It seemed, for a moment, like old times.

The week after Christmas had once again brought with it an almost-forgotten ritual of the Irish rock calendar: Rory Gallagher on tour.

As Philip Nolan wrote in his article for Evening Herald, there was a time when Rory’s Christmas Irish dates felt as essential to the season as “turkey and ham, plum pudding, paper garlands and Christmas tree lights.” But it had been four long years since Ireland’s first international rockstar had last taken his band around the island.

The Christmas/New Year run of 1983-84 was, in fact, Rory’s first full Irish tour since Easter 1980. Although he had made a handful of home appearances in the early 1980s – most prominently at Punchestown Racecourse with Phil Lynott in July 1982, and at Lisdoonvarna in July 1983 – those were brief interruptions in what had otherwise been a period of retreat. The lukewarm reaction to Jinx, an increasingly strained relationship with Chrysalis and a dispiriting US tour supporting Rush had slowed his momentum. “Rory had become quite frustrated with the way life was unfolding for him at the time,” Dónal Gallagher would later reflect. Between January and August 1983, he played just ten concerts – the quietest year of his career – choosing instead to spend extended time in Cork with his mother, Monica, while he regrouped.

Late summer found him looking noticeably healthier. Footage from his August 1983 appearance on Ireland’s Eye, filmed in Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel, shows him rested, slimmer, his skin glowing and the perpetual under-eye shadows noticeably softened. By autumn, rejuvenated, he was back in London, working on his forthcoming album anticipated for release in the new year. This would, of course, become the ill-fated Torch project, then circulating under the working titles of either Failsafe Day or Early Warning.

Against this backdrop, the announcement of a ten-date Irish tour came as something of a surprise. Rory had intended to spend the Christmas period in London putting the finishing touches on the album, but Dónal sensed his brother was placing too much pressure on himself and needed a break. Live work, even with the anxiety it increasingly provoked, was still the surest way to shake Rory out of a rut. It also had the added benefit of allowing him to be back home for Christmas.

But putting the tour together was far from straightforward. In early December, The Southern Star reported that Jim Aiken Promotions and MCD were locked in a battle for the rights, each refusing to budge. Dónal publicly reassured fans that a tour would go ahead regardless, whether with MCD at the end of December or Aiken in mid-January. A week later, after protracted negotiations, MCD emerged victorious, securing the dates for 28 December to 8 January. The timing was tight, but Dónal was quietly proud that Ireland’s two leading promoters had fought fiercely for Rory. At the helm of MCD was Denis Desmond, who would – decades later – play an unexpected role in Rory’s legacy when he purchased the guitarist’s beloved 1961 Fender Stratocaster at Bonhams and donated it back to the Irish state.

As was so often the case at this time in Rory’s career, press coverage of the tour announcement blended admiration with a new, lightly patronising vocabulary. Rory was now described as “veteran,” “durable” and the “hardest working musician” in his “ever-present check shirt,” yet also as “much-respected,” “ever-popular” and still a “superstar performer.” A Meath Chronicle preview from 10 December was among the most positive:

In an era that has seen the rise and fall of thousands of so-called guitar heroes, Rory Gallagher has stayed the pace ahead of the best. Live, his performances have to be seen to be believed… Gallagher packs more energy into a two-hour set than most bands use in five minutes on Top of the Pops.

With the dates secured, tickets finally went on sale on 7 December, with the support slot going to local Cork band Driveshaft. Though brief, the so-called “Santa tour” – as the Irish press dubbed it – marked a meaningful reconnection with the audiences who had followed Rory since the late 1960s. The tour came at a time of creative uncertainty but also recalibration, when live performance remained his anchor despite mounting stagefright and the competing demands of recording.

I had originally hoped to include this episode in Rory Gallagher: The Later Years, but selectivity won out. Revisiting it now, however, reveals just how significant those ten winter nights were not only as a festive tradition briefly revived, but as a turning-point moment in Rory’s evolving relationship with his music, his home audience and himself.

SFX Hall, Dublin (28 and 29 December 1983)

Rory kicked off his Irish tour with two electrifying nights at Dublin’s SFX Hall on 28 and 29 December. Built in 1957, the St Francis Xavier Hall (commonly known as the SFX) was Ireland’s national concert hall and home to the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra. From the late 1970s until its closure in 2005, when it was demolished to make way for an apartment block, it earnt a reputation as a premier venue for rock and pop concerts.

