It is usually very hard to get tremendously excited about the release of yet another concert video or tour film. Therefore, it makes it all the more wonderful to discover an artefact that pre-dates the MTV ubiquity of slickly produced popumentaries and promo video compliations.
The seminal performance film, Rory Gallagher: Irish Tour 1974 received a theatrical re-release at the Ballygowan Irish Film Festival at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn on Tuesday May 1. Directed by music feature filmmaker Tony Palmer, whose credits also include the Cream Farewell Concert and rockumentaties on The Who and Jimi Hendrix, Irish Tour 1974 is a well loved classic made all the more riveting for its astonishingly unpretentious and unobtrusive fly-on-the-wall filming technique, which in the words of Rory’s bassist Gerry McAvoy, “created an atmosphere where we didn’t know that they were there.”
On its original release, Irish Tour 1974 was premiered at the Cork Film Festival and then shown exclusively at a Soho Cinema. Following initial fears that the original print had been destroyed, it has now been recovered and remastered by BMG Music Programming, with an additional full eighty-minute commentary from Gerry McAvoy and Rory’s brother and manager Donagh Gallagher.
“Rory was one of the easiest people I ever, ever had to deal with,” enthused director Palmer in Kilburn. “He wanted everybody to be happy. You have to remember that this film was partly recorded in Ireland and partly recorded in Northern Ireland.
“1974 was a very, very difficult period. The camera crew were detained at Belfast Airport, locked in a room and interrogated very closely about what they were filming and why, So, you have to remember that there was a very tense atmosphere. But every time Rory appeared on the stage, North or South, east or west, there was a true sense of peace and love, not in any hippy sense of the word, but a true and genuine sense of community and happiness.”
That sense of community and happiness is captured in several stunning concert scenes featuring Gallagher classics such as ‘Walk On Hot Coals’ and ‘Going To My Home Town’. The crowd scenes capture the sense of occasion and palpable expectation found in every single town, as hundreds of delirious fans chant ‘Rory! Rory!’ in those raucous few minutes before the band come onstage.
At the end of the screening, a platinum disc for 600,000 sales was presented to Gerry McAvoy and Donal Gallagher made the following touching remarks. “I can never resist any opportunity to get people to hear Rory’s music and allow them to understand just how great he was. He was such a great loss and he was such a genuine talent and person. He is irreplaceable.
“Going forward from here, there are lots of things planned including a few spectaculars in the coming years for Rory, which will really make sure that his name travels down through the years to come.”