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Category Archives: Arts & Music


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Birth of Henry Vivien Pierpont Conyngham

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Henry Vivien Pierpont Conyngham, 8th Marquess Conyngham, Anglo-Irish nobleman who holds titles in the Peerages of Ireland and the United Kingdom, is born on May 25, 1951.

The eldest son of Frederick Conyngham, 7th Marquess Conyngham by his wife, Eileen Wren Newsom, he attends Harrow School before studying at Harvard University.

Styled Viscount Slane until 1974 and Earl of Mount Charles from 1974 until 2009, he succeeds his father in the marquessate and other titles in 2009. However, in the Republic of Ireland frequently, and erroneously, he remains referred to as Lord Mountcharles, his former courtesy title. He also inherits the U.K. peerage title Baron Minster, of Minster Abbey in the County of Kent, created in 1821 for his ancestor, the 1st marquess thereby giving the Marquesses Conyngham the automatic right to sit in the British House of Lords until 1999.

As Earl of Mount Charles, he unsuccessfully contests the Louth seat in 1992 for Fine Gael. In 1997 he stands for election to Seanad Éireann for Trinity College Dublin and runs again without success as a Fine Gael candidate for the European Parliament in 2004.

Lord and Lady Conyngham divide their time between Beauparc House and Slane Castle in County Meath. The latter is the family’s principal ancestral seat until it is badly damaged by fire in 1992. The castle has now been restored.

The Marquess Conyngham enjoys a high profile in Ireland as the author of a weekly column in the Daily Mirror. He has been dubbed the rock and roll aristocrat or the rock and roll peer owing to the very successful series of rock concerts he has hosted since 1981, held in the natural amphitheatre on the grounds of Slane Castle. These concerts have included performances by The Rolling Stones, Thin Lizzy, Queen, U2, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, Oasis, and Madonna. Lord Conyngham receives the Industry Award at the 2010 Meteor Awards. In his autobiography Public Space–Private Life: A Decade at Slane Castle, he describes his business career and the challenges of being an Anglo-Irish peer in modern Ireland, and how being Anglo-Irish has gradually become more accepted there.


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Birth of Irish Folk Singer Christy Moore

Christopher Andrew “Christy” Moore, Irish folk singer, songwriter, and guitarist, is born in Newbridge, County Kildare, on May 7, 1945.

After attending Newbridge College, Moore works as a bank employee and has a desire to express himself using traditional music. During a twelve-week bank strike in 1966, he goes to England, as do many striking officials, but he does not return when the strike is settled. Doing general labouring work, he frequents the folk clubs and the Irish music pubs where he meets Séamus Ennis, Margaret Barry, Luke Kelly, Martin Byrnes, and many other traditional musicians.

Moore’s first album, Paddy on the Road, a minor release of 500 copies, is recorded with Dominic Behan in 1969. In 1972, his first major release, Prosperous, brings him together with three musicians, Liam O’Flynn, Andy Irvine, and Dónal Lunny, who shortly thereafter form the Irish folk music band Planxty. For a short time, they called themselves “CLAD,” an acronym of their names, but soon decide on Planxty.

After leaving Planxty in 1975, Moore continues his solo career, reforming his old band on occasion. He also forms the band Moving Hearts with Lunny and five other musicians in 1980. In 1987, he appears on Gay Byrne‘s The Late Late Show performing with The Dubliners for their 25th anniversary. In 2000, he publishes his autobiography, One Voice.

Moore’s earlier years of heavy drinking, sleeping dysfunctional hours, continual traveling, and often eating takeout foods results in a decline in health and several operations. Moore’s battle with alcohol and subsequent heart operations takes their toll. At the end of the 1990s, Moore reduces his workload for medical reasons.

Moore releases his first new studio album in four years on April 17, 2009, entitled Listen, and promotes it through a series of live gigs. In December 2011, he releases the album, Folk Tale. His most recent album, Where I Come From, is released in November 2013 and features a new protest song called Arthur’s Day. The album peaks at No. 3 on the Irish album charts.