The week before landing in Ireland, Rory met with Philip Nolan of the Evening Herald in London for an interview. He had been in the studio until the early hours of the morning mixing tracks for Torch, so Dónal suggested the three of them meet at The Red Pepper, a Chinese restaurant near the Strange Music offices. Rory arrived at 2:30pm, having only just woken up, and acknowledged that his schedule was starting to run away from him:

Well, I’ve been in the studio on and off since October, and at the moment I’m trying to cram in rehearsals too. I like working under pressure, but I like it to be average pressure and it’s getting a bit out of hand at the moment. You go into the studio to mix at seven, and suddenly it’s a dozen coffees later and five or six in the morning, and it’s silly really.

Over dinner, Nolan was struck by the breadth of topics they covered: from the Harrods bombing, the British press and Irish political figures to Dublin Gas, the Cork Jazz Festival and George Orwell. Rory also spoke about his new album, describing it as “innovative,” and shared his enthusiasm for the contemporary music he admired, including Kraftwerk, Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream. However, true to form, he reiterated his refusal to release singles or become a “media pet,” remaining steadfastly independent in the 1980s music scene. For Nolan, Rory was so “forthright and honest” – qualities that seemed almost at odds with survival in the cutthroat music industry. When asked about the upcoming Irish tour, Rory admitted he was nervous: “I always am. It helps to get the adrenaline flowing, but I’m looking forward to it.”

One passage that has always stayed with me from this interview is Nolan’s vivid description of watching Rory eat:

I’m fascinated by his command of chopsticks until it suddenly dawns on me- those fingers, the self-same ones that have given the world a million of the best guitar solos it’s ever been treated to, the nimblest, meanest, most exciting, electric fingers Ireland has ever produced. Betty Grable had the legs, Jimmy Durante had the nose, but no one ever had Rory Gallagher’s fingers.

It’s a wonderfully expressive image, capturing both the gentleness and the sheer power in his magic hands.

Throughout the week leading up to the start of the tour, Nolan observed fans flocking to Dublin, dressed in check shirts and faded denim, eager to see Rory live. The anticipation was well-founded.

Cathal Dervan of the Meath Chronicle, reviewing the two nights under the headline ‘A Class Apart’ wrote that Rory delivered “the most dynamic performances seen on Irish soil in 1983.” To earn such praise, he had to “outplay and outwit” contemporaries including Simple Minds, U2, Thin Lizzy, Mama’s Boys, Dire Straits, Van Morrison and Moving Hearts – and he did so with effortless mastery.

Each night’s performance lasted over two and a half hours, opening with ‘Follow Me’. Tracks from Jinx featured prominently, and the crowd thrilled to Rory’s signature stage antics, including his iconic duckwalk. Notably, he performed ‘Lonely Mile’, a song that would later appear as a bonus track on a posthumous rerelease of Jinx. The acoustic set included ‘Bankers Blues’ and ‘Out on the Western Plain’, described by Dervan as “escapism through music at its best.” The show closed with ‘Shadow Play’, featuring multiple false endings and Rory’s Strat “crying out in melodic ecstasy.” The audience cheered so enthusiastically that Rory returned for three encores, performing ‘Wayward Child’, ‘Philby’ and ‘Bullfrog Blues’. Among the crowd were Paul Brady and Adam Clayton of U2.

A bootleg recording of the second night attests to the band’s energy. Rory and his band kicked off like a rocket with ‘Follow Me’, before sliding straight into ‘Failsafe Day’, then new to the set and sounding fantastic. It’s one of those songs I’ve always wished Rory had played live more often. As a huge Byrds fan, my own personal highlight is ‘Double Vision’ where Rory seamlessly weaves in ‘Eight Miles High’ – a track he once named among his top ten songs of all time. Continuing in that spirit, he also slips a fragment of the Stones’ ‘Paint It Black’ into ‘Philby’, and it works just as brilliantly. ‘Lonely Mile’, mentioned earlier, is another standout for me – such a hidden gem in Rory’s back catalogue! There’s also a gorgeous rendition of ‘Hoodoo Woman’, with truly sublime slide work. The acoustic ‘Ride On Red, Ride On’ is another fabulous reminder of Rory’s versatility; it’s remarkable how a song can sound equally compelling in studio electric form and stripped back onstage. The night closed with a rip-roaring ‘Bullfrog Blues’ medley – a perfect ending to a performance brimming with energy and joy.

