Dónal Gallagher – A Family Affair

The man who saw the man who saw the man who saw the bear… Dónal Gallagher, Rory Gallagher’s brother, but also his manager and surely his biggest fan and best friend, has experienced it all. He remembers everything amazingly and you can listen to him talk about it for hours. This is what I did, thanks to the kindness of Michel Vidal, whom I publicly thank here. Incidentally, I met him for the release of Notes From San Francisco, a double CD including Rory’s ‘lost’ album, recorded in 1978/1979 but never released to date, accompanied by a ive recording of a legendary concert from the same period at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco, which has delighted bootleggers for thirty-three years, and which Dónal, the keeper of the flame, is finally offering to everyone. Buckle up your seat belts, back to the past. Guaranteed thrills…

‘Notes From San Francisco’ – The Whole Story

Dónal, why release an album that Rory himself refused to release? 

“Um… We always knew that Rory only made great music and that the problem on this album, he said so himself, was just a mixing problem. It should also be remembered that, at that time, at the end of 1978, Rory was at a turning point in his life. He wanted to recover the wild side of his beginnings and the current album seemed too elaborate to him. It is also for this reason that, after the recording of this album, he fired his whole group to return to the formula of the trio. Yet he had always wanted to make an album in the United States because that is where the roots of his own music were. He had known producer Elliot Mazer since 1970 and respected him because of his work with Neil Young. The idea was to do an album in San Francisco with American session musicians like Kenny Buttery, because he had worked with Bob Dylan, or musicians from Muscle Shoals, because Rory loved their style. At the same time, he had his own band that he had been with for many years, and it wouldn’t have been very fair to do that… 

At that time, Rory was just coming out of a world tour and the label was putting a lot of pressure on him to do ‘the American album’, the one that would finally make him a star in the States. But in addition to fatigue and pressure, it turned out that the studio was not functioning properly, as parts of the studio had been taken apart in order to be able to record ‘The Last Waltz’, of which Mazer was the sound engineer! And Rory also had a hard time being produced. He had always had control of his music and his musicians, so it was hard for him to see Mazer go talk to his drummer or his keyboardist to tell him to play this or that. In the end, the record didn’t sound like Rory wanted it to sound. They mixed and remixed it, and remixed it. When Rory returned to San Francisco in mid January ’79 to work on the album again, he went to see the Sex Pistols concert at Winterland, which turned out to be their last. The gig was chaotic and bad, but I remember Rory telling me, ‘This is the worst gig I’ve seen, but it was also the most Rock N Roll. I want to find this!’ As he did not want to disappoint the label, his band and his relatives, he still went to master the album, but eventually, he brought the band to Germany and re-recorded most of the tracks as a trio. 

As he thought that Rod de Ath was putting too much on the drums, he replaced him with Ted McKenna, the former drummer of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band but kept the bassist, Gerry McAvoy [Editor’s note: the album mentioned will be Photo Finish]. My son Daniel, who is a guitarist in a band called Cazals, is also a very good sound engineer. For several years, he had been telling me about this lost album and asking me to let him try to do something with it because he adores his uncle. I gave him a chance and found his mix sounded much better than anything I had listened to. And so we went to the studio after we got back in touch with Elliot for his comments, and I named my son as the ‘new’ producer on the album. And it was him who had the idea to join this concert at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco, to show the direction Rory wanted to give his music at that time, ‘Straight Between The Eyes Rock ‘N’ Roll’. He called it ‘Meat and Potatoes Music’…

PS (for fans only): There is no other ‘lost’ album. The one called Torch is just the Defender album. Torch was its working title…!

PPS: On the other hand, there are a lot of unreleased concerts. As Rory refused to play the radio game, refusing to release singles, he was never played. I had found the ploy of letting the radios record the concerts, which allowed us to go that way, while recovering the tapes after. This is why many Rory concerts exist on tape, still unreleased.”