Moore is best known for his political and social commentary which reflects a left-wing, Irish republican perspective, despite the fact that his mother was a Fine Gael county councillor and parliamentary candidate in Kildare. He supports the republican H-Block protestors with the albums H-Block in 1978, the launch of which is raided by the police, and The Spirit of Freedom. He also records songs by hunger striker Bobby Sands, including Back Home in Derry. Moore ceases support of the military activities of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1987 as a result of the Enniskillen bombing.

Political songs Moore has performed throughout his career include Mick Hanly’s On the Blanket about the protests of republican prisoners, Viva la Quinta Brigada about Irish volunteers who fought against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and Minds Locked Shut about Bloody Sunday in Derry.

In 2007, Moore is named Ireland’s greatest living musician in RTÉ‘s People of the Year Awards.


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Birth of Sculptor John Edward Jones

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John Edward Jones, noted Irish civil engineer and sculptor in Dublin and London, is born in Dublin on May 2, 1806.

Jones is the son of miniature painter Edward Jones. Under the identity of “J. Jones,” architect, 7 Amiens Street, North Strand, Dublin, he exhibits several watercolors at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1828 and 1829, including his View of the Town of Youghall, showing the proposed Chain Bridge (1828) and Design for a Viaduct (1829). He studies engineering under Alexander Nimmo and works for him on major engineering projects in Ireland including the building of the bridge at Waterford from 1829-1832, which he directs. He is listed as a civil engineer in Wilson’s Dublin Directory for the years 1833-35 with an office address at the Commercial Buildings, Dame Street. In 1839, he is awarded a Telford Medal in silver and 20 guineas for his paper and drawings on the sewage in Westminster.

In 1840, Jones ceases his engineering practice to become a sculptor in London, with considerable success, particularly in portrait busts of notables. Among his sitters are Queen Victoria, Albert, Prince Consort, Louis-Philippe, Napoleon III, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Brougham, the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Palmerston, Daniel O’Connell, and Lord Gough. Among his few full-length statues is one of Sir R. Ferguson at Londonderry. He exhibits at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1854-1862.

Jones dies on July 25, 1862, while visiting Finglas, near Dublin, and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.


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“Riverdance” Performed for the First Time

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Riverdance, a theatrical show consisting of traditional Irish music and dance and featuring Irish dancing champions Jean Butler and Michael Flatley and a score composed by Limerick native Bill Whelan, is performed for the first time on April 30, 1994, as an interval performance act during the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest at the Point Theatre in Dublin.

Riverdance is rooted in a three-part suite of baroque-influenced traditional music called Timedance composed, recorded, and performed for the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest, which is hosted by Ireland. At the time, Bill Whelan and Dónal Lunny compose the music, augmenting the Irish folk band Planxty with a rock rhythm section of electric bass and drums and a four-piece horn section. The piece is performed, with accompanying ballet dancers, during the interval of the contest, and later released as a Planxty single. Whelan has previously produced EastWind, an album by Planxty member Andy Irvine with Davy Spillane who’s cross between Irish and Southeastern European folk music proves an influence on Riverdance. Thirteen years later, Bill Whelan is invited to do the intermission piece for another Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin and composes Riverdance. In the book The Humours of Planxty by Leagues O’Toole, Whelan says, “It was no mistake of mine to call it Riverdance because it connected absolutely to Timedance.”

The 1994 performance earns a standing ovation from the packed theatre of 3,000 people. As a result of this success, Riverdance is invited to perform at the prestigious Royal Variety Performance at Dominion Theatre, London, in the presence of Prince Charles on November 28, 1994.

At Congratulations: 50 Years of the Eurovision Song Contest and Eurovision Song Contest’s Greatest Hits events, the seven-minute performance is named as one of the most popular interval acts in the history of the contest.

An audio recording of Riverdance enters the Irish Singles Chart at number one on May 5, 1994, and remains there throughout the summer, eventually totalling a record eighteen weeks at #1. In response to the Rwandan genocide of May/June 1994, a video of the Eurovision interval performance is released by the Irish broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann under the title Riverdance for Rwanda with all proceeds going to the Rwanda Appeal Disasters Joint Appeal Committee.