Despite positive press and bootleg evidence, the shows drew only modest crowds. Sligo folk legend Seamie O’Dowd, who attended one of the Dublin gigs as a Christmas present, recalled it was “nicely crowded but not exactly packed.” Yet what stayed with him was the lesson Rory seemed to impart that night: every gig mattered, and the band “played out of their skins” regardless of audience size. He has occasionally wondered since whether he was overromanticising the memory, but reviewing footage from the Belfast show on the same tour only confirmed that they were indeed “firing on all cylinders.”

The Gleneagle, Killarney (30 December 1983)

Rory’s Irish tour then rolled on to the southwest, stopping in the lakeside town of Killarney in County Kerry for a show at the Gleneagle – the long-established, family-run hotel known across the region for its music nights.

Among the crowd that evening was journalist Mike Galvin, who had interviewed Rory only months earlier while still a student at University College Cork. Writing decades later on the 30^th anniversary of Rory’s passing, Galvin reflected on that unlikely moment when the first issue of Raven, the student magazine, featured interviews with both Rory Gallagher and the then Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald. As he joked, “I naturally selected the interview of greatest international importance for myself, and so gave FitzGerald to some other guy. I did Rory.”

Galvin remembered walking nervously to Moore’s Hotel on Morrison’s Island, cassette recorder in hand, ready to meet his hero. To his surprise, Rory was equally apprehensive, and Galvin was struck by how shy, quiet and gentle he seemed – so different from the stage persona he projected. After fumbling with his recorder while Rory waited patiently, the pair discussed everything from Taste and the contemporary music scene to Rory’s influences, the difference between European and American audiences, the legendary Rolling Stones jam, the perils of releasing singles, his unpopularity with DJs and even whether he ever saw himself getting married.

Flash forward to the Killarney gig in December. Galvin was right at the front of the stage when Rory spotted him. Recognising him instantly, Rory grinned and silently asked, “Which one?” to which Galvin mouthed back: ‘Shin Kicker’. Rory nodded and tore straight into it. It remains one of Galvin’s most treasured memories.

But Galvin wasn’t the only one whose life was jolted by that night. Scott Johnson, another attendee, still recalls it as both the “best” and “loudest” experience of his life. At one point, a friend leaned around the speaker stack only to have his head “physically blown away by the force of the sound.” He paid the price for it, losing the hearing in one ear for a week afterwards! A reviewer for The Kerryman later described the show as one of the loudest concerts ever performed in County Kerry.

Equally, for 16-year-old Denis O’Sullivan, taking in his very first concert, it was a lifechanging experience:

I can still remember it all these years later, the smoke-filled hall, the energy, Rory leaping around the stage giving it all he had and it was loud, my ears were ringing for days after but that night changed my life forever and is the main reason that I’m still playing guitar to this day! What a night, what a memory! 

Leisureland, Galway (31 December 1983)

With barely a moment’s rest, Rory and the band were back on the road the very next day, heading north to Galway to ring in the New Year at Leisureland – a large leisure complex at the heart of Salthill since 1973. Anticipation was high. The Connacht Sentinel looked forward to welcoming Rory’s “time-proven, stripped-down and red-hot sound,” while the Longford Leader declared it a concert “no serious rock fan will want to miss.” Both papers emphasised the same point: it spoke volumes about Rory’s loyalty to his Irish fans that he would interrupt the recording of his new album to treat them to a Christmas and New Year run of shows. Supporting him on the night, alongside Driveshaft, were local outfit Shattered Ego.

Despite the excitement, the gig once again failed to draw a full house. Some blamed the shifting, fashion-conscious music climate of the early 1980s; others suspected that New Year’s Eve itself worked against Galway, with many people committed to other plans and the student population back home. But if the numbers were down, Rory’s energy wasn’t. He and the band played with their usual abandon.