The Sequel – Rory in the Eighties

“Rory managed to stay very active in those keyboard-dominated 80s, releasing some really good albums like Jinx and Defender, even though he was no longer in the spotlight. And anyway, he was never in a competition to be in the lead, even if every time he was on stage it was like a world cup for him. He never liked the formatting of radios and never made an effort to please them. This never released album also had a very big negative effect with his label, Chrysalis Records, who thought they had invested a lot in this ‘American album’ and were never allowed by Rory to just listen to the album! Another very hard moment for me, as a manager but at the same time as a brother, like at the time of this audition with the Stones…”

Flashback – Rory Gallagher, the New Rolling Stones

In 1975, Rory had just finished his contract with Polydor, so he was completely free and at that point the Stones contacted him. Before, already, when they had launched their own label ‘Rolling Stones Records’, Keith Richards had answered, in an interview where he was asked who he would like to sign on this label: ‘Rory Gallagher and Peter Tosh’. He liked the fact that Rory was hooked up to country music like him, people like Hank Snow… At that time, Keith was doing very badly and it was Mick Jagger who kept the band alive. Charlie and Bill had nothing to say. The band were only looking to replace Mick Taylor, without taking on a genius like Jeff Beck, and the one closest to it was Rory. So I got a call from Ian Stewart one evening around half past midnight and when I told Rory they wanted to take him, he didn’t believe me, of course (laughs)! They asked him to come and spend a few days in Rotterdam, Holland. It was supposed to be January 10, 11 and 12, then it was postponed to January 16, 17 and 18, then to 20, 21 and 22, then to 27, 28 and 29 (laughs)… And we had a concert in Tokyo on the 31st, a place where the Stones were off-limits and they couldn’t join us anyway. Besides, Rory didn’t want me to go to Rotterdam with him, because he didn’t want to talk about business. ‘It’s just a jam… I love the band…’. I said, ‘Rory, don’t be silly, they’re delaying your coming because they say their mobile recording studio isn’t ready! They’re going to be recording you, playing with them, and you should have someone with you to represent you. It’s not just a jam session!’

Stubborn as he was, he went to Rotterdam alone. I still have his plane ticket (laughs). Mick Jagger picked him up from the airport and when they got to the hotel by taxi, Marshall Chess greeted Rory saying, ‘Welcome to the Stones! You’re the man for the job and we all want it to be you!’. And he asked him, ‘Where is your manager?’ (laughs). The first night Keith didn’t come and they just sat there waiting for him and then they started working on ‘Hot Stuff’. The next day Keith was there and they worked on four tracks including ‘Miss You’ and ‘Start Me Up’. Rory would get up early in the morning, just to chat with Bill and Charlie about his hero, Brian Jones, which didn’t help (laughs)…! Keith wasn’t there on the last night and Rory said he had to go and asked what would happen now. Mick asked him to go talk to Keith and Rory went to see him at his hotel. When Rory arrived, Keith was in an almost comatose state on his bed, the door wide open. He tried to wake him up for an hour and a half without success, went to the bar, then came back every half hour to try to wake him up again. When he went back to see the others, everyone was gone to bed. Rory packed his bags and got on the plane. Me, I had already put the group on the plane and he joined them in Anchorage (laughs). That’s the whole story… 

Side Effects – Rory Gallagher, the New Guitarist of… Bill Wyman

“During the last years of his life, Rory had become very good friends with Bill Wyman. Here is another anecdote where Rory drove me crazy! One of the deals between Bill and the Stones, when he left, was that he would keep that famous truck/mobile recording studio and Bill offered Rory to buy this truck because he knew Rory wanted to set up a studio at the time. And even though Bill was asking for a lot of money, I told Rory to buy it. He thought it was risky to spend such a sum but I told him that I would easily find a Texan billionaire who would be willing to pay a fortune to own the Stones Mobile if ever we could not monetize it (laughs). And just because Rory hated this business side so much, he refused to buy it. ‘Typical you…!’ he said with disdain when I told him to buy it (laughs). Coming back to Bill Wyman, Rory was to be the guitarist for the Rhythm Kings! And he never told me about it, which gives a glimpse of how he could be secretive and not say anything about himself!”

