Rory Gallagher: the lost Rolling Stone? How Cork’s guitar genius nearly joined Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

He eventually spotted Rory ­Gallagher, the 26-year-old guitar wizard, fresh off a flight from Heathrow. ­Gallagher walked slowly through arrivals, carrying a suitcase, his battered 1961 Fender Stratocaster and an amplifier. He and Jagger went outside to a taxi rank.

Jagger and a driver haggled over the price of the 15-minute drive back to De Doelen Concert Hall, close to Rotterdam Centraal train station. Bombed during World War II, the 2,200-capacity venue had been rebuilt in 1966. Now it was playing host to a different kind of conflict, as the Rolling Stones rehearsed for their upcoming tour.

This was to be their first since the surprise departure that December of guitarist Mick Taylor (who had in turn replaced founding member Brian Jones in 1969).Gallagher was in the Netherlands to audition for the berth vacated by Taylor. Later that evening, he stepped on to the De Doelen stage, his footsteps echoing on the floorboards.

There to meet him were the rest of the Stones, except Keith Richards, who was missing and presumed to be off his face somewhere.

Stones manager Marshall Chess stepped forward and offered a hand.

"Hi Rory, welcome to the band," he said. "You're the guy for the job."

This was just one extraordinary chapter in the life of Gallagher, who died in June 1995 following complications from a liver transplant. During his life, Gallagher was a cult figure among other guitarists, who were awestruck by the virtuosity and sheer ferocity of his playing.

The fan club included Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, who took him on the road as support for Blind Faith's epic summer 1969 trek around America. Johnny Marr of the Smiths and Slash from Guns N' Roses were admirers too.

One apocryphal story has Jimi Hendrix being button-holed backstage at the Isle of Wight Festival and asked how it felt to be the world's greatest guitarist. "Go ask Rory Gallagher," he is reputed to have said without missing a beat.

In a way it skipped a generation. Young people now seem to enjoy the performances, his integrity

But by the time of his death, Gallagher had fallen out of fashion. He died, if not in obscurity, then very much on the downward slope.

"He definitely felt himself he had been forgotten a bit," says Daniel Gallagher, Rory's nephew, who was 13 when the guitarist succumbed to a post-operation infection."He wasn't a self-publicist. He didn't understand that he had to sell himself or release singles."

Daniel recalls an interview Cameron Crowe, the Rolling Stone journalist turned film director, once gave about Gallagher. Rory was on a publicity jaunt across America and Crowe tagged along to write about it.

"He hated doing PR. Every day he would go back to his hotel after a day of schmoozing and he would be exhausted. It drained him," he said.

Rory's brother Dónal says: "In the 80s and 90s, he was almost airbrushed from the rock scene. In a way, it skipped a generation. Young people now seem to enjoy the performances, his integrity.

"I always put it down to the fact that he didn't do singles − he didn't go down that route of miming on Top of the Pops. He would do his share of press, but when he was asked about himself he would refer to another, overlooked guitarist: Doc Watson or Django Reinhardt, perhaps."

Punk and its scorched-earth repudiation of the music that came before didn't help, Dónal says.

"It galls me. The Old Grey Whistle Test made three specials about Rory − the only artist they ever did that for. Yet they never show them. Johnny Rotten was a fan."

"The Clash would always credit him," Dónal adds. "But he had been named the best guitarist in the world by ­Melody Maker and that made him a target for the NME. If you were a Melody ­Maker artist, the NME regarded you as old and boring."

Clapton may have been a better technician but Rory was certainly more exciting. He would take chances that Eric just wouldn't take

Twenty-five years after his death, things have turned full circle. Gallagher has been discovered anew and taken his rightful place alongside rock gods such as Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. He's starting to sell in respectable numbers, too. A recent live album, Check Shirt Wizard: Live In '77, made the UK top 40; a 2019 collection of ­Gallagher blues covers topped the Billboard blues chart in the US. And footage of his searing 1970 Isle of Wight performance with his band Taste has had millions of views.

In the Isle of Wight clips, Gallagher is a force of nature. He doesn't seem to play guitar so much as wrestle it, as if trying to tame a wild beast.

"With Rory it was always teetering on the brink. With Cream, for example, there was no danger. Everything Clapton played was perfect and you knew it was going to work," Gallagher's long-serving bassist Gerry McAvoy wrote in his autobiography, Riding Shotgun. "Clapton may have been a better technician, but Rory was certainly more exciting. He would take chances that Eric just wouldn't take."

One milestone he never achieved, though, was joining The Stones. The mid-70s had been a testing period for the rock's original wild bunch. Richards was in the throes of cocaine addiction and Taylor had sensationally walked out in the middle of the recording of their Black and Blue album. Taylor had felt his contribution had not been acknowledged. Increasingly dependent on heroin, he worried, too, that the Stones lifestyle was leading him on a path to destruction. If he didn't leave, he feared the worst. He wasn't built like Jagger and Richards. He broke the news to Jagger at a party on December 12, 1974.

