Going to My Hometown

Rory Gallagher was among the greatest guitar players in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. A bluesman of global renown – not least among his fellow musicians – he recorded and played with seminal figures like Jerry Lee Lewis, Muddy Waters, Albert Collins, Scottish skiffle hero Lonnie Donegan, and was once rated as the greatest of them all by Jimi Hendrix.

Rory was also a powerful songwriter and lyricist. He didn’t do singles, but his legendary live shows and albums turned his songs into instantly recognisable classics. Chief among his calling cards was ‘Going To My Hometown’, a guttural working man’s cry for home that taps brilliantly into both the blues and the Irish emigrant experience. It was released on the classic Live in Europe (1972), Rory’s first Top 10 album. ‘Going To My Hometown’ strikes a universal chord. There are moments when all of us want, more than anything – as another great songwriter (and member of the Irish diaspora) put it – to “Get back to where you once belonged.”

The Story Behind The Song

Most people at some point will have heard the phrase “all politics is local.” It’s said to have been first uttered by the powerful Irish-American politician Tip O’Neill (1912-1994). You could make a similar claim for art, especially music. In Ireland, it sometimes feels as if nearly every county, town and village has at least one song paying homage to it. Most of these are variants on traditional folk songs, but their ubiquity proves how important a sense of place is to Irish people.

Indeed you could make a virtual tour of Ireland by song, from ‘Dublin In The Rare Oul Times’ to ‘Galway Bay’ (there’s two famous songs with that title), ‘The Derry Air’, ‘The Boys of Wexford’, ‘Follow Me Up To Carlow’ and the Cork anthem ‘By The Banks of My Own Lovely Lee’, to mention just a tiny handful.

Often referred to as ‘the Southern capital’ of Ireland, Cork has also been honoured by modern songwriters of the calibre of John Spillane and Ger Wolfe. Most important of all, however, was Rory Gallagher (1948-1995), who's ‘Going to My Hometown’ – a working man’s insistent cry for home – became one of his most popular and enduring live songs.

Born in Ballyshannon in Co. Donegal in 1948, Rory moved to Cork as a kid, with his mother Monica and his younger brother, Dónal. Having received a present of his first guitar at the age of nine, he began to gravitate towards the skiffle of Lonnie Donegan and – listening to AFN radio – the blues of Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy and Muddy Waters. He was just 15 years of age when he joined The Fontana Showband, where he learned his trade as a live performer, playing – as all showbands did, more or less – the hits of the day.

Rory felt hobbled by the musical rigidity of the showband world. Deciding to follow his muse, in 1966 he formed the rock trio Taste, who rapidly gained a substantial following around Europe, with their blistering approach to blues rock, centred around Rory’s fiery guitar playing. They released two successful albums on the Polydor label, Taste (1969) and On The Boards (1970). But Rory had become increasingly unhappy with his management set-up and the terms of the recording deals that Taste were locked into. He decided to launch a solo career.

Rory Gallagher, on stage at the Macroom Festival, 1978

Rory Gallagher became legendary for the extraordinary intensity of his live shows, and for his indefatigable work ethic. He recorded two albums, titled Rory Gallagher and Deuce respectively, in 1971 alone. And then in 1972, he released the blistering Live in Europe, which gave him his first UK Top 10 hit and was a gold album. Unusually for a live album, it contained new songs, except for two live versions of previously released tracks.

By many estimates, the most powerful song on what is often hailed as Rory’s greatest album is his rewrite of the traditional ‘Going To My Hometown’. The opening lines describe a scene that will be familiar to young Irish men who arrived at working age in the early 1960s.

“Mama’s in the kitchen, baking up a pie,” Rory hollers, as he plucks the mandolin. “Daddy's in the backyard (pause) – ‘Get a job, son/ You know you ought to try’.”

And so he does, going to work for Henry Ford, the American car manufacturer, who had a plant in Cork – first setting up there in 1917, and staying right through to the mid-1980s. Ironically, Henry Ford himself was drawn to locate the factory in Cork, as it was from Cork that the Ford family had emigrated to the USA in the 1830s.

Rory Gallagher, photographed in Cork for Hot Press, by Colm Henry

‘Going To My Hometown' is a variation on the theme of ‘Poor Boy Blues’ – or ‘Poor Boy Long Way From Home’ – which is regarded as one of the oldest in the blues canon. “I made a mistake/ I moved too far,” Rory sings, and it is this complaint that every working musician will relate to. Even successful artists, at the time, spent endless months on the road, in Rory’s case touring across continents, in order to make a living playing the music he loved. But it took its toll.

