Seven decades since it rolled off the production line in Fullerton, California – and whatever your personal tastes – you’d have to agree that Leo Fender’s deathless doublecut is the quintessential electric guitar.

It’s the shape a kid would draw if you handed them a crayon. It’s the model you’d show to a visiting glow-fingered alien curious about humanoid rock ‘n’ roll.

To sling a Strat is to experience the ultimate collision of tone and ergonomics.

Respect to the Telecaster (born three years earlier, in 1951), but it’s a caveman’s club next to Leo’s next great lightbulb moment.

Sleek as a surfboard, contoured to the body like a well-cut suit, with stellar access and the first bulletproof tremolo system. Sonically unique, with an unmistakable singlecoil ‘cluck’ that could be fattened, starved, or stacked via a cluster of idiot-proof dials and a five-way selector (from the mid-’70s on).

Back then, in 1954, the Strat seemed to come from the future, and even now, if you pause and consider it afresh, it still does.

But the Fender Stratocaster would just be a glorified carpentry project without the players who danced across its neck and gave it life. Here we celebrate 25 of the very best Strat-o-masters, from the worlds of blues, rock, funk, disco, prog, shred, grunge, metal, and beyond.

Buddy Holly

It’s December 1, 1957. Buddy Holly is performing That’ll Be The Day on his Ed Sullivan Show debut, and the great American public is seeing the Fender Stratocaster in action for the first time.

He might look like a librarian on uppers, but the Texan bandleader’s piston-pump rhythm work is not to be sniffed at, and to a generation that has known nothing but horn bands, that hard, biting jangle is a clarion call announcing that things will be different from now on.

Jimi Hendrix

Admittedly, the defining image of the Strat’s greatest Sixties ambassador sees him torching the damn thing onstage at 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival. But the instrument’s real pyrotechnics happened before Jimi lit the match.

Exploring the outer limits of its mischief-ready sonic scope and easily abused tremolo, he couldn’t have conjured the same black-magic cacophony – or the beauty of Little Wing – from any other model. Jimi’s trademark flip ‘n’ restring, meanwhile, was an audio-visual WTF that only cemented the impression he’d just stepped off a spaceship into Swinging London.

Hank Marvin

You Americans don’t know how lucky you are. It wasn’t until 1959 – a full five years after US production began – that Shadows bandleader Cliff Richard bought and gifted to his guitarist what is believed to be the first Strat on British shores (a Fiesta Red stunner with gold hardware). Those gorgeous, glassy, plaintive melodies on Apache and Wonderful Land wouldn’t have shimmered the same on anything else.

Jeff Beck

Sure, a Telecaster (in the Yardbirds) and Les Paul (on Blow By Blow) were fine for the punch-your-lights-out early stuff. But when Beck really found his voice and fell into his signature techniques – the volume swells and whale-song whammy tickles, exemplified by Where Were You – only the Fender doublecut could get the job done.

“What is it about the Strat that I love so much?” he mused in an interview with Malcolm Gerrie of Sky Arts. “Its endless color…”

Eric Clapton

Like Beck, EC played ’em all, from his Yardbirds Tele, through the revved-up Les Paul of the Bluesbreakers, to the SG-fueled ‘woman’ tone showcased on Cream’s Disraeli Gears. But like so many Sixties galacticos, as the decade turned, he was drawn to the Strat, retooling a clutch of second-hand models bought from a Nashville music store into the fabled Blackie mongrel that drove everything from Cocaine to Wonderful Tonight.

“I felt like Blackie had become part of me,” Clapton once told Guitar Player. “A guitar like that comes along maybe once in a lifetime.”

David Gilmour

Compared to his ’70s-gunslinger peers, the Pink Floyd man didn’t play too many notes. But the sweetness of his phrasing, twinned with the haunting, bell-like quality of his ’69 Black Strat, meant each one was a symphony (revisit the shivering four-note starburst of Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part II).

That Black Strat was just recently auctioned from the private collection of late Indianapolis Colts boss Jim Irsay for $14.5 million, making it officially the world’s most valuable guitar.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

The Texas bluesman picked up his early-’60s Strat – known as both Number One and First Wife – from an Austin music store in 1974. As a man who played so hard he had to perform DIY on his own tattered fingers, the instrument probably deserved its retirement in 1990 – while SRV’s tragic death that August meant he never saw Fender’s signature replica launch two years later at NAMM.

Ritchie Blackmore

Deep Purple’s dark wizard got his wings on a Gibson ES-335, but a fateful 1969 encounter with Eric Clapton’s roadie changed everything (“He brought a Strat, so I said to him, ‘Do you want to sell that guitar?’”).

In a 2024 GW interview, Blackmore told us he tracked Smoke On The Water on a mongrel, before summing up the Strat’s pragmatic magic: “It’s a way of paying the bills. It also happens to be an incredible guitar.”

Nile Rodgers

Just for a moment, consider how many unfathomable millions of dollars must have flowed through the Chic legend’s ‘Hitmaker’ Strat.

Seeing action with everyone from David Bowie to Madonna, the sonic character of its unusually light alder body is perfect for Rodgers’ muted hits and zingy chord fragments. But he might never have picked it up from a Miami pawn shop in ’73 were it not for the curt advice of wingman/bassist Bernard Edwards (“Get a Strat, motherf***er!”)

Yngwie Malmsteen

Before the Scandi shredder broke out with 1984’s Rising Force, ‘scallops’ were something you gagged on at posh dinner parties.

Inspired by a 16th century lute with carved-out frets, Malmsteen recalled that “people thought I was crazy” when they saw his teenage handiwork. But there was no arguing with the added velocity of scalloping, which made this already-lightning-fast player even speedier, like strapping rockets on Usain Bolt’s sneakers. Only Clapton was offered a Fender signature Strat before him (but Malmsteen’s ’88 model was the first to feature his signature on the headstock).

Dave Murray and Janick Gers

Given all that demon iconography, you’d expect Iron Maiden’s three-guitar frontline to reach for something macabre from the B.C. Rich brochure. In fact, the British metallers’ gallop is largely underpinned by a pair of workhorse Strats, with Janick Gers favoring a Seymour Duncan JB JR-bolstered model and Dave Murray driving a pair of Hot Rails (Adrian Smith is more of a dabbler, mostly wedded to his Jackson San Dimas).

Tom DeLonge

The Blink-182 man has bounced between Fender and Gibson his whole career, and lately seems sworn to his signature Starcaster. But after retiring the iconic early “Sticker Strat”, the Enema Of The State period saw DeLonge punch out parts like All The Small Things on a pastel-hued Custom Shop Strat with a lonely Seymour Duncan Invader bridge ’bucker (it was released in 2001 as a production guitar).

Albert Hammond Jr

Beset by bowel-tuned nu-metal, it felt like we hadn’t seen a Strat in years when The Strokes broke out with 2001’s Is This It.

While Nick Valensi was all studied cool on an Epiphone Riviera, his corkscrew-curled wingman hammered thrillingly at a high-strapped 1985 reissue of a ’72 Strat (that instrument was also behind the feral, Freddie King-inspired solo on Last Nite).

Billy Corgan

Alt-rock will forever be associated with a sticker-coated Jazzmaster, but look closer and the Strat appeared in the hands of everyone from Kurt Cobain (at the ’92 Reading Festival) to Mike McCready (the out-of-phase shimmer on Yellow Ledbetter). Amongst these, Corgan was arguably the greatest virtuoso and most committed Strat-o-phile.

In his words, the Smashing Pumpkins leader “walked into a Guitar Center one day and, off the wall, bought an Eric Clapton ’57 reissue. That became the main guitar for Siamese and Mellon Collie, and launched a thousand ships of people chasing that sound.”

Mark Knopfler

Before he settled back into the molten Les Paul solos of Brothers In Arms, the Dire Straits leader was the fastest gun on London’s post-punk scene, revered for the quicksilver bob ‘n’ weave outro to 1978’s Sultans Of Swing.

Tellingly, the red ’61 he played it on (supposedly something of a partscaster) was one of the few models that Knopfler chose to ring-fence from his 2024 guitar auction.

Bonnie Raitt

The Californian slide goddess and 13-time Grammy winner picked up her first Strat on the street following a 1969 gig – immediately falling for the often-neglected third position. “It’s all about that middle pickup,” says Raitt. “You just can’t beat it.”

Eric Johnson

The Cliffs Of Dover virtuoso could easily have followed his G3 brethren into an Ibanez endorsement. But Johnson is a Strat diehard with a very specific wishlist, insisting that models from ’54, ’57, and ’58 are best (“I think Fender had a shipment of wood that was real special”) and adding an offbeat f-hole to his 2018 signature thinline.

Cory Wong

Funk belongs on a Strat – don’t argue – and Wong’s kinetic grooves with Vulfpeck have moved more feet than anyone on the modern scene. He’s proved price isn’t everything with his dedication to his teenage Highway One model – also the inspiration for his 2021 signature model – and should really be taking a salary as Fender brand ambassador.

Wong was led to the aforementioned Highway One Strat by his father, who – Wong said in a 2023 Guitar World interview – told him, “‘Listen! You love the Chili Peppers, you love Stevie Ray Vaughan. Look at Jeff Beck, look at Jimi Hendrix, look at Stevie Ray and Eric Johnson.’ He gave me this lineage of the Stratocaster and basically said: Look at all the things this guitar is capable of.’”

H.E.R.

The Strat’s generation-leaping appeal is underlined by Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson, whose breakout 2021 album, Back Of My Mind, bends the backbone of vintage R&B into bold new shapes.

“The Strat is an iconic guitar, just because of the look and shape,” says the 28-year-old Californian (who got her own signature model in 2020). “But the tone, the heaviness… to me, it’s the unicorn. It’s classic, but it’s new at the same time.”

Rory Gallagher

Bought on credit in 1963, and beaten like a dog through the ’70s and ’80s, the Irishman’s ’61 looked set for a quiet retirement. Instead, it now enjoys an afterlife as a blues-rock Excalibur, loaned out to wide-eyed fanboys like Joe Bonamassa.

“I’m thinking, ‘I’m gonna take so much shit for this’,” recalled the US bluesman of test-driving Rory’s doublecut at London’s Hammersmith Apollo in 2011. “Because everyone on the Internet will go, ‘Who do you think you are?’ But anybody would have done it…”

The Edge

U2’s sonic maverick has built up quite a rack since 1980’s Boy (you could argue he’s equally associated with the Explorer). But hands-down the most neck-tingling moment of any show is the delay-drenched jewelry box tinkle of Where The Streets Have No Name, and for that, a Strat on the middle pickup is non-negotiable.

Mdou Moctar

If your first guitar had been built from driftwood, bicycle cables, and the keys used to open sardine tins, you’d be glad to get on a Strat too. The desert-blues figurehead’s only stipulation is that the strings on his American Professional left-hander are at least two years old.

Steve Lacy

Every time you think you’ve got the Strat all figured out, a twenty-something gunslinger comes along and flips it on its head.

Take the Californian alt-R&B phenom, who splits his licks between solo work, The Internet, and a billion guest-spots with everyone from Vampire Weekend to Tyler, The Creator. Then there’s Lacy’s rulebook-shredding People Pleaser signature Strat – complete with an onboard fuzz circuit.

Ry Cooder

There’s a case that the Californian slide man barely qualifies as a Strat player. His trademark ‘Coodercasters’, after all, are so heavily modded that Leo Fender would barely recognize them as his children. But Cooder demands inclusion for his beyond-spellbinding, desert-baked, and dust-blown tone.

Buddy Guy

When the great Louisiana bluesman headed north in ’57, he assured his ailing mother he’d return from Chicago at the wheel of a polka-dot Cadillac. Guy couldn’t keep that promise, but made amends by commissioning his spotted Fender signature model.

He’s never strayed from the Strat, and even on the brink of his nineties, used it to dig out a gorgeous fingerstyle blues in the credits scene of last year’s Oscar-winning Sinners.

Ireland, with a combined population – North and South – of only seven million, has punched way above its weight when it comes to delivering bona fide guitar heroes, whether they be from the blues, rock or alt fields.

Thankfully, Ireland’s troubled history and sectarian divide has never crossed over into music; bands from the North and South have always enjoyed equal success and respect on their respective opposite sides of the border, and religious differences have rarely played any part in the makeup of the most successful bands from the Emerald Isle.

The guitarists on this list hail from all corners of the musical spectrum, but, inevitably perhaps, there is one towering name that crops up, time and time again – Rory Gallagher.

Although he seems somewhat overlooked these days, his influence is everywhere; the caliber of guests at the annual Rory Gallagher festival, in his hometown of Cork, is testament to the enduring respect his name commands. Fittingly, he opens up our celebration of Irish greats, past and present.

1. Rory Gallagher

Without doubt the single most influential Irish guitarist or in fact musician, period, must be Rory Gallagher. In a long career, from his first, self-titled, album as a member of Taste in 1969, through to his final album, Fresh Evidence (1990), Gallagher maintained a level of quality control that meant every album was a treasure trove of inventive and uniquely expressive playing.

Whilst Gallagher was a superb acoustic stylist, often reintroducing lost Delta blues classics to a new audience – the electric guitar was what he used to build his unrivaled reputation.

Brandishing the most battered Strat in rock, Gallagher was a true master of everything the instrument had to offer, utilizing every option at his disposal to create the broadest of tonal palettes with which to convey his unique vision.

A typical Gallagher solo could include wah-simulating tone knob swells, violin-like volume swells, pinched harmonics, simulated whammy bar dive bombs, bent harmonics and even occasional bouts of right-hand tapping – long before Eddie unleashed the technique on the world.

Gallagher’s influence was immense – from Slash to Johnny Marr, to Alex Lifeson to Brian May and all points in between.

Gallagher started out playing at nine, and quickly improved to the point where he was winning local talent shows by the age of twelve. When he was 15, he’d managed to save enough money to buy the Strat which he used for the rest of his career, a 1961 sunburst model, which he bought for £100 ($125) in 1963.

That was the year he joined the Fontana Showband, playing hits of the era. Gallagher was a huge blues and rock ’n’ roll fan – his biggest inspirations being Muddy Waters, Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran. Knowing there was no future for him playing the music he loved, he left the Showband to front a number of beat and R’n’B combos before forming Taste in 1966.

Finally able to realize his dream to play the music that he lived and breathed, without compromise, Gallagher’s ambitions rapidly outgrew the limitations of the Irish music scene.

He moved to London in 1968, where his skills finally found the audience they deserved. Gallagher’s rapid ascent through the ranks of London clubland bands saw him score a record deal with Polydor, release three albums and appear at the Isle Of Wight Festival within the space of two years.

Taste reached the end of their life in 1970, and Gallagher embarked on his solo career, releasing fourteen albums before his untimely death in 1995 at only 47, due to complications associated with liver failure.

Amongst one of the richest of back catalogs, one album crops up constantly whenever artists discuss Gallagher – Irish Tour ’74, which serves as the perfect introduction for anyone looking for a point of entry into the Irish wizard’s work.

2. Gary Moore

The other Irish colossus of blues guitar. Gary Moore started out as a left-hander who taught himself to play right-handed and served a short apprenticeship in a number of bands on the burgeoning beat scene in Belfast in the mid ‘60s. Moore actually knew Rory Gallagher, striking up a friendship before Gallagher moved to London in 1968.

That same year, Moore moved to Dublin to join Skid Row, a blues/rock band fronted by Phil Lynott, who left soon after Moore joined. Moore made two albums with Skid Row, Skid (1970) and 34 Hours (1971), before he left, frustrated with their musical direction. Moore made his first solo album, Grinding Stone, in 1973.

Lynott had formed Thin Lizzy in 1969 after his departure from Skid Row, scoring a run of hit singles and albums, until guitarist Eric Bell departed in 1974. Casting around for someone to fill the gap, Moore was the obvious choice, though he only stayed with Lizzy for a few months.

Moore’s next step was to join jazz-rock band, Colosseum II, putting in a spell of three years. Again, dissatisfied with where his career was going - a common theme through Moore’s life – he returned to Thin Lizzy in 1978 for another couple of years, before finally deciding to commit to a solo career.

Moore’s metal-oriented albums, kicking off with Back On The Streets (1978), through to After The War, (1989), saw him achieve notable successes both in Europe and America. His incendiary, balls-to-the-wall technique, was a perfect match for the bombastic rock he was playing; every song was awash with jaw dropping, explosive soloing.

Moore was apparently feeling disillusioned with his career, and had frequently expressed a yearning to get back to the blues that had inspired him when he first started to play. Having voiced this dissatisfaction to bandmates, it was suggested to him that he should just go ahead and make a blues album. Still Got The Blues (1990) saw Moore fully embrace his first love.

He had long cited the legendary Bluesbreakers album, featuring Eric Clapton, as one of his major influences. Moore took Clapton’s blueprint of Les Paul and Marshall fueled blues grit and ramped it up to a whole new level of intensity. The fire and venom in Moore’s soloing was the perfect way to pull rock fans into the world of blues, with Moore channeling both sides of the line.

Later Moore albums saw him tone down the rampant, blazing solos, for a more traditional blues approved tone, but with no less ferocity in the playing.

Moore was often seen to be wielding Greeny, the famed Les Paul that he bought off one of his other heroes – Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac. Moore was still recording and touring, and enjoying great success when he died suddenly of a heart attack at only 58 years old in 2011.

3. The Edge

Born David Evans in England, in 1961, The Edge moved to Dublin one year later and is included in this overview as an honorary Irishman, given his contribution to Irish music alongside his bandmates in U2, all of whom he met at school in 1976.

Stylistically, The Edge is poles apart from the raw, bare-knuckled blues approach of Gallagher and Moore, instead opting to explore and exploit the world of signal processing to the max. His ingeniously creative use of delay pedals in particular, marked him out as a unique sonic stylist, all the more unusual given that U2 were coming from much the same creative hotbed as the Irish punk movement.

Near contemporaries of The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers and The Boomtown Rats, U2 eschewed their ragged, aggressive vibe for a more mainstream approach that rapidly saw them blast through the restraints and limitations of the new wave audience to become global, stadium-filling superstars, and the biggest Irish band of all time.

Stylistically, the Edge utilizes a technically simple and direct approach, using minimal voicings, harmonics and droning open strings to leave room in the aural spectrum for his chained signal processors to work their magic.

One of those guitarists whose entire modus operandum is to serve the song, The Edge never wastes a note – everything he plays is delivered with precision and deft economy. The influence of those who inspired him, guitarists on the artier side of the new wave movement such as Tom Verlaine and John McGeogh is apparent – less so that of fellow countryman Rory Gallagher, for whom the Edge has often stated his admiration.

4. Vivian Campbell

Vivian Campbell has been a member of Def Leppard for over 30 years now, but prior to that he built a name as a guitarist to watch out for in his band Sweet Savage from 1979 to 1983, parlaying that rising profile into the opportunity to carve out a stellar rep as the new shredder on the block, thanks to his work in Dio.

Citing the twin giants of Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore as primary influences, alongside the likes of Marc Bolan and Mick Ronson, Campbell’s work with Dio seemed to be informed more by the era of excess and virtuosity that was the signature of the ‘80s hair metal age.

Joining Dio in 1983, Campbell recorded three albums before jumping ship under an acrimonious cloud. Campbell has often aired his dissatisfaction with his time in Dio, though according to Campbell, that was more about business decisions than musical differences.

“I was forced into signing over publishing rights when I first joined, so I never saw any of that money. I did get my dues for Last In Line (1984) though, as I had signed a separate publishing deal by then. I enjoyed the musical side of things, though at times I’d be a little jealous of the likes of Van Halen and Ratt, who always looked like they were having fun – everything in Dio was just way too serious.”

After Dio, Campbell spent a year with Whitesnake before parting due to the time honored ‘musical differences.’ Campbell spent a few years working with other artists and had started to enjoy some success with his band, Riverdogs, when the opportunity to join Leppard arose in 1992, due to the untimely death of Steve Clark the year before.

For Campbell, this was everything he was looking for in a band. “It was amazing to be in a band with a bunch of guys I really liked, playing these fantastic, anthemic rockers and actually getting paid properly.”

5. Bernie Tormé

Inspired by Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore (sound familiar?) plus the classic rock stylings of Hendrix and Beck, Bernie Tormé spent his early years gaining valuable experience in a number of minor bands in Ireland before following the well-trodden path across the Irish sea, as had his heroes before him, to London.

Arriving in England in 1974, it took a couple of years for Tormé to find his feet before forming The Bernie Tormé Band. With the punk explosion in full flight, Tormé adapted to the prevailing trend, aligning his band with the new wave acts of the era.

In truth, they always seemed an unlikely fit for the scene, and Tormé’s next move, joining former Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan’s band, Gillan, in 1979, seemed like a far happier alliance. Gillan was riding high at that time, enjoying a string of hit singles and albums.

Tormé’s playing was strongly to the fore, demonstrating killer chops, matched to a flamboyant visual style which saw him become a key figure on the UK rock scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. If proof were needed of Tormé’s rising stock, shortly after departing Gillan (citing frustration with financial arrangements), he spent a short period of time as Randy Rhoads’ replacement with Ozzy, completing a run of tour dates.

After a few months with Osbourne, Tormé went on to form various solo bands, most notably, Tormé, featuring L.A. Guns’ singer, Phil Lewis, on vocals. Sadly, his career seemed to be on a downward trajectory for the latter period of his life, for reasons that seem hard to fathom, as he clearly had the chops to fill the guitar seat in any band of the day.

Like so many of the entrants on this list, he passed away before his time in 2019, at 66, after a bout of illness.

