Archive Review: Rory Gallagher’s Notes From San Francisco (2011)

By late 1977, Irish blues-rock guitarist Rory Gallagher had delivered six studio albums in as many years, and had toured constantly during the interim. After completing a particularly grueling six-month tour that finished in Japan, Gallagher and band flew back to San Francisco to record a new album with producer Elliot Mazer (who helmed Big Brother & the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills album with Janis Joplin).

After a couple months of intense and difficult recording, the guitarist deemed the final mixing process to be “too complicated” when it obviously wasn’t getting anywhere, and he put the entire album on the shelf, subsequently breaking up his band of five years in the process. In early 2011, Gallagher’s nephew Daniel, son of Rory’s brother and manager Donal Gallagher, rescued these unreleased recordings from the archives after 34 years and remixed the album that would have been released between 1976’s Calling Card and 1978’s Photo-Finish. Recorded with a four-piece band, the album’s nine songs are Gallagher originals, around half of which would be re-recorded in different form with a three-piece band for Photo-Finish.

Rory Gallagher’s Notes From San Francisco

The question on everybody’s mind, of course, is Notes From San Francisco worth the wait? Yes, I’d have to say that it was. While Gallagher may have had an inordinate amount of trouble trying to get the performances to sound like he wanted during the mixing process, Daniel Gallagher’s nuanced mix – performed with modern equipment, of course – brings out facets of the guitarist and band’s performances that the primitive late-1970s technology overlooked. The album-opening “Rue the Day,” for instance, offers up some tasty honky-tonk piano running like a river beneath Gallagher’s twangy leads and roaring vocals. Martin Fiero’s blasts of sax help round out the sound, which is revved-up boogie-rock evoking 1970s-era Rolling Stones.

Only hardcore fans of Gallagher’s bootleg albums have heard “B Girl,” but for everybody else, it’s a new song, and a good ‘un at that. With a sleazy guitar riff circling in and out of the mix, the band lays down a fat, funky rhythm that dances beneath Gallagher’s comparatively gruff, whiskey-soaked vocals. It’s this contrast, between the guitarist’s dark-hued vocals and the band’s bright instrumentation that makes the song truly shine. A long-time live favorite, “Mississippi Sheiks” would be re-recorded by Gallagher for Photo-Finish, but it’s performed here with a different arrangement. Gallagher’s stunning guitar intro and the band’s stammering rhythms are akin to the sort of blues-derived hard rock pursued by Savoy Brown or Status Quo. But what sets this performance apart from all the others is the addition of Joe O’Donnell’s lively electric violin, which provides the song with an otherworldly, soulful vibe.

Wheels Within Wheels

Notes From San Francisco includes two different versions of the popular Gallagher song “Wheels Within Wheels,” the first being a gentle MOR radio ballad with touching vocals and Lou Martin’s rolling piano-play, while the second, alternate version is delivered at the same mid-tempo pace, but with a bluesier inflection in both the vocals and in Gallagher’s fretwork and with less emphasis on piano, sounding like a 1980s-era Eric Clapton ballad but with more heart and soul. Another track that would appear on Photo-Finish, “Brute Force & Ignorance,” lives up to its title with a muscular, bludgeoning performance with crashing drumbeats, brickhouse bass lines, and scorched-earth guitar. Fiero’s sax makes another appearance here, lending a bit of R&B feel behind Gallagher’s weeping, soaring guitar solo.
 
One of the lesser-known Photo-Finish tracks, “Fuel To the Fire” represents another outlier in Gallagher’s musical evolution. With sparse, but strong instrumentation behind his mournful vocals, Gallagher’s atypical fretwork finds him pursuing a less bluesy, more rock ‘n’ roll oriented sound with jazzy undertones and some odd, invigorating phrasing and extended solos that are simply beautiful. The album also includes two “bonus tracks,” including the previously-unreleased or re-recorded “Out On the Tiles,” a wildcat rocker with locomotive rhythms and a scattergun approach, Gallagher’s guitar spitting out notes with reckless abandon, razor-sharp tone accompanied by blistering speed and joyful chaos.

Live In San Francisco

Notes From San Francisco includes a second live disc, culled from a December 1979 performance at The Old Waldorf. Fronting the power trio had recorded Photo Finish, Gallagher leads longtime bassist McAvoy and drummer Ted McKenna through a set that includes a mix of the old and new material. Crowd favorites like the raucous “Shinkicker” and “Off the Handle” are perfect showcases for Gallagher’s onstage charisma and dynamic guitarplay, while old chestnuts like the soulful “Tattoo’d Lady” and “Calling Card” are provided new vigor by Gallagher’s incendiary fretwork and the band’s muscular backing rhythms.  

