* The title of this month’s blog post comes from the nickname that Dave Fanning was given by his Irish teacher, Mr O’Shea, at Blackrock College. This nickname, which describes Dave’s obsessive love for music from a young age, could equally apply to Rory. Therefore, it seemed very fitting when deciding on a title for this piece that covers Dave and Rory’s meetings across the decades.

For several years, we had obsessed over the stills. Every time we browsed the videography on the wonderful RoryOn website, our attention was caught by those images: Rory in a cornflower blue shirt and black sweater vest cradling his beloved 1932 National Triolian Resonator, a glass of orange juice before him. Sat across the table, in what appeared to be a cosy pub overlooking a river, was Dave Fanning, the legendary Irish television and radio broadcaster, rock journalist, DJ, film critic and author. The accompanying description told us that the stills were from a 1990 broadcast of Rocksteady, a long-forgotten music programme on Channel 4 in the UK, and that not only was Rory interviewed, but that he also did a blues improvisation. As huge enthusiasts of Rory’s acoustic playing and Dave Fanning being one of our all-time favourite Rory interviewers, it sounded like a match made in heaven! But whatever had happened to the footage? Off we went on our quest for the Holy Grail…

We started by contacting several people at Channel 4, but to no avail. We were told that the footage had not been released through Channel 4 DVD or any other distributor and that they did not take individual requests for one-off copies. Then we searched the British Film Institute, the National Archives, Britset – basically anywhere that might possibly have a trace of this lost footage. In our search, we came across a 2015 newspaper article for the Irish Daily Mail written by Dave himself, where he reflected briefly on filming Rocksteady with Rory at Camden Lock in London and that they, in fact, had spent the whole day together. This only piqued our curiosity further! Not knowing where else to turn, we contacted John Welsh, aka ScottishTeeVee, who runs an incredible YouTube channel full of rare music uploads from his 25+ years as a music video collector. To our surprise, he replied within twenty-four hours to let us know that he indeed did have this footage and, what’s more, that he would upload it to his channel especially for us. And true to his word, he did exactly that just a few weeks later on 18th November 2021!

Being in Australia, it was Rain who discovered the footage first when she visited YouTube that evening. By the time I (Lauren) got up for work the next morning at 6.30am, my phone was flooded with messages from her, excitedly informing me of the good news. I didn’t need telling twice. Immediately, I logged onto my computer to watch the video, thrilled to finally have access to it after all these years. And I’m pleased to say that it lived up to all our expectations and more! (a full account of Rocksteady will feature in Part 2 of this piece). For the next hour or so, the two of us raved to one another about Rocksteady, to such an extent that I started work late and missed the first part of a Zoom meeting (oh well, when it comes to Rory, the world stops as far as I’m concerned). I’m sure that at least half of the video’s some 500 hits on the first day were unashamedly ours, and we’ve continued to visit it at least several times a week ever since. 

So, what is it that makes us rave so much about Rocksteady? Indeed, that’s something that our Instagram friends have often asked us. Well, in just three minutes and eight seconds, it somehow manages to capture everything that made Rory so unique, so special, so perfect: his gentleness, his humility, his intelligence, his kindness, his warmth, his sense of humour, his boyish charm (even at 42 years of age here) and, of course, his mastery of the acoustic guitar. Throw in Dave’s own knowledge, passion and appreciation for music, as well as his expert interviewing approach (friendly, attentive, endearing), and the clip truly stands out as one of the best Rory interview pieces. 

But Rocksteady was not the only time that Rory and Dave met. In fact, it marked just one of many encounters between them over the years, on both television and radio. And each of these are firm favourites of ours. In all their meetings, Dave somehow always manages to get the best out of Rory. Usually rather timid and not keen to draw attention to himself, Rory really seems to come out of his shell with Dave. He is more relaxed than usual as they swap stories, reminisce and banter. In fact, it often feels more like two old mates catching up over a pint than an interviewer-interviewee situation. We as listeners are almost like intruders, eavesdropping on a private conversation. Unlike other interviewers (and let’s face it, Rory had some pretty awful ones over the years!), Dave always gives Rory time to think, digest his questions, articulate his thoughts and say what he wants. Perhaps because Rory knew that Dave was the real deal, he was willing to give more away than usual. Like Rory, Dave is a true music lover, erudite, passionate, hard-working, creative: so, a man after Rory’s own heart in many ways. 