The success of the Eurovision performance leads husband and wife production team John McColgan and Moya Doherty to consider how to develop the piece. They decide to produce and direct a stage show, expanding the Eurovision piece and Bill Whelan’s composition. In November 1994, tickets are sold in Dublin for the first full-length performance of Riverdance, which opens at the Point Theatre on February 9, 1995. The show runs for five weeks and is a sell out with over 120,000 tickets sold. It stars the original lead dancers from the Eurovision performance as well as many from the dance troupe featured in the Eurovision performance.

Riverdance continues to be performed all over the world, in a diminished format and in smaller venues. Current productions are geared towards smaller theatres, whereas past productions have been performed in large theatres and arenas. Sets have been simplified, and some numbers contain fewer performers than in past productions.


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Birth of Pop Singer Dusty Springfield

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Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien, English pop singer and record producer known professionally as Dusty Springfield, is born on April 16, 1939, to Irish parents in West Hampstead, North London.

With her distinctive sensual mezzo soprano sound, she is an important blue-eyed soul singer and, at her peak, is one of the most successful British female performers, with six top 20 singles on the United States Billboard Hot 100 and sixteen on the United Kingdom Singles Chart from 1963 to 1989. She is a member of both the U.S. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and U.K. Music Hall of Fame. International polls name Springfield among the best female rock artists of all time. Her image, supported by a peroxide blonde bouffant hairstyle, evening gowns, and heavy make-up, as well as her flamboyant performances on the black and white television of the 1960s, make her an icon of the Swinging Sixties.

Born in West Hampstead, London to a family that enjoys music, Springfield learns to sing at home. In 1958, she joins her first professional group, The Lana Sisters, and two years later forms a pop-folk vocal trio, The Springfields, with her brother Tom Springfield. Her solo career begins in 1963 with the upbeat pop hit I Only Want to Be with You. Among the hits that follow are Wishin’ and Hopin’ (1964), I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself (1964), You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (1966), and Son of a Preacher Man (1968).

As a fan of U.S. pop music, she brings many little-known soul singers to the attention of a wider U.K. record-buying audience by hosting the first national TV performance of many top-selling Motown artists beginning in 1965. Although she is never considered a Northern Soul artist in her own right, her efforts contribute a great deal to the formation of the genre.

Partly owing to these efforts, a year later she eventually becomes the best-selling female singer in the world and tops a number of popularity polls, including Melody Maker‘s Best International Vocalist. She is the first U.K. singer to top the New Musical Express readers’ poll for Female Singer.

To boost her credibility as a soul artist, Springfield goes to Memphis, Tennessee to record Dusty in Memphis, an album of pop and soul music with the Atlantic Records main production team. Released in 1969, it has been ranked among the greatest albums of all time by the U.S. magazine Rolling Stone and in polls by VH1 artists, New Musical Express readers, and Channel 4 viewers. The album is also awarded a spot in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Despite its current recognition, the album does not sell well and after its release and Springfield experiences a career slump for several years. However, in collaboration with Pet Shop Boys, she returns to the Top 10 of the U.K. and U.S. charts in 1987 with What Have I Done to Deserve This? Two years later, she has two other U.K. hits on her own with Nothing Has Been Proved and In Private. Subsequently in the mid-1990s, owing to the inclusion of Son of a Preacher Man on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, interest in her early output is revived.

In January 1994, while recording her penultimate album, A Very Fine Love, in Nashville, Dusty Springfield falls ill. When she returns to the United Kingdom a few months later, her physicians diagnose breast cancer. She receives months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, and the cancer goes into remission. In 1995, in apparent good health, Springfield sets about promoting the album, which is released that year. By mid-1996, the cancer has returned, and, in spite of vigorous treatments, she dies in Henley-on-Thames on March 2, 1999. Her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, has been scheduled two weeks after her death. Her friend Elton John helps induct her into the Hall of Fame, declaring, “I’m biased but I just think she was the greatest white singer there ever has been … Every song she sang, she claimed as her own.”

Springfield is cremated and some of her ashes are buried at Henley-on-Thames, while the rest are scattered by her brother, Tom Springfield, at the Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland.


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First Performance of Handel’s Messiah

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George Friedrich Handel’s Messiah is performed for the first time at Mr. Neale’s Great Musick Hall on Fishamble Street in Dublin on April 13, 1742. It receives its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gains in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music.

