Defender

Probably one of the best Unrecognized great Irish Blues men of all time. But, that's the way Rory liked it. Forget the "Fab Four Fame persona....Just Play baby!R.I.P RG

Wow-so many great tunes here and some great guitar playing. Back to his blues roots, it hard to fathom how an Irish musician can evoke such visions of the deep South. Seven Days is an awesome number. Continental Op is a barnstormer, I Ain't No Saint has great guitar riffs, and, well, I could just keep going. No bad numbers on this!

Wow, what a great example of this guy's brilliance. The guitar on this recording is absolutely scorching, and beautiful. All cuts are so strong it's hard to pick a favorite. But "Continental Op (to Dashiell Hammet)", "Don't Start Me To Talkin" and "I Ain't No Saint" are super examples of why we fans of blues/rock are so enamored with Rory. "Road To Hell" could be a bluesman's theme song. "Doing Time" allows Rory to show his slide prowess, and "Seven Days" provides some outstanding acoustic guitar. This album really gives example of Gallagher's talent which transcends time and space. What a great loss to the music world. His band is very good, providing solid backing. The bonus tracks are truly bonus in that they are no repeats of other songs on the album, and they are quality songs. Overall I give this CD an A++.

As with any Rory album, he takes you places that you don't expect. His incredible songwriting just keeps getting better and better! His musicians are always so talented and you can feel that they are really having a good time.Having been fortunate to actually see them live, I can honestly say that his relationship with his fellow musicians was second to none! Another fantastic album by this greatly talented man and his band!

Most of the guitar heros out there probably wish they could play as good as this legend. Rory has a diversity and passion that few can match - slight nuances and chance-ups in his playing reveal true genius. He plugs in and plays strait out and honest - no noisy din, trickery or trendy walls of strange sounds that so many others hide behind. This is another fine output of strait-up rock and blues. My favorite tunes are Loan Shark Blues and Road to Hell. It's all good - real good.

I first found this at a record store in NJ back in the late 80's it was a CD at the time. To have a vynil version is awesome. Thanks!!!!

Classic Rory. A can't miss for any blues/rocker. Just rebuilding my stock.

By this time in his career, Rory was playing more hard edge blues, & this is a great album. The "Live in Cork" DVD from Nov.1987 has several songs from this album.

I was a huge fan of Rory Gallagher when he had his quartet band with Rod de’Ath and Lou Martin, I had seen a couple of time promoting Blueprint & Tattoo. In the late 70s I guess I got distracted by other music and, although I still listened to and loved those albums, I did not follow his subsequent album releses until this one. I had seen him live in the intervening years but I saw a review and bought it. His 80s power trio albums were more heavy than his 70s albums but here he seemed to be on fire, I really liked it.Having got caught up in the CD revolution I ditched a lot of my vinyl and am now replacing it. I decided to get the Rory Gallagher albums that I used to have on vinyl (I already have all his albums on CD) I then decided to go to the albums that I never had on vinyl. Rory Gallagher is one of the artists that it is well worth having on vinyl. The quality of the mastering is brilliant.This is definitely power trio mode despite there being some piano and keyboard on some tracks (including the aforementioned Lou Martin) and the album holds up extremely well. I know that Rory had insecurities at this stage of his life, but the quality of his output never dipped. The negative effect was mostly that it limited the volume of his output, so there may have been many more albums but he left up a catalogue of brilliant work.I just saw a clip on YouTube of Rory being interviewed on Borderline (an Irish music programme I guess) and he talked about Defender being the result of having recorded an album called Torch which “...wasn’t satisfactory..” so they ditched it and started again to record Defender. I knew about this happening with the San Francisco session prior to Phot-Finish but I did not know about Torch. I wonder if that album might ever get remixed and released. It is a tantalising thought if you considered how the earlier rejected album turned out.

The best of Rory's later albums, I think. I agree with all the other positive comments about this album, but I really want to remark on the great remastering. The sound quality is just so good, clarity and separation are wonderful, the drums sound like they're a couple of feet away from the listener. If you're a guitar geek like me you can pretty much tell what the different instruments are on each song. Rory's comments on the liner notes are so informative. Great work by brother Donal in putting out such a quality product. If only Jimi Hendrix's legacy could be handled with such delicacy and love

24 bit High Resolution re-mastering from the original 1/4 master tape by Andy Pearce & Matt Wortham at Wired Masters in 2017.All of the 2018 CD studio remasters released by UMC contain updated sleeve insert photos and track comments. There is no remix meddling this time; these are as the original releases. All have bonus track(s) except Deuce. Excellent sound quality throughout and the content needs no further comment other than it is Rory Gallagher doing what only he and his co-musicians could; a unique sound and a massive influence on many players that have followed.

This version is in fact the digipak one to match the late summer releases of Stage Struck and Fresh Evidence, and finally completes Donal Gallagher's excellent set of updated remasters.Rory's other remastered albums were released in two batches of six, and are all worth buying to complete the set:Photo Finish, Against Grain, Calling Card, Top Priority, Blueprint and Jinx.Irish Tour '74, Tattoo, Blueprint, Live In Europe, Deuce and Rory Gallagher.

I bought 'Live in Europe' in 2002 and I bought 'Defender' in late 2011 which, in my opinion, is his best work.It rocks from start to finish with the highlights being 'Road to Hell', with its Stones-like riff, and the R & B soaked bonus track, 'Seems to me'. 'Failsafe Day' is another raw rocker and the production throughout is first-class, with prominent bass and drums.Highly recommended, if you love raw and hard rock'n'roll Blues.