Album – Live! In Europe, 1972
See also – Deuce 50th Anniversary box set, Radio
Bremen version.
He wanted his next album to be a live album and it made the executives
at Polydor somewhat twitchy – a live album wasn’t quite the stuff of hit
material. But then again, Rory Gallagher wasn’t exactly bidding pop idol
material about to get the right haircut, the right clothes, drape himself in
supermodels and mime on Top Of The Pops. He recorded performances of his European
tour of February and March 1972, releasing them as Live! In Europe on 14 May that
year.
It didn’t get him on Top Of The Pops, and then there’s the
tale of Rory’s less than positive response to the exec who presented him with
an edited version (not edited by Rory!)
of ‘Going To My Hometown,’ declaring it to be a hit single. But Live! In Europe
was his biggest charting album of all three of his solo albums at that point
and it is still spoken of in hallowed tones by a host of highly respected successful
musicians who regard it as a seminal influence.
Outside of ‘Going To My Hometown’, ‘I Could’ve Had Religion’
is one of the legendary songs off the album. Bob Dylan had planned to include
it on one of his albums in the early 1990s and requested a copy of Live! In
Europe, which he was sent with a copy of the then most recent album Fresh Evidence.
As it was, Dylan never used the song. When asked why when he caught up with
Rory at the 1994 Montreux Festival, Dylan replied that he thought it was an old
traditional song, not realising that Rory had written it himself.
Rory had found the verses that he expanded into ‘I Could’ve
Had Religion’ in a poetry book, and to that end, apparently regarded it as a
traditional number. He thought Dylan should have recorded it anyway, but Dylan didn’t
want to take the song away from Rory. Being a massive Dylan fan, Rory probably
would have been delighted if it had been used by the American legend.
It’s easy to see why Dylan took the song as part of the
traditional cannon. It has all the hallmarks of an old blues song: a man done
wrong by a woman on the road to some personal hell, who originally was aiming
for a life in the church. Interestingly, in the hey day of the country blues,
the church regarded the music as being from hell itself. There were many
bluesmen caught up in the juxtaposition, with Eddie ‘Son’ House perhaps being a
famous case. He was a preacher at one point but fell back into the blues. His
singing style was thought to have been influenced by his time as a preacher.
It's also astounding that the song was put together by a 23-year-old.
Rory had a very strong faith himself and was a practicing Catholic. It’s mere
supposition, but perhaps the themes of blues allowed him to explore another side of
life from a safe vantage point. Unlike many of his peers, Rory hadn’t fallen
prey to the sexual mores and drugs that beset the music industry of the late
1960s and early 1970s. He had probably witnessed enough of that chaos to be
able to channel it into a classic blues song of his own.
As good as it was, ‘I Could’ve Had Religion’ doesn’t seem to
have remained in Rory’s live repertoire beyond the early 1970s. But decades
later, in the 1990s, it made a return to Rory’s set and the passing of time
only seems to have added to its potency. The guitar sound became even more wretched
and angry, with Mark Feltham’s otherworldly harmonica giving it an added dimension.
At the 1994 Montreux Festival – that same one where he met Dylan again – Rory also
adds to the lyrics something that could only have been gleaned from lived experience.
This later version comes across as one that is truly spoken from the heart.
Rory did have the odd penchant at times to cook up new lyrics seemingly on the
spot as he played live. This is no exception and perhaps for him, an incredibly
shy and reserved person offstage, it was a way in which he could safely express
what was on his mind.
I Could've Had Religion, Montreux 1994
