Live! In Europe

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Live In Europe would be Gallagher’s most successful record yet on both sides of the Atlantic, but the band’s ferocious work rate was taking its toll on Wilgar Campbell. The only member of the band with a family, he found the strain of touring too much and began missing shows. The final straw came when he bailed out on the day the band were to due to fly to Ireland to play a gig that was being recorded for a TV broadcast. Onstage, it was another matter entirely, and Gallagher understandably jumped at the chance to record another live album. But this one would be different: it would be recorded in Ireland. At the time, in late 1973, Northern Ireland was in the iron grip of sectarian violence. The previous year, the Provisional IRA had killed more than 100 British soldiers and carried out roughly 1300 bombings; Loyalist paramilitaries had responded by carrying out their own campaign of violence. Live! in Europe is the third album by Irish blues guitarist Rory Gallagher, released in 1972. It is a series of live recordings made during his European tour that year. Unusual for a live album, it contains only two songs previously recorded and released by Gallagher ("Laundromat" and "In Your Town"). The other songs are either new Gallagher songs or Gallagher's interpretation of traditional blues songs.

Rory Gallagher was born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, in 1948, and raised in Cork. His father sang and played accordion in local bands, while his mother had been a member of a theatre company. The young Rory got his first guitar at the age of nine, and his listening tastes gravitated from Lonnie Donegan to Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy. I first met Rory when he came to live in Belfast,” says McAvoy. “He was known as a bit of a character because of his long hair. He was a bit outlandish but at the same time he was very polite and pleasant. I didn’t realise he was headhunting me and Wilgar. There was no beating about the bush. He asked if I would be available to come to London that weekend for a bit of a blow.” The debut album had been poorly received in some quarters (American journalist Lester Bangs had described it as “one of the most noticeably vacuous releases of the season”), instigating a fractious relationship with the press. But, crucially, both the record and the live show had connected with the public. Johnny Marr was another devotee. “ Deuce was a complete turning point for me,” the former Smiths guitarist told Guitar magazine in 1997. Marr has admitted that, as a teenager, he tried to emulate the look of Gallagher’s increasingly battered and weather-worn red Stratocaster on his own instrument – with the help of a blowtorch and a chisel in woodwork class. The dramatic theater that emerges from this musicianship is hardly the contrived sort of mere crowd-pleasing, but that which arises from the natural stage presence of musicians fully and completely immersed in their playing. Likewise the rowdy but respectful crowd reaction: Rory Gallagher played with a raw, gutsy intensity that carried impact all the greater for the ever-so-slight but tangible restraint he employed, a touch that precluded any of the heavy-handed and blowzy self-indulgence that was the bane of British (and American) blues.It was in Belfast that Gallagher began searching for a new band. He soon found two players he could work with: drummer Wilgar Campbell and 17-yearold bassist Gerry McAvoy, whose own band, Deep Joy, had supported Taste. Ironically, Deep Joy had split up on exactly the same night as Gallagher’s former group, just down the road in Ulster Hall. Time to boogie. BOUGHT AND SOLD with its lovely unison between guitar and voice, ends with melodic touches of its sister song ‘Lost at Sea’ from the album ‘Against the Grain’.

Nevertheless, Gallagher’s relentless integrity, combined with the furious immersion in his live performances, won him a staunch following. Working as a solo artist following the somewhat tumultuous dissolution of Taste, it took this iconoclastic musician no longer to document his concert work than when he was with the unsung British power trio: the now fifty-year-old Live in Europe album (released 5/14/72) was his third overall release under his own name after the eponymous debut LP and its sophomore follow-up Deuce. Rory avoided pandering to his audience. He preferred to simply play music and, in so doing with such unabashed abandon, he rendered it with an irrepressible glee that radiated from the stage to his enraptured audiences. He said, ‘It was probably the worst gig I’ve ever seen and the best gig I’ve ever seen’,” recalls Donal. The resulting album, Irish Tour ’74, remains the highlight of Gallagher’s career. Recorded in Belfast, Dublin and Cork, it finally nailed his live performances on vinyl.

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He was very up for the whole punk thing,” says Donal. “He loved the whole attitude and it really hurt him when he got labelled as part of the old guard.”

Like every young Irish musician who came of age in the early 60s, Gallagher served his apprenticeship on the showband circuit, playing covers of popular hits.He was a confident guitarist, albeit one with a rebellious streak. One appearance at a school talent show provoked the ire of the Catholic brothers who ran the establishment. The reason: Gallagher had covered Cliff Richard’s chaste 1959 hit, Living Doll. Donal Gallagher recalls his brother’s social life in his later years revolving around the studio, the canteen and the bar, where he’d run up “terrifying bills”. Live In Europe has served as a massive influence on budding musicians: Adam Clayton and The Edge of U2 both cite this album as the recording that made them want to learn guitar and play in a band – they were still schoolboys at the time! But the punishing schedules took their toll. Gallagher’s drinking escalated, eventually reaching full-blown alcoholism. He also began to experience stage fright, a fear of flying and bouts of physical exhaustion. He dealt with his problems by turning to prescription pills, soon developing an addiction to them as well. As he rarely socialised with anyone offstage, no one had any idea how many pills he was taking.

The latter featured Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover on production duties, though it was an unhappy experience for both parties. It would also be the last album to feature Rod de’Ath and Lou Martin. Not one to drag his heels, Gallagher moved fast. In January 1971, the trio got acquainted via series of intense jams in small basement rehearsal room in Fulham. By late February, they were in the studio, recording Gallagher’s first, self-titled album. If Rory was feeling pressured to prove himself after the demise of Taste, he wasn’t letting on, even to his bandmates.

Maybe it was time for a change, I don’t know,” says Martin. “I couldn’t get into his head and what he was thinking about.” I only joined a showband because there was nowhere else to go with an electric guitar,” he later explained.