Dave has always spoken so kindly of Rory and has done so much to keep his legacy alive since 1995, whether through tribute radio shows, newspaper articles, contributions to documentaries… So, today on the 22nd anniversary of this fabulous Rocksteady interview, we wanted to honour Dave – Fear Na Ceirníni / The Man of the Records – by dedicating this month’s blog post to him. 

Since the Rocksteady clip entered our lives, we knew we wanted to honour it in a post somehow. Our first correspondence with Dave Fanning occurred in December of last year, when the Rewriting Rory blog was only a month old. Lauren and I convened for one of our usual Zoom chats, talking all things Rory quite late into the night (at least for me [Rain] in Australia), and decided to email Dave, expressing our love for his interviews with Rory and enquiring if he had any additional audio / footage which might be of aid to us for a future article. We kept our fingers crossed, never expecting a reply – especially so close to Christmas – to come through into our inbox three days later from Dave, kindly lending us a hand.

As we begun our research for this month’s post, we realised there were quite a number of gaps within the public knowledge of Dave and Rory’s friendship, and so we took the chance to reach out to Dave again around late March, this time requesting an interview. He warmly accepted our invitation, and we scheduled a Zoom meeting for the last week of April. We couldn’t quite believe our luck, for not only are we an independent (and fairly new) blog, but on a personal level, we are tremendous fans and admirers of Dave’s work within the Irish music industry. Since the Zoom call was planned according to UK time, I restlessly endured the time delay in Australia, waiting the entire Sunday for the evening’s interview. Luckily, to pass the time, I was at work for most of the day, the anticipation creeping into my mind throughout the shift, enough for me – usually shy and reserved – to confess to a few co-workers of my excitement. 

Although we were almost terrified from nerves, Dave was incredibly friendly with us throughout our fruitful conversation, often drifting onto other topics, such as his interest in the British psych-folk movement of the late sixties, and recommending to us the music of female singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan, who he had recently interviewed on his radio program. Overall, we are incredibly grateful to Dave, and we hope you, the readers, enjoy this month’s retrospective.

Dave’s Early Years

As soon as we asked our first question, Dave sparked up like gasoline added to flames, immediately contextualising for us the Irish music scene at that time, in particular the popularity of the showband. Dave admits to not knowing about Rory during his showband days (the Fontana showband, later renamed the Impact), though he can recall being “about thirteen” when he heard Rory’s first group, Taste, and their 1969 self-titled debut. “I knew it was there and I think I heard bits, but it didn’t really mean anything to me,” Dave explains. This was primarily a result of not being of an age where “I was absolutely, completely immersed in music”, nor was he actively seeking out the Irish music scene, either. Nevertheless, Taste’s next (and final) release a year later would undoubtedly hook Dave onto Rory’s musical line forevermore.

When the second album came out, in other words On The Boards, and I listened to “What’s Going On” in particular, and there was about two and a half minutes that reminded me of the Kinks of a few years earlier; short, sharp, loud – way too loud for day time radio, so that means it must have been good … it was just absolutely brilliant.

And then at the age of about fourteen or so, Taste played the Isle of Wight festival, and that was a really big thing because we used to listen to a guy called Kid Jensen on Radio Luxembourg, and it was a big scene that he was reporting on, at half twelve at night or one o’clock in the morning, from the Isle of Wight. And he said, you know, ‘whatever about Cream and blah, blah, blah and all the rest, I’ve just seen the greatest band ever – Taste.’ And I just thought ‘wow, an Irish band is being mentioned!’ I just couldn’t believe it.’ 

Although Dave couldn’t remember the precise occasion when he attended his first Rory concert, he estimates that it was around the time Rory went solo following the split of Taste, and “most likely” occurred at the National Stadium in Dublin.

I must have seen him I’d say fifteen, sixteen times overall over the next bunch of years. I saw him a lot. I always saw him when he came here, and it was a special, kind of odd, concert … it was a bit of a religious experience thing with Rory … [and] as much as I love Thin Lizzy – or loved Phil Lynott in particular – he wasn’t Rory Gallagher. I prefer Rory Gallagher, it’s as simple as that. 