Journalist John Waters, writing in Hot Press, delivered an enthusiastic review. He described how Rory burst onstage at midnight, offering a few bars of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on the Strat before launching into the set. Waters’ first impression was simply how well Rory looked: “clean-shaven, hair freshly chopped, the cut of his denim waistcoat accentuating the new slimline Rory, a veritable picture of good health.” He noted the modest turnout, but insisted that “such considerations become irrelevant” the moment Rory hit the stage. Once up there, Waters wrote, Rory “communicated individually and directly to each and every member of his audience.” Anyone who hadn’t already been a diehard was likely converted by the night’s end.

Waters also pushed back against the lazy shorthand of describing Rory as merely a “guitar hero,” arguing that such labels missed the true magic:

He is a figure of fantasy not in the sense of being a Star-symbol – which he manifestly is not – but in that he seems to have the ability to create, in his music, a gloriously child-like vision of the world. A pavement artist with guitar for paintbrush, he sketches, shades, strokes and colours his fantasy world, inhabited by wandering cowboys, bearded babies and limping spies

The acoustics of the cavernous leisure centre weren’t ideal, and Waters admitted that he couldn’t catch the names of the new songs Rory tested out. Still, the set leaned heavily on a wide sweep of older material, with a blistering cover of Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’ standing out. Waters even suggested Rory consider releasing it as a single in 1984!

Fan Pat Comer shared similar memories. Having seen Rory at Lisdoonvarna earlier that summer, he rushed straight to Zhivago the moment he heard about the Galway show to buy tickets. He later won two more tickets in a Galway Advertiser competition, which he promptly gave away. Like Waters, he remembered Rory hitting the stage at midnight to the familiar strains of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, before delivering “a couple of hours of brilliance.”

Pat also singled out ‘Summertime Blues’, along with “fantastic versions” of ‘Bad Penny’, ‘Follow Me’ and ‘Moonchild’ (his personal favourite), plus an acoustic interlude that featured ‘Out on the Western Plain’ and ‘Ride On Red, Ride On’. The small crowd was made even more noticeable by the scale of the venue, and the acoustics took a few numbers to settle, but Pat felt all the luckier for it because it made it feel like a personal concert from Rory. He woke the next morning, not with the usual New Year’s hangover, but with “a hangover of R&B.”

City Hall, Cork (1 January 1984)

New Year’s Day brought Rory back home to Cork for an eagerly awaited concert at City Hall. Although attendance was once again surprisingly modest, with the hall only half full, it gave the night a relaxed, easygoing feel. For those who were there, the sparseness created an unexpected gift: the chance to see Rory’s musicianship at close quarters.

For 17-year-old Pat Leahy, seeing Rory for the first time, the experience was nothing short of overwhelming. Much of the night dissolved into sensory blur, but what he does remember is Rory’s sheer “brilliance” and the feeling of being swept up in “a big bouncing mass of hair, denim and sweat”. Trying to convey the electricity of it all, he offered one of the tour’s most memorable comparisons: “People say about going to Lourdes and seeing the torchlight procession. It’s not a patch on a Rory Gallagher gig. Talk about a religious experience!”

Members of Rory’s family were also in attendance at the gig, including his beloved Uncle Jimmy, Principal of Cork Regional Technical College. Jimmy’s son, Jim, recalls how his father got “bewildered looks” from students wondering what he was doing there. Setting family ties aside, Jim argues that “the unity of performer and audience Rory created was never matched” in his experience.

Curiously, this sense of transcendence was not echoed in the local press, with The Southern Star lamenting the show’s “aura of déjà vu” and quipping that “a few new ideas in every department wouldn’t go astray.”

Lakeland Forum, Enniskillen (3 January 1984)

Following the Cork concert, Rory was due to travel up to Northern Ireland to play the Lakeland Forum in Enniskillen, but the gig was cancelled and later rearranged for Omagh three days on. The reason remains a little murky: some recall heavy snow making travel impossible, while others suggest the postponement stemmed from poor acoustics in the leisure centre venue. Whatever the cause, the break offered Rory a rare pause in the tour’s relentless pace, giving him and Dónal two quiet days at home with their mother.

