easily. It was Peter Grant, Zeppelin’s manager, who was looking after Rory initially. Who wanted to continue with management, but Rory had decided that he wanted to basically be in control of himself.
I think in some ways, you have to trust some people. Being his brother, my role kind of snowballed because I was on the road as the road manager. I wasn’t doing other duties in particular, but then suddenly the record company people show up and they want to speak to somebody. I then became the conduit to the artist, by and large, but we were still touring.
I think it would have been a good idea to have somebody fixed in an office operating the day-to-day stuff. It would have been good for him to have a management company, certainly in the U.S. for a U.S. base. He certainly would have benefitted from that.
Brady: How did you become Rory’s road manager?
Donal Gallagher: Starting out as kids, Rory was stage-struck from the age of six. In those days, there was only so much material a youngster could perform, in particular with rock n roll and blues. There wasn’t much suitable for a kid of that age, so I got brought in to harmonize when he was about ten and I was about nine. We’d tour around and do Everly Brothers material, which we thought was very safe.
I started an argument with him on stage once and got fired, so to get back in his good books I’d carry his guitar for him. Then when he was joining various bands, I’d just do anything to get back and be part of the music side. I’d describe it as latching on, so my role then just developed over that.
Brady: I’ve read that you play drums. How often did you sit in with your older brother?
Donal Gallagher: Not too often. Rory had an elephant’s memory, he had sworn that he would never work with me on stage.
There was only one occasion, when his band was late to turn up for a gig in Birmingham. Rory went out and entertained the crowd while they were waiting. He then spotted a piano player and a bass player in the audience and brought them on stage, and he needed a drummer, so I got hauled on to play drums.
That was both the worst and the best experience I had because the road crew started putting all the echoes into the monitors when I was drumming. It was difficult to make sure you were keeping the beat.
My drumming was very primitive. We spent a lot of time in the Ghent House in Belgium for a year, and it had a small studio. When he was sort of demoing stuff, he’d ask me to go down and keep time, basically.
I had some of the best teachers. All the drummers Rory had would all show me what they knew.
Brady: Over the years, Rory had multiple offers from great bands for him to join them. Why did he never take them up on that?
Donal Gallagher: The first one, I think, was Canned Heat. When “The Owl,” Al Wilson suddenly passed away, it was only years afterwards when we were doing a show with Canned Heat that “The Bear” came up to Rory and said, “You know, we tried to get in touch with you.” That was one I think Rory would have jumped at had they actually connected at that time.
Then the other one was with Cream. When they split up, Eric Clapton was leaving the lineup more than anything else. Rory was with Taste playing at Cream’s farewell concert in London, and Robert Stigwood, who was their manager, had the idea of Rory replacing Eric Clapton. Rory felt that he would be basically forever walking in Eric’s shoes, so he just dismissed that immediately.
In ’75 when the Stones approached him, that was very much a straightforward one, but the difficulty was that they contacted Rory in very early January. He agreed to go to Rotterdam and record with them, but at that time their mobile [recording studio] kept breaking down and having technical difficulties.
So it backed right up into a Japanese tour that Rory was due to go out on at the end of January. Eventually he did go over and do four nights with them in Rotterdam, and Rory was welcomed into the Stones by their manager at that time. Rory refused to have any representation come with him. I wanted to go over with him for the sessions, but he said, “Oh, I’m only having a jam session, nothing serious.”
Also, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards weren’t talking at that time, and it was very much driven by Mick to get the band back on the road. Rory was the natural replacement for Mick Taylor because that was the rule at the time. It wasn’t finding a guitar player it was finding a replacement for Mick Taylor.
It came to the last evening, and Rory had recorded something like four tracks with them, which later were on the Black and Blue. Mick said, “We’d love to have you, but you need to have a conversation with Keith. So would you please go up to Keith’s room, he’s waiting to discuss things with you.” So Rory went up and Keith was comatose in the bed. Rory went back every half hour throughout the night, and Keith never came around, so Rory just packed his bags and got on the plane the next day.
The whole thing was left wide open; it was very much an ambiguous situation.
Rory then had gone on to Japan, and in time, the agents for Rory in London had put out a press story. The agent was terrified of Rory joining the Stones, so he put out a story saying that Rory refused to join the Stones and left for Japan. I don’t think they followed up thereafter.
Brady: While looking online for a biography of Rory, all I could find was one that fans don’t really seem happy with. Do you have any plans to write one?
Donal Gallagher: Yeah, I’ve got a lot of it written down, very much in story form. There’s just so much to write. If you get interrupted, it is so difficult to come back. This album took over my life, and I just haven’t gone back to writing any more of it.
It’s one of those things. I’m totally better as a storyteller sitting up at a bar than I would be writing it down. I know I could work with somebody to do it. It’s something I must get done. We’ve even been talking about a film about Rory, to try to get a look of him as a younger person or whatever.
With the book that is out there, Jean-Noel Coghe is a French writer, so what you’re reading is a translation into English. In some parts it isn’t quite a true translation. And then Rory’s bass player wrote a book, but it was an absolutely disgraceful book to be honest. The less said about that book the better.
So a good biography has to come.
Brady: I’m sure you’ve heard this question plenty, but I’m going to ask it anyway. What truth is there to the story that Jimi Hendrix asked Rory Gallagher how it felt to be the best guitar player in the world?
Donal Gallagher: That’s a difficult one because it’s something that’s been circulating for a while, and it certainly has been used by the record companies. The source that it stems from is from a South African writer, I can’t remember his name straight off, but he wrote it on his blog. From what we understand, it happened after the Isle of Wight Festival. Now, with these quotes, they get arms and legs onto them, and I’ve seen that it was at Woodstock, but that’s not the case.
I do know that Hendrix had been to see Rory. In fact, on one occasion, Rory had a guy on stage jamming with him, this guy called Tim Rose. Tim Rose had a hit with this song called “Morning Dew,” and the other side of the record was “Hey Joe,” which was a traditional song he had contemporized. So he was on stage that night and spotted Hendrix at the back of the room and actually left the stage to go physically attack Hendrix because he felt Hendrix stole the song.
So Rory told me to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t do anything whatsoever to Jimi, so I followed him down to make sure that he didn’t. So anyway, Hendrix and Tim got talking, and Hendrix bought Time a drink and told him how much he like his record. He told him that it inspired him to rerecord it.
Certainly, Jimi did see Rory on a few occasions at the clubs in London. I think that the phrase, to be honest, was at the Isle of Wight Festival. Now, Rory had opened on the Friday night, early at the festival. That caused quite a sensation; he actually got five encores. I still have all the press clippings. Here was this new guy who stole the festival. Hendrix didn’t play until Sunday night and wasn’t very well actually. He was quite ill at the time, and didn’t do a particularly great set.
This interview with the South African guy was conducted afterwards, so he may have been asking, “With everyone excited about Rory Gallagher…” and then the question. So you can take it in two slightly different ways, but nonetheless it’s an acknowledgement.