When listening to Dave’s interviews, we immediately notice the love he has for Rory’s music, and in our conversation, that love has certainly stayed with him long after Rory’s passing. “[His] first [solo] album was the one for me,” Dave claims matter-of-factly, “without a doubt, it really was. Just everything about the album I really love, loved all the tracks … particularly “I Fall Apart” and “Can’t Believe It’s True”. Like all of us fans, once Dave listed one Rory song, he simply could not stop there, and begun to name favourites of his, from “Walk On Hot Coals”, to “Ain’t Too Good” (“people don’t really know that well, [but] it’s a fantastic song”), and finally “Philby” (“short, sharp, shock, brilliant”). When we raised the point that Rory is often overlooked as a great songwriter, Dave agreed, offering this interpretation:  

Yeah, one of his problems I think was that I think he liked being on the stage. He liked being on the road, and an album was almost a chore. There was some talk about Deuce, and ‘you mean I have to take a picture for the cover? Oh God, well, okay, take a picture’, that kind of thing. And the cover for an album in the 1970s was really important, like David Bowie, the height of his platforms was as important as any song or the B-side of any of his singles. The image, it’s just big. And Rory couldn’t give a damn about that, and I kind of liked him more for it, you know? … He just wanted the album finished, and they were pretty unpolished, which, of course, is praise as far as I’m concerned.

Rory and Dave: The First Meeting?

After several years on pirate radio stations Radio Dublin and the Big D, Dave joined RTÉ’s newly launched station Radio 2 in May 1979, hosting ‘The Rock Show’ from midnight to 2am. Although Dave couldn’t remember the first time that Rory appeared on his show, he did recall how the experience “meant an awful lot to [him]” because he had followed Rory’s music throughout the 1970s and knew it “so well.” Regardless of the exact date of their first meeting, it marked the start of regular exchanges between the two and, for roughly eight years, Dave received a Christmas card from Rory every year – something which he described to us as “the best thing about being in 2FM” [as Radio 2 is now called].“Beat that!” he added, with a laugh.

Dave then shared some personal reflections on what it felt like to conduct an interview with Rory, echoing some of the thoughts written in his 2015 article for the Irish Daily Mail ‘The Loneliest Man Who Made Everyone Happy’:

I always felt guilty talking to Rory because… there’s a song by the Beach Boys which is called “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times”, and to be honest, that’s Rory. He just was too gentle, too nice a guy, he was just too shy, too inside himself, too … so many different things. And I almost felt like every question I asked was not a conversation, it was an intrusion. So, the minute I could say ‘do you wanna pick up the guitar and play a song?’ And he’d go ‘yeah, absolutely!’ That’s all he wanted to do. And unfortunately, he never had an awful lot to say in an interview and I just felt like I was probing him all the time. And it was never as loose as it should be, maybe I was a bit fan worship, but he was also… he was just such a nice, quiet guy. He really was […] I could have an interview with stars ten times bigger and it’s just an interview or a conversation. Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters. He really sits down and looks at you and talks and gets interested. Or Chris Martin even. Chris Martin asked me more questions than I asked him. That kind of thing. And Cyndi Lauper. ‘Tell me, have you got a sister?’ and all this kind of stuff. But with Rory, it’s like… [groans] as much as I love him, I just felt guilty. I did.

Dave’s words came as a surprise to us because, as mentioned in our introduction, Rory always appears much more at ease with him than with other interviewers and far less guarded than usual. When we suggested as such to Dave, he himself was surprised at our impression, stating that “[he] didn’t know that” and that “it wasn’t easy” to speak to Rory. However, for us, Rory and Dave seem to immediately hit it off in what we believe to have been their first meeting on 9th April 1980. 