A handful of tracks from the live portion of Notes From San Francisco stand out in particular from Gallagher’s previous (and frequent) live sets. One is a performance of “Bullfrog Blues,” from the guitarist’s early British blues-rock band Taste. Revving up the tempo, Gallagher and band crank out an unabashed boogie blast with machinegun drumbeats and flamethrower guitar licks. The concert rarity “I’m Leavin’“ is another up-tempo raver with brokeback drums, rapidfire vocals, and raging fretwork all delivered with punkish intensity, while a cover of the 1950s rock ‘n’ roll gem “Sea Cruise” is amped-up and ramped-up from the original but manages to capture the restless, rockin’ soul of the song nonetheless.     

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Although collections such as Notes From San Francisco are typically aimed at a collector audience that eagerly grab up everything new or novel from a musician, in this instance this two-disc set serves as an excellent introduction to an underrated and too-often overlooked blues-rock talent. Gallagher’s guitar rages like an out-of-control wildfire throughout these studio tracks, and roars like a jet fighter on a bombing run in the live setting.

While hardcore Rory Gallagher fans will eat this stuff up, Notes From San Francisco is more than a mere musical curiosity. The album stands on its own as both a studio recording and a live document, and it would have been welcome had it been released in 1978 as planned. As such, its current release represents an important and impressive addition to the guitarist’s growing legacy. (Eagle Records, released May 17th, 2011)

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Archive Review: Rory Gallagher’s The Beat Club Sessions (2010)

If not exactly a contemporary of British blues-rock guitarists like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, Ireland’s Rory Gallagher came of age in the wake of trailblazers like the Yardbirds and Cream. From the time of Gallagher’s band Taste’s 1969 self-titled debut album, through an acclaimed solo career that began in 1971 and resulted in over a dozen albums until Gallagher’s tragic death in 1995, the guitarist earned a well-deserved reputation for powerful guitarplay; gruff, soulful vocals; and a skilled manipulation of blues and rock music that easily rivaled that of Clapton and Page as well as peers like Gary Moore and Mick Taylor.

Interest in Rory Gallagher and his music continues to grow some 15 years after his death and, luckily for us punters, there seems to be a deep well of archive material being brought up by bucket and chain and trickled into the marketplace on compact disc and DVD. Gallagher’s The Beat Club Sessions represents a new high in the guitarist’s growing catalog, a dozen white-hot performances that burn brighter than phosphorus, blasting through the eardrums to rattle around in the brain like a maddening sustain. Recorded during three of Gallagher’s frequent appearances on the German television program The Beat Club, the album (and accompanying DVD) features material culled from Gallagher’s 1971 debut and that year’s follow-up Deuce, as well as a couple of choice covers, like the guitarist’s signature romp through Junior Well’s “Messin’ With the Kid.”

Rory Gallagher’s The Beat Club Sessions

The Beat Club Sessions opens with the lively “Laundromat,” a scalding hot tater that jumps around like a lobster in a pot. Gallagher’s guitar playing here is positively stunning, flowing effortlessly from raw scraped rhythms to jazz-inflected solos, his gravel-throated vocals almost an afterthought in the face of the song’s massive groove. Gallagher’s “Sinnerboy,” from his album, is a horse of an entirely different color. The intro offers up some delicate guitar picking, Gallagher’s vocals complimented by shimmering cymbals before he cuts loose with a muscular, bluesy rhythm that leads into a taut solo that cuts like a razor. Contrasting with these scorchers is the long-time Gallagher favorite “I Don’t Know Where I’m Going,” an acoustic blues number with a little Delta mud in the grooves, Gallagher’s subdued guitar strum matched by his warbling harmonica work.

The serpentine slide-guitar that introduces “I Could’ve Had Religion,” from the album, opens the door to a smoky, down-n-dirty sin-and-salvation tale that sounds like Robert Johnson with an Irish lilt to his voice. The song stomps and stammers out of your speakers like a hungry beast, a change in fortunes from Johnson’s hellhounds as the song’s protagonist willingly chooses the dark side. Gallagher’s slide-guitar runs wild through the song like a jolt of electricity guaranteed to tickle the fancy of any blues-rock fanboy. “Used To Be” is another long-time live fave, a raucous houserocker a la Cream, Gallagher using the power-trio format to its fullest, the song bristling with electric guitar riffs and crashing rhythms.

