Edged in Blue

Rory Gallagher's life and music are traced through iconic guitar artistry, private struggles, and Irish rock history.

Rory Gallagher was the original Irish guitar hero, whose artistry with a battered '61 Stratocaster became the stuff of legend. 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 umpteen million records and became a charismatic icon of Irish music, inspiring musicians such as Brian May of Queen, The Edge of U2, Slash of Guns N' Roses and Johnny Marr of The Smiths to strap on a guitar and make history in their turn.

But away from the stage, Rory was an intensely private man whose heart was a closed book to the outside world. His closest confidante was his brother, Dónal, who accompanied Rory on his rise from their childhood Everly Brothers stage performances, the Irish showband scene across the north and south of the Irish border through to the deafening heart of the 70s rock scene in London - and far beyond. From playing bomb-shattered Belfast at the height of the Troubles to touring across America with everyone from Blind Faith to KISS, Dónal was at Rory's side to witness his greatest triumphs and, after all too brief a span of years, his decline into illness and a tragically early death.

Offering a definitive account of his life and music, Edged in Blue is not only the tour de force biography that Rory's fans have hungered for, but also an extraordinary eyewitness chronicle of rock's golden era, peopled by a dazzling cast of characters from Van Morrison to Janis Joplin, from Eric Clapton to Jerry Lee Lewis and countless other giants of modern music. No less remarkable are the sketches of life on the streets of post-war Cork, where ships bore away a lost generation of Irishmen to new lives on the other side of the world, monks ruled classrooms with a bitter rod of iron and police cars vanished beneath the waters of the river Lee when drunks mistook them for taxis.