9th April 1980, ‘The Rock Show’

In this interview, Dave begins by going back to the early days and asking Rory about his time in the showband and Taste. What is very apparent to us as listeners is the openness with which Rory addresses his time in Taste, a topic that is so often uncomfortable and even painful for him to speak about. Rory is also not afraid to challenge Dave when he disagrees with certain points: when asked if Taste “specialised in interpretations of blues standards,” Rory pauses thoughtfully, before responding, “Not really” and explaining why Taste were, in fact, different to Cream and drew upon a range of influences from rhythm and blues to jazz and rock ‘n’ roll. As Rory moves on to discuss his time in Germany, the Isle of Wight festival and the Blind Faith tour, he becomes noticeably even more relaxed, animatedly sharing a funny story with Dave:

The very first gig we did [with Blind Faith] was in Philadelphia in the Spectrum there and we stepped onto the stage and the stage started revolving and the promoter didn’t tell us and there we are playing in front of 20,000 people. It was more people than we’d ever seen. Yeah, I thought this has gotta be… I don’t know, a bad trip or whatever they call it, but it was a good experience.

Rory’s quick wit is also apparent when Dave asks him about his experiences in the recording studio and whether he prefers working on his own or with others. “I wouldn’t like to be  Stevie Wonder. Let’s put it that way,” Rory jokes in response.

Another classic moment in this 1980 interview comes when Dave mentions the Best Guitarist Melody Maker award that Rory won in 1972 and asks why Rory didn’t capitalise upon it. He cheekily recalls a quote Rory gave at the time –“I don’t want to swing out of the chandeliers on Top of the Pops” – to which an embarrassed Rory responds, “God, you’re remembering quotes that I can’t remember!” When Dave elaborates with the nicknames that Rory is given in the press (“the hardest working man in rock,” “the People’s Guitarist”), Rory provides a fantastic response that encapsulates why so many of us feel such warmth towards him. It is worth quoting in full below:

It’s the press guys who just put those tags on me. I regard myself as an A musician in the A  League, but I don’t feel that I am in the B League or the Z League, and I don’t believe in leagues. To be in the A League doesn’t mean you have to wear a velvet  suit and a yellow hat, play a white guitar tonight and don’t play for the next four years. I hate all this popstar routine and all this malarkey, particularly at that time. I just wanted to… if I was top guitar player, fine, whatever that meant. If I was…  you know your own quality. You know whether you’re playing well that week or that album or that. You know what I mean? And I was delighted to see that I was voted  high  in the polls, but then you look in the polls and see one of your own favourites not even in them, but you can’t get carried away  with them. I don’t know. You’re a pop artist if you capitalise on every little thing that happens, but I think if you overcapitalise on things or you become too political, it’s no fun anymore. You’d be better off joining the Conservative Party. I’d rather just play. If you get a couple of slaps on the back or a poll here or there, a reaction, that’s fine, but let’s put it this way, the playing of music is a busy enough thing. It leaves very little time to be playing a chess game with the public or playing a chess game with the press. There’s too much of that, in my own view. I like to be a little more naive and just let it happen [laughs] and see what happens.

Next, Dave asks Rory about his influences and recent session work. Rory beautifully describes session work as “a great holiday” for him because “the responsibility is off your shoulders and you can just become a guitar player.” Last month, we dedicated two posts to Rory’s session work between 1985 – 1995, and if you are keen to catch up, here are the links: Part 1 and Part 2. Moreover, Rory also speaks positively about how much he learnt from Muddy Waters during their 1972 session, words that he almost repeats verbatim when asked ten years later at Ohne Filter, indicating just how much the experience stayed with him. 

Finally, Dave asks Rory “is the enthusiasm still there?” “The energy is still there. It just becomes more mature,” he replies with so much wisdom for his 32 years. In his final words, Rory emphasises to Dave just how much music means to him:

The point is if I wasn’t doing it on stage, I’d be playing at home or I’d be playing at a club. I’m one of those guys who’s not too… you find musicians cribbing about aeroplanes and travel and all that. That doesn’t bug me so much. I enjoy it and I like seeing… it’s easier than joining the Navy to see the world and you see these different places and you get a chance to see different players. I enjoy travelling. It never wears me out to the point where I don’t enjoy the show.

Overall, a fabulous and very promising first meeting between the two Men of the Records!

