RORY GALLAGHER, CASINO DE PARIS 12/05/86

One week after Dio and his oleopneumatic show, we find ourselves again in the Casino de Paris with its namby-pamby ambiance to welcome Rory Gallagher.

With him, it was quite a plunge 20 years back. Since his last visit, even his penultimate or antepenultimate visit here in the capital, nothing had changed place.

Behind a light show, worthy of the most beautiful Youth and Cultural Houses, so dear to André Malraux, the stage was revealed to us, wide, but empty, apart from a few small Marshall Amps and a very clean drumset.

With the first chords of “Double Agent” [sic], the crowd – made up largely of student ex-fans of the sixties – come together as one to celebrate what they came here for: forceful rock and roll, an afternoon of blues, all coated with a gigantic feeling.

That is exactly what Rory Gallagher delivered to us that evening there, supported as usual by Gerry McAvoy on bass and Brendan O’Neill on drums. Dressed in a pair of trousers that were too big and too long for him, a sleeveless jean jacket on top of a western shirt, Rory played for two hours and a half during which he alternated his classic personal compositions – “Shadow Play”, “Big Guns”, “Bad Penny”, “Philby” – with some covers like the eternal ‘I Wonder Who’, ‘My Baby She Left Me’ or the irresistible “Nadine” by Chuck Berry where we were surprised to see Rory pick up a sumptuous black and gold Gibson Melody Maker.

He also couldn’t resist giving us a long acoustic set, alone on the stage with his acoustic guitar to take us far away to his western plains  and even further away to his Irish-Gaelic roots.

All this to tell you that not for a single second did we get bored, always caught in the turmoil of Rory’s riffs and solos, supported by a rhythm section and a harmonica player of such calibre that made this concert a moment that should not be missed.

Philippe Touchard