Rory could have done with a coach to discipline him,” says Donal. “He would work himself into a frazzle and what should have been an enjoyable experience wasn’t.” He said, ‘It was probably the worst gig I’ve ever seen and the best gig I’ve ever seen’,” recalls Donal. We did a couple of shows in the north of France and only a handful of people turned up,” says McAvoy. “But that was OK. Our attitude was if we put on a great show then next time twice as many people will turn up. And that’s generally what happened wherever we played.” We did shake hands,” says de’Ath, who would play with Gallagher until 1976. “I don’t think he did that with Gerry.” 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.

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. By the time Gallagher recorded his third album, Blueprint, in December 1972, several things had changed. Fired up by de’Ath’s exuberant drumming style, the guitarist had expanded his power trio format to a quartet with the addition of Belfast-born keyboard player Lou Martin. 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.” Taste played their final show at Belfast’s Queens University on October 24, 1970. It was a hard decision for the guitarist –“I don’t like to think about it too much, because it upsets me,” Gallagher later said of Taste’s split – though, typically, that didn’t stop him making it. 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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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. 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.

One thing does worry him. As we speed into the heart of the city, Rory hunches deeper into his seat. He turns slowly to his driver, crinkling his eyes: “That’s a strange town, you know. When did I ever bust six strings in a night before?” Live! in Europe was released at the end of the British "blues boom" that began in the 1960s. Sparked by bands such as the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds and Cream, fans and musicians were fascinated by authentic Chicago blues artists such as Muddy Waters. Gallagher had an extensive knowledge of this kind of music, although he tended to play down arguments about what was "pure" blues. In an interview at the time he said:He’d run himself into the ground, and by the time the album was finished he would be verging on a nervous breakdown,” says Donal “And then he would have to go out and do PR for it before touring to promote. He was 24/7.” Released in November 1971, just six months after the debut, Deuce incorporated Celtic influences amongst the tight blues workouts, notably on I’m Not Awake Yet. Elsewhere, Don’t Know Where I’m Going was an homage to one of Gallagher’s more unlikely heroes, Bob Dylan. Gigging before, during and after the recording of Deuce, the band had little time to celebrate its entry into the charts at a respectable No.39. Amazingly we were cleared,” recalls McAvoy, who remains convinced that the drugs had been planted. “But Rory didn’t know about it.” To the immense relief of the rhythm section, they made it to America unmolested by the law. As well as introducing Gallagher to a new market, their US dates – where they played with Little Feat and Frank Zappa– opened the band’s eyes to the pulchritude that was on offer. But while the band were delighted to find that their crowds were almost 50 per cent female, Gallagher refused to take advantage of the situation. 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. I was pissed off because I had made a mistake on Laundromat,” recalls the bassist. “But to Rory it didn’t matter as long as it had the feel. To Rory, feel was everything.”

We were one of the only bands to play Belfast,” says Lou Martin proudly. “ Thin Lizzy wouldn’t do it because of the aggravation. But Rory insisted on it.” 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!Unwilling to kill the momentum, Gallagher and his band began work on their second album, Deuce, as soon as they returned from America. Sessions took place at Tangerine Studios in Dalston, a run-down part of East London. Thanks to its cavernous echo, the studio was usually favoured by reggae artists, though there was one unexpected sonic downside: it stood next to a bingo hall, which meant the band had to work out-of-hours to avoid the cries of “Two fat ladies!” seeping through the walls. 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 even witnessed the Sex Pistols’ infamous final show at San Francisco’s Winterland in January 1978.Gallagher’s lifestyle eventually caught up with him. On 14 June, 1995, the guitarist died from complications following a liver transplant made necessary by his reliance on alcohol and pills. He was buried in Ballincollig, near Cork City. Thousands of people lined the streets of Cork to bid him farewell with an ovation. In fact if the subject didn’t involve music, books or film, Gallagher rarely connected with his band on any deep level. “I remember once we were having a chat in my room and he asked me about spiritual matters,” says Rod. “He asked me what the Godhead means and the whole thing about reincarnation, Buddhism etc, because he knew that I’m really into that stuff. We were both drunk and I remember him getting quite agitated and storming out shouting, ‘That’s blasphemy!’” After sharing a festival bill in Berlin with Rory, Stuart Copeland (then with Curved Air) was so overwhelmed with the live impact of Rory’s trio, that he left that band and formed a trio which he called The Police. For some time Rory had wanted to capture the adrenaline and excitement of his live performances. Whilst touring extensively in Europe he decided to record his shows. The results were little short of phenomenal and Live! in Europe earned Rory his first gold disc. 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.” 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.”