Ulster Hall, Belfast (4 and 5 January 1984)

While Rory’s Cork homecoming had been somewhat subdued, his return to Belfast – his “second home” – and the hallowed walls of the Ulster Hall could hardly have been more different. As a beacon of light during the Troubles, his appearances in the city were always widely anticipated, and 1984 was no exception. These two nights generated the tour’s greatest excitement and attracted significant press coverage.

No sooner had he stepped off the plane at Belfast’s Harbour Airport than he was interviewed by Eugene Moloney of The Irish News. They discussed his 1972 session with Muddy Waters, his desire to work with Bob Dylan and the prospect of an acoustic album. When asked about future plans, Rory repeated the familiar refrain – “I’d still like to be playing when I’m 60” – but he also gave a wonderfully unexpected answer. Jerry Lee Lewis had a bar in Memphis, he said, and he quite liked the idea of opening a pub himself one day, pulling pints and playing the odd set in between.

Rory also made a couple of local television appearances, beginning with the nightly news programme Scene Around Six, where he was interviewed by presenter Diane Harron (this can be found on the Rory Gallagher: The BBC Collection boxset). The segment opens with Rory and Diane walking casually around Belfast city centre, Rory somewhat self-conscious, hands in pockets. As footage of Ulster Hall comes into view, his voiceover reflects:

Every time that you come back, you get glimpses of the old gigs you used to do in the clubs here and the college dates and certain people you still know and used to know […] I always like to come back.

Once inside and seated, Harron turned to Rory with the question: has your music changed in any way? His response was characteristically thoughtful:

Well, the way I see it, if you want to keep within the rhythm and blues framework, you can’t really change it too much and I don’t like to be going zig zag just to appear to be progressive. I think it should be like whiskey: it should mature from within and grow out that way. To keep the roots and just improve the rhythms and the ideas and the lyrics and things like that, so the progress doesn’t reek of trying to be modern. I think it should be natural progression, so that if somebody sees you in 1984, they think, ‘That’s great stuff!’ They can sense new ideas as opposed to coming out with a false face and synthesisers just to prove that you can do that thing too. I think there’s a subtle improvement and a subtle progression all the time.

Rory also spoke about the recent death of Alexis Korner, reflecting on having played with him a few times and praising him as a bandleader and for his spirit, enthusiasm and musical knowledge. The conversation ended with a focus on Rory’s upcoming plans: his next album, future tours and possible film soundtrack work.

Rory also appeared on Good Evening Ulster, interviewed by a young Eamonn Holmes. He seems a little more subdued here, with his natural shyness coming through more than usual – probably not helped by Holmes repeatedly cutting him off as he tries to gather his thoughts!

Asked about his following in Belfast, Rory responds with humility:

Not too bad. We’ve had a good live following for a while. It’s good to be back because one stage we were coming back every Christmas and it was nice, but then we broke up the cycle by doing an Easter tour and then we got waylaid abroad

He adds that Taste had helped retain a wide audience and that younger fans were now coming through. When Holmes cheekily asks whether this makes him feel old, Rory replies candidly:

It’s the two tests – if you can keep the old fans and convince them that you’re still playing what they like to hear, and if you can convince the young people as well that your music is vital and youthful, you’re not doing too badly.

Holmes then presses Rory on his reluctance to embrace the trappings of showbiz, to which he gives one of my favourite ever answers because it sums him up in a nutshell.

Because I don’t wanna be Boy George, I don’t wanna be Bryan Ferry. I wanna be me. My idols are really people like Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie and Muddy Waters and they shunned it as well. They did what I would love to do. They played until their old age and they built something that meant something. It wasn’t something that was handed to them in a bean tin all the time. It was hard to write a story about it or underline what they did, but whatever they did, it was magic.

Rory also discusses his upcoming album, due for release in early March, which leads into a stunning solo performance of ‘Ride On Red, Ride On’ on acoustic guitar and harmonica. Alone in the studio, he conjures pure magic. With his eyes closed, utterly absorbed, every note seems to flow directly from him, creating a moment of musical rapture. At the song’s conclusion, he slowly opens his eyes and looks around, momentarily dazed, as if coming back down to earth after a musical possession, before returning to his introspective composure. It always moves me deeply, offering a fleeting glimpse of the Jekyll-and-Hyde duality that defined him and hinting at how hard it must have been for him to emerge from that shell to perform.

