Quote:
Originally Posted by heyman  "I was going to say Rory Gallagher -- possibly one of the best blues rockers ever "
Didnt he almost play for the stones?
Bad Penny.... what a great song and great playing.. |
Both times the Stones went shopping for guitar players at the end of the 60s and early 70s, Rory was mentioned.
It's interesting... I got onto him with the Tattoo album and saw him over five times (I think seven times -- but, like Rory, back then I
drank)...
But I've gone back and picked up some of his earlier albums and, I have to say that he is someone who
really grew up as a player in the public eye (to the extent he was in it at all, mind you.) His early work shows a lot of
promise... happily he pretty well fulfilled that, at least from a lot of folks' point of view.
I think his songwriting may have peaked in the early 70s (though he continued to write some good ones all the way through) but his playing really took off in the late 70s and 80s.
I kick myself -- hard and repeatedly -- for having completely missed Rory and
Roy Bucahnannan (Uh OH -- looks like we all missed a really unsung hero!) doing a double show at the old (tiny) Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, CA, in, I think the late 80s or early 90s... within a few years both guitarists would be
jammin' with Jimi... and I ****ing missed it. THAT one is hard to live with... [I guess I can aspire to catching them at the big jam session in the sky... I think I'll just watch. Thank goodness, I did see Rory a bunch of times. And saw Jimi, too, though he's pretty much a little better known... Also, really, really happy I saw
Robert Quine... with Richard Hell, of all people. But, damn Quine was
amazing... so free... so crazy... so great. He's got some great recorded work with avant-composer John Zorn that's pretty freakin' great -- and, of course, he also worked with a lot of normal acts as well. Seems like he did a stint with the aforementioned Lou Reed (RQ handled most of the leads
). ]
As long as we're talking outside --
David Torn has brought a really interesting approach to his take on the instrument.
I just saw
Bloomfield above -- of COURSE! How could I forget? As long as we're going back,
Jorma Kaukonen is a HELL of a player (though he's more a folkie these last few decades).
How about
Henry Kaiser and
Fred Frith? (Should have caught those guys when we were talking about their buddy and onetime bandmate, Richard Thompson.)