A perennial live favourite, he hauled his battered Stratocaster, a bass player, drummer and minimal road crew round the European arena and festival circuit without remit, achieving widespread popularity and acclaim during the '70s. In America, where he is less well known, Gallagher has mounted no less than 25 full-scale college and theatre tours over the years. In England he has played the Reading Festival more times than any other act, ditto the Montreux Festival, and he's proud of it. He eventually appears in a quiet Chelsea bar where the staff treat him as a familiar and valued customer, reserving a quiet table in the corner, and supplying lagers and whisky chasers throughout. He is in poor shape.
Rheumy eyes peer from a face that looks as if it has been pumped up like a football.
His hair is a virulent shade of dark henna red, but grey roots push up along the crease of a ragged centre parting. He explains that many sleepless nights, bad diet and much lack of exercise and fresh air have been the upshot of a prolonged stretch in the recording studio. If you produce, write and play on an album, you lose all perspective. I get terrible doubts. The predecessor of Defender, an album called Torch, was put in the bin.