Happy New Year, everyone!

The turn of the year is usually framed as a time for resolutions and fresh starts, but I’ve long found early January carries a quieter, heavier mood for me.

The anniversary of the passing of my other great hero, Phil Lynott, on 4 January always brings a deep sense of loss. Soon after comes another difficult marker: the anniversary of what would prove to be Rory’s final tour of Holland. A tour that came to an abrupt and distressing end when Rory became too ill to complete his Rotterdam concert, forcing the cancellation of the remaining dates. “It’s painful that such a dedicated artist had to say goodbye to the stage in this way,” his brother Dónal later reflected. For those who want a fuller account of this tour and the events that followed, I explore them in detail in Chapter 3.3 of Rory Gallagher: The Later Years.

This year, though, the weight has felt particularly acute. Forty years since Phil’s death is a sobering milestone; the weather has been bitterly cold and snowy; and beyond our windows, the world itself feels increasingly unstable and threatening.

But at times like these, music can offer refuge, continuity and comfort. With that in mind, I wanted to share something today that is a little different from the typical Rewriting Rory content – something that also neatly brings to a close the loose trilogy of ‘Christmas’ posts I’ve been sharing over the past few weeks.

What follows is a wonderful interview with Rory from 1975, broadcast on the Irish radio programme Roll Over Beethoven. It was recorded in early January while Rory was back home during his annual Christmas tour of Ireland. Curiously, this interview doesn’t seem to have yet made its way to YouTube (or at least has been taken down at some point), so I wanted to make it accessible here. Even though it falls outside the final decade that Rewriting Rory usually focuses on, I hope it offers a small refuge from January’s bleakness. As always, my thanks to Rob Phaneuf for sharing it with me.

Catch up on the other two Christmas posts here:

“The Santa Tour”: Rory’s Irish Homecoming, Christmas 1983-84

A Year in Review: 2025