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Wesley Callihan

Wesley Callihan, author and presenter of the popular Old Western Culture video series, recently gave a lecture at the New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. The subject of the lecture was, in part, the connections between Dashiell Hammett’s character the Continental Op, and such illustrious luminaries as Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, and Blues and Rock guitarist, Rory Gallagher. The exact title of the lecture is: The Connections Between the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the Silver Valley of North Idaho, Dashiell Hammett (Author of the Maltese Falcon and the Thin Man Detective Novels), Clint Eastwood’s Spaghetti Westerns, and Rock Guitarist Rory Gallagher. Rory’s inclusion in the mix was rather timely considering the recent release of the 10-inch EP, “Continental Op,” and fortuitous, since Callihan had never even heard of the Irish legend until just a few short years ago.

Unfortunately I never even heard about Rory Gallagher until about five years ago or so. Growing up in Idaho I wouldn’t have had much of a chance to see him anyway. But I’ve been a life-long fan of the old blues greats – Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Son House, etc. So when I finally rectified my erroneous ways and started listening to Rory, I did so with a vengeance, and have all his music (still missing the San Francisco recordings but not for long). I’ve got every biography about him, I think, and have studied his life and music pretty thoroughly, and my son, a 20-year old blues guitarist with a little 3-piece band that plays in local coffee houses, loves Rory too, and plays a couple of his pieces in his sets. — Wesley Callihan

The lecture at New Saint Andrews College was videotaped by Roman Roads Media and uploaded to Vimeo. It is interspersed with video clips of Rory playing relevant songs such as “Continental Op” and “Public Enemy,” but the stuff about Rory is towards the end of the lecture. You can watch the full lecture below or skip to the main Rory bit at around the 40:40 mark. I’ve also included the text of the Rory related part of the lecture courtesy of Mr. Callihan.

1972 Melody Maker top guitarists

In 1972, Melody Maker, the world’s oldest music magazine and one of the leading critical journals of rock in the late 60’s through the early 80’s until it shifted its focus to pop, named a 25 year old guitarist from Cork, Ireland, its International Top Musician of the Year, ahead of such guitarists as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. This same guitarist was asked in the early 70’s to audition for both The Rolling Stones and Deep Purple, bands at the height of their careers, but he turned them both down. He just wasn’t that interested. Guitarists like Slash of Guns n’ Roses, Brian May of Queen, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Johnny Marr of the The Smiths, Gary Moore and Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, Muddy Waters, Albert King, and countless others have praised this Irish guitarist for the influence he had on them, for the integrity he showed in a business where most musicians compromise in some way or another the gifts they have, for his love of the old American blues and Irish folk music and his ability to translate it all into blues rock, and for his brilliant guitar work.

1970 Isle of Wight

Rory Gallagher was born and baptized in Donegal and raised in Cork, showed very early talent on the guitar, began playing professionally in Irish showbands, and then in his late teens started his own three-piece band called Taste around 1966. Their popularity grew in Ireland and then on the continent, to the extent that Taste toured with and opened for Cream, including their farewell concert at the Albert Hall in 1968. Taste toured with and opened for some of the great power groups of the late 60s and was a spectacular success at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival, playing in front of 150,000 people, on a bill that included Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Who, Chicago, Procol Harum, Jethro Tull, and over a dozen more. By the early 70s, Taste had broken up and Rory Gallagher formed his own trio, which, with minor personnel changes on drums, lasted over 20 years, producing 12 studio albums, 6 live albums and a number of other recordings in compilations.

