Later this week marks 45 years since Rory played a now-legendary gig at the Nikos Goumas Stadium in Nea Filadelfeia, Athens.

A year earlier, when playing the Montreuil-sur-Mer Citadel in France, Rory was approached by two representatives from Happening Promotions who floated the idea of him performing in Greece, to which he agreed immediately. However, nothing could have prepared him for the extraordinary events that followed. The social and political climate in Greece at the time was volatile, to say the least. The country was hovering on the edge of a major political shift, about to elect its first socialist government by a landslide after years of rigid conservative rule.

Organisers had anticipated a sizable crowd of 15,000 to the Athens gig on 12 September 1981, but word-of-mouth caused the audience to swell to an estimated 40,000 fans. Security was entirely inadequate for a gathering of that magnitude. During Rory’s set, overenthusiastic fans continually breached the perimeter, climbing onto the stage and mobbing him, which led Dónal to take to the PA system to plead for space so his brother could safely continue playing.

Anticipating mass unrest, the police responded with heavy-handed force, flooding the stadium with blinding sheets of tear gas. The atmosphere instantly erupted into a full-scale riot, leaving more than 300 people injured and the surrounding neighbourhood shops ablaze. Remarkably, Rory and the band kept performing through the choking chaos before finally being evacuated, their eyes stinging from the tear gas.

In a 1982 interview with Hot Press, Rory described the experience as ‘the most frightening gig’ of his life, admitting that he genuinely feared he was going to die on the football pitch without understanding what was happening around him. He recalled looking out to see flames consuming the back of the stadium, mass confusion backstage as menacing, armed semi-militia units patrolled the corridors and being unable to stop trembling even after safely arriving back at his hotel room. The dramatic events in Athens transformed Rory into a cult figure in Greece and he remains deeply revered there today as a folk hero who embodied a spirit of defiance and freedom for a generation of youth living through immense political upheaval.

The next scheduled performance in Thessaloniki still went ahead, but it did so under strict police observation. Authorities dictated the terms of the entire evening, refusing to let Rory play an encore. To top off a tumultuous trip, the police escort vehicle ran out of petrol on the way back to the hotel, forcing the band to walk the remaining distance through the dark city streets on foot! Yet the ordeal did nothing to dampen Rory’s affection for the Greek people; he boldly declared that the mayhem wouldn’t prevent a return visit, although this never did go ahead.

I recently obtained a copy of an interview that Rory gave to Greek radio prior to the gig, where he shares some of his favourite tunes. I thought it seemed fitting to share it today in anticipation of the anniversary: