A statue of Irish rock and blues legend Rory Gallagher is finally to be erected at Belfast’s Ulster Hall – nine years after its planning application went to City Hall.
In October 2016 Belfast City Council’s Planning Committee gave the proposal the go-ahead for unveiling at Bedford Street at the side of the Ulster Hall, which Gallagher saw as his musical home and where he played regularly and faithfully throughout the Troubles years.
But fans have had to wait for the statue of their guitar hero.
Before that in 2007, a memorial plaque to the guitarist was unveiled at the Ulster Hall during a special tribute concert.
Details of the January 2025 unveiling emerged in papers for a Belfast Council committee meeting this week.
The Rory Gallagher Statue Project Trust has crowd funded to create the statue with the intention of having it installed at the Ulster Hall site and to gift it to the council.
“The unveiling date of the statue is proposed as January 4 2025, which is the 30th anniversary of the BBC recording at the Ulster Hall of Rory at Midnight,” a report read.
Gallagher was born in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal and spent part of his childhood in Derry before moving to Cork and creating the band Taste in the late 1960s.
When Belfast musicians Richard McCracken and John Wilson joined the band, Taste took off and released two acclaimed albums while gaining a reputation as one of the great live acts.
After Taste broke up Gallagher was known as the ‘One Man Led Zeppelin’ and throughout the 1970s and 1980s sold more than 30 million records worldwide. He died in June 1995 aged 47.