![]() And that alone may be why he isn’t better known today. It becomes something completely different.” Suffice to say, Rory wasn’t in it for the fame. You play less, you perform less you circulate less. In a famous 1972 quote from Rolling Stone, Gallagher thought it was a “waste” to work for years on your music, just to “make it big, as some people do and just turn into some sort of personality. A single-minded music obsessive who never married, he eschewed the spotlight and the whole rock guitar god mythology while he was alive. tours, the reasons that Gallagher is often a forgotten man when lists of guitar gods are compiled are not hard to discern. ![]() VIDEO: Taste perform “Sugar Mama” at the 1970 Isle of Wight FestivalĪlthough he’s sold over 20 million albums and while alive completed 25 U.S. Spending your life on the road takes its toll and after his liver failed on June 14, 1995, Gallagher succumbed to infection following a liver transplant at the age of 47. A solo career of 14 live and studio albums followed. ![]() After opening for Cream and Blind Faith (Eric Clapton became a friend), Taste dissolved amid management disputes and Gallagher went solo, reportedly writing one of his most famous tunes, Used to Be,” about Taste. He was also an instinctive, better-than-average singer who made up in passion what he didn’t possess in range or phrasing.Īfter a time as a part of Irish bands like The Impact and The Fontana, he formed his first power trio, The Taste later shortened to just Taste. On numbers like “Alexis” from 1990’s Fresh Evidence he also played a mean slide on his battered ’61 Stratocaster, very much in the league of such slide masters as Duane Allman. When so moved he also had an almost supernatural way with Leadbelly tunes. He was also adept at authoritative 12-bar blues stompers like his ever popular “Too Much Alcohol,” the first Gallagher tune to catch my teenaged ears.Ī student of American blues guitarists from Blind Boy Fuller, Charley Patton and Big Bill Broonzy to Earl Hooker and Hubert Sumlin, Gallagher could also play fantastically crisp and complex acoustic guitar tunes like his “Unmilitary Two-Step” from his 1973 album Blueprint. Self-taught and devoted to playing blues and blues-based rock in all its forms, he’s most famous for the over 300 nights that he spent on the road each year, almost always fronting a power trio in theaters packed with fans, working himself up into faster-and-faster blues explosions on original tunes like “The Devil Made Me Do it,” (from 1973’s Jinx ). As a guitar player, Gallagher had it all: speed, endless ideas and the brain-to-fingers connection to pull it off.
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