Crest of A Wave

The rollicking “In Your Town” shows just the slightest hint of Chicago blues in its deep rhythmic groove, Gallagher almost shouting his vox above the din, an aural assault partially created by his flamethrower fretwork. The song’s rapid pace is propelled by drummer Wilgar Campbell’s incessant percussive percussion and bassist Gerry McAvoy’s heavy bass-work. Again, Gallagher’s squealing guitarplay tortures the arrangement with a black cat moan and a spine-shaking intensity.

Gallagher’s “Crest of A Wave” is one of his signature tunes, a lyrically and musically epic song that offers ringing, circular guitar, strident vocals, a rock-solid rhythmic backbone, and a leather-tuff solo that soars like a bird of prey. Gallagher’s cover of Junior Wells’ “Messin’ With the Kid” may be absent the master’s powerful harp playing, but the guitarist claimed equal ownership of the song with soulful vocals and an inspired, fleet-fingered bit of guitarplay. McAvoy’s bass solo here is a thing of beauty, while Campbell’s drum solo adds a bit of bluster to the song’s braggadocio, but it’s Gallagher’s wailing solos that steal the spotlight.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Rory Gallagher fans have long known of the man’s immense talents as a guitarist and a performer, but he remains one of the best-kept secrets in blues-rock music. Gallagher arrived late to the party, perhaps, the British blues scene already moving on to harder-edged rock by the time that the guitarist made his debut. Still, as these early performances from the dawn of his career show, Gallagher had the skills, the heart, and the soul to deliver emotional, moving blues-rock music that connected with the listener.

That he never found a larger audience is an oversight that The Beat Club Sessions can help correct. These twelve powerful performances showcase a guitarist at beginning of a substantial career, full of vigor and brimming over with ideas, both musical and lyrical. That Gallagher’s long-time fans will grab up The Beat Club Sessions is no surprise, but the album would also make an intoxicating introduction to the man and his music for the newcomer. (Eagle Records, released September 14th, 2010)

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Archive Review: Rory Gallagher’s Irish Tour (1998)

As recounted in our reverent review of his seminal BBC Sessions set, Rory Gallagher was a hell of a guitarist, a gifted artist with one foot in rock ‘n’ roll and the other solidly in the blues. As a handful of legitimate live albums and dozens of bootlegs would attest to, Gallagher was at his best when onstage. This Buddha Records reissue of Irish Tour showcases the artist at the top of his game, a six-string guitarslinger without peer who could tear off blistering riffs and crunching chords with lightning fast ability, a powerful showman holding the audience in the palm of his hand.

Rory Gallagher’s Irish Tour

The performances on Irish Tour were taken from shows done in Belfast, Dublin and Cork during January 1974. Gallagher was an Irish homeboy who had made good, a star of significant drawing power throughout the European continent. Because of the violence and chaos in Northern Ireland, however, most artists refused to play the region, leaving audiences starved for rock ‘n’ roll. In this environment, Gallagher came home, causing everybody to forget their differences for a while. Consisting mostly of familiar songs drawn from previous Gallagher studio albums, Irish Tour nonetheless offers up a handful of inspired covers alongside the scorching originals.

Among the highlights of Irish Tour’s ten tracks are a soulful cover of Muddy Water’s “I Wonder Who,” which includes some sparse tho’ well-placed guitar licks, and a simply unbelievable rendition of the crowd favorite “Tattoo’d Lady” that showcases Gallagher’s considerable six-string skills alongside some tasty keyboards from Lou Martin. A funky, down-and-dirty cover of J.B. Hutto’s “Too Much Alcohol” will knock you on your ass every bit as quick as a pint of Old Crow whiskey. With flaming keyboards behind him, Gallagher knocks out a firey, hard rocking version of “Walk On Hot Coals” that includes an extended instrumental jam while “Back On My Stompin’ Ground” is a cajun-fried slab of Southern-styled funk that is razor sharp and sonically dense as a bayou fog.

The Reverend's Bottom Line

Gallagher would go on from this performance high to play hundreds of shows and record dozens of albums during a career that stretched across a quarter-century. Although he always delivered the goods on stage, never again would he play with such feeling and fire in a series of performances that would mean so much. With a talent the equal, not less than contemporaries like Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton, Rory Gallagher was a true rock ‘n’ roll treasure. (Buddha Records, released September 7, 1998)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ music zine

Also on That Devil Music: Rory Gallagher - BBC Sessions CD review

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Archive Review: Rory Gallagher’s BBC Sessions (1998)

He never played with one of John Mayall’s legendary bands, nor did he go through the revolving door that was the Yardbirds’ lead guitar slot. He’s a contemporary of folks like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck – the holy trinity of British blues guitarists – but has never enjoyed the kind of semi-legendary status conveyed upon those three artists. Much like Gary Moore, another fine axeman, guitarist Rory Gallagher has attracted a cult following; unlike Moore, who is still alive and well, Gallagher’s death seemed to doom the blues guitarist to rock ‘n’ roll obscurity.

