There are various versions of "Rory & the Stones" about.
1. One was that the Stones management contacted Rory while he was recording Calling Card (his finest album in my opinion) with Roger Glover (formerly of an unknown Brit stadium rock band) and said that the band "would like to come over and jam with him". Rory was obviously chuffed at the honor while Glover moaned about having to rearrange all the miking in the studio which had been painstakingly set up for recording. But in the end they rearranged the studio for the jam, except that the Stones never came! This story is confirmed by Glover in the new liner notes of the remastered Calling Card and Glover generally doesn't talk nonsense nor did he take drugs. Rory is unavailable for comment.
2. Version 2 is that the Stones called Rory to join them in Amsterdam where they were parading candidates, but that Rory refused: "I've got an album to do, guys! Some other time."
In the end it doesn't matter, Rory wouldn't have joined them though he was certainly the type of bluesy-virtuoso player Jagger (not Keef though) favored (among Jeff Beck, Harvey Mandel and Mick Ronson):
- Rory was an introvert and insecure about himself, it would have been Mick Taylor all over again. Ronnie Wood doesn't have an overbearing ego, but he's not insecure about himself.
- Rory would have been an image issue for the Stones, he didn't have a cool haircut and would never give up his plaid shirts however much his record company berated him to "look a bit more rock star". He didn't dress up for stage, period.
- Introvert and plaid shirts or not, Rory was a dictator/single-minded. He broke up Taste because the other two wouldn't submit even more to him (as if Taste hadn't already featured him enough). And At the height of that particular Rory Gallagher band line-up's success he kicked out Lou Martin and Rod d'Ath and scrapped a wole album recorded with them (recently released as "Notes from San Francisco" and at the behest of his record company even containing horn arrangements and a commercial US FM radio-friendly production). He wouldn't allow co-writing, sang all his material and there is not a single album sleeve out there that doesn't show him alone.
- Rory wasn't money-driven. He made lots of anti-commercial or plain dumb decisions in his career, inter alia refusing that songs be released as singles, kicking out the keyboarder who refined his music so much (and getting the same guy back in when Rory's commercial fortunes had already dropped), binning a "too American production" and reverting to trio work which did him no favors because his music benefitted from an organist and piano player (and Lou Martin was an excellent piano player).
Rory giving up singing (or being restricted to singing a song an album), writing lyrics, his frontman role and songwriting (or even being restricted to contributing one or two compositions per Stones album, something neither Wyman and Taylor nor Wood were ever allowed to do on a regular basis), as well as getting a haircut and glamming up a little to play Gimme Shelter is unfathomable to me though musically it might have been a dream. (Deep Purple considered him as a replacement for
- how by coincidence his name has popped up again!
- and decided against him for pretty much the same reasons in the end.) Rory wasn't as relaxed about himself as, say, Joe Walsh who did/gave up all that to join The Eagles in exchange of an allotment of perhaps two own songs per Eagles album, Rocky Mountain Way being integrated in their live set and, of course, lots and lots of money. (Walsh and The Eagles had the same management when he joined them, so it was basically an engineered merger, but one that has lasted like engineered marriages sometimes tend to.)
But man, he would have kicked some butt with the Stones!