“I’m getting lonesome/ I’m getting blue,” Rory confesses, “I need someone/ to talk to.” There is a little more elaboration before he erupts into the chorus: “Yes, I’m going to my hometown/ I don’t care, even if I have to walk.”

It was an emotion keenly felt by Rory himself. In ‘Philby’ – perhaps the finest song from his later career – he identified with the notorious British double agent, Kim Philby in terms that also express the loneliness of the long-distance rock star. “Ain’t it strange that I feel like Philby,” he sings, “There’s a stranger in my soul/ Lost in transit in a lonesome city/ Can’t come in from the cold.”

A feeling of alienation and insecurity far too often goes with the job, as travelling musicians and their entourages move from one bleak hotel room to another. And so, driving home for Christmas can seem like a wondrous thing. It certainly meant a lot to Rory, who made a habit of touring Ireland over the Christmas and New Year period during the 1970s, always including a gig in Belfast, even at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland – and in the process uniting people from both sides of the political and sectarian divide in a way that almost nothing else could or did at the time.

It was more practical for Rory to live in London, which was the centre of the music industry in Europe, but he loved Cork dearly. Some of the most endearing footage of Rory, the man, shows him walking through the streets of the city and taking the time to engage with local fans. These were Rory’s people, and he by far preferred meeting them, and talking to them, to the so called glitz and glamour of the music industry. Rory Gallagher lived for his music, but he was also ‘one of us’ – the ultimate people’s champion. Nowhere is that more felt than through the heady combination of pain, release and ultimately exhilaration captured on ‘Going To My Hometown’.

He wasn’t one to be pushed around either, reacting angrily to his record company wanting to release a shortened version of ‘Going To My Hometown’, which they claimed would be a surefire hit. Rory refused to release singles. He wasn’t even remotely interested in sacrificing the integrity of his music on the altar of commerciality.

As a musician, he attracted an extraordinary level of reverence from his peer guitar players, garnering the ultimate tribute from Jimi Hendrix who, when asked how it felt to be the greatest rock guitarist in the world, said: “I don’t know. Ask Rory Gallagher himself!”. He attracted similar respect from virtuoso American guitarist Joe Bonamassa, Johnny Marr (of The Smiths), Brian May of Queen and legions of others who were hooked by the honesty, vulnerability and sheer power of his music, and the wizardry of his guitar-playing. Indeed, Adam Clayton and The Edge of U2 refer to Rory’s Live In Europe album as the one that made them want to play guitar and be in a band – despite the fact that they were mere schoolboys when it was released! A poll of his peers, conducted by Rolling Stone magazine, saw him voted one of the greatest ever guitarists in rock music.

World renowned musicians queued up to play with him. He shared stages and recording studios with Muddy Waters, Jerry Lee Lewis, Lonnie Donegan, Albert Collins, Albert Lee, Cream bassist Jack Bruce, The Fureys, and The Dubliners, among others. Music industry lore has it that he was invited to join the Rolling Stones to replace Mick Taylor, but Rory decided against it. He was nobody’s sideman.

Nor will his memory fade. His beloved Cork named both the Rory Gallagher Music Library and Rory Gallagher Place in his honour and erected a bronze sculpture inscribed with lyrics from his songs. Similar tributes have been paid in Dublin, London, Paris and elsewhere, and he has also been honoured by the Irish state, in the form of a postage stamp bearing his likeness.

There are three (yes three) live versions of the song on the 40th Anniversary boxed set of the majestic Irish Tour ‘74, which was released in 2014. We recommend you start with the version recorded in Cork City Hall. There are also covers by Bernie Marsden and The Juke Joints. But the truth, as so many have found out, is that no one does Rory Gallagher like Rory Gallagher.

Check out also live video footage of Rory and his band playing a signature tune, the traditional ‘Bullfrog Blues’, in Paris before an audience of frenzied and adoring fans, who turn the event into an uplifting spiritual celebration. As the song progresses, the stage becomes increasingly full of fans, all interacting with Rory – who is clearly fired up and in the zone. For many other artists, such a stage invasion would have been a reason to stop the show. But not for Rory Gallagher, who positively revels in the contact with the fans. Truly, the stage was his second home. And ‘Going To My Hometown’ remains its finest expression.

Rory Gallagher at Bottom Line, NY. Photo by Chuck Pulin.