Throughout his career, Rory frequently performed in Germany, and 1988 was no exception. Despite far less touring dates than usual due to health problems, Rory appeared at the Heppenheim Open Air Festival on this day in 1988 – much to the delight of European fans. I share a few eyewitness accounts of the occasion below, as reported in the Rory fanzine Deuce at the time.

Ilona Haun

By coincidence, I heard from Marcus [Gygax – founder of Deuce fanzine] that Rory would perform at the Open Air festival in Heppenheim. One thing was clear to me right away. I was gonna see him again! But the concert took place nearly 300 kilometres away from Nurnberg, my hometown. Then, fortunately, my husband-to-be offered himself to go with me there. Also because I made him very anxious with all my stories I told about how great the concerts from Rory are.

So there we went to Heppenheim on 11th September, complete with a bottle of Paddy’s, which I brought to give to Rory as a gift. When we arrived at the festival, we were not allowed to take the bottle of whiskey in. Pity, but we were still fully excited about the coming Rory Gallagher concert.

As other groups played first, the minutes seemed like hours until the moment Rory would come. Finally, the great moment was there. At 18.30, Rory and Band came up on the stage and welcomed us with ‘The Loop’. After ending the instrumental, Rory walked towards me and it seemed like he remembered me from the concerts in Regensburg and Fürth from last year. And he certainly did like the t-shirt with Paddy Old Irish Whiskey that I was wearing!

Songs like ‘Tattoo’d Lady’ with Rory’s great guitar playing, ‘Shin Kicker’, ‘Kickback City’ etc. made us feel very good and happy. During the bluesy ‘I Wonder Who’, I noticed that the front row was one giant photo camera. Everybody was shooting pictures. During the complete concert, one could see Rory did like it a lot here in Heppenheim. He really enjoyed it. It looked like a good day for him today and he raised the atmosphere to an incredible height with playing ‘Follow Me’.

To give the band a moment off, and perhaps to let us breathe some air for a moment, Rory went solo and started playing Out on the Western Plain’. Suddenly, [when back to the electric set], the power fell out. We couldn’t hide the smile on our face as we saw how fantastically Rory mastered this unwanted situation. He just took a step forward and came as close as possible to the crowd and kept on playing. He kept on playing ‘A Million Miles Away’. After a few minutes, the power came back just after Rory had played ‘Pistol Slapper Blues’.

During the complete concert, I was impressed about how fast his fingers run over the neck of his guitar and over the fact that he was noticeably happy. It was not possible to get the crowd in higher atmospheres with the songs ‘Bad Penny’ and ‘Shadow Play’. We were already there! As with everything, this concert also came to an end, unfortunately. But we wouldn’t let him go that easily. An encore, that’s what we wanted. ‘La Bamba’ and the crowd cheered for more. Rory liked it and gave us finally ‘Messin’ with the Kid’. The complete concert lasted a full two hours and 15 minutes full of joy, excitement and fun. We really did see a very good and happy Rory today.

Wolfgang Gürster

To say it straight away: it was one of my absolute best festivals ever and I’ve seen a lot of good festivals over the last 12 years. First and foremost, the loving and excellent organisation of the city youth centre in Heppenheim was probably responsible for the success of the festival. The second thing that impressed me about this festival was the beautiful festival grounds. An amphitheatre that is perfect for festivals of around 5,000 fans. It wasn’t just me and the fans present who enjoyed the festival grounds; Rory certainly did too, who came to the edge of the stage a few times, let his gaze wander around the wide area and was beaming from ear to ear. He must have remembered his magnificent Loreley performances here.

Regarding Rory’s performance itself, it could be said that he was powerful, earthy and full of energy as he thundered across the boards. The set consisted largely of the same songs as the Defender set in 87. What was particularly impressive for me was his fantastic version of ‘I Shall Be Released’, where the fans lit a veritable sea of ​​lights with their lighters and the mood reached its peak and then was brought to a state of calm.

In the middle of the set, unfortunately I don’t remember which song it happened with, the entire power system suddenly went out for about 10 minutes, meaning no sound and no light. Without even seeming to be surprised, Rory picked up an acoustic guitar, walked to the edge of the stage and played a song for the fans in the front rows. After the song was over, he turned around and looked questioningly at his roadies. Big head shaking and hectic fever backstage, Rory just shrugged his shoulders briefly as if to say, “Alright, I’ll just play without an amplifier until you get it under control again.” He turned back to his fans and played a new, great blues piece.

After about 10 minutes, the sound was back on, as was the lighting system, and the band started up again, as if they had just started the concert. Honestly, I’ve seen many a band and many a superstar in the same situation as Rory, but no one handled this breakdown as coolly and calmly as Rory. Unfortunately, due to this problem, Rory had to shorten his set, so he skipped ‘Bullfrog Blues’ this time, but even without this song, it was a gigantic performance and Rory was celebrated by the fans in a party-like and enthusiastic way after a good 2.5 hours.

A few more words about the festival: the Blues Band had to certify that they were the ultimate festival band. Of course, it was extremely bad luck for Meat Loaf to have to appear after Rory, but I thought he had a bit more power. And a last word to the fans: I was at the Monsters of Rock in Schweinfurt shortly beforehand. The people were against these drunk and rowdy visitors. An absolute treat in Heppenheim. In Heppenheim they also raged and almost went crazy at Rory’s performance, but fortunately the destructive rage and sheer hatred were missing!

Michael Heuer

For the only time this year, Rory played in Germany at the festival in Heppenheim. Two amateur bands, The Blues Band (with the original line-up!) and Meat Loaf also played. However, the latter does not fit into the overall picture.

Rory and his band came on stage at 6:30p.m. sharp. After the typical Rory adjustment work, they immediately started with ‘The Loop’, which could now be seen as the successor to the previous opener ‘Shin Kicker’. Afterwards, ‘Nadine’ (“old Chuck Berry number called Nadine”) where blues harp player Mark Feltham also came on stage. As I read in the newspaper beforehand, Rory had a lot of plans for this concert and apart from a small “weak period” of about half an hour, he performed well. Once again, he played without a sound check and, of course, had problems with the stage sound at the beginning. But he quickly recovered and played his set with a lot of action and power. The old, poor worn out Fender Strat worked its magic again!!

Even a short power outage couldn’t harm him; he simply took his acoustic guitar and played it. That was simply professional and impressive. Unfortunately, the concert was limited in time because of Meat Loaf. It still lasted well over two hours including the encores. The concert itself had a very strong blues flavour; he played a lot of blues songs that I didn’t know at all.

About an hour after the concert, I met Rory. Even though he was pretty tired and exhausted (he had been on stage for two hours), he came to us and chatted with us about the concert, the new record that will hopefully be released soon, the next tour, etc. It’s really exciting. It was simply a great experience, this Sunday evening.