This from the always brilliant Don’s Tunes (Don Draper ya get me?!)
Rory Gallagher: Even though I grew up in Ireland, where there’s a lot of folk music and traditional music is very close at hand, it didn’t initially appeal to me, even though I can see traces of it creeping in over the years in my songwriting and some chord patterns and some kinds of solos I do. But I wasn’t really turned on until I heard American music via Lonnie Donegan. You know, I heard him doing Woody Guthrie songs, Lead Belly songs. And of course, I heard Elvis Presley, Eddie Cochrane, the early rockers, Chuck Berry. So it was a mixture of folk, blues, and rock from America. I was only six, seven, eight, nine, at that age, and then I just followed it through and learned about all these artists. And I’m still discovering undiscovered people and learning. But it took me about a good ten or fifteen years to find out who was who in the whole spectrum of things – who were the originators or the prime movers, and who were the followers and copyists.
Well, I mean, everyone is stating the obvious Robert Johnson connection. He seems to be the virtuoso of that era, of that point, but Son House would be very important inasmuch as he gave lessons, I believe, to Robert Johnson. He probably wrote “Walkin’ Blues,” for instance. And Muddy Waters also claims that Son House was important at the time.
It depends. You see, it’s very hard to dictate to some youngster. They might listen to Albert King and immediately see themselves in that lineage. I think all young players, rock and blues players, should dig deeper, back beyond the obvious big blues stars like B.B. King and Buddy Guy, who are all great. I’m very interested also in the country blues and the “electrified country blues,” as I would call it – Big Joe Williams and things like that. I also like all the slide players from Earl Hooker through Muddy Waters, obviously. Robert Nighthawk is a favorite of mine, and I eventually discovered Tampa Red kind of late on, and he’s very smooth-playing. Like that lick that Muddy Waters is known for – we all thought that was an original Muddy Waters thing, but he got it from Tampa Red. So this folk music tradition of passing on and picking up and stealing goes on like mad, you know.
But in my own style, being a European very influenced by American music and so on, I try to find a way that if I’m doing a blues number, I can do it very traditional if I want to. I can also add my own element or my own twists to it and have it be a rock song with a blues thing in it. I try to be adventurous and progressive in some material, in others I try to be as downhome and ethnic as possible.
Interview by Jas Obrecht
any excuse . . . . . . Rory and the boys at Montreux Shadow Play 1979
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