He traveled with and sometimes opened for, an other times was opened by, some of the greatest groups of the 70s and 80s, and personally knew most any name you can think of from those decades. He never became a superstar like many of the guitarists he influenced and was easily the equal of, because, well, perhaps because he was Irish. He is often called the last of the independents. He wanted to write and play music the way he wanted to write and play music, he was extremely picky about the studio recordings he made, he was, like many musicians, at his best not in those studio recordings but on stage because he loved pleasing people with his music and fed off the energy of the crowd, but in a very down-to-earth way. He almost always wore jeans and plaid shirts and work boots, or something like it. He had a home in Cork where his mother lived and would visit her several times a year and always on Christmas holidays even though he was touring the world all year and had a home in London too. He never had a serious relationship with a woman, never married, never messed around, didn’t do drugs, for most of his life didn’t drink heavily (though being Irish, he loved his beer) always kept his humility and would stop to autograph a fan’s arm on the street and chat with strangers in music stores. He was rather lonely later as he moved into his forties but had a few good friends – music was his life. Unfortunately, his life was cut short in 1995 when a botched liver transplant resulted in his death in a London hospital at the age of 47. He is buried outside of Cork.

Not having much of a social life outside touring and recording he spent a lot of time in his apartment in London writing songs, but when he wasn’t doing that, or when he had free time on tour or during recording sessions, he loved to read. There are pictures of his apartment in London that show shelves covered with books on music, mostly the history of the blues, and the rest seem to run largely to detective novels. That was his favorite recreational reading, and his favorite detective novels were Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op stories. Perhaps Rory Gallagher was drawn to another character who was essentially alone, or who had to maintain a certain emotional distance from most people in order to do what he had to do the way he had to do it. Or perhaps he just plain liked the stories. He loved detective stories so much that several songs on his many albums take the life of the detective or spy or even the crook being chased by the spy as their theme. You’ve heard small portions of several of them earlier in this talk. One is called Secret Agent, from the 1976 album Calling Card. It’s in the voice of a man whose jealous girlfriend has a detective following him, but the narrator is giving him the slip:

My baby`s got a secret agent, / To watch me like a hawk, / He knows each time I leave my house,
He knows each time I move around. / I`ll make that man / Turn in his badge in the morning, / I`ll slip around him, I`m too quick to catch, / No jealous woman is gonna keep tabs on me.

Another song, Public Enemy number 1, from the 1979 album Top Priority, is in the voice of a gangster talking to his girl, the driver of his getaway car:

There aint’ no doubt about it, She looks like a gangster’s moll / She’s the driver of the getaway car / of Public enemy number 1. / She’s fact and she’s fiction / All wrapped up into one / Sound, lights and vision / Street car collisions and all / We got the G-men on a mission / They can’t catch up at all / you got to keep your eyes peeled / Stay alert at the wheel tonight / Keep the key in the ignition / We won’t get no remission this time / Won’t you have that motor twitchin’ / When I come running by.

The title of still another, Philby, also from Top Priority, comes from a real-life spy named Kim Philby who served as a double agent for Britain in the mid 20th century but defected to the Soviet Union, his sympathies having always been with the communists. Here Gallagher compares his life on the road with that of a spy in a foreign country.

Now ain’t it strange that I feel like Philby / There’s a stranger in my soul / I’m lost in transit in a lonesome city / I can’t come in from the cold. / I’m deep in action on a secret mission / Contact’s broken down / Time drags by, I’m above suspicion / There’s a voice on the telephone. / Well it sure is dark in this clockwork city / Contact’s never gonna show / I’ve got a code which can’t be broken / My eyes never seem to close.

And of course, one from the 1988 album Defender – you heard this at the beginning of this talk – is even titled Continental Op. The lyrics are from the perspective of the Op, who of course works in San Francisco:

There’s a body in the bay / The cops are taking it away / They said this case was closed / It only shows you that never know / So who they gonna get when the troubles got to stop / Here’s my card I’m the Continental Op. / I saw you leavin’ town / I’m gonna have to track you down / You slipped through the web / And you might have dodged the Feds / But who they gonna get when you’ve outfoxed the cops / Here’s my number I’m the Continental Op. / Call the agency, we never close / First consultation is free / Check my reputation, check my pose / But first check my fee / There’s a menace on the streets / Offering infants sweets / Don’t give this man a ride / Lock your car from the inside /
He’s suspect No. 1 / But I guess his race is run / He left a set of prints / He’s not as smart as he thinks /
‘Cause who they gonna get / When the trouble’s gotta stop / Here’s my card / I’m the Continental Op.

