The Isle of Wight Festival, 50 years on: the Rory Gallagher revelation

The Isle of Wight Festival, created in 1968, reached its peak in 1970, when nearly 600,000 spectators gathered on this piece of land in the south of the United Kingdom. Fifty years later, Europe 1 looks back on the various concerts given for what was, one year after Woodstock, one of the last great hippie meetings. This Thursday, Rory Gallagher, who truly appeared on stage at the Isle of Wight festival with his group Taste, before embarking on a brilliant solo career.

Three hairy people from Cork

Seeing three Irish musicians on stage at the Isle of Wight festival is itself a small event in itself, as the island's exporting artists are not yet legion. There is indeed the Northern Irishman Van Morrison, but for the rest it is rather postcard folklore that holds the limelight with the stainless Dubliners. But in 1970, there are these three hairy people from Cork, in the south-east of the Republic of Ireland.

The trio, named Taste, has already recorded two albums and provided prestigious opening acts like Cream, the formation of Eric Clapton. But it is the talent and the frenetic energy of its guitarist Rory Gallagher that is obvious. It is Friday August 28, 1970, over a beautiful sunny afternoon, and Taste performs "Sinner Boy" on the stage of the Isle of Wight Festival.

A service as a will

For the record, the group was only to be filmed on two tracks for the official film of the festival. The film was to be kept for the stars, but the trio's hair-raising performance was ultimately boxed in its entirety. So much the better, because it will be Taste's testament. No one knew about it except Rory Gallagher, but the group only had a few more weeks to live.

The prodigy guitarist had had enough of the pretensions of his acolytes and his manager. Everyone wanted an equal share of the pie as Gallagher made up all the pieces and put on the show on his own.

In 1971, the start of a solo career for Gallagher

After a last concert on New Years Day 1971 in Belfast, Taste broke up and Gallagher began an extraordinary solo career. He is already nicknamed the Irish Jimi Hendrix. His playing is at the same time virtuoso, fluid, offensive, with two major influences: American blues and Celtic folklore. His first albums are well made. We also discover an inspired composer and a singer with a raspy voice fed on whiskey.

But it is on stage that the power and charisma of Rory Gallagher are best expressed. In 1972, he burned an ecstatic Live In Europe , an essential record for those who love the genre. The public is in heaven. It will be definitively two years later with a mammoth double album, one of the best concert recordings in history: Irish Tour 1974 .

A political testimony in a bloody Ireland

With its metallic cover and red writing, it is also a strong political testimony, in an Ireland bloodied by what is modestly called at the time "The Troubles", the troubles, but which is in reality a civil war. The IRA, the Irish Republican Army, is stepping up attacks and bombings in retaliation for the humiliating treatment inflicted by Great Britain on the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. The dead number in the hundreds. We remember Bloody Sunday , sung by U2.

British soldiers shoot at Republican protesters, killing 14 people. The climate is explosive, foul-smelling. It must be said that the island is still very far from having become the giant startup that it is today. There are still ghettos, shanty towns and terrible poverty.

Of all this Gallagher does not care. He will courageously do his Irish Tour  with his musicians on both sides of the border. The reception of the public, of this youth taken hostage, is particularly fervent. It goes far beyond the simple framework of a rock concert. Here is one of Rory Gallagher's most striking compositions, "Tattoo'd Lady":

The Northern Irish will always be grateful to Rory Gallagher for having performed regularly in Belfast, Londonderry among others, during these years of lead. The artists of the time who braved a possible attack just to play their music were extremely rare.

Two million copies sold for Irish Tour

Irish Tour will sell over the years to two million copies. It will seal the reputation of the guitarist, an authentic, generous man, obsessed with his music and the best way to offer it to the public. When he's not in the studio, he's on tour, with the unbalanced life that comes with it. No drugs at home, but way too much alcohol, locked in pubs before and after concerts. "Too Much Alcohol" is even the title of one of his most famous blues borrowings.

Blues, country, jazz and the influence of American music

Rory Gallagher loves American music, blues, country, jazz, much more than English pop. With his age-old jeans and checkered shirts, he looks more like a Wild West cowboy than an Irish fisherman. On stage, he pays many tributes to his heroes, whether they are black bluesmen from Chicago or CountryMen from Bayou. The proof, with this moving "As The Crow Flies", by Tony Joe White.

Rory Gallagher dies at 47

Throughout his short life, Rory Gallagher will remain faithful to his roots, his values, his music. There wasn't much room next to his legendary Stratocaster guitar or his banjos and other mandolins, no woman, no child. Just the music, the records, more or less good, the tours, always formidable and, oddly for such a frequent traveler, a fear of the plane which becomes unhealthy. The treatments he is taking are incompatible with his excessive alcohol consumption. His liver is so damaged that he urgently needs a transplant. He died of a staphylococcus in 1995, at only 47 years old.

A street named after him in Ris-Orangis, in the Paris region.

The tributes will live up to his exceptional talent: statues in Ireland, Rory Gallagher music schools, a model guitar, a blues festival in his name in his home village of Ballyshannon, very close to the Northern Irish border. , and even more astonishing, a street with its name in Ris-Orangis, in the Paris region.

He leaves as a legacy dozens of albums in studio or in public, a discography still evolving besides since a triple unpublished live dating from 1977 was released in 2019. Another live is due out in the fall, proof that its flame still burns intensely.

Find all the other episodes of our series "The Isle of Wight Festival, 50 years later":

> Episode 1: the last notes of Morrison's Doors

> Episode 2: Mighty Baby, talent without glory

> Episode 3: the unexpected concert of Brazilian exiles