Fortunately for us, one of the Ulster Hall gigs was recorded for the BBC’s Rory at Midnight special. It’s a performance I return to constantly – in fact, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it – because it captures the heat, sweat and sheer vibrancy of the night so perfectly. If I could time-travel to any Rory gig, this one at an iconic venue that meant so much to the attendees would be top of my list.

Unlike other dates on the tour, Ulster Hall was packed to the rafters, with not a pin’s point of space. At several moments, Rory even has to warn the crowd to be careful and watch their backs to avoid being crushed. Chants of “Rory! Rory!” break out spontaneously throughout the concert – a testament to the audience’s sheer love and admiration for him.

There are so many moments of joy in this concert, including my favourite ever rendition of ‘Shadow Play’ (yes, even above Montreux ’79!). It’s fast and fiery at the start, bursting with high energy, before Rory reins everything in, even shushing the crowd, only to build it up again to a blazing finish, where fans rush the stage multiple times and Rory duckwalks after them. ‘Big Guns’ and ‘Wayward Child’ are explosive, his slide work absolutely off the scale – a reminder that, in this style, nobody could touch him. ‘I Wonder Who’ is another highlight. I’ve always loved hearing how that song developed over his career (for more on this, check out last October’s blog post) and this version contains some beautiful, wailing solos as Rory pushes and stretches the song into new shapes. His improvised lines – “If your love was honey, baby, you know I’d buzz round like a bumble bee” – are pure gold.

Although only 40 minutes made it to TV, luckily for us, the full two-and-a-half-hour show now circulates in bootleg form. The setlist is close to the rest of the tour, but special shout-outs go to a blistering ‘Shin Kicker’, a full-throttle ‘All Around Man’ and a gorgeous, aching version of ‘A Million Miles Away’. Given how electrifying the concert is, it’s astonishing to consider how nervous Rory was beforehand. His old friend Billy McCoy recalls going backstage to see him and finding him pacing up and down the room, lost in his own thoughts. “Hey boy, what’s wrong?” he asked, placing a hand on his shoulder. Rory admitted he was feeling “really nervous” – his stage fright increasingly pronounced at this point in his career. “The tension backstage before any gig was electric,” Dónal reflects, “It was actually a huge strain. Everyone around Rory picked up on this tension. It was walking on eggshells.”

Yet once the lights came up and the first notes rang out, that nervous energy transformed into something extraordinary. I’ve been inundated with fan memories of the Ulster Hall shows – so many, in fact, that I’ve had to be selective – but together they paint a marvellous picture of just how magical those nights were.

Gary Waardlow told me he “couldn’t believe how fantastic” Rory’s playing was in person, having only heard him on record before. However, it’s only since Rory’s passing that he truly appreciates how lucky he was to have seen him live. His standout tracks from the evening were ‘A Million Miles Away’, ‘Bad Penny’, ‘I Wonder Who’, ‘Out On the Western Plain’ and ‘Big Guns’, which was his favourite song at the time. Yet what lingers most in his memory is the sense of camaraderie Rory fostered, the way he brought the audience together. Even amid the tensions of the Troubles, the divisions between communities seemed to melt away for a few hours.

Flynn Beltane also remembers it as an unforgettable night. He and a group of friends travelled from Portadown to Belfast – four squeezed into a Mini and five into a customised Ford Escort van, He recalls that the moment Rory walked on stage, the atmosphere lifted instantly and the whole hall “from front to rear became electric.” Rory and the band “played their hearts out” and, watching the footage now, Flynn can spot himself going wild in several shots. He remembers Rory drenched in sweat and somehow making it to the front to touch both his hand and Strat – a moment etched in his memory forever. Leaving the venue, Flynn discovered their van had been stolen; after speaking to the police, all nine of them somehow squeezed into the Mini for the 27-mile journey home! They talked about that night for years, and Rory has remained in Flynn’s thoughts ever since.