6. Eric Bell

Eric Bell grew up in the same scene as Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore – no surprise there – and was actually a member of Van Morrison’s band, Them, for a short period in 1966. Bell formed Thin Lizzy with Phil Lynott in 1969 – though the band had to move to London to get a deal with Decca Records at the start of the ’70s.

They became a huge live draw, released three albums and a string of Lizzy classic singles, including The Rocker which was co-written by Bell, and, of course, their take on the traditional Irish song, Whisky In The Jar, of which they took ownership, due to Bell’s work on the intro and the solos.

According to Bell, it took countless hours and approaches before he finally settled on what to play for the distinctive introduction. Bell was forced to leave Lizzy in 1973, due to frustrations with his reliability. According to Bell, the pressure of the workload the band was enduring, and the variety of temptations that life in a successful rock band offered, were too much to cope with.

He maintained a low profile for many decades but did release The Acoustic Sessions, an acoustic reworking of early Thin Lizzy music, retaining Phil Lynott’s vocals, in 2024.

7. Kevin Shields

Kevin Shields’ work with My Bloody Valentine, who formed in 1983, releasing their first EP, Geek!, in 1985, saw him explore a strongly avant-garde, explorative approach to the guitar. His use of radically altered tunings and extreme sonic processing, torturing his Jazzmaster through endless chains of stompboxes, saw him carve out his own niche in the world of alt-guitar heroes.

His unique right hand technique, using the long whammy bar on the Jazzmaster to subtly manipulate his strumming, causing the pitch of his chords to constantly shift, only added to the disorienting wall of sound that he created.

In contrast, the vocal melodies that rode above Shield’s massed banks of delay and distortion were conventionally melodic enough to score the band prolonged success.

8/9. Carlos O’Connell & Conor Curley

The forerunners of the current crop of Irish bands, Fontaines D.C., features the twin guitar tag team of Carlos O’Connell and Conor Curley. Ironically, vocalist Grian Chatten is also a skilled guitarist.

Though Chatten doesn’t play much guitar live, he actually contributed the best solo on the band’s last album, Romance, (2024) as O’Connell recalls, “Conor and I were wondering what to do for Death Kink when Grian said he had an idea, and he fucking nailed it in one take.”

O’Connell and Curley favor textured, layered interweaving guitar lines in place of obvious guitar heroics, but their love of the traditional tools of the trade is obvious from the breadth of warm tones they deliver. Amongst O’Connell’s go-to guitars is a signature Rory Gallagher Strat.

“I wasn’t a fan of Rory when I bought the guitar – I didn’t really listen to much blues – I just thought it looked cool. Since then I checked him out and I can see he was a genius.”

10. Josh Jenkinson

Inhaler, like Fontaines D.C., are forerunners of the new generation of Irish rock bands, enjoying huge commercial success with their indie/pop flavored rock with a hint of classic U2, perhaps unsurprisingly, as vocalist Eli Hewson is Bono’s son.

Josh Jenkinson favors a textured, arpeggio-driven approach to his guitar lines, prioritizing taut, economical hooks over showboating. Jenkinson took inspiration from one of Irish rock’s immortal figures, Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott.

“Just to see someone there who was mixed race, like me, was inspirational in itself. It helped give me the belief that I could achieve something in music.”

11. Dom Martin

Amongst the new era of Irish blues guitarists, Dom Martin has marked himself out as the one most likely to assume the mantle of Rory Gallagher. A fantastically adept acoustic and electric stylist, Martin is quick to acknowledge the giant footsteps he’s following in.

“My main influence would be Rory Gallagher. Unfortunately, I was only 4 years old when he passed but his music and the way in which he played left a lifelong impression on me. I spent all my young years in my bedroom listening and playing along to his records.

“He definitely played from the heart and soul and that’s all that really matters when it comes to self-expression. I have been decorating my silence with Rory for as long as I can remember, and I owe him a lot.”

12. Simon McBride

Simon McBride took on the unenviable task of following the legacies of Ritchie Blackmore and Steve Morse as the latest guitarist in all-time rock legends, Deep Purple, becoming a full-time member in 2022. He has a connection with fellow Irishman, Viv Campbell, as he was a member of the reformed line-up of Sweet Savage, Campbell’s first band of note.

McBride caused heads to turn when he won Guitarist magazine’s Young Guitarist of The Year competition in 1993 at the age of 15.

As you would expect, given his achievements at such a young age, McBride has chops to spare, not only can he replicate the classic solos of the band’s history, but he also carves out his own unique signature statements on the band’s newer material. He also continues to front his own band between Purple commitments.

13. Muireann Bradley

Muireann Bradley came to prominence in the UK in 2021, at 15 years old, having posted videos on YouTube, showcasing her ability to recreate, to the finest detail, the work of the great American acoustic blues stylists of the early 20th century.

On top of her fantastic technical ability, she possesses a convincing, warm vocal tone that saw her achieve exposure on UK TV and become a surprise entrant on the British album charts with I Kept These Old Blues in 2023 – achieving an unlikely success in the era of homogenized, digitized and processed artificial pseudo music.

She is planning to play shows in America later this year, hoping to build on her European success.

14. Jake Burns

Jake Burns continues to front Stiff Little Fingers, who emerged from the hotbed of dynamism that was the Irish punk scene in 1977/78. Unafraid to touch on raw subject matter at a time when there was tremendous religious conflict in Northern Ireland, their song titles spoke volumes – Wasted Life, Suspect Device and Alternative Ulster, which featured one of the most iconic guitar intros in punk history.

Burns brought as much fire to his playing as to his excoriating vocals. His primary influence is a familiar name on this list. “I saw Taste on TV when I was 11 – this noise just transfixed me. I decided there and then that I wanted to be Rory Gallagher.”

15. Damian O’Neill

The Undertones emerged from the same scene in Northern Ireland as Stiff Little Fingers, bringing a keen pop sensibility to their take on the prevailing punk winds. Damian O’Neill’s simple, effective guitar breaks are an integral part of the band’s songs, never more than on their seminal hit of 1978, Teenage Kicks.

One of O’Neill’s primary influences is the work of Billy Harrison, the lead guitarist in Them.

“Just listen to his slick, choppy and jagged blues licks on Baby Please Don’t Go, his strange and unnerving slide guitar playing on One, Two, Brown Eyes and his simple, but oh so effective solo on the anthemic Gloria, and you can see why his playing made such an impression on a 15-year-old novice guitarist such as myself. It sounds like Billy was improvising as the tape was rolling and the feel and attitude in his playing is so exciting.”

16. Billy Harrison

Billy Harrison was a member of Them – Ireland’s answer to the Rolling Stones in the mid-’60’s UK R’n’B explosion, which saw the Chess songbook liberally raided by beat combos across the UK.

Fronted by Van Morrison, besides the usual covers, Them had a couple of aces up their sleeves in Here Comes The Night and Gloria – two proto-punk/garage classics.

Harrison is often overlooked in the annals of Irish music, but he contributed some of the most interesting guitar work at a time when many of his contemporaries were happy to endlessly recycle Chuck Berry licks.

17. Andy Cairns 

Andy Cairns is the singer and guitarist in Therapy?, who combine classic rock sensibilities with an ear for a commercial tune mixed with a dash of post-punk urgency to create a unique sound, described by Andy Cairns as ‘The Undertones meets Metallica.’

