This album captures one of Ireland’s most loved musicians in his favorite setting, live on stage. Perfectly capturing the live connection between the audience and performer, Irish Tour is not only one of Rory Gallagher’s best albums but is surely one of the best live albums ever released.
Mott has always rated this album very highly. The star of the album has to be lead vocalist Dave Byron. In the world of heavy rock, nobody had a voice with such range. Just listen to him pleading on ‘Come away Melinda’ or riding the magic carpet ride of ‘Dreammare.’
Although all of the songs on this collection are recorded live, they are not all from the same concert. In fact, they are not even all from the same year or line-up. The songs kick off with nine from the Raindances tour with Sinclair and Collins on board. All musicians in this incarnation of the band excel.
Although every track is a guitar instrumental, there is more variety on a Peter Banks album than there are colours in a box of Smarties. They range from the sledgehammer licks of ‘Fathat’ to the delicate acoustic work on the delightful ‘Fade to Blue,’ or the tragic beauty of a song like ‘As Night Falls.’
A landmark album in the world of rock. At all times the musicianship and songwriting are faultless, with Elton putting every ounce of emotion into Bernie Taupin’s lyrics.
If you like guitar driven power trio rock, low down, dirty, sleazy rawk and roll, with snarled, vicious vocals, guitar licks that kick you straight in the head, guitar solos that make you realize why guitars are called axes, a bass guitarist that drives every song into your brain, every bass player should be called Big George, a drummer who has never heard the word subtle, you have a sense of humour and like a good time, then this is the album for you.
The short way of describing this album is, “Arthur Brown sings Halloween hits.” But there is so much more to this glorious romp, so much fun. There is also a fine selection of cover songs—nothing obvious, but delving back into the ’50s and ’60s.
