In Perspective
Rory Gallagher and the Ghost of World Music Past
Rory Gallagher
Wheels Within Wheels
Buddha/BMG
Rock'n'roll, like all good things, comes eventually to those who wait. Thus Elvis was made flesh (and more and more of it as time and alienating adoration gradually encroached into his mahogany and jumpsuit domain) and dwelt amongst us like some sort of divinely gyrating antidote to the cold-war rug-burnt climate of paranoia and "contentment".
This same "rhythmic messianic template" seems the rule rather than the exception. You need only contemplate the frayed sleeves of your record collection (those pulsating, over/under-produced grails of homage to resurrection through erection) to see this proudly adolescent-in-theme process of overthrowing kings and slaves alike at work; from Elvis all the way up to the Eminem, via the Beatles, Pistols and Nirvana and all their snarling satellite offspring, you can follow the trail.
And if there ever was a land which demanded its very own musical ejaculating prince, surely catholic-infested Ireland of the 1970's - the land into which I was born - stands head, shoulders and bent knee above the rest. And it just so happens that that man's name was Rory Gallagher.
Like Elvis, Gallagher burst onto the music scene in Ireland, along with his legendary power-trio Taste, clutching onto the consoling power of the blues with a purity and passion so evidently lacking from the dominant cabaret show-bands of the era (in which Gallagher had begun his career). Armed only with his trademark-in-the-making abused Fender Stratocaster and an endlessly lumpy wardrobe stuffed with lumberjack shirts, Gallagher released a slew of blues-based rock albums throughout the early 70's, culminating in the enduring Irish Tour of '74, which showcased not only his unpretentious yet nevertheless scorching guitar style but also his self-sacrificing showmanship (considering the bashful truth of his soul). It is no wonder that the state-spectacle-issued youngsters in the front rows can't seem to slap their knees hard enough so as to satisfy their gape-jawed joy at what is occurring on stage before them.
A colleague of mine met Gallagher backstage at the famed London Marquee club in 1968, and still vividly recalls the painful, even debilitating, shyness of the man (which makes his brash stage persona all the more sacrificial). She remembers him sitting alone backstage, his long hair shrouding his catholic-tinted blush as she vainly attempted to strike up a conversation with the man she had long fantasized would one-day be her lover. She also told me of how she was reduced to tears a full quarter of a century later when she witnessed Gallagher's final gig, which also took place in London. Gallagher, clearly effected by his years of excessive drinking (mixed with his increasing dependence on prescription medicine), was having trouble living up to his hard-won, hard-touring reputation. Thus the more bloodthirsty in the club that night began to berate the man who single-handedly brought rock to the masses of the stimulation-starved youth of repressed Ireland, eventually resorting to hurling abuse and objects at the performer. It was not a pretty night and Gallagher never played again. Just a few months later, at just 47 years old, he was dead, resulting from complications following a liver transplant.
And now, eight years later, comes Wheel within Wheels, a recording of acoustic blues, folk and traditional which remained unreleased in Gallagher's lifetime and which reflects his long-held ambition to make just such an album. First of all, this is an album which introduces a new term into the cultish lexicon of Gallagher cover-bands and ageing groupies - eclecticism. Eclectic has never been a word which I would previously have associated with the music of Rory Gallagher. Indeed his terrain has always seemed fairly well plotted, forever venturing further into the now starving constellation of the white-boy blues (White Stripes aside). But as Wheels Within Wheels begins to turn, one is soon confronted by a range of sounds, the likes of which have rarely emanated from any recording baring the name of the artist otherwise referred to as "the Kid". Witness, for example, the sweet and sour McCartney-like melody of the title track, tinged with worthy lamentation and regret, or the optimistic Mediterranean flavour so joyously on display in "Flight to Paradise" to see this variety of styles in play. But the curiosity of Gallagher does not stop there.