Derek Lyness, a fan since school days, went to the concert with a group of friends, starting with a few pints in Robinson’s Bar – which was heaving with Rory fans – before heading over to join the long queue snaking along the front of Ulster Hall and down the side street. When the doors opened, they rushed inside managed to get about 6-8 feet from the stage. Derek remembers a “long energetic set” and an amazing crowd. Joe Kelly – who attended with his brother Tom – equally remembers the gig as “awesome.” “We always felt safe at Rory’s gigs,” he told me, “We were able to forget about the Troubles for a while.”  ‘Calling Card’ was his standout moment of the night, and the memory has grown even more precious since his brother passed away.

For Simon Bell, Rory was a major influence on his musical life; he bought a sunburst Tokai Strat to emulate him, and his current band still close their set with a song Simon wrote in Rory’s honour. Its opening line – “Famous checked shirt and a battered Strat, playing rock and blues giving all you got!” – sums up that Ulster Hall night for him. The crowd, he remembers, was “in unison watching every motion Rory made,” which was “joyous.” David McClenaghan boiled it down to five words: “He tore the roof off.” But for Arthur Cowan, the best thing about Rory’s Ulster Hall appearances was simple but no means easy: “He brought everyone in Northern Ireland together.”

Knock-na-Moe Hotel, Omagh (6 January 1984)

From Belfast, Rory travelled west to the Knock-na-Moe Hotel in Omagh for what was effectively the rearranged Enniskillen date. The Knock-na-Moe, originally built in the late nineteenth-century for the Stack family, became a hotel in the 1960s and soon established itself as a popular venue for dances and touring acts. It would later be destroyed by fire in the early 1990s and subsequently demolished, but in 1984, it was still a thriving stop on the local live circuit.

One of the most vivid accounts of the Omagh concert comes from fan Dino McGartland, who not only attended the show but spent time in Rory’s company. Determined to meet his musical hero, Dino finished work early, packed several of his albums for signing and persuaded his brother to drop him at the hotel. Even from outside, he could hear the unmistakable sound of live music. Peering through a window, he spotted Rory and the band mid-soundcheck and decided to slip quietly inside.

Expecting at any moment to be told to leave, Dino instead found himself sitting undisturbed for almost 45 minutes, listening as the band worked through their set. When they finally stopped, Rory jumped off the stage and Dino approached him to shake hands. He welcomed Rory to Omagh, and Rory mentioned he knew the town well as Richie McCracken, Taste’s former bassist, had been from the area. Rory signed the albums and chatted warmly about Muddy Waters’ recent passing, the London sessions and Jinx. As they said their goodbyes, Rory promised they’d catch up again at the gig that evening.

The concert itself, Dino recalled, was “typical Rory, explosive, 100 miles an hour.” Armed with a new camera, he took numerous shots from the front of the stage. After the show, he waited around and eventually spotted Dónal. Dónal asked him and his wife Annie to hold on a moment; when he returned, he led them into the hotel dining room. There sat Rory with Gerry McAvoy and Brendan O’Neill. Rory pointed to two empty seats and invited them to join. He offered Dino a pint of Guinness, and the four of them spent around 45 minutes talking music. Dino left with a signed plectrum, a tour poster autographed by the whole band and photographs taken by Dónal himself.

Despite such an intimate and enthusiastic fan experience, the Mid-Ulster Mail painted a more muted picture of the turnout. Although it described the performance as “a night of rock grandeur,” it also lamented the “dismal gathering” in attendance. Those who were there, however, it acknowledged, went home “well pleased” with Rory’s performance.

Baymount Hotel, Sligo (7 January 1984)

Rory’s next stop took him back across the border into the Republic for a concert at the Baymount Hotel in Sligo, a venue with deep roots in Ireland’s live music history. Opened in 1960, the Baymount quickly became a staple of the showband circuit and, over the decades, welcomed many of the era’s major touring artists, including Eric Clapton, Roy Orbison, Thin Lizzy and Dusty Springfield. Although it closed its doors in 1989, with 28 houses later built on the site, the hotel lives on in local memory as one of Sligo’s most important mid-century music spaces.

One of the few eyewitness accounts of Rory’s 1984 appearance comes from Seamie O’Dowd, who had previously seen him perform on the tour in Dublin. Spotting that Rory was now due to play in his hometown, Seamie decided – despite being down to his last bit of money – to buy a ticket. Unfortunately, only around 100 people turned up. In hindsight, Seamie links this sparse attendance to broader changes in musical taste and the shifting live music landscape of the early 1980s, as the concert scene moved away from the heavy blues and classic rock dominance of the previous decade.