Handel decides to give a season of concerts in Dublin in the winter of 1741–42 arising from an invitation from the Duke of Devonshire, then serving as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. After arriving in Dublin on November 18, 1741, Handel arranges a subscription series of six concerts, to be held between December 1741 and February 1742 at the Great Musick Hall on Fishamble Street. These concerts are so popular that a second series is quickly arranged. Messiah figures in neither series.

In early March, Handel begins discussions with the appropriate committees for a charity concert, to be given in April, at which he intends to present Messiah. He seeks and is given permission from St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral to use their choirs for this occasion. The women soloists are Christina Maria Avoglio, who sang the main soprano roles in the two-subscription series, and Susannah Cibber, an established stage actress and contralto who sang in the second series. The performance, also in the Fishamble Street hall, is originally announced for April 12, but is deferred for one day “at the request of persons of Distinction.” The orchestra in Dublin, the exact size of which is unknown, is comprised of strings, two trumpets, and timpani. Handel has his own organ shipped to Ireland for the performances.

The three charities benefit from the performance – the prisoners’ debt relief, the Mercer’s Hospital, and the Charitable Infirmary. In its report on a public rehearsal, the Dublin News-Letter describes the oratorio as “… far surpassing anything of that Nature which has been performed in this or any other Kingdom.” Seven hundred people attend the premiere on April 13. In order to accommodate the largest possible audience, gentlemen are requested to remove their swords and ladies are asked not to wear hoops in their dresses. The performance earns unanimous praise from the assembled press: “Words are wanting to express the exquisite delight it afforded to the admiring and crowded Audience.” A Dublin clergyman, Rev. Delaney, is so overcome by Susanna Cibber’s rendering of “He was despised” that he reportedly leaps to his feet and cries, “Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!” The takings amount to around £400, providing about £127 to each of the three nominated charities and securing the release of 142 indebted prisoners.

Handel remains in Dublin for four months after the premiere. He organises a second performance of Messiah on June 3, which is announced as “the last Performance of Mr. Handel’s during his Stay in this Kingdom.” In this second Messiah, which is for Handel’s private financial benefit, Cibber reprises her role from the first performance, although details of other performers are not recorded.


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Birth of Musician Gary Moore in Belfast

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Robert William Gary Moore, Northern Irish musician, most widely recognised as a singer, songwriter, and virtuoso rock and blues guitarist, is born in Belfast on April 4, 1952.

In a career dating back to the 1960s, Moore plays with musicians including Phil Lynott and Brian Downey during his teenage years, leading him to memberships of the Irish bands Skid Row and Thin Lizzy, and British band Colosseum II. Moore shares the stage with such blues and rock musicians as B.B. King, Albert King, Jack Bruce, Albert Collins, George Harrison, and Greg Lake, as well as having a successful solo career. He guests on a number of albums recorded by high-profile musicians.

Moore starts performing at a young age, having picked up a battered acoustic guitar at the age of eight. He gets his first quality guitar at the age of 14, learning to play the right-handed instrument in the standard way despite being left-handed.

At the age of 16, aiming to become a musician, he moves to Dublin. Moore’s greatest influence in the early days is guitarist Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac who is a mentor to Moore when performing in Dublin. Other early musical influences are artists such as Albert King, Elvis Presley, The Shadows, and The Beatles. Later, having seen Jimi Hendrix and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in his hometown of Belfast, his own style is developing into a blues-rock sound that becomes the dominant form of his career in music.

In Dublin, Moore joins the group Skid Row with Noel Bridgeman and Brendan “Brush” Shiels. It is with this group that he earns a reputation in the music industry, and his association with Phil Lynott begins.

Moore moves to England in 1970 and in 1973, under the name “The Gary Moore Band,” he releases his first solo album, Grinding Stone. Grinding Stone receives “Album of the Year” accolades on KTAC-FM/Seattle-Tacoma, Washington, in 1974.

In 1974 he joins Thin Lizzy after the departure of founding member Eric Bell. From 1975 to August 1978, he is a member of Colosseum II. In 1977, Moore rejoins Thin Lizzy, first as a temporary replacement for Brian Robertson, and on a permanent basis a year later.