The timing was unfortunate. Sessions for Black and Blue were going on. And the Stones were booked for a lucrative North American tour starting in Baton Rouge on June 1, 1975, so they needed a new guitarist and quickly. Gallagher was the first name on their wish-list.

"Mick Jagger had always been very vocal about how he admired Rory's playing," says Dónal, who together with Daniel, his son, has worked tirelessly to keep Gallagher's legacy alive. "And when The Rolling Stones first formed their own label, Keith Richards made it clear that the two people they wanted to sign were Rory Gallagher and Peter Tosh."

Gallagher was born in Donegal, but grew up in Cork. He was based in London for most of his career, and he and Dónal happened to be home for Christmas and staying with their mother in Douglas, on Cork's southside, when the phone rang one night late in 1974.

"It was about 1am," says Dónal. "Back then, if the call was overseas, you had to go through the operator. She told my mother she was connecting. I took the call. I was a bit defensive because in those days there were a lot of kidnappings. The guy says, 'My name is Ian Stewart... I'm looking for Rory Gallagher'."

Stewart co-founded The Rolling Stones with Brian Jones in 1962. However, he had been notoriously shunted from the line-up by the Stones' early manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, who felt he did not fit their bad-boy image. He stayed on as road manager, keyboardist and general fixer. It was in that last capacity that he was placing a call to the southside of Cork city a few days before Christmas.

"Rory had gone to bed on one of his rare early nights," Dónal says. "When I woke him he thought I was winding him up. But he agreed to go to Rotterdam to jam with them."

Sensing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Dónal was keen to accompany his brother to offer advice and emotional support. Gallagher, however, was reluctant to become too excited.

"I said to Rory, 'Please let me go, this is serious'. He said, 'No, it's only a jam session'. To which I responded, 'If they have a mobile unit and they're recording you, it's serious'."

He was a huge star in Japan at the time and didn't believe in letting down his audience

The problem was that Keith Richards was absent, both in body and mind, during Gallagher's audition.

"He was going through a pretty bad time from what I understand," Dónal says. "The first night Rory was there he didn't come down at all."

Richards was in his elegantly wasted prime. Playing Knebworth the following year, he was in such a state that his road crew cut the wires to the speakers.

This caused a 90-minute delay, during which they tried to revive him. After the show, he fell asleep snorting heroin at the wheel of his Bentley and crashed into the central reservation of the M1. When people wonder how Richards is still alive, this is the period they are talking about.

It was an indication of the Stones' dysfunction that, although Jagger seemed amenable to having Gallagher join, he didn't feel able to discuss it directly with Richards. Instead, at the end of three days of rehearsals at De Doelen, he drew Gallagher aside and advised him to speak to Richards. The complicating factor for Gallagher was that he had booked a Japanese tour and needed to get back to Heathrow the following day if he was to make the dates. He was a huge star in Japan at the time and didn't believe in letting down his audience. The clock was ticking.

"Rory went up to Keith's suite. Keith was passed out," Dónal says. "Rory stayed up all night and would go up every half-hour to see if he'd woken up."

With Richards out of it, the next morning Gallagher said his goodbyes, took his amp and guitar and left.

He would have just been playing solos... and learning to be subservient to the two big egos. I don't think it would have worked

In March, Ronnie Wood of The ­Faces flew out to meet Mick and Keith. On April 14, he was unveiled as Taylor's replacement (though he didn't become an official member until February 1976). After Gallagher, the band had also auditioned Peter Frampton, Wayne Perkins, Jeff Beck and Steve Marriott. But Rory was first on their list.

Would Gallagher have played well with the Glimmer Twins? Bill Wyman, the Stones' bassist at the time, wasn't so sure.

"We had a good time with him, but I think Mick and Keith felt he wasn't the kind of character that would have fit," he said. "If he'd been in The Stones he wouldn't have been singing and that was one of his strong points. He would have just been playing solos... and learning to be subservient to the two big egos. I don't think it would have worked."

In Ian Thuillier's 2010 documentary, Ghost Blues: The Story of Rory ­Gallagher, Bob Geldof, who knew both parties, said: "He could never have put up with the b*****ks of Mick and Keith. Never in a thousand years. Up against Mick and Keith he would have shot himself."

Larry Kirwan, of Celtic punk band Black 47, had a different take.

"He could have single-handedly revived their creative spark," he said. "Imagine Keith trying to keep up with this bluesy dynamo. What a power duo they would have made, intertwining rhythm and lead lines. They were born for each other."

Gallagher himself came across as ambivalent about joining the Mick 'n' Keef circus. ​

"If somebody needed a guitar player for a tour and I was free and it was the right situation, I'd do it and it would be fun," he said. "There would be less pressure if I just had to stand there and play."