Let’s give Rory one more listen

I want to thank Roman Roads Media for handling the audio/visuals today and for filming this. Thank you all for your time today; it’s been a pleasure to be here!

(end of lecture)

Thanks once again to Wesley Callihan at Schola Tutorials for allowing me to post his recent lecture at New Saint Andrews College.

Dave Thompson

Born in Devon, England, Dave Thompson got his start writing and publishing the TV Times fanzine during the punk explosion at the end of the 1970s. A regular contributor to the weekly music paper Melody Maker throughout the 1980s, he has also written for the publications Record Collector, Rolling Stone, Mojo, Q, Spin, Alternative Press and many others. He is currently a columnist in the record collecting magazine Goldmine, and a contributor to the All Music Guide. His latest foray into the world of rock ‘n roll is “If You Like Led Zeppelin” an new addition to the “If You Like” series of books from the Hal Leonard publishing empire. “It is the unique story of how Led Zeppelin came together not as players, but as influences and ideas. It unearths the music that the musicians themselves were listening to, to open up an entire new world of experience and excitement for both casual and committed fans. It then travels beyond Led Zeppelin, to the bands and artists who in turn took their own lead from the Zep.” One of those artists discussed in the book is Rory Gallagher. Dave has kindly allowed me to post an excerpt from the book that deals with the legendary Irish axeman.

If You Like Led Zeppelin

… But there was a generation rising up behind and around them, too, for whom Zeppelin’s sonic and subtle influences were an open invitation to take things to a whole new level.
   Blues guitarist Rory Gallagher moved to London from his native Ireland in late 1967 with Taste a band constructed firmly in the three-piece shape of the Experience and Cream. But it was Fleetwood Mac and, in particular, their guitarist Peter Green who gave Taste the confidence to follow their hearts, Gallagher later reflected — a debt he repaid shortly before his death in 1995, when he contributed a couple of tracks to the Rattlesnake Guitar Green tribute album.

“You cannot overestimate Fleetwood Mac’s importance at that time,” producer Mike Vernon agreed. “They brought the blues back into focus and rejuvenated the whole scene.” Vernon signed the infant Mac to his own Blue Horizon label, and admits it was the band’s immediate success that allowed the label to flourish as it did, becoming the primary staging ground for virtually every homegrown blues band of the era.

…And so back to Rory Gallagher, the man Jimi Hendrix once called the best guitarist in the world. Two studio albums attest to Taste’s brilliance, both released in the wake of Led Zeppelin I and both learning its lessons; Taste and On the Boards, two slabs of archetypal blues rock shot through with some astonishing detours. “some of the tracks,” affirmed Gallagher’s nephew and archivist, Daniel Gallagher, “could almost be very early metal, with that very deep, almost guttural bass. They tried to handle everything — tracks are country, the amazing jazz stuff they did on On the Boards — and that took a lot of attention away from that dark, brooding sound. It was brilliant. And if Rory had allowed ‘What’s Going On’ to be released as a single after [they played] the Isle of Wight Festival, when they were really flying, a lot could have changed.”

Rory Gallagher at the Isle of Wight ©rorygallagher.com

Instead, he broke up the band, forming a new trio for a solo debut album, Rory Gallagher, that was as strong as that third Taste LP should have been (had they only hung on to make it). Deuce (1971) was defiantly low-fi, no frills, no production — just a hard-hitting roar Danial sums up as his uncle simply asking, “‘How loud can I get this amp and how well can I play through it?’ and saying, ‘Guys, keep up’ to the band.”

The masterful Live in Europe followed. Unique in that many of its contents never appeared on a studio disc, Live in Europe was the first and, in some ways, the best of Gallagher’s many solo concert sets. “It’s such a good album and he captures the songs so well. Anybody else would have rerecorded the songs in the studio environment to show how great they are, and tried to have hits with them. But Rory realized, no, ‘this is exactly how they should sound, I nailed them,’ and he never went back to them.”

