For over 30 years, Lothar Trampert has worked as a freelance journalist, author and editor of the specialist music magazine Gitarre & Bass. During this time, he has conducted over 400 interviews with musicians from a wide range of genres. For Lothar, photography has also been a “side job”. In his viewl, it was always easier to ask artists for quick shots than waiting for management to come to an interview with a photographer. Through this “side job”, he has managed to build a vast portfolio of photos, including of Rory. Lothar’s photos of Rory come from a meeting that took place at the Bonn Blues Festival in 1992. As readers will be highly familiar with, 1992 was a very difficult time for Rory, with worsening physical and mental health issues. When I caught up with Lothar earlier this year, unsurprisingly, this became a big focus of our (bittersweet) conversation.

I started my conversation by asking Lothar when he was introduced to Rory’s music and what he loves most about it. This is what he had to say:

When he played at Rockpalast on Grman TV. It was the first “Rocknacht in der Grugahalle” in Essen 1977. Maybe I had my first Taste album earlier – I don’t remember that. I [then] saw Rory in 1979 in Saarbrücken at a huge festival, and also 79 in Montreux.

Our discussion then turned to the Bonn Blues Festival in 1992:

This was the first and only time I met Rory for an interview. He was not in a good condition health wise. His face skin was disastrous… I would not give the original photos to anyone. I photoshopped them – that was a question of dignity. He was very calm, friendly and answering all my questions, as far as I remember. You know, I loved this guy’s music. He was an original, a guitar hero. It was not easy to see him like that.

Lothar showed us the original photos of Rory under the agreement that we wouldn’t share them publicly and they are indeed difficult to look at. They show an exhausted and unwell man, yet who is still willing to keep going for the sake of his fans, graciously give interviews and perform. Looking at him in the photos, it is hard to believe that he would go on to give a 3-hour concert that evening and in such top musical form. Blues musician Walter Trout remembers seeing Rory backstage at Bonn and also thinking how ill he looked, yet being later stunned by his performance. Before an audience at Buxton Opera House in June 2022, Trout stated how amazed he was at the Irishman’s transformation from front to backstage, describing him as “one of the greats.”

For Lothar personally, however, the Bonn concert was not one of Rory’s strongest performances. He mentioned, for example, that he was not keen on Rory’s cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Just Like a Woman’. This cover is one that has attracted mixed views from the fan community, but on our list of fan-rated Top 20 Rory moments from 1985-1995 (compiled last March), it reached Number 12. For many, it is seen as offering a powerful juxtaposition of “Rory’s vulnerability at that time and his musical brilliance.” As fan Nora Devin put it, “[Rory] put more feeling into this song than any lyrics could.”

In concluding our conversation with Lothar, we touched on the often negative comments in the fan community towards Rory in his later years. He empathised:

I understand your feelings about disrespectful and hateful comments about Rory in his last years. Some people can be extremely ugly, even towards weaker humans in trouble. The truth is, that he had better times in his life – under many aspects. What a great artist – and what a loss […] I will never forget him.

Finally, when asked about his lasting memories of Rory, Lothar’s words were rather poignant: “a hurt man, ill and lost in his life”, yet “a genius on the guitar, a great singer, a nice young man.”

“I will never forget him,” he concluded.

To find out more on Lothar’s work, visit http://www.paleblueice.com where he currently blogs. He also still regularly writes for Gitarre & Bass, along with Jazzthetik and Amazona.de. You can also check out his Facebook page here.