17th May 1986, Self Aid

Although Rory and Dave quite likely crossed paths several times between 1980 and 1986, their next official documented meeting was on 17th May 1986 at Self Aid – an unemployment benefit concert held in Dublin. Dave was at Self Aid making a documentary for RTÉ directed by Billy McGraw which had, in his words, “the ridiculous title” ‘Behind the Screens’. As part of this documentary, he interviewed Rory (as well as many other stars performing that day). He also did the “completely over the top” stage announcement for U2 and got some iconic shots of the band from the back of the stage. Before we went into the specific details of Self Aid, however, Dave helped us clear up a long-standing mystery.

For many years, the above photo of Rory standing alongside Dave and Christy Moore has been circulating online. According to the caption, the photo was taken at the Lisdoonvarna Festival in 1983. As we started to ask Dave about his memories of this festival, he interrupted us to say that it definitely was not Lisdoonvarna. How did he know? Because the occasion stuck in his head for one hugely important reason: this was the precise moment that he introduced Christy Moore to Rory for the first time. As he recounts:

There was so many things going on that day [at Self Aid] that I don’t remember it too much. But I do believe that Christy Moore and Rory had never met, and I said ‘Rory, Christy. Christy, Rory’, which was pretty cool actually […] I don’t think Christy had ever met Rory at that stage, and that’s the photo. No doubt Christy would come along and say, ‘I met him before’, [but] I don’t think he had. I’m sure anyway […] It’s definitely Self Aid, I do remember that. That would be the summer of ’86.

So, there you go, right from the horse’s mouth! 

The Lisdoonvarna mystery now solved, Dave moved on to speak a little about his memories of Self Aid, really bringing the atmosphere alive for us with his words:

Geldof was a saint at that stage. It was only less than a year after Live Aid. He had saved Ethiopia and all this kind of stuff. He was like the man. Like, he arrived and stepped out of his car, I remember he was holding a little kid who I presume was Fifi Trixibelle or it could be the girl that died, I have no idea. But I’ve got pictures of him anyway holding this girl, and people just stand away from him, and it was like ‘ah, the Pope has arrived’, and like Geldof just hates all that kind of stuff. He doesn’t give a damn about anything. But Geldof had to go onstage that day, it was the very last gig ever of the Rats – until 2009, about thirty years later – but it was the last time they played, and they had to do a tribute to Phil Lynott because Phil had died six months before that. So, they sang a song, ‘Cowboy Song’, and Bob didn’t know the lyrics. He didn’t know them properly, but he knew he had to do it, so I had to go around and find a thing called a Walkman, which was a brand-new invention at the time. In other words, he could stand there and I could put headphones on him and he could listen to it. He doesn’t have to go in… I’m telling you, the old days were mad. Anyway, the point is we did that, I got a version of it and put it on his head, he listened to it and all that, and then he got up onstage. He didn’t even need to sing the damn song because the whole audience sang it anyway. 

Given all that was going on around him and the general excitement of the day, Dave confessed that he couldn’t actually remember interviewing Rory! In his defence, their interview lasts just under two minutes and takes place in a noisy backstage environment shortly after Rory has come offstage. Rory is somewhat edgier and more fidgety in this interview, perhaps reflective of the nerves he felt at performing at Self Aid (something that he discusses with Dave in their 1988 interview coming up in Part 2 of this piece). Rory tells Dave that he was in Lille yesterday and is flying to Bremen tomorrow, and how the confines of the 20-minute set meant that he had to “trim it down a wee bit and cut out verses 16 and 17.”

Despite his jitters, once again, Rory is not afraid to speak his mind with Dave. When asked whether he immediately said yes on hearing about Self Aid, Rory answers, “Well, to be quite honest with you, no.” He then explains how he took the time to “sit down and chat and run through the general format and the idea and spirit behind it,” and only decided to get involved once he was satisfied that everything seemed “above board.” As Phil Lynott had passed away just a few months before, Dave also asks Rory about how well he knew Phil. Rory reflects briefly on the times they jammed together in the National Stadium with Eric Bell, in Cologne with Gary Moore and at Punchestown Festival (Dave later told us that he was the stage announcer at this gig). Finally, Rory is asked what he has been doing recently, giving him the opportunity  to discuss – in his typically modest way – his two US tours (“not exactly high-profile things”) and playing behind the Iron Curtain.

Click here for Part 2 of the Dave Fanning interviews, which includes more from our chat with him!