Live in Europe promo

Gallagher’s only Top 10 album in the U.K., Live in Europe has too many highlights to list. But we must spare a thought for “I Could Have Had Religion,” a song Gallagher based around four anonymously written lines he’d found in a book of Irish poetry. He wrote the tune and further words, but still co-credited the song to the ubiquitous “Trad Arr.” So when Bob Dylan rang him up one day, wanting to cover the song himself and hoping for further light on its origins, the American folksinger was staggered to discover just how un-trad it really was. His own next album was intended to be an all-folk covers affair, spotlighting his own rearrangement abilities. “I can’t do that to this song,” the Zim sadly told Gallagher. “Because I can’t take it away from you.”

Gallagher was at his best. 1973’s Blueprint is arguably the repository for some of his best-known numbers: “Walk on Hot coals” (immortalized on a classic Old Grey Whistle Test performance), “Daughter of the Everglades, “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son”; Tattoo followed that same year, and then came Irish Tour ’74, the subject of both a double live album and a phenomenal concert movie of the same name.

The stars were all aligned. Gallagher was at the peak of his power and his popularity. Readers of the weekly Melody Maker had just elected him the number one guitarist in the world, and Irish Tour (both incarnations) lives up to all expectations.

In terms of rawness, the vinyl was the way to go; it captured the sound of Gallagher and band as they sounded every night, tight and turbulent, mixed with the magic of a tiny club PA and loud enough to make you sweat in your living room. The movie, shot by Tony Palmer, is a more considered affair; studio fixes and overdubs cleaned things up for what would become one of the best-loved rock flicks of the seventies.

But even here, the polish could not disguise the purity. This is still the blues at their most electrifyingly effortless, and the fact that the two releases shared just six (of nineteen) tracks ensured fans had to grab them both.

Leadbelly

The Rolling Stones certainly did. Gallagher was the first name on their list when they were seeking a replacement for Mick Taylor, long before such better-remembered names as Jeff Beck, Wayne Perkins, and the ultimately successful candidate, Ronnie Wood. Four days were spent in Rotterdam rehearsing, before Gallagher hightailed to Japan for his own next tour. They asked him to join the band as well, but he demurred. He liked being his own boss too much. And as for him gifting them with the riff to “Start Me Up” … well, that’s the tradition in the Gallagher household, and it wouldn’t be the first time Mick and Keef played magpies with other people’s music. It took them six years to release it, of course, but it took Rory that long to record “Out on the Western Plain” — a simply devastating Leadbelly rebuild that had been around (in lyrically different form) since the Taste days, and which he now recorded for 1975’s Against the Grain.

The last truly essential Gallagher album is 1976’s Calling Card. Indeed, his nephew cites “this and Irish Tour [is] where I’d start people if they didn’t know Rory. Maybe it’s Roger Glover’s production, but it’s his most mainstream album … you’ve got the funkiness of ‘Do You Read Me,’ the great rocking tracks like ‘Moonchild,’ his voice is really good on ‘Calling Card,’ the beautiful melody of ‘Etched in Blue’…”

Gallagher would continue recording for the rest of his life, touring too and amassing a back catalog which, when remastered and reissued in 2011-2012, comprised a solid seventeen separate releases. And he was as vital on his last album, 1990’s Fresh Evidence, as he was on his first, as Daniel explained:

“The lyrics on Fresh Evidence are that kind of ‘Don’t give a …’; it’s all about having taken so many hits, dealt with so much stuff, the walking wounded … ‘Everyone’s had their chance, but I’m still here making another record.’ … ‘Kid Gloves,’ with that stuff about being asked to take a dive … It’s a very independent record, a very fierce one.”

It was also his last. Gallagher died on June 14, 1995, from complications while awaiting a liver transplant. He was forty-six.

• Dave Thompson’s book “If You Like Led Zeppelin” can be purchased online through Amazon.com
• Check out Dave Thompson’s website at: It’s Not Only Rock’n’Roll