But if the crowd was small, Rory’s performance was anything but diminished. Seamie is emphatic on this point:

I can tell you as a first-hand witness with readily available evidence that Rory didn’t flag in his musical efforts until he sadly became unwell, and even then he fired out some great performances.

For those present, the Sligo show was another example of Rory’s unwavering commitment to giving everything, whether to a packed hall or a room of 100 faithful listeners.

Rosehill Hotel, Kilkenny (8 January 1984)

Rory’s 1983-84 Irish tour drew to a close at the Rosehill Hotel in Kilkenny on 8 January. Unlike the other dates, this concert has proven remarkably elusive in the historical record. Despite extensive efforts, trawling regional newspapers, searching local archives and reaching out to fans, no first-hand accounts or contemporary reviews of the performance have surfaced. So, if anyone reading is able to fill this gap, their contributions would be invaluable!

Against the Shifting Tides

Having been absolutely enamoured with the Rory at Midnight concert footage from the very first moment I watched it, I always had in the back of my mind the desire to write more about this 1983-84 Irish tour. The atmosphere in that Ulster Hall audience was so electric and beautiful to watch, and I felt sure that similar patterns would have played out across the island of Ireland, especially since Rory hadn’t toured there for four years.

However, the more I researched and spoke to people, the more dismayed I became to find that, with the exception of Belfast, turnout was, in fact, very poor, even in his hometown of Cork. On the one hand, one could argue that it was Christmas/New Year and that people had already committed to seeing family and friends. But on the other hand, Rory’s Christmas/New Year tours had always been a major annual event throughout the 1970s, with audiences coming out in droves regardless of circumstances.

So, what had changed? As Seamie O’Dowd reiterated, the musical tide had shifted. Guitar heroes of the 1970s – though Rory was, of course, so much more than that label – were now often seen as passé and out of step with the 1980s zeitgeist: MTV, power dressing, synthesisers and a culture where image often mattered more than music. Some fans had simply moved on. Others had grown older, married or started families, and could no longer go out as they once did. Ireland was also in the midst of a prolonged economic downturn, with high unemployment, meaning people had to be careful with what they spent – a situation that would culminate in the Self Aid benefit concert of 1986. What is clear, however, is that none of this reflected on Rory himself. As a performer, he was better than ever, subtly evolving while staying true to his blues roots, playing his absolute heart out night after night.

While it’s true that Rory would give the same performance whether he faced one person or a million, it’s hard not to imagine that the thin crowds, especially in his home country, may have been upsetting to his sensitive self. Dónal and other band members have noted that the shift in popularity and changing trends aggravated the depression Rory had long struggled with and contributed to his increasing reclusiveness from the Jinx period onwards. But I do hope he took away some glimmers of hope from what he saw that winter.

For example, many of those who did attend were young fans in their teens or twenties, experiencing Rory live for the first time, having been drawn by stories from older peers or relatives. And they were not disappointed, witnessing firsthand the magic that had inspired those tales. Just as Irish Tour ’74 had marked the start of the love affair for their elders, this tour did much the same for a new generation.

And then there was Belfast. The energy there was extraordinary. Unlike other cities, the crowd never faltered. Despite the divisions of the Troubles, Rory’s music consistently united people from both sides of the community. He may have downplayed its significance, claiming it was “no different to playing any other city,” but his performances there were monumental: nights where people put aside political and social tensions to share in something profoundly communal. Belfast reminded everyone of Rory’s enduring presence and magnetism, and it stands as the emotional and symbolic heart of this tour.

So, in retrospect, the low turnout should not dominate the story of the “Santa tour”. It should not be seen as a reflection of Rory’s “decline”, nor part of the broader “rise and fall” narrative of his career. Viewed in context, the tour was a success: a demonstration of his talent, his ability to maintain longtime fans while inspiring new ones, and a foundation upon which he would build during his next Irish tour, four years later in 1988. It showed that, even amid numerous personal and professional challenges, Rory’s music retained the power to captivate, connect and leave a lasting impression on everyone fortunate enough to see him live.