The guitarist Alex Lifeson called essential to rock and roll: “He was awesome”
Rock and roll will never run short of guitar heroes in every generation. No matter how often someone dives into their signature Eric Clapton licks or tries to be the next Eddie Van Halen, there’s usually someone out there who knows how to twist those three chords in just the right way to make them sound fresh all over again. Although Alex Lifeson was the kind of guitarist who could develop his own language on guitar, he thought that Rory Gallagher was one of the foundational pieces for his sound.
Every aspect of 1970s rock can be traced back to the blues. Clapton had just Blind Faith and disbanded Derek and the Dominoes, so that left the road open for everyone from Jimmy Page to Joe Perry to try their hand at twisting the blues into different shapes, whether that was Page making outlandish licks or Perry putting some swing behind every note he played.
Compared to everyone else, Gallagher was more interested in doing what it said on the tin for bluesy rock and roll. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in terms of raw ferocity and taste, Gallagher was miles ahead of anything anyone had done, usually earning fans amongst musicians more than casual fans.
While his music isn’t always the most radio-friendly, he took far greater chances behind the scenes than many people dared. From the way he flirted with his tone to even sprinkling in bits and pieces of jazz into his style, there was a certain magic that happened every time that he strapped on his guitar, especially when he went for a solo and left almost every other guitarist in the dust.
For an impressionable player like Lifeson, hearing that ferocity at work was what made him love guitar. If you listen to how he tears through his solo on ‘Working Man’, it’s practically a one-to-one comparison of what Gallagher could do live, but perhaps with a bit more reckless abandon left over from Lifeson’s old Zeppelin records.
Even though Gallagher was a living legend when he opened for Rush, Lifeson considered it an honour to share a bill with him, telling Guitarist, “He was awesome. We opened for him in 1974, so it was great to do those shows with him in the ’80s. I learned a lot from him. All those pick-harmonic things I do-I got those from him. I also loved his use of syncopated delays. I think he was an essential player for that period, and he was just a terrific person. He influenced a lot of guys.”
And despite moving far away from the blues rock that he started with, it’s not that hard to find Gallagher’s influence in the way that Lifeson approaches his craft. Since he helped introduce the world to the sound of different delay settings, Gallagher practically wrote the rulebook that Lifeson was drawing from when he started messing around with effects on albums like Permanent Waves and Hemispheres.
Despite being one of the guitarists known for pushing music forward every chance he got, Lifeson didn’t hide any of his influences whenever he played. He was more than happy to talk about his love for Gallagher, but somewhere along the way, he managed to sprinkle in pieces of brilliance in between his own tunes.