Rory Gallagher, Guitarist of… Bob Dylan

“Rory met Bob Dylan in Montreux in 1976 as they were playing the same day. I will remember it all my life because I had not recognized Bob and had forbidden him to enter Rory’s dressing room (laughs). Later I got a call from Dylan’s office who wanted a copy of Rory’s Live In Europe CD and couldn’t find it in the US. So I sent it to him, along with a copy of the new album, Fresh Evidence. They sent me back a box-set as a thank you and I took the opportunity to ask them why Dylan wanted this album so much. They explained to me that he wanted to make an entirely acoustic album with a version of the track ‘I Could Have Had Religion’. He didn’t do it in the end, but in 1994, just a year before Rory died, they met in Montreux, and Dylan asked to see Rory in his dressing room because ‘he couldn’t do it last time’ (laughs). This guy has an elephant’s memory (laughs)…! And Dylan talks to Rory about that song again and says, ‘Rory, did you write that song?’ ‘Yes, yes, I wrote it.’ And Bob said to him, ‘I knew that! On your record you indicated it as a traditional song arranged by you, but I looked everywhere, when I wanted to record it, in the bookstore of Congress and in all the books on the Blues, but there was no trace of this song anywhere!’ Rory told him, ‘I used four lines that I had read in a Blues poetry book. And I’ve seen so many musicians take stuff from the Bluesmen…’ Dylan asked him as a gift, if he could play it during his concert. He also asked him to record it with him and to come to New York to work together. I was over the moon, thinking it would do Rory a lot of good. I was wrong. After that, Rory fell into depression and didn’t want to leave his room for four days. And Claude Nobs was going crazy because the room where Rory was, one of the nicest in the whole hotel, was to be taken the next night by Quincy Jones (laughs). And of course, Rory never went to New York to record with Dylan… 

The Commitments, Featuring… Rory Gallagher

“This film actually traces the life of Rory. Roddy Doyle wrote the book and based it on the life of Rory, a young kid in Ireland who wanted to change the musical trend of the country, except instead of Blues he took Soul Music. The last sentence of the book, ‘Let’s return to Gallagher’s is a nod. When he wrote the book, he was a complete stranger and he called my office because he wanted Rory to come for the book launch. Rory refused and of course the book became an international bestseller and then a famous movie (laughs).”

Personality Crisis

What kind of human was Rory? Very introverted, very private, even with me. It’s hard to understand if you don’t know the history of Ireland and if we don’t talk about our parents… My mother is from the South of Ireland, Cork, and my father is from Derry [Editor’s note: Northern Ireland]. When the war came, he joined the Free State Army and became a military officer, at a time when Ireland declared itself neutral! So it was a strange army… He remained in the military after the war and was not well regarded in the North where he had returned when I was born. Incidentally, he was also a fantastic musician, on the accordion and he had his own orchestra. He himself filled the Opera House and plenty of places Rory played later…! My parents then moved to Coventry, then Birmingham. They ended up settling in Cork, near my mother’s mother, who couldn’t bear to move. It was around this time that Rory seemed to slip into a shell.

We were a bit lost, with our Northern accent in Southern Ireland, we were taking it all in our heads at school, even by the priests who did not understand that we do not speak Gaelic. Rory couldn’t even tell them he played the guitar because the guitar was a phallic symbol! He had to keep it a secret…! Once, when I was in sixth grade, one of the priests wanted to put on a musical show and he didn’t have a guitarist. Someone said, ‘Donal’s brother plays the guitar, and he plays it really well!’ It drove Rory crazy,. He was so afraid of being punished. The first night he played very innocently Roy Rogers, Country & Western, because we can sing about a horse but especially not about a woman (laughs). And the priests loved it! The next night Rory performed the same songs, but a problem arose and, to buy time, they brought him back on stage, telling him to play anything and there he played ‘All Shook Up’ and ‘Living Doll’ by Cliff Richard. The kids in the room went nuts! The next day, not only was Rory kicked out of school, they kicked me out too. At the age of 15, Rory joined a showband and he got to experience things that kids of his age wouldn’t typically experience. If Rory hadn’t been a musician, he would have been a priest. He had this sense of vocation, but at the same time he could never keep commitments, which may seem paradoxical with all the concerts he did. I could arrange to meet him the next day at 11am and he would ask me to call him first, just in case. Rory has always been different…”

Intimate Rory

“Rory loved cinema, and French cinema in particular! In his last years, when he only lived in a hotel, he used the alias of Alain Delon! When I wanted to reach him on the phone and was told that Rory was not on the hotel lists, I asked to speak to Alain Delon (laughs). What we don’t always know, either, is that Rory spent his time reading. Even on tour he brought suitcases stuffed with books, and when I saw a roadie wince while carrying his luggage, I knew the guy had fallen on the suitcase of books (laughs).”