To me the very thought of a fine blues player, with a stirringly Celtic twang to his tuning, collaborating with a traditional harpist is exactly the sort of musical idea for which I would happily hijack and fly planeloads of boy bands into record company buildings, just so as to bring attention to the real musicians in the world. "Bratacha Dubha" (Gaelic for Black Flags), is a beautifully understated duet with harpist, "Maire Ni Chathasaigh", that mixes Irish moods with traditional English folk structure in a way that speaks not only of a land and a people but also of a view of them by one who has continued to imbue the finest of their traits and tales.
That is not to say that all is well in Gallagher town. For whilst this album truly does possess a high-octane propensity to grow on you just as turkey-like layers seem to conglomerate on Michael Douglas' scrawny neck, there are a number of tracks to which I give the Rosie O' Donnell-ass equivalent of a wide berth. "Barley" and "Grape Rag", which admirably features the legendary Dubliners and the lead singer, Ronny Drew, whose voice sounds like nothing less than a rusty spade being scraped across gravel, is perhaps the best example of one such track. It does, in its favour, serve as a grand reminder of the importance of having a goodtime as a musician and these smoke and strong-whisky boys are certainly doing just that. But it sounds altogether too cosy, even twee, I am horrified to say, for a blues man and rebel-song singing bunch of rabble-rousers to be indulging in, for my tastes at least. Similarly, better versions of "As the Crow Flies", exist throughout Gallagher's live repertoire. Balancing that "Going to My Home Town" is a more than a bit funky and strut-worthy, it must be said.
But the whole crux of this album is to feature Rory Gallagher playing folk, playing traditional songs and playing them well. From oiled-up bottle-neck renditions of "Amazing Grace" to a catgut-gumbo-jam called "Deep Elm Blues", so thick with deep-south evocation you have to practically pick the dragonflies from your matted hair, this album delivers in spades, buckets and well-crafted reams.
And that is really all there is to mention about Wheels Within Wheels. Just a bunch of exiled musicians getting it on with Rory in a hotbed of folk and traditional songs that not only refuse to sleep easy, but perhaps even seek to speak to the future based on the sweet, blazing pathos of the past. That is the lasting legacy of folk and traditional and blues. They give us signposts in a time of directionless sounds seduced by streaming images designed to dazzle the eye and deafen the mind.
It is in folk, traditional and blues music which you can find the common echo of us all. For if you listen wide and far, from Ireland to Mongolia, from Bulgaria to America, common musical strands and whispers seem to float quite fluidly between the strings and out of ancient storyteller throats. The common heritage of the world is there for all to hear, without the date-rape-like intrusion or sex-farm visuals of MTV.
And guess what? The same undoubtedly goes for Iraq. For tyrants may blessedly fall and ravaged populations may once again begin to sing, but one who watches must also wonder honestly of the men (Donald Rumsfeld and co.) who now lead the parade to celebrate the tyrant's demise, yet who once were so instrumental in sustaining his tyranny. Somehow the damning images and sounds which might link us, with possibly incendiary results, to the shocking truth of the past (in this case Rumsfeld's official dealings with Saddam in the wake of his worst massacres in the 80?s) have been excluded from our sensory palate. So how has this effected the present and what will such selective exclusion of certain sources of information mean for the future of the bomb-dropping democracies? Will bad men reign with a cosmetic grin? Will Britney's cute but artless ass continue to spin and win?
Perhaps it is in the globally revealing blueprints of blues and folk and traditional music that we may once again recognise the sound of our own common human heritage, which, try as they might, no power-brokering spinner of the broken-record of truth may pull asunder.
Rory Gallagher's album, Wheels within Wheels, cuts a swathe through rich musical vistas and terrains with such a singularly joyous vision - it is truly music by and for the real world. Without perhaps realising (or wanting to), Gallagher amounted, in my fuck-humble-pie opinion, to nothing less than a revolutionary musical figure. Just imagine meticulous craftsmanship, uncompromising musical tastes and, most heretical of all, the lumpiest lumberjack shirt collection that Ireland, and perhaps the world, has ever seen or heard.
-Paul Meade
In Perspective takes an in-depth look at a release of historical significance -- reissues, box sets, retrospectives, "best ofs," or new releases by historically significant artists. Each installment features a different writer offering his or her opinions and insights into a key release and its creative forces.