In July 1979, he leaves the band permanently to focus on his solo career, again with help from Phil Lynott. After a series of rock records, Moore returns to blues music with Still Got the Blues (1990), with contributions from Albert King, Albert Collins, and George Harrison. Other collaborations during his solo years include a broad range of artists including Trilok Gurtu, Dr. Strangely Strange, Jimmy Nail, Mo Foster, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Jim Capaldi, B.B. King, Vicki Brown, Cozy Powell, Rod Argent, The Beach Boys, Paul Rodgers, Keith Emerson, Roger Daltrey, and Otis Taylor.

Gary Moore dies of a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 58 during the early hours of February 6, 2011. At the time, he is on holiday with a girlfriend at the Kempinski Hotel in Estepona, Spain. Moore is laid to rest in St. Margaret’s Churchyard, Rottingdean, East Sussex, England, in a private ceremony with only family and close friends in attendance.


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Birth of Singer Ruby Florence Murray

ruby-florence-murrayRuby Florence Murray, one of the most popular singers in the United Kingdom and Ireland in the 1950s, is born on the Donegal Road in south Belfast on March 29, 1935. In 1955 alone, she secures seven Top 10 UK hit singles.

The distinctive sound of Murray’s voice is partly the result of a throat operation in early childhood. She tours as a child singer and first appears on television at the age of 12, however, laws governing children performing, Murray has to delay her start in the entertainment industry. She returns to Belfast and full-time education until she reaches 14 years of age.

Spotted by producer Richard Afton, Murray is signed to Columbia and her first single, Heartbeat, reaches No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart in December 1954. Afton offers her the position of resident singer on the BBC‘s Quite Contrary television show, replacing Joan Regan. Softly, Softly, her second single, reaches number one in early 1955. That same year Murray sets a pop-chart record by having five hits in the Top Twenty in one week, a feat unmatched until the emergence of Madonna in the 1980s.

The 1950s is a busy period for Murray, during which she has her own television show, stars at the London Palladium with Norman Wisdom, appears in a Royal Command Performance, and tours the world. During a 52-week period, starting in 1955, Murray constantly has at least one single in the UK charts, this being at a time when only a Top 20 is listed.

Murray appears with Frankie Howerd and Dennis Price in her only film role, as Ruby in a 1956 farce, A Touch of the Sun. A couple of hits follow later in the decade. Goodbye Jimmy, Goodbye, a No. 10 hit in 1959, is her final appearance in the charts. EMI puts together a compilation album of her hits on CD in 1989, including songs that are regularly featured in her act, Mr. Wonderful, Scarlet Ribbons, and It’s the Irish in Me. They update this with the release of EMI Presents The Magic Of Ruby Murray in 1997 and a triple album, Anthology — The Golden Anniversary Collection, in 2005, the 50th anniversary of her peak successes on the charts.

A play about Murray’s life, Ruby, written by the Belfast playwright Marie Jones, opens at the Group Theatre in Belfast in April 2000.

Although her days as a major star gradually diminish, Murray continues performing until close to the end of her life. She spends her last couple of years in Asprey’s Nursing Home, often delighting her carers with a song. She dies of liver cancer, at the age of 61, on December 17, 1996 in Torquay after a long struggle with alcoholism.


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U2 Album “The Joshua Tree” is Released

the-joshua-treeThe Joshua Tree, the fifth studio album by Irish rock band U2, is released on March 9, 1987. The album is produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno on Island Records. Formed in 1976, the band consists of Bono (vocals and rhythm guitar), The Edge (lead guitar, keyboards, and vocals), Adam Clayton (bass guitar), and Larry Mullen, Jr. (drums and percussion).

In contrast to the ambient experimentation of their 1984 release The Unforgettable Fire, the band aims for a harder-hitting sound within the limitation of conventional song structures on The Joshua Tree. The album is influenced by American and Irish roots music, and depicts the band’s love–hate relationship with the United States, using socially and politically conscious lyrics embellished with spiritual imagery.