Thanks to the folks at the brand new Buddha Records, however, Gallagher’s fate may not be quite so bad. An ambitious reissue and rediscovery program by the reformed label is placing Gallagher’s musical legacy back on the street, where it belongs. The label reissued Gallagher’s self-titled first solo album and Deuce, his second effort – both on CD for the first time domestically – about a month or so ago. Buddha seems to be buying up Gallagher’s work from other labels, as well, suggesting a champion somewhere in the corporate ranks, and rumor has it that we’ll be seeing reissues of Irish Tour ‘74 and the underrated Photo Finish on compact disc sometime soon.

Rory Gallagher’s BBC Sessions

Perhaps Buddha’s greatest coup, however, is the recently released BBC Sessions, a two-disc collection of live performances and radio broadcasts that serves as an excellent place for the uninitiated to become familiar with Gallagher’s talents. Following hot on the heels of BBC collections from Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and preceding an upcoming release from the Who, Gallagher is among heady company, as well he should be. British union rules required BBC radio to broadcast a certain amount of live music each day, which led to a number of different programs that featured live performances from local venues around London, as well as in-studio appearances from various popular performers. The BBC has hundreds of hours of this stuff, covering almost every British artist of note and more than a few American talents, as well. Realizing the treasure trove of recordings in their hands, the BBC has begun to cash in on their archives, much to the delight of music lovers everywhere.

The Irish-born Gallagher grew up listening to these BBC broadcasts, and made his first appearance on those airwaves in 1968. Gallagher’s first breakthrough came with Taste, a blues-oriented power trio much like Cream, and his work with that band caught the ears of European audiences. As a solo artist, Gallagher toured relentlessly, both across Europe and the United States. It was his BBC appearances, however, which helped support this touring, Gallagher’s scorching six string work reaching out across the airwaves and making converts out of listeners across the globe. Gallagher did a lot of work on the BBC – his brother’s liner notes to BBC Sessions says that they had to work their way through 10 hours of tapes to compile this set – and if the material here is representative, he never disappointed.

Rory Gallagher In Concert

The BBC Sessions set is divided into two parts. The first disc is a collection of performances that were broadcast on a program called In Concert and were caught live in clubs like the Hippodrome, the Paris Theatre, and the Hammersmith Odeon. Most of these ten cuts are taken from 1977-79, a period that many consider to be Gallagher’s golden age. A lone cut from 1973, the traditional blues number “What In the World,” serves mostly as a foreshadowing of Gallagher’s still maturing talents. There are many great performances caught here, including the rollicking “Country Mile” and the fluid “Calling Card,” one of Gallagher’s signature tunes. “Got My Mojo Working” is an electric boogie while Gallagher’s original “Used To Be” showcases some red-hot playing beneath the artist’s growling vocals.

The second disc here is comprised of live studio broadcasts and, with the producers casting a wider net, features performances that range in age from 1971 to 1986, with an emphasis on the mid-‘70s era Gallagher. If the first disc shows Gallagher’s energy and skill in a live setting, the material performed in the studio on disc two showcases the deliberate and complex side of Gallagher’s talents. Again mixing scattered originals with inspired covers and custom arrangements of traditional blues numbers, these studio performances provide a more complete look at Gallagher’s evolution as a guitarist. A couple of more familiar tunes dominate the side – the haunting live staple “Daughter of the Everglades” and “Seventh Son of 7th Son,” which sounds as close to authentic Delta blues as any Irishman is every going to get, but there’s plenty of solid performances to choose from.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

A mesmerizing guitarist and charismatic performer, Gallagher was capable of both great subtlety and outrageous bluster in his playing. A hard-working performer who toured to the point of exhaustion, Gallagher often cranked out studio albums – especially in his later years – that balanced mediocrity with brilliance, hiding a truly magical performance or two among the musical chaff. His better tunes usually made it into his live set, and it’s indeed his live albums, of which he made several, upon which his legacy is built.

Gallagher deserves more respect than he’s received. With twenty-five years under his belt, he literally died from too much living. He left behind a lot of great music, however, and thanks to Buddha we’ll get to hear some of it again. Gallagher had a talent every bit as great as Clapton, Page, or Stevie Ray and, as such, is quite worthy of rediscovering. (Buddha Records, released 1999)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ music zine

Also on That Devil Music.com: Rory Gallagher - Irish Tour CD review

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