The year was 1995, and I had it going ON – bar chords were sounding clean (ish), I could play most Nirvana riffs to a recognisable standard and had even made a fair bodge of the solo to Oasis' “Live Forever”.. honestly it felt like the sky was the limit.
And then a little article a Guitar For The Practicing Musician caught my eye.. a chap called Rory Gallagher had died. Still, it wasn't a name that I recognised. I thought nothing of it and went back to practicing selections from “Definitely Maybe” and dreaming of owning a 335..
And THEN, I noticed BBC2 running a repeat of “The Old Grey Whistle Test” featuring Rory. And my jaw hit the floor.
Seriously, this guy was absolutely on fire – howling bends, effortless legato, the whole fretboard at his mercy – but I think what impressed me most was the scat singing, the way he could vocalise a phrase and double it flawlessly on the guitar at the same time.. how did you learn that?? Rory made his guitar seem like another limb, something that wasn't a foreign object that he picked up but something that was a part of his body and he could use as naturally as his voice. And then he went to the open C tuned Telecaster and pulled off the same trick with a slide and then there were the phenomenal acoustic chops on display with his haunting rendition of “Out On The Western Plains”... that was when I realised what it was to be a truly great guitarist, not just a hack playing tabs. And I've been working on that ever since.
So, a quick potted history – now one thing I found slightly disconcerting, Rory was 47 when he died.. As of writing, I'm going to be 47 in about five minutes time. Still, Freddie King was gone by age 42 so I guess we both beat the curve.
Rory Gallagher was born in 1948 in
Ballyshannon, but in 1949 the family moved to Derry and then Cork,
and with their parents being musical both Rory and younger brother
Donal were encouraged to pick up an instrument. Aged 9, Rory received
his first guitar and as with many players of his generation, it was
the rock & roll of musicians like Elvis who proved to be the
gateway drug into the blues. By 12 he was performing live and bought
his next guitar with the prize from a local talent contest. Aged 15,
he bought the iconic 1961 sunburst Stratocaster that would be forever
associated with him for £100 cash.
Meanwhile, his appetite for
the blues was growing – as with peers Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton &
Jeff Beck, it began with skiffle acts like Lonnie Donegan, before
moving into players like Buddy Holly & Eddie Cochrane, before
landing on Chicago blues icon Muddy Waters. Along the way he picked
up tricks from acoustic bluesmen such as Big Bill Broonzy and
Leadbelly – whose “Out On The Western Plains” he covered on the
Old Grey Whistle Test show.
Rory's undeniable talent saw him
blow through a variety of different cover and showbands, touring
Ireland and Spain amongst others, before in 1966 deciding to strike
out on his own and form his own trio, Taste – possibly influenced
by Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix as both Cream and the Jimi Hendrix
Experience were formed around the same time. Taste would in fact go
and support Cream and one of Clapton's subsequent ventures, Blind
Faith, and met with some success, releasing two albums and playing
the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival – yes, THAT Isle Of Wight which
also happened to be Jimi's last gig. Taste would split after that
gig, Rory choosing to go solo and hiring bass player Gerry McAvoy and
drummer Wilgar Campbell, and would stay on that path until his
eventual demise in 1995 from liver failure. Tragically, this had come
about from an overuse of paracetamol that he'd been prescribed as a
painkiller for severe abdominal pain rather than any self-destructive
rock & roll excess, and it's hard not to feel that something like
that could and should have easily been avoided.
One
interesting side story is that Rory in fact turned down joining the
Rolling Stones after Mick Taylor left – feeling that the
satisfaction he got from he got from writing and recording his own
music was worth far more to him than the immense commercial success
he would have had as a Stone. Something to keep in mind.
Right, biography done, let's turn our attention to some licks – as you would expect, Rory's lead work was primarily pentatonic based, but as we'll see he made deft use of the Dorian and Aeolian (aka natural minor scale) modes too, and it's interesting to note the influence that traditional Irish folk music had on some of his phrasing.
This first example is taken from
a live version of “Messin' With The Kid”, a straight 12 bar in E,
and features a signature Rory take on the E minor pentatonic and our
Magic Three Notes in particular! Of particular note here is his use
of the 6th (C#, in this case played on the 14th
fret of the B string), and the sextuplet rhythms he uses to employ
this, illustrating some Celtic influences at play in a straight up
blues solo.
In this second excerpt, Rory really has pedal to metal and you can see him also making use of the 2nd (F#) with more absolutely burning sextuplets before resolving to the b3 (G) with some wide and aggressive vibrato to really sell the whole phrase.
Moving on to one of his bigger hits, “Moonchild” (in the key of A minor), Rory milks a 15th fret bend on the B string before moving laterally down the B string – he was never a player to stay stuck in one position and I think this may have been his exquisite (mostly open A tuned) slide playing rubbing off on his regular playing. Notice the repeated 16th note motifs and the unusual five note grouping, and again, WIDE vibrato to really make the lick complete.
This final example comes from “A Million Miles Away” which is Rory showing the world just what he could do with a slow minor blues (in this case, C minor). There are an absolute cornucopia of licks to learn on this one, and it's interesting to contrast this with Jimmy Page's solo on “Since I've Been Loving You” as both songs come from a similar place, harmonically. This lick illustrates Rory ripping through a couple of octaves on C minor pentatonic, with a brief appearance from the 2nd (D) and finishing with a G minor arpeggio. Students of mine may well recognise the diagonal pentatonic techniques at work here – I told you the big boys use these ideas too!
There's so much more to enjoy about Rory's playing - we haven't touched on his brilliance with a slide, or his devastating fingerstyle playing, so I would urge the reader to go and investigate as much as you can to understand exactly why none other than Jimi Hendrix called him the greatest rock guitarist in the world - RIP Rory.
Tune in next month as God himself makes another appearance – yep, we're back to see what Eric Clapton got up to after leaving Cream...