Inspired by American tour experiences, literature, and politics, U2 chooses America as a theme for the album. Recording begins in Ireland in January 1986. Several events during the recording sessions help shape the conscious tone of the album, including the band’s participation in A Conspiracy of Hope tour, the death of roadie Greg Carroll, and lead vocalist Bono’s travels to Central America. Recording is completed in November 1986 and additional production continues into January 1987. Throughout the sessions, U2 seeks a “cinematic” quality for the record, one that will evoke a sense of location, in particular, the open spaces of America. They represent this in the sleeve photography depicting them in American desert landscapes.

The Joshua Tree receives critical acclaim, topping the charts in over 20 countries, and selling in record-breaking numbers. According to Rolling Stone, the album increases the band’s stature “from heroes to superstars.” It produces the hit singles With or Without You, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, and Where the Streets Have No Name. The album wins Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1988. The group supports the record with the Joshua Tree Tour throughout 1987.

Frequently featured on critics’ lists of music’s greatest records, The Joshua Tree is one of the world’s best-selling albums, with over 25 million copies sold. U2 releases a remastered edition of the record in 2007 to commemorate its 20th anniversary. In 2014, it is deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the U.S. Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry.


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Birth of Irish Blues & Rock Guitarist Rory Gallagher

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William Rory Gallagher, Irish blues and rock multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and bandleader, is born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, on March 2, 1948.

Both Rory and his brother Dónal are musically inclined and encouraged by their parents. At age nine, Gallagher receives his first guitar from them. After winning a talent contest when he is twelve, Gallagher begins performing with both his acoustic guitar and an electric guitar that he purchases with his prize money. It is, however, his purchase three years later of a 1961 Fender Stratocaster for £100 that becomes his primary instrument and most associated with him for the span of his lifetime.

Gallagher is initially attracted to skiffle after hearing Lonnie Donegan on the radio. While still in school, playing songs by Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, he discovers his greatest influence in Muddy Waters. He begins experimenting with folk, blues, and rock music.

While still a young teenager, Gallagher begins playing after school with Irish showbands. In 1963, he joins one named Fontana, a sextet playing the popular hit songs of the day. The band tours Ireland and the United Kingdom, earning enough money for Gallagher to make the payments on his Stratocaster guitar. Gallagher begins to influence the band’s repertoire and successfully moulds Fontana into The Impact, changing the line-up into an R&B group. The band plays gigs in Ireland and Spain until it disbands in London, with Gallagher and the bassist and drummer continuing to perform as a trio in Hamburg, Germany.

In 1966, Gallagher returns to Ireland and forms Taste, a blues rock and R&B power trio. Initially, the band is composed of Gallagher and Cork musicians Norman Damery and Eric Kitteringham. However, by 1968, Damery and Kitteringham are replaced by Belfast musicians John Wilson on drums and Richard McCracken on bass. Performing extensively in the UK, the group supports both Cream at their Royal Albert Hall farewell concert and the blues supergroup Blind Faith on a tour of North America.

After the break-up of Taste in 1970, Gallagher tours under his own name. He hires former Deep Joy bass player Gerry McAvoy to play on his self-titled debut album, Rory Gallagher. This is the beginning of a twenty-year musical relationship between Gallagher and McAvoy. The 1970s are Gallagher’s most prolific period, producing ten albums in the decade. In 1971 he is voted Melody Maker’s International Top Guitarist of the Year, ahead of Eric Clapton. However, despite a number of his albums reaching the UK Albums Chart, Gallagher does not attain major star status. Though he sells over thirty million albums worldwide, it was his marathon live performances that win him the greatest acclaim.

In the 1980s he continues recording and embarks on a tour of the United States. In addition, he plays with Box of Frogs, a band formed in 1983 by former members of The Yardbirds.

In the later years of his life, Gallagher develops a phobia of flying. To overcome this he receives a prescription for a powerful sedative. This medication, combined with his alcohol use, results in severe liver damage. Despite his condition he continues touring. By his final performance on January 10, 1995 in the Netherlands, he is visibly ill and the remainder of the tour is cancelled. Gallagher is admitted to King’s College Hospital in London in March 1995. His liver is failing and the doctors determine that a liver transplant is the only possible course of action. After 13 weeks in intensive care, his health suddenly worsens when he contracts a Staphylococcal infection. Gallagher dies on June 14, 1995, and is buried in St. Oliver’s Cemetery just outside Ballincollig near Cork City, Ireland.