On 11 August 1992, the new Rory Gallagher Band made their debut at the unlikely location of the Marina Hotel in Rhyl, North Wales. Rory and his brother Dónal were on their way to Holyhead to catch a ferry to Dublin, in preparation for Rory’s headlining performance at the inaugural Temple Bar Blues Festival. Apprehensive about debuting the new band at such a large-scale event, the brothers reached out to their old friend, music photojournalist and fellow musician, Bob Hewitt, who lived in the area to arrange a warm-up gig at a small local venue. Bob and his friend Chris White arranged everything—from publicity to security—and thought that the 1,000-capacity hotel would do just fine. However, on the night, they were astonished by the queue “running down the promenade as far as you could see”. The “£5 on the door” ticket price to see “one of the great guitar heroes in action” was no doubt a major draw for many. Bob’s band The Misery Brothers opened the show, then Bob had the “greatest thrill” of introducing Rory to the stage.

For some long-term fans in attendance, there was an initial scepticism about the new Rory Gallagher Band. Reflecting on it today, they concede that they perhaps did not give them a fair chance to prove themselves out of a stubborn loyalty to previous bandmates, Gerry McAvoy and Brendan O’Neill. As a result, all sorts of rumours have circulated about the Rhyl concert over the years, from Rory refusing to go on stage and needing to be “plied” with black coffee backstage to Rory simply “bumbling around” on stage with all his spirit and fire “gone” and “dead.” “Absolute rubbish and a pack of lies,” Bob categorically affirmed when speaking to me in 2023, “Rory went on stage on time and played a blistering set. The crowd loved him. He wasn’t in the best of health back then, but that didn’t affect the way he played that night.” Similar remarks were made during my conversation with fan Robert Orr: “It was a very emotional night. I had not seen Rory play for a while. Rory played his heart out, but he looked very ill. As for the band, they did Rory well and the night was amazing.” Mark Feltham echoed Bob and Robert’s thoughts: “Rory was still playing well then and, of course, the other guys [David and Richard] were in awe of being around him.” Indeed, drummer Richard Newman also recalled the night with admiration: “I found out who Rory was that night. He blew the roof off.”

One other fan who was at the concert was David Crawley. At the end of 2024, David reached out to share a set of previously unseen photos from that unforgettable evening. With his permission, I am pleased to share them below. He also shared his own wonderful memories of the evening:

I was there that Tuesday night, 11 August 1992, when Rory Gallagher played in Rhyl. The gig was announced in the local paper the Thursday prior and a column announced that Rory would be playing the club at the Marina Hotel. Entry was £5 on the door. It is difficult to express how monumental that announcement was for a local fan of Rory’s music. No one played Rhyl, or anywhere near Rhyl. For someone like Rory to be playing there was inconceivable. For those who don’t know, Rhyl is a town on the North Wales coast, and even in ’92  it could be said that its best days were decades behind it.    

I was 16 at the time and a huge fan of Rory’s music. My stepdad had joined the family a few years earlier and had brought with him his guitars and records, which included Taste’s On The Boards and Rory’s Calling Card, Jinx, and Stagestruck. I loved Rory’s music from the first note. I had to go to the gig. Getting there posed something of a problem as it was about 20 miles from home. I was too young to drive and the bus wouldn’t get us there early enough … or get us home afterwards. Five of us wanted to go and a friend’s dad agreed to drop us off. That meant someone had to sit in the boot of his estate.

We arrived at the inauspicious Marina Hotel early and were right at the front of the queue. The bouncers challenged us about our age and I pleaded with them to let us in.  We were there to see Rory, not to get drunk. They took pity on us, and we handed over our fivers. I’d been to quite a few big gigs by this point, but never an intimate club gig. In hindsight, we should have made the charge and secured a spot at the very front, but we settled in a spot about 20 feet from the stage.

I remember The Misery Brothers doing a great support set before Rory was introduced to the stage. I don’t think that I had seen a video of Rory at that point. It was the pre-YouTube age and Rory was not a regular on TV in the 80s and 90s. I was too young to have seen Rory on the Old Grey Whistle Test and had only heard him speak in a radio interview a year or so earlier after the release of Fresh Evidence. I think that was probably The Blues Show with Paul Jones on Radio 2. I remember rushing out to buy Fresh Evidence shortly afterwards, and it remains one of my favourite records. The only point of reference I had for what Rory looked like were the cover and inner photographs on those records we had at home. I remember Rory walking on stage and being a little surprised that the man who walked out on stage was not the skinny kid in the check shirt, but a middle-aged man in a dark jacket. From the first note it was clear that this was still Rory Gallagher. I remember the gig being very loud and Rory seeming happy to be on stage and chatting a little with the audience. I was too in awe of Rory to really to take it all in, and I can’t recall the whole set list. He did a few tracks from Fresh Evidence and did an acoustic segment, including Out On The Western Plain. I believe that Donal recorded the gig from the board and I’d love to hear it again.

My parents had agreed to pick us up from Rhyl on their way home from one of my stepdad’s gigs. He warned me that he had to be up early the next day for work, so we had to be ready to go when they got there. I had a tap on the shoulder from one of the bouncers to let me know my parents were waiting outside. I pleaded with them to wait until the show finished, but my stepdad had seen Rory live before and was aware that he’d often play for hours and wasn’t going to be persuaded to hang about. He said we’d catch Rory again the next time he played nearby. Sadly, that was never to be.

Many years later I found myself Googling Rory’s appearance in Rhyl and happened upon Lauren’s great Rewriting Rory website and Bob Hewitt’s article about the gig. He believed that there were no photographs of the gig but was unaware that I had taken some. I had a cheapo compact 35mm camera with me that night and had taken a few shots of Rory’s set. These photos had been sitting in a photo album for over thirty years, and I thought it fitting that they be passed to Lauren to publish for the first time on what will be the 33^rd anniversary of that night in Rhyl where Rory blew the roof off the Marina Hotel. 

Many thanks to David Crawley for his kindness in sharing his memories and photos