Troublegum (1994), and Infernal Love (1995), saw the band score big around the world, although America remained resistant to their charms.

Influenced by the bands of the punk explosion, particularly The Clash and the Buzzcocks, as well as Irish punk legends Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones, Cairns’ playing remains laser-focused on taking the band’s anthemic rockers to another level - rarely indulging in the standard pyrotechnics of the rock arena.

18. Henry McCullough

Henry McCullough cut his teeth in Eire Apparent, moving to London in 1967 and sharing a manager with a certain Jimi Hendrix, namely Chas Chandler. By 1970, he’d become a member of Joe Cocker’s Grease Band, played on a Spooky Tooth album, The Last Puff, and had appeared at Woodstock with Cocker.

Moving onwards and upwards, he spent eighteen months in Wings, hooking up with them in 1972. Although he played on Red Rose Speedway and a bunch of singles, differences with Paul McCartney saw him leave in 1973, just before they recorded Band On The Run. McCullough’s career seemed to go into freefall after that, with only intermittent session work keeping things going up to the end of the ‘70s.

Perhaps the most surprising move in his career was when he substituted for the recently departed Wilko Johnson at a handful of Dr Feelgood shows in 1977 – a highly unlikely combination. McCullough died in 2016 after a period of illness.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

On album number four, Empty Chairs, Canadian singer and guitarist Spencer Mackenzie is dialling up the intensity and embracing more of an up-tempo, darker shade of blue.

But there’s still plenty of soul encased within the new music, which sees him experimenting with dynamic nuances and sounding more sonically versatile than ever.

And then there’s his rousing cover of Rory Gallagher’s Don’t Know Where I’m Going, transforming a lesser-known 1971 acoustic cut by the Irish great into a big-band extravaganza.

That’s Progress

Now in his mid-20s, Spencer is starting to branch out from the classic blues that made him fall in love with music in the first place.

“The thing that’s cool about this album is that there are chord progressions I’ve never used before, including some chromatic movements and ideas that stem from outside of the blues,” he explains.

“I grew up listening to the greats like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King, but this album is more of a hybrid between blues and rock. The songs are a bit grittier and more in-your-face, which resulted in more energetic guitar playing.

“One thing I’ve learned recently is the amount of subtlety between big solos and shorter verse leads. Don’t use the ginormous lead sound one minute into the song. It’s better to go with a light boost and save the bigger tones for later.”

Embrace The New

Modern players like Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark Jr. and Marcus King have also shown Spencer how the blues has evolved with the times.

“What I love about Gary in particular is how he brings traditional playing into the modern age,” says Spencer. “I love the amount of freedom in his solos, he just goes off because his leads are open-ended. Leads should also be intentional, otherwise people can get bored.

“One of my favourites is Derek Trucks’ solo on Midnight In Harlem from the first Tedeschi Trucks Band live album [Everybody’s Talkin’, 2012]. It goes on for quite a while, but every second counts. It would be easy for a player to get lost in a situation like that, but Derek never has that problem.”

Electric Upgrade

There are many Rory Gallagher songs Spencer could have covered, but he ended up choosing Don’t Know Where I’m Going because of its relative obscurity.

“I didn’t know much about Rory until I went to music college,” he says. “I just fell in love with his style right away, especially as I grew up as a Strat guy.

“I chose this song because it’s an acoustic thumb and plucking thing from his second album [Deuce, 1971] that isn’t as well known as classics like Bad Penny or I Fall Apart. I love how stripped-down it is – there’s almost this old-timey Robert Johnson feel. Then I chose to turn the song on its head and record an electric version with more intensity and soloing.”

Different Shades of Blue

This latest release also sees Spencer switching from his ES-335 to a Les Paul.

“I didn’t want to take my 335 on a plane,” he says, explaining how he “needed something with humbuckers” and stumbled upon a secondhand ’60s Standard Iced Tea Burst Les Paul.

“I loved the finish and thinner neck, though it didn’t feel too thin like an SG. It was 12 hours away from where I live, that’s part of the struggle of being left-handed. I brought an amp, played it in a parking lot and brought it home. It ended up becoming my number one because of its versatility.

“The difference from nine to 10 on the volume is huge. I sometimes use that instead of gain-staging pedals. You can control a lot of sound through the guitar, dialling down the lead tone to find the rhythm tone.”

Spencer Mackenzie on how he dials in his sound

Like a lot of blues guitarists, Spencer doesn’t need a great deal in terms of pedals.

“I just want a few that work well with my Vox AC30,” he says. “I use a Boss ES-5 to switch through levels of gain.

“The first patch is just my Fender Engager Boost, the second one is my Analog Man Prince Of Tone, and the third is both of them together. Number four is my Fulltone OCD, and the final setting is the OCD with my Prince of Tone for a rip-your-face-off sound.”

• Empty Chairs is out now via Gypsy Soul.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Rory Gallagher had a lifelong affection for single-pickup student guitars that he often modded with more powerful pickups then played on the major stages of the world. Arguably, this guitar – serial number 60937 – is the most famous guitar of that style in Rory’s collection. Ironically, however, it was found by chance by his brother Donal Gallagher while Rory browsed a nearby guitar store.

“This guitar was found on one of the many trips to LA we made over the years. We were there for just a few hours in the afternoon, and Rory said he wanted to visit a guitar store, I think it was called Valley Sound, and he knew the guy there. So I said, ‘Okay, Rory, let’s go down. But it’s a nightmare parking because there’s only a couple of meters.’

“So I dropped him at the place, and he said, ‘Oh, I think they have something I might want, I won’t be very long,’ and, of course, he walks in the door and I said, ‘Okay, I’ll stay with the car.’

“Going into guitar stores in places like LA, where they knew who Rory was, was always funny because you’d get other guys trying a guitar out and, of course, they’d see him and immediately start a Rory guitar riff at full volume, to show that they knew who he was.

“A lot of the time, my head wouldn’t be in the right space for that, but Rory took it gallantly. Anyway, he was in there and I was outside with the car. You’re not supposed to do it, but I kept feeding quarters into the parking meter, hoping the attendant wouldn’t spot me doing it, but I was getting so bored.”

“But then I realised we were parked outside a pawn shop, and I kind of looked and I thought, ‘Oh, I wonder if they have any spare guitar cases.’ We had this ongoing thing where Rory was picking up loads of guitars, but none of them had decent cases – or sometimes the original cases had been lost or they weren’t up to touring.

“And I thought, ‘Well, I’ll kill five minutes.’ So I went into the store and I said, ‘Would you have any guitar cases?’ and the guy said, ‘Oh, do you not want to buy a guitar?’ and I said, ‘No, no, I haven’t got the money for that.’ I was like, you know, pleading poverty.

“I’d seen one case that looked good, but he said, ‘Oh, well, you’d have to buy this guitar to get the case.’ So I looked at it and it was a Gretsch Corvette. So I said, ‘How much do you want for that, then?’ and he said, ‘Oh, it’s $500.’ But I was seriously focusing on the very good case that it had. So in the end, I got him down to $150.

“I took it out and put it in the boot of the car, fed the meter some more and waited for Rory. Rory eventually came over, all disappointed that he hadn’t found anything, and I said, ‘Well, Rory, look, you’ll probably kill me for this, but I spotted they had a guitar… Actually, the case is probably much better than the guitar is.’

