Hop en passant la dernière interwiew de Donal Gallagher, le frère, pour le site officiel :
All the latest news from Donal:
4/3/05 Interview by Dino McGartland
Just two days after Rory’s birthday I caught up with Donal Gallagher to ask for an update as to “what’s goin’ on” and what’s in the pipeline as regards future plans and releases. He was very forthcoming in his answers and as usual a gentleman in his manner.
Dino McGartland: Ten years on Donal, it’s quite staggering to think that these years have flown past us since Rory’s passing, from a personal point of view what have those ten years been like for you?
Donal Gallagher: Strange! Almost like a complete reinvention of my own life. Suddenly, from being a person travelling on the road for nearly thirty years, obviously that all ceased. Though I still travel quite a bit in relation to my work, the friendships and comradre particularly with the band of musicians that you would have on the road, that’s altered, although we’re still friends and we meet up at different things, you lose the ‘family’ thing but the absence of Rory is immense and needless to say the effect a bereavement has on any family is huge to all it’s members.
Though in a different way the vacuum that’s left by not having Rory around has been filled partly by a different presence of him, I suppose a need for me to keep a kind of spiritual contact, in particular when you’re dealing with somebody else’s art / legacy, I feel it’s only right to try to communicate in some one way or another to at least try and have the thoughts and feelings that he would have towards his own material. With Rory you could never set an agenda, nor could you ever set a meeting, so an awful lot of what had to be done was almost on a telepathic basis, so in a way it’s an extension of that relationship. These feelings were very much to the fore over the period of W.W.W. and these communications I intend to set down in writing at some point.
D.McG: Is it difficult dealing with the modern business of promoting Rory’s back catalogue and stuff like that?
D.G. As we speak, I’m quite encouraged by the Sony-BMG merger. Initially, I had a dread of these two large companies combining but as it starts to integrate I’m very encouraged by the team that’s been put together for catalogue, and the overall direction that this new company will now take. The new ethos for Sony-BMG will favour good artists and catalogue, where as before when it was BMG we were very much “second” to the Pop Idol department. It used to annoy me to see the budgets and the attention that was given to non descript pop acts, when they were in a sense stealing it from the bread and butter album artists so as to keep the video divisions going. So, I’m now delighted that it’s turning the corner and they’re putting more effort into not just the catalogue but also there are new young bands there that do good (new) music. It’s a company waking up and saying we should put more effort promoting good music. Its fine having albums released and issued but if it isn’t getting proper marketing and proper plugging, it becomes only for the die hard fans who know where to buy the material and the music doesn’t reach a broader audience.
D.McG:Have you noticed over the years that Rory’s music is now being picked up by a younger generation who are possibly downloading his music through the Internet.
D.G: Yes, Despite being spoon- fed umpteen digital channels that are effectively showing videos that virtually soft porn clips not music, I’m quite intrigued by the upcoming generation and encouraged to see that many of them know the difference between what’s good music and not. Though I’ve no angst against any of the ‘pop idol’ type acts, they effectively they get all the media’s attention and with formatting of music on radio, this has been taking the oxygen out of the air for real musicians but it is great to see that a lot of youngsters recognise the difference. Therefore, it’s great to have a medium used by kids to access whatever they want listen too or sample.
D.McG: So what way do you think is the best way to get Rory’s music promoted?
D.G. More media and airplay, for awhile it was if they were trying to ‘air – brush’ Rory out of music history but these are the areas to pick-up new listeners. With the new company internally I have to inform the new personnel and they are from various departments from “pluggers”, to the sales team, to people who deal with the television and marketing, so in turn they have a major role to play.
In a way, if Rory had properly released singles (in my view potentially there were a few on each album), his talent would be more globally recognised, right now we would be releasing a ‘Greatest Hits’ album but it wasn’t what Rory wanted. However, the lack of singles means that there are no media milestones and radio programmers to get their head around. However, I intend to have a go at putting ‘Big Guns’ out as a single, in an effort to focus radio on a cut for airplay.
D.McG: You’re constantly being asked about more and more releases be it DVD or CD and some fans expect there to be a mountain of material in the vaults.What do you say to those who just can’t get enough of Rory. Basically the Rockpalast DVD came out last year and no sooner was it out when people wanted to know when the next one was being released? People have been asking for example about the “Rory At Midnight”concert or the Isle Of Wight gig?
D.G: At the present time, we plan to release ‘Big Guns’, The Very Best Of Rory, this June, we have mixed it in 5.1 (surround-sound), from the original multi-tracks, it will have new versions of some of the songs and the artwork is immense with a 50 page booklet with a lot of unseen pictures of Rory. Currently, I am endeavouring to have the Rockpalast vol.2 released by June also. It had been the plan to have released the album in March but with the integration of the two companies Big Guns would have got lost, so that’s why we held back.
What people have to appreciate is that there are copyright issues which are sometimes very difficult. So lets say “Rory At Midnight”, now that is owned by the BBC and I’ve had talks with the BBC about it and I’ve had difficult talks with the BBC where they aren’t particularly interested in licensing to us. Also, the BBC are going through changes where they had a whole Hammersmith Odeon concert and they were about to sell it to some asset house finance company as part of a package of concerts!! So I had to get into some legal action to prevent that, so meantime I couldn’t come to an agreement on anything else with them because I’ve got legal action. Equally I had to have legal action over the Beat Club issues. So when you deal with lawyers and these corporate companies it isn’t very easy and it takes forever and it is extremely frustrating from our end and it’s more frustrating for the fans who can’t understand it. I get very upset when I see people burning copies, bootlegging or putting it on E-bay illegally. It’s very discouraging because the quality they would get is only minor and that has a knock on effect when you bring out the finished version.That’s why I try to discourage any of that trade, plus it’s theft of Rory’s copyrights.
D.McG Is the “shopping” site on the official rorygallagher.com site going to happen?
D.G. Yes, it is. I have found someone with experience to deal with it, having had commercial website dealings I knew how flaky some operations can be and I wouldn’t want Rory fans to suffer. Also, I just felt that up until now it wasn’t appropriate but I appreciate it does help to fly the flag.
D.McG:Cork and Ballyshannon are once again at the forefront of the tributes what your feelings on that?
D.G. I’d like also to thank everybody for their support, in particular those who stage the tribute events, I could go on all night but it’s a bit like the Oscars. Just to everyone for the strong, continued, sustained support, it’s very important to me and very encouraging and it does shine through at the record company, who are mesmerised at such a strong cult following. With the new influx into BMG of personnel from the Sony camp many who (including the chairman) are Rory fans, it would appear that they’re really getting behind Big Guns, which will be T.V advertised in the U.K. They’re really throwing their weight behind it, and I’m already doing interviews for Classic Rock, June issue. BBC radio 2 are already making their radio documentary, which will be transmitted on Saturday April 16 at 2130.p.m. I’m sure people will get this on the web. I know already they’ve interviewed Brian May, Jack Bruce, Ronnie Drew, Michael Crowley from Cork, and Gary Moore is narrating the show.
Que des bonnes nouvelles pour l'avenir !!
