Article by David Fricke from the January 2nd, 1979 issue of Circus Magazine. Photograph by Bob Leafe.
Irish guitar wizard Rory Gallagher still plays long blues solos, even though critics “are afraid to like it.”
“I don't really think about it. I'm aware of the fact that I must mean something as a guitar player. I'm not naive.”
Still just shy of 30, Irish-born blues guitarmeister Rory Gallagher has almost 20 years of guitar playing behind him, so there's no excuse for naivete about his steadily growing reputation as a Fender-bending celebrity. Four English and American albums with his late '60s aggregation Taste, and nine subsequent solo albums, substantiate that reputation as the workingman's blueser, eschewing egotistical hard rock flash for the earthier machismo of electric English blues. Dressed in characteristic flannel shirt, jeans, and sneakers with his trusty 1960 Stratocaster at the ready, Rory Gallagher stands as a timeless testament to the long blues guitar solo and he makes no excuse for it.
“I wouldn't let the critics faze me,” he emphasizes. “The new press are sort of anti-lead guitar. They're afraid to like it. But even with the three-chord punk thing-you have to take it somewhere from there. It's unnatural not to want to express yourself in notes and ideas.”
The early Taste albums (Taste and On the Boards) show Gallagher plowing jazzier turf in the blues context than recent outings like Calling Card and Photo-Finish. He takes understandable issue with the critical contention that he doesn't capture the manic intensity of his stage show in the studio, but there is no doubting his ability or sincerity when he tears breakneck into his standard showcloser "Bullfrog Blues" (heard convincingly on Rory Gallagher Live).
Gallagher's taste in guitarists is, unlike many of his ilk who draw inspiration from only one well, flavored with a list of people he swore by in his formative years— classic rockers like Presley and Holly, bluesmen like Willie Dixon and Jimmy Reed.
“Even now, I play records from many different styles. Certain people get hung up on a B.B. King complex, but no disrespect to B.B. King— it gets to the point where it gets in the way. I want to listen to different players.”