“So he said, ‘What is it?’ and I said, ‘It’s a Gretsch,’ and he said, ‘A Gretsch?’ and I opened the trunk of the car, he looked at it and he just closed it down again and said, ‘Let’s get out of here before they realise what they’ve sold you.’ [laughs]”

The following is an extract from Gallagher's Guitars: The Rory Gallagher Collection, which is available now.

Rory Gallagher's Sunburst Strat has a unique beauty to it and it appeared on many album covers through the years: Deuce (1971), Live in Europe (1972), Against the Grain (1975), Top Priority (1979), Stage Struck (1980), Jinx (1982), and Fresh Evidence (1990). On Against the Grain and Jinx, the Strat appears on its own without its owner, like a metonymy for Rory himself. The link between the two is so strong that on an album cover, the Strat is Rory.

That humanization of the ’61 Sunburst Strat is due mostly to its severe wear and tear. In a very Dorian Gray fashion, the Strat bears the marks of every gig and every recording session Rory ever did. It was the definition of a road warrior instrument before that was even a thing.

Guitars were not supposed to be that well-worn, and before Stevie Ray Vaughan came along in the 1980s, no one had seen another Strat that showed its scars in such an obvious way. Even Fender execs were miffed that their brand was represented by such a worn-out example. In 1979 they gave Rory a brand-new Strat to replace the ’61. Needless to say, that 1979 25th Anniversary model saw little use.

But Rory wasn’t beating up his Strat on purpose. In fact, he was quite distressed when it started coming apart, especially after having spent such an enormous amount of money acquiring it.

After a show at the Marquee Club in London where he was playing with Taste (which would have been in 1967 or 1968), Rory noticed bits of paint coming off as he was cleaning his guitar. As Dónal Gallagher puts it, “He was actually really upset about that. It was losing the paint. It was never intentional. Nor did he take a hammer, chisel, and a saw, as most people used to think. That’s when it really started.”

The guitar had already been through a pretty eventful life. In October 1966 it was stolen along with a Telecaster that Rory had borrowed. He contacted the Irish TV channel RTÉ, which featured the two guitars on a show called Garda Patrol to try to locate them. The publicity probably prevented the thief from selling them, so they were dumped in a ditch, where they remained for a few days before being retrieved.

In the meantime, the Strat was subjected to the hardships of the Irish weather, which is probably when the finish started wearing off, and Rory had been away from his instrument for long enough to realize how precious and truly irreplaceable it was to him. As Dónal tells it, “Rory was in mourning for a week.”

But the element that took away most of the paint away from the instrument arguably was Rory himself: his right-hand strumming was aggressive enough that it actually ended up digging a trench above the pickguard (which clearly shows his favorite picking spot), and he also sweated profusely. He had a particularly acidic sweat caused by a rare blood type, which also affected his liver. Plus, he played long concerts on a de facto lifelong never-ending tour.

The website setlist.fm lists 1,900+ shows from 1971 to 1995, an impressive average of more than 68 gigs a year! And that’s not counting the 228 shows with Taste from 1967 to 1970 and recording eleven solo studio albums and two Taste studio albums. That’s a lot of playing – and a lot of sweating.

Apart from regular refrets with standard Fender wire, the neck was temporarily removed to be dried off, replaced in the meantime by a veneer-board neck. Rory’s account of those changes are not so clear, but it seems that the neck was removed a few times over the years.

Rory’s sweat was also a threat to the Strat’s pickups, but details are somewhat hazy since nobody at the time thought of documenting this aspect of the instrument. Rory regularly tried several pickups on his guitars, and since the Strat was his main instrument, it saw several pickup swaps over the years out of necessity and curiosity.

The first known change happened in 1975, when the bridge and neck pickups stopped working at the same time and had to be replaced, presumably with stock Fender pickups of the era, leaving only the original middle pickup.

From 1982 to 1984, the bridge pickup had a black cover, but there’s no definitive theory on what that black pickup was. Rory went back to a white cover, but there’s no saying how many times the pickups were fixed, rewound, or replaced over the course of the Strat’s life.

The pickups were examined after Rory’s passing, and the final version of the Strat was documented with two Fender pickups in the middle and neck positions (apparently from the 1970s) and an early DiMarzio FS-1 in the bridge position.

It makes sense that, as a relentless tinkerer, Rory would be interested in what Larry DiMarzio was doing, as he was one of the original replacement pickup makers. FS stands for “Fat Strat,” which is pretty self-explanatory. That pickup, released in 1974, has a slightly higher output than a regular Fender pickup and more present lows, which would have been a perfect match for Rory’s harder-edged music by the end of the 1970s.

As on most Strats of the era, the wiring was “corrected” to include a five-way switch instead of the original three-way, and the middle-pickup Tone knob was turned into a master Tone, leaving the neck-pickup Tone knob unused.

Finally, the Strat is also easily recognizable by its headstock only. The Fender logo has all but faded away, there’s an extra string tree on the D and G strings that seems to have been installed in 1974 (the original remains on the B and high E), and the tuners were changed, probably in 1975.

Rory might have been trying to get his Strat to remain in tune for a little longer, and he went for the German brand Schaller. The change wasn’t convincing to him, so he changed again, this time to the American brand Sperzel. Those Sperzels are vintage models with a split shaft.

At some point, the low-E tuner broke and was replaced with a Gotoh tuner that remains today. The five-Sperzels-and-a-Gotoh look remains iconic and perfectly symbolizes Rory’s pragmatic and functional approach – so much so that it was even replicated on the Fender Custom Shop version of the guitar.

First-Hand Experience

All these details have made this guitar a true relic in the original religious sense of the term: it is a part of Rory himself, a receptacle for his musical mojo and a dear friend that spent more time with him than most people.

Being in the same room as the guitar, especially being able to observe it up close, is incredibly special. It’s not unlike seeing the Mona Lisa in the Louvre: it’s so ubiquitous and it has been represented and replicated so many times that finally getting to experience it in person is a little disappointing at first. Just as the painting is smaller than expected, the guitar is only a great vintage Strat. It takes a few seconds to truly get into the spirit of the object and fully connect with it, to allow yourself to be moved by its presence and aura.

Every detail tells a story, from the holes left by the replaced tuners on the back of the head (next to a missing chunk of wood that begs for an explanation) to the screwdriver spots left around the screws from removing the neck so many times. The serial number is 64351, and the lower twelfth fret dot is pearloid instead of the period-correct “clay.”

Fender began using pearloid in 1964, so this is another later workaround. But most impressive are the neck, whose back is so dark and dirty it doesn’t look like maple anymore, and of course the body, its grayish hue like driftwood on a windy bay, islands of sunburst lost in a sea of bare wood.

Even the case tells a few stories. It’s a bulky black molded case typical of the late 1970s and 1980s, not original by any stretch of the imagination. Fenders sold in Europe in the 1960s rarely came with the American case since Fender charged a premium for them. Owners usually opted for local ones.

Pieces of tape identify its inhabitant as “Stage Strat,” which is both a beautiful understatement and a perfectly fitting potential nickname, and identify its owner as “R.G.” – which is all you need to know, really. There are also stickers that attest to a few trips – “AER Lingus FRAGILE” and “British Airways FRAGILE” – but it seems like the days of that case flying as check-in baggage are definitely over.

• Gallagher's Guitars: The Rory Gallagher Collection is available now.