Blood Brothers 

“Why did I dedicate my life to my brother? I do not know. In our family, there were only the two of us… My father was away very often and Rory was a great brother to me. Like a father. I think he shouldn’t have taken on this responsibility of father when my father was not there, because it was very heavy for him. We were very close, we even started music together. When he started doing little acoustic concerts in Cork, he would take me to do the backing vocals, because in churches or family clubs where you could play, the only repertoire accepted was that of the Everly Brothers. It was Rock ‘N’ Roll, but no one was offended by ‘Wake Up Little Susie’. Even the priests could laugh at this song. So we went everywhere together, even though I was terrified of going on stage. One night, he fired me because we had a fight on stage (laughs). It was the end of my career and I started to help him carry his amps. I also started to realize the financial aspect when he started playing in England. He was writing to my mum to say it was all fantastic and I was learning from another musician in the band that they had no money and were starving to death from not having eaten for 3 or 4 days. But he was just happy to have met Georgie Fame or to have opened for the Byrds. Why am I still taking care of him, even though he’s dead? Because I always thought there was some injustice to Rory, that he didn’t get the recognition he was due… And I would also say, if I didn’t, who would. “

Medication

“It started in Austria, during a concert. He hadn’t drunk much but he had taken these pills before going on stage. Twenty minutes after the start of the concert, the pills began to take effect and his fingers could no longer move! And I didn’t want it to happen again. During the next concert, Mark Feltham, the harmonica player, noticed that Rory was putting some pills in one of his pockets and taking them out while I looked away! Before the next concert, I went to the dressing rooms, like a thief, I searched his bag, and there, I realized that the problem was more serious than I thought. The bag was filled with medicine and also contained several prescriptions. I took all the drugs, pretending it was a burglary, knowing it was risky, because of the risk of withdrawal… I promised Rory that we would see a doctor later, in Germany, and the next two days I could already see the change. He regained his appetite, slept better. And then one of the roadies, in Germany, came to see me, telling me that Rory had given him a prescription to get medicine at the pharmacy but that he preferred to talk to me about it, because he was afraid to be fired from the tour. I went with him to the pharmacy and when the pharmacist saw the list of medicines he told me that it was impossible for him to give me these medicines because they were all banned in Germany! I then asked him to fill bottles with placebos and that’s what the roadie brought back to Rory. It worked for a few days.”

This Is the End, My Friend

“I always thought that the drugs the doctors gave him to treat his depression were not the right ones. Doctors were just taking his money thinking that a rocker must take this or that drug because of what he takes or smokes, when not only did Rory not smoke, but he never even so much as smoked a joint! For alcohol, we tried everything… What we had discovered was that when we managed to deprive him of the drugs prescribed by doctors, the bad effects of alcohol disappeared. But by 1990 his health had deteriorated. He was sick all the time, he had stomach pains, and I innocently believed it was because of the way he ate, because we ate late. He liked to go eat Greek in the middle of the night, and if we were in Marseille, he took you to the worst restaurant to eat (laughs)! And one day, I saw that his mind was starting to be disturbed too! And of course he refused to see a doctor. The doctor who did his liver transplant at the end of the day told me that Rory was the most stubborn patient he had ever operated on!”

The Very End

“I had made the decision to have this liver transplant because Rory was already in a coma. He never knew he had a liver transplant. He probably suspected he would have to go through this, but he hadn’t entered the hospital for that. No one thought he was so sick, not even him. He had contracted pneumonia during the last Dutch tour and I thought it was a continuation of that. I could never tell Rory how much I disliked the doctors around him because he considered them his best friends. He often went to dinner with one of them, gave him paintings. For me, this guy was not a doctor, just a charlatan. At first, Rory had started taking pills because of his fear of flying, but now this drug is banned due to its side effects! In addition, Rory always had a certain fascination with medication, due to the fact that he was a hypochondriac. On tour, when the other musicians were feeling sick, they would ask me not to tell Rory anything because he was the one who wanted to give them all kinds of pills (laughs)! With all these drug mixes, he got very sick. I had to force him and take him to the hospital because he was terrified to go. He got better for three weeks, but he shut himself up even more. Every time he went to London, he came back very badly. There is something in the Irish psyche about London, like it’s exile, punishment… Whereas for all musicians, London is heaven. You never know who you’ll meet in the instrument shops! And Rory spent his life in instrument shops. More and more isolated, Rory locked himself in his depression, withdrawing from the world more and more. And no one could help him anymore.”

Conclusion

The end is always tragic. For everyone… Because our heroes are ‘also’ flesh and blood. So, forget everything you just read, put the ‘Notes From San Francisco’ Live CD on the turntable and play the intro for track # 11, ‘Bullfrog Blues’… Meat and Potatoes…!