If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to become one with the music, all you have to do is watch the transformation that happens on the face of guitar player Rory Gallagher as he leans his head back and soars on the notes while playing a set at the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival with his short-lived band Taste. This euphoria is captured on the newly released DVD, Taste: What’s Going On – Live At The Isle Of Wight 1970. An idol for many guitarists today, Gallagher, who passed away in 1995, was at the genesis of his playing, ripe for the picking, his musical spirit never purer; but the trio itself was at it’s desistance.
A trio formed in Ireland in 1966, by 1968 the rhythm section was changed and Gallagher had a drummer and bass player that compelled him to push his playing even higher. They opened for Cream and toured with Blind Faith and Gallagher’s reputation as a guitar player kept growing. “Rock & Roll in those days was this very exotic, slightly dangerous thing going on abroad,” U2’s Edge says in the documentary segment of the DVD. “Taste had basically done the impossible: come out of Ireland and gone all the way and played on the same stage at the Isle Of Wight with Jimi Hendrix and taken most of the world by storm.”
Taste played on Friday afternoon and was called back for an unprecedented three encores. After their set, Gallagher went off to watch Tony Joe White, who had Cozy Powell on drums. The band was over, they all knew it, so hanging out with each other following even this remarkable performance was not something any of them wanted to do. Later, when Hendrix was asked how it felt to be the best guitarist in the world, he threw the praise over to Gallagher: “I don’t know, why don’t you go and ask Rory Gallagher.”
Despite their show being hailed as one of the best of the festival, it inevitably didn’t save Taste as a band. They toured Europe but were done by year’s end. Gallagher went on to mine his guitar for new sounds, in constant explorations of what he could get the guitar to say and in the process became a legend. “I have a cousin who is a few years older and he bought me Rory Gallagher Live In Europe 1972,” Vivian Campbell told me during a 2013 interview. “I was ten at that time and that was the first album I had and because of the situation in Northern Ireland at the time, very, very few acts would come and play there and Rory Gallagher would play there every December or January, play at the Ulster Hall in Belfast. So that was the first live show that I saw and I saw him many times in Belfast over the following years. He was a big influence on me; great, great guitar player, great live performer.”
Taste: What’s Going On – Live At The Isle Of Wight 1970 grasps that moment in time when Gallagher was heading towards his prime alongside Richard McCracken and John Wilson, cementing a piece of musical history. Their Isle Of Wight set is the bulk of the DVD, with a short biography on Gallagher at the beginning with interview snippets from Edge, Larry Coryell, Brian May and Bob Geldof, who calls their performance “brilliant.” Setlist includes “What’s Going On,” “Sugar Mama,” “Morning Sun,” “Gambling Blues,” “Sinnerboy,” “Same Old Story,” “Catfish Blues” and some stellar Gallagher slide.
Bonus goodies include three songs from the Beat Club sessions in 1970 (with a luscious version of “It’s Happened Before”) and three interlocking videos. Taste: What’s Going On comes in several versions: DVD, Blu-Ray, vinyl, CD and digital formatting so there is something for everyone. But if this doesn’t make you want to go right out and buy everything Gallagher ever recorded, then watch it again and you’ll be convinced. Someone said that if you take out the rhythm section you can hear Gallagher’s jazz improvisations. Honestly, if you do that, and drop the vocals, it’s just a pure delectation of chords and notes. And you don’t want to miss that.