Best of 2025: Over the holiday season, GW is shining the spotlight on some of its biggest stories of the year.

Joe Perry and Brad Whitford have recalled the time when Rory Gallagher served as a support for Aerosmith during a festival in the 1970s – and ended up proving such a hit with fans that he stole the band's thunder.

The two Aerosmith icons sat down with Rick Beato for a career-sprawling interview, and a particularly memorable show starring the late Irish guitar hero cropped up during the conversation.

“I don't wanna hear about that,” Perry quips as Whitford begins to spin the tale, which took place when Aerosmith was set to headline the Schaefer Music Festival in 1974 in Central Park.

“It was before we were accepted in New York at all. Rory Gallagher probably had one of the most stunning shows of his entire career,” Whitford recalls. Perry puts it more bluntly: “He kicked our ass. We headlined. He went on first, and he kicked our ass.”

“He went off stage, they made him come out for an encore,” Whitford continues. “He did this encore. Went off. They made him come out again. Another encore. They wouldn't stop. He came out for three encores. Oh my god.

“And then we got on the stage, and I just remember watching people walk away before we even started playing.”

That sinking feeling must have been horrific. The band were on the upswing at that point. Their third album, Toys in the Attic, had saved the band from getting axed by their label and reversed the fortunes of their career. But Gallagher was an unstoppable force that day.

“It was like the show's over, and who are these guys? They didn't care,” Whitford adds. “I swear, it had to be one of his best concerts.”

That Gallagher made such an impression shouldn't come as a surprise. The late Irish guitar great is widely considered to be one of the most influential blues-rock guitar players of all time and a true guitar one-off who inspired the likes of Brian May and Jimi Hendrix.

In fact, it's oft-reported that Hendrix was once asked how it felt to be the greatest guitar player in the world, to which supposedly responded: “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Rory Gallagher.”

Gallagher was revered for his distinct blues-rock style and famed for his heavily relic'd 1961 Stratocaster – believed to be the first to reach Irish soil – which sold at auction for almost $1,000,000 last year.

One of Fender Custom Shop’s leading Masterbuilders has shared his theory as to why some of the most legendary Fender guitars of all time are so heavily worn.

In guitardom, there are few sights more iconic than a battered and bruised Fender. Rory Gallagher’s legendary 1961 Stratocaster – which sold earlier this year for more than $1,000,000 – was stripped bare through wear. Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Number One was equally relic’d. Mike McCready’s Strat can also be added to that list.

There have been a few theories as to why these guitars ended up so heavily weathered, from natural wear and tear caused by spiky jewellery and belt buckles, all the way to the acidity of a player’s sweat.

Custom Shop Masterbuilder Dale Wilson – who’s mastered the art of artificial aging through his relic builds – has a different theory, though, and it doesn’t have anything to do with acidic sweat. But it does involve sweat in general.

“I have a theory. People always say Rory Gallagher had an acidic sweat, right? Or Steve Ray Vaughan. [But] this is what I think,” he says in a new interview with The Music Zoo.

“It's probably wrong but I think they put their guitars in the cases wet, and then they closed the cases and went to the next show. Then it just stewed in that wetness, in that sweat – because they both perspired quite a bit – until the next gig.

“I mean, Mike Campbell's guitar. You've seen the fretboard on that. It just is globbed with [dirt], and he doesn't want that cleaned off. I think it’s the same with heavy touring musicians that are just going from one place to another.

“They put it away wet. So it's not necessarily buckle rash or them hitting it on something – which it is, of course – but on top of that, it's just the paint getting loosened over time, sitting in a case.”

Andy Hicks – another legend of the Fender Custom Shop – agreed with Wilson’s theory, pointing out that vintage guitars are especially susceptible to such aging.

“The sweat gets through the natural checking,” he adds. “We’re talking about vintage guitars, so it’s lacquer paint. It checks, the sweat seeps in through that, and then kind of festers underneath.

“It’s not that your belt is a particularly spiky belt, it’s just more abrasive than jeans or whatever. And the paint is now hanging on for dear life because it’s had this water underneath the finish. Something like that is just going to take it off.”

“And if you like at some of the checking, there’s the bleed through,” Wilson agrees. “It almost looks like there’s oil in the checking running under the finish. I think that’s exactly what it is.”

Mystery solved? Well, Hicks and Wilson are leading experts when it comes to all things Fender, so they might have just hit the nail on the head.

Though Hicks is known for ultra-relic’d builds, he also has a few more out-there Fenders in his portfolio. Last month, he unveiled his latest Custom Shop design: a Godzilla Stratocaster with a built-in Roar button.

Joe Perry and Brad Whitford have recalled the time when Rory Gallagher served as a support for Aerosmith during a festival in the 1970s – and ended up proving such a hit with fans that he stole the band's thunder.

The two Aerosmith icons recently sat down with Rick Beato for a career-sprawling interview, and a particularly memorable show starring the late Irish guitar hero cropped up during the conversation.

“I don't wanna hear about that,” Perry quips as Whitford begins to spin the tale, which took place when Aerosmith was set to headline the Schaefer Music Festival in 1974 in Central Park.

“It was before we were accepted in New York at all. Rory Gallagher probably had one of the most stunning shows of his entire career,” Whitford recalls. Perry puts it more bluntly: “He kicked our ass. We headlined. He went on first, and he kicked our ass.”

“He went off stage, they made him come out for an encore,” Whitford continues. “He did this encore. Went off. They made him come out again. Another encore. They wouldn't stop. He came out for three encores. Oh my god.

“And then we got on the stage, and I just remember watching people walk away before we even started playing.”

That sinking feeling must have been horrific. The band were on the upswing at that point. Their third album, Toys in the Attic, had saved the band from getting axed by their label and reversed the fortunes of their career. But Gallagher was an unstoppable force that day.

“It was like the show's over, and who are these guys? They didn't care,” Whitford adds. “I swear, it had to be one of his best concerts.”

That Gallagher made such an impression shouldn't come as a surprise. The late Irish guitar great is widely considered to be one of the most influential blues-rock guitar players of all time and a true guitar one-off who inspired the likes of Brian May and Jimi Hendrix.

In fact, it's oft-reported that Hendrix was once asked how it felt to be the greatest guitar player in the world, to which supposedly responded: “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Rory Gallagher.”

Gallagher was revered for his distinct blues-rock style and famed for his heavily relic'd 1961 Stratocaster – believed to be the first to reach Irish soil – which sold at auction for almost $1,000,000 last year.

He was also a hero of Joe Bonamassa, who spoke at length about the influence that Gallagher had on the guitar scene – before embarking on a run of Rory Gallagher tribute concerts earlier this year.

With Aerosmith’s gigging days now behind them – although Perry reveals there has been talk of at least one more show – the pair are about to head out on the road as The Joe Perry Project.

Meanwhile, Perry has spoken about his new favorite piece of gear. He’s also revealed that he planned to take Jeff Beck's Strat on tour with Aerosmith, but found it wasn't half as good in his hands.

Marcus King has taken to the stage with yet another legendary electric guitar, using Rory Gallagher’s famed white Fender Telecaster to play a handful of songs at one of his recent shows.

King is certainly no stranger to playing hallowed six-strings steeped in rock ‘n’ roll history. Recently, he became the latest big-name player to wield Jeff Beck’s iconic YardBurst Les Paul, which had already passed through the hands of Lenny Kravitz’s guitarist, Craig Ross.

