RORY GALLAGHER – DEFENDER OF THE FAITH

After ten years of good, loyal service to blues rock, Rory Gallagher is still going and is here with a new album (Defender) and a European tour as a bonus. When you like the blues, you stay true to it for twenty years, but when you are true bluesman, you stay true to it for life.

“I’ve just come from Chicago!” exclaims a pretty blonde who has just approached Rory backstage at Hammersmith Odeon. That’s all it takes to bring a smile to the face of the guitarist. Chicago, it’s probably there where he would have liked to have been born. Chicago is known for being the town where the blues became electric. The majority of Rory’s idols (Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Otis Rush, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, Bo Diddley, Howlin’ Wolf Sonny Boy Williamson) were born or grew old in Chicago. It’s certainly there where you have to look for the true roots of hard rock because Chicago blues was the base of the British blues boom, which gave rise to the Yardbirds, Cream, Led Zeppelin (who covered or ‘copied’ various Willie Dixon tunes), the Rolling Stones and the Jeff Beck Group… Even Motorhead did a Willie Dixon cover (“I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man”). Although many ‘forget’ these roots that are so obvious if you take the trouble to listen to even Willie Dixon or Muddy Waters, Rory remembers them.

RORY GALLAGHER: “I always like to listen to what is good nowadays, but I retain a huge interest for what came ‘before’. I am still discovering great musicians from the beginning of the 1950s. Musicians who have never been credited for what they brought. All these Chicago bluesmen, people like Link Wray, had already practically invented everything, and nobody even remembers then. If you listen to the solo albums of Link Wray, you can find riffs used by the Who, the Kinks and various other groups. Nothing is truly new…

Rory has just written an instrumental, by the way, that was inspired by the red-light district [sic] in Chicago called The Loop. The pretty blonde doesn’t agree, “Just now you made a mistake when you said The Loop was an area of Chicago. It’s the name of a street…” Rory isn’t upset, although he roamed the streets of Chicago when the girl was still in nappies. He signs his latest album (Defender) and the beauty walks off proud at both the signature and her comment… This will not prevent Rory from presenting the song exactly the same way at the concert the next evening, just as he will certainly present it on his next French tour in the spring. If you meet a blonde there, just ask her if she is from Chicago…