Rory Gallagher’s brother reveals how pills became a huge issue for legendary guitarist

Fans worldwide were devastated in 1995 when Rory died at the young age of just 47.

Dónal Gallagher, who was Rory’s only sibling and also his manager, reveals in a new documentary to be screened tomorrow night how the blues legend’s life spiralled out of control in his latter days.

“Rory was sort of working day and night, the stress and all that, plus touring all the time,” explains Dónal in RTÉ’s Rory Gallagher: Calling Card.

“We were flying, particularly on the American tours, you might have three flights a day, connecting, connecting, and we had all developed a fear of flying in particular, but Rory’s was very acute.

“He had then started to take tablets to kind of keep him calm. The guy had never used drugs, he didn’t smoke.

“He was the straightest guy you could think of Then prescribed medication became the problem.”

As well as the prescription tablets, Rory also took somewhat to alcohol.

“There was a depression there, there was a melancholy, and when you are writing songs in the blues idiom, everything is negative so he was compounding his own mental situation,” Dónal says.

He says Rory completed an album but wasn’t fit enough to promote it, and some gigs were touch-and-go with his arms sometimes turning to jelly for no reason.

“Just the other day I found his ’92 diary and I was going through lists of what the poor man was taking and how many prescriptions he had of it. Where did he get all this medication from?” Dónal asks.

“Some of it you’d only get if you were in a psychiatric ward and under supervision.”

Despite interventions by Dónal and Rory’s bass player Gerry MacAvoy, the London-based star was admitted to hospital in the English capital.

“A couple of days later I was told to ‘come meet the transplant team’,” Dónal recalls.

“I had thought diabetes, then you have to make the decision because he’s in a coma.

“They moved him to the King’s Hospital, where he had a [liver] transplant.

“He wasn’t going to give up the fight, then sadly with all the looking after he got a bug [MRSA] in the hospital, and he never got out of there.”

Other musicians featured in the documentary include Brian May, Johnny Marr, Bob Geldof, Imelda May, Moya Brennan, Dave Fanning and Paul Charles.

Rory was the original Irish guitar hero, whose artistry with a battered ’61 Stratocaster was feted.

Bob Dylan and Muddy Waters admired him, the Rolling Stones tried to hire him — and his fans worshipped him.

Clad in faded denim and a checked shirt, he sold 30 million records and became a charismatic icon of Irish music.

Dónal accompanied Rory on his rise from their childhood Everly Brothers stage performances and the showband scene across the north and south of the border through to the heart of the ’70s rock scene in London – and far beyond.

Queen guitarist Brian May claims the supergroup owes their sound to Rory.

“You hear that distortion dig in…and he sings and that’s what I wanted. I said ‘that’s what I want’,” says May.

“I asked him ‘how do you get the guitar to sing like that?’”

“Rory pointed to a box with an amp and a treble bass.

“That was his voice, his sound. I was completely inspired. So it was Rory who gave me my sound, and that’s the sound I still have,” May beams.

• Rory Gallagher: Calling Card is on RTÉ One tomorrow at 6.30pm.