Rory Gallagher
1948–1995
Irish blues guitarist who found the music in shortwave static in Cork, then made Belfast his base — a live player’s player who never chased a hit.
was born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, in 1948 and raised in Cork, where he hunted American Forces Network and Radio Luxembourg for the blues that Irish state radio would not play. He formed Taste in Cork, then based himself in Belfast from 1967: the city sat outside the Federation of Irish Musicians' reach, had a hard blues and jazz scene around record-shop owner Dougie Knight and pianist Jim Daly, and gave Taste a residency at the Maritime that Them had made famous. He went solo in 1971 and built his reputation almost entirely on stage — Irish Tour '74, recorded through the worst of the Troubles, is the record most often held up as the evidence. He died in London in 1995, at 47.