The world of music has great artists who, due to their talent, way of being or perhaps because of their way of thinking, have gone unnoticed by history, without anyone having valued their work and styles as they really deserved. The case of Rory Gallagher is one of the most palpable examples, a musician who composed and played the music he liked without looking at the fashions of the moment and with the awareness of knowing exactly what he was creating.

Rory Gallagher was born on 2^nd March 1948 in Ireland, getting his first guitar at the age of nine (a gift from his uncle), an almost toy guitar but one that marked what his life was going to be from those moments. When he reached the age of 15, he decided to abandon his studies to dedicate himself exclusively to music and more specifically to blues rock, which years later made him one of the best guitarists of the genre.

Almost 30 years of musical history have left great works that did not have a spectacular boom like that of other artists of the time but that managed to sell more than 30 million records, a not insignificant figure for an artist who did not have the necessary support of the record labels of the time and who rebelled against the existing fashion in Ireland in the 60s, where the show bands dominated and in which he was forced to play, despite his well-known rebelliousness, in his early years.

The Fontana Show Band and Impact were his first public appearances, but Rory quickly grew tired and in 1965 he founded a blues trio called Taste, it was the first attempt to do what he really wanted and it lasted until 1970 when his two partners got tired of always appearing in the background. From then on, it was when the capacity and ability of Rory Gallagher reached high quotas creating The Rory Gallagher Band, in an effort not to create doubts among the musicians who accompanied him…

…….Regarding his style, you only have to listen to one of his records to understand all the skill that kept his hands and mind working together and perfectly from the very moment the first note of his guitar sounds, a style influenced by some of the best blues guitarists B.B. King and Albert King and that Rory combined with his rock influence, even hard fragments that leaned towards heavy but that he masterfully combined with the most classic and urban blues.

He was a complete musician, because he not only played the guitar but also the mandolin, harmonica, saxophone… and his death separated him from learning the piano. He was not an idol of the masses, but musicians have always known who Rory Gallagher was, the guitarists of the heavy rock group Judas Priest, Steward Copeland of The Police, or better known, people like Slash of Guns & Roses, The Edge of U2 or our own Rosendo Mercado (especially in Leño’s time), have cited him on more than one occasion as one of their most notable influences and even as the cause of their musical vocation.

I don’t want to forget Platero y Tú who, as a very personal opinion, plagiarized one of his most impressive songs Laundromat from 1971 and whose initial chords have been copied in an exemplary manner by Fito’s group in one of the best known hits of this group Por m», which opens the album 7.

In short, if you are a big fan of blues rock and you know Rory Gallagher, congratulations, if not, it is never too late to realise that you can play good rock and good blues without repeating ad nauseam the same aseptic solo, such as the case of Eric Clapton. On the first album of our friend Gallagher, you’ll find swampy recreations of the Muddy Waters sound, unbridled blues where T-Bone Walker meets the great white guitarists, single-chord acoustic outbursts, seven-minute compositions in which he incorporates elements of jazz, “little” gems with bluesy-inspired acoustic guitar and harmonica and a song that, with generous guitar playing, anticipates the final part of Stairway to Heaven. Needless to say, Gallagher will always be more exciting to listen to than Mr. Page, who we assume is secretly subsidised by some multinational aspirin company.»