The first time guitarist Joe Bonamassa heard the music of Rory Gallagher, it felt like the world had stopped. “I was from a small town in upstate New York, and it was very blue collar, working class,” begins the blues musician and three-times Grammy nominee, as he unpacks his relationship – musically and spiritually – with the late Cork guitar wizard.
Bonamassa speaks of Gallagher with a reverence tinged with wonder. The day he heard Gallagher’s music pouring out of a speaker, he knew that this was an artist with whom he would have a life-long fascination. Here was a musician he could relate to – someone from an unprepossessing background. A player whose lightning finger work was matched by his humbleness and lack of pretension. “The Rory thing always for me was he was that guy: the image and the music went together,” says the 48-year-old from upstate New York.
Bonamassa is regarded as one of the great blues guitarists of his generation, so it is fitting that he will be paying tribute to Gallagher with three shows at Aiken Promotions’ Live at the Marquee event in Cork.
He says he won’t be mimicking Gallagher – Bonamassa never sounds like anyone but himself. He will, however, breathe new life into Gallagher’s classic repertoire as he plays the entire set from Gallagher’s famed Irish Tour ’74 live LP, recorded on the road in Cork, Dublin and Belfast. Fans from around the world who are expected to travel to the dates will be able to reconnect with Gallagher’s legacy and experience a classic repertoire in a modern context.
“The intent is to celebrate the man’s life, and I’m just a conduit for it. I’m not Rory. You could study Irish Tour ’74 for the next 25 years and never get close. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here for Rory’s family. And I’m here for Peter Aiken and to celebrate a musician whom I have a real deep respect for,” says Bonamassa, who has been in Cork rehearsing in the lead-up to the gig.
He has always felt a deep kinship with the Corkman – perhaps because of the parallels in their life stories. They both grew up away from the bright lights of the music industry – Gallagher in Cork City and Bonamassa in Utica, New York (population 65,000) – and both started playing at a young age. Gallagher joined his first band in his teens; Bonamassa was gigging by the age of 12 – one of his earliest shows was supporting BB King (he would later jam with Rory’s contemporary Eric Clapton). Divided by time and distance, they nonetheless have much in common.
“You try to have substance over style rather than style over substance. The true legends… it’s definitely that you put the music first,” says Bonamassa. “You have to have an image obviously. You can’t just meander up there. But it’s not about the flash, the look, the style. The music has got to be good. Whatever happens up there, it’s got to be good. You’re not going to be able to blag your way into something.”
If Gallagher is acknowledged as a genius, in some ways, Bonamassa believes he remains under-appreciated. As a songwriter and a vocalist, he was right up there. Gallagher wasn’t just about blistering solos – the American feels that as singer composer, he was right up there and deserves higher praise.
“He was a criminally underrated acoustic guitar player, an underrated songwriter and singer,” he says. Gallagher isn’t the only blues musician to be pigeonholed in that fashion. “When BB King died, they said, ‘guitarist BB King’. Are you kidding me? He’s a singer.”
Gallagher died in June 1995 at the relatively young age of 47, his health damaged by years on the road and a heavy drinking habit. Bonamassa has always taken care of himself while touring. In his mid-40s, he has the privilege of being able to look back at rock and roll history and learn from the experiences of artists who went before him. And the lesson is that you have to look out, especially as you grow a little older.
“It is a hard life. Freddie King [blues guitarist from Texas] died when he was, I think, 42. Rory’s health struggles at the end were well documented. He had another two lifetimes. So we could be sitting here if it didn’t occur 30 years ago [i.e. if he hadn’t died before his time]. He would still be around and playing.”
Gallagher was always proud to have grown up in Cork, and it is apt that Bonamassa should come to the city to pay tribute. That Cork was a huge influence on Gallagher as a musician is confirmed by his brother and former manager, Dónal, who says growing up in their parents’ pub, The Modern Bar, on MacCurtain Street, had a huge impact on the young musician.
In Rory Gallagher’s case, a childhood in a pub introduced him to the wonders of the world – and of music. “The drift of people through, the stories… I remember [classical composer] Seán Ó Riada in the bar. Nancy and the Teetotallers,at the start of the skiffle craze, were playing Cork Opera House and they came into the bar. Rory was learning skiffle. That was Cork for you,” recalls Dónal.
Cork got under the skin of Rory’s music, says Donal. “If you listen to Tattoo’d Lady. I see the influence of the old Mardyke with the fair grounds where they used to set up. Going to My Home Town, referencing Henry Ford. People thought that was Rory being Americana. Ford was huge in Cork. Henry Ford, if you look at the centre of Detroit – the centre of it is called Corktown. A lot of that stuff was subliminally going in.”
One intriguing chapter in the Rory Gallagher story is his audition in the mid-1970s to join the Rolling Stones, where he would have replaced Mick Taylor. He flew to Amsterdam to meet Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards. It ultimately didn’t work out – which was for the best feels Bonamassa.
“There’s a lot of theoretical what-ifs,” says the guitarist. “I think if he joined the Stones, eventually Ron Wood would have gotten that gig. Rory took up a lot of space. He’s a front guy. It’s hard to go from being a front guy and a lead player who takes up a lot of space, figuratively not literally. To go into, ‘I’m just playing this part’. Whereas Ronnie Wood used to be in an ensemble – was used to servicing the song and that’s it.”
Rory Gallagher is unique in that he unites musicians from across rock’n’roll. His fans include Slash of Guns N’ Roses and Johnny Marr of the Smiths—artists spoken of in the same breath.
“We all relate to this authenticity,” says Bonamassa. “He’s very authentic in what he did and he never compromised. Not many artists could say that through their career. He never sold out for the hit. Never sold out any of it. He just did what he did.”
- Joe Bonamassa plays Rory Gallagher, Live at the Marquee Cork, July 1-3
