'They Don't Make Them Like You Anymore': Remembering the taste of Rory Gallagher across the years

Thirty years ago, many people in Cork learned the first news of Rory Gallagher’s death from the front page of the Evening Echo of Thursday, June 15, 1995.

On the right-hand side of the front page is a black-bordered headline reading “RIP Rory Gallagher”.

The story, by Liam Heylin, begins “Internationally acclaimed rock guitarist Rory Gallagher, who died yesterday, will be buried in Cork city on Monday.

“The funeral Mass will take place at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Dennehy’s Cross, it was confirmed today.”

He was born on March 2, 1948, and was just 47-years-old when he died.

Some 34 years earlier, a very young Rory had featured on the front page of the Evening Echo. 

On April 7, 1961, we carried on page five an advertisement for ‘The Evening Echo Search for a Television Star’, a talent competition offering such prizes as a Velo-Solex autocycle, a GEC transistor radio, a Pasap automatic knitting machine with a free course of instructions in its use, and a Relaxator relaxing chair.

Front page

Later that month, on Saturday, April 22, 1961, the front page of the Evening Echo featured a photograph of a 13-year-old schoolboy, “Rory Gallagher, MacCurtain Street, Cork, one of the winners at the TV Talent Competition at the City Hall, Cork”.

Rory would make the pages of The Echo countless times over the years. On February 24, 1965, we reported on a performance his showband gave in a prestigious London venue, when he was still only a schoolboy.

“The Fontana became the first showband to open with a vocal number in the Gresham Ballroom on Monday, February 15. Although a Monday, this ballroom (which is among England’s largest and most beautiful) had a capacity crowd for the Fontana.”

Taste

In 1966, Rory would form the blues and rock band Taste (originally “The Taste”). In August of the following year, the band returned to Ireland for a few weeks and, much to the excitement of Leesiders, played a concert at City Hall.

“Cork is in for a big treat this Saturday when The Taste are at last coming home,” an Echo report from August 21, 1967 states.

Ten years later, on Monday, June 27, 1977, Rory topped the front page in a montage of four photographs from the Macroom Mountain Dew festival, where he had played before a crowd of 8,500 people, not a million miles from his mother Monica de Roiste’s homeplace of Cúil Aodha.

Bob Dylan

Rory was laid to rest at St Oliver’s Cemetery on the afternoon of Monday, June 19, 1995, after requiem Mass at the Church of the Holy Spirit at Dennehy’s Cross. Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton had sent messages of sorrow, as had Bon Jovi and blues titan John Mayall. Rumours flew that Van Morrison might attend the funeral, or Muddy Waters, or BB King.

Reporting on the funeral, Liam Heylin said in the Evening Echo that: “As well as family, friends and many fans, others at the funeral included The Edge, Adam Clayton, Sting, Gary Moore, Ronnie Drew, and younger exponents of rock from bands like Power of Dreams, Ruby Horse, and Belsonic Sound.”

Ronnie Drew shouldered the coffin, alongside Rory’s brother Donal.

Liam Heylin added a beautiful note to his funeral report: “The last sounds that Rory Gallagher heard in this life were the blues, played to him in his dying days in hospital by friend and harmonica player Mark Fetham”.