That guitar – like the Gallagher Telecaster that recently saw action – is currently in hands of French vintage guitar dealer Matthieu Lucas of Matt's Guitar Shop, and now he and King have worked together once again to bring the fabled single-cut out of its case and onto the stage.

Like many of Gallagher’s guitars, the white Telecaster was auctioned off earlier this year alongside the late blues rock great’s 1961 Stratocaster. It was one of Gallagher’s most cherished instruments, and eventually became his number-one slide guitar, famously starring during Gallagher’s 1970 Isle of Wight festival set.

When it went under the hammer, the guitar was snapped up by Lucas, who has now told Guitar World the story of how it ended up in the arms of King – who used it during a show in Belgium on July 10.

“We bought the Black Esquire and sold it to my friend JR in Argentina,” Lucas remembers, relaying how he once owned Gallagher’s other, equally iconic single-cut. “The White Telecaster was a dream guitar to get for the shop.

“When you look at that guitar, you think about Rory's first band Taste, most notably at Isle of Wight and all his career and legacy,” he adds. “The white guitar talked to me more than anything in that auction.”

That he was able to put this Tele in the arms of King was even more special, owing to the fact he believes King to be “the best guitar player of his generation and already one of the best in the world’s history”.

“I just think Rory was one of the best guitar players that ever lived and so is Marcus today,” he gushes. “The feeling of having that legendary guitar being played so beautifully is an incredible sensation.”

King used Gallagher’s white Tele to play a handful of tracks, including Rita is Gone, Homesick, and Save Me. The solo that King puts together for Rita... – with its soaring dynamics and effortless touch – is a particular highlight that stuck out to Lucas.

It also stuck out to King, as Lucas remembers: “He gave the guitar back to me after the set and said, ‘Oh man, it's such a good one.’"

The collaboration continues Lucas’ desire to put iconic instruments into the hands of active musicians, and to prevent fabled guitars from falling out of the public eye and into the obscurity of a storage facility.

“Our philosophy is to have the guitars being played on stage as much as possible,” Lucas tells Guitar World. In an Instagram post, he added, “We don’t believe in locking guitars in glass boxes. We believed in passing the torch. These mythical instruments were meant to be played.”

As such, the Gallagher Telecaster will be spotted out in the wild again soon. Not only that, expect Lucas and King to work together again to bring another famed example from Lucas’ sphere of influence to the stage. As for the guitar dealer himself, he already has his mind set on the next guitar.

“We never know what's next,” he teases. “I know that Marcus' favourite is Paul Kossoff and Eric Clapton's Cream 1955 Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty! We'll see what's next.”

Lucas has a history of facilitating high-profile guitar link-ups. In the past, he’s entrusted Steve Jones’ Sex Pistols Les Paul to Yungblud, Billie Joe Armstrong and Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley.

Joe Bonamassa has wrapped three superlative tribute shows to Rory Gallagher in the late blues guitar player’s hometown, and helped bring the gigs to a close with an emotional encore of As The Crow Flies with Gallagher's own 1932 National resonator guitar.

Bonamassa’s life was changed when his father played him Gallagher’s 1972 live album, Live in Europe. Speaking of the impact of the record with Guitarist, he said, “Here's this guy with long hair, looking like he just came out of an auto factory playing some of the most gutbucket blues and rock you've ever heard.”

As such, Bonamassa called the trio of shows in Cork, Ireland, “the biggest challenge of my musical life,” but he held his own, delivering tracks lifted from Gallagher's stacked repertoire with plenty of personality, while paying tribute to Gallagher’s signature, brazen blues rock style.

There was hope that Gallagher’s legendary relic’d Strat might make an appearance following its donation to the National Museum of Ireland, but while that didn’t materialize, Gallagher’s 1932 National Triolian did play a starring role.

The guitar, which is fast approaching its 100th birthday, was used on Gallagher's famed 1974 live album, Irish Tour, adding a metallic and soulful voice to his take on Tony Joe White's As The Crow Flies. Bonamassa continued that heritage in Ireland, showing off some exemplary slide guitar work in the process.

The guitar was originally bought from a travelling guitar salesman in Denver for just £100. It was donated to a Cork museum that honors Gallagher's cultural impact in the wake of last year's epic Rory Gallagher guitar auction. The money raised from a GoFundMe campaign was used to buy the instrument, which was kindly donated to Bonamassa for the three special shows.

Speaking of the guitar, Donal Gallagher, Rory's brother and former manager, previously said, “The National is really good, though, even for a beginner to pick it up and play it, it almost plays you.

“I can tell you, it brings power to your hands, you move from that neck to the Strat, and it’s like running your hand across a jelly. Rory didn’t have a pickup on the guitar, he just played it into the mic and let it carry.”

Though with that setup came a big issue: its sounds were often drowned out by loud venues and enthusiastic crowds. As such, the guitar was eventually superseded by a pickup-loaded National Resolectric by 1991, Gallagher having jumped a year-long waiting list for the model given his star appeal. But it’s this gorgeous vintage relic that he is most associated with, and Bonamassa makes it sing.

For the shows, Bonamassa had first launched into Cradle Rock and, appropriately, stuck to Fender Stratocasters for the show as he made his way through other Gallagher classics such as Tattoo'd Lady and Calling Card.

Gallagher's long-time right-hand man, Gerry McAvoy, also featured for two takes on famed Gallagher covers, the pair teaming up on William Harris' Bullfrog Blues and Roy Head & the Traits’ Treat Her Right.

“Going all the way back to 1970, he's played more gigs than we could ever imagine, he's one of the OGs,” Bonamassa had said of McAvoy before welcoming him to the stage.

Across the three nights, Bonamassa also used Gallagher’s famed Number 1 Range Master 1 treble booster – a piece of gear that hugely shaped Brian May’s tone – which had been left out of the gear auction last year.

After the final cheers rang out, Bonamassa was left to look back on the trio of shows.

“There are so many emotions running through my head right now,” he wrote on Instagram. “The one that is on the top of my mind is gratitude. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity and to have conquered my own self-doubt in accepting this incredible honor and responsibility.

“I hope we all did Rory right and played these shows in his spirit. I hope he would have been proud to see the love from his hometown carrying his legacy on. An honor of a lifetime for that I will never forget. Still processing it all, and it might take a while.”

Joe Bonamassa has repeated history by buying a sunburst Fender Stratocaster from Crowley’s Music Store – the guitar gear retailer that famously sold Rory Gallagher his now-legendary 1961 Strat back in 1963.

Gallagher originally bought his 1961 Sunburst Strat from the same store in Cork, Ireland, for £100 in 1963. At the time, the blues rock ace may have been unaware of the things he would achieve with the instrument, but it quickly became his go-to guitar.

Fast forward a few years and the Strat’s finish had almost completely worn away owing to the sheer amount of action it saw in the hands of Gallagher, with the guitar itself becoming synonymous with the legendary blues rock virtuoso.

As last year’s auction drama proved – when petitions and politicians moved to keep it in Gallagher’s home country – it stands as one of the most recognisable electric guitars in rock history. In Cork, especially, the sentimentality around the instrument is massive.

Indeed, it was Sheena Crowley, the daughter of the man who sold Gallagher the Strat all those years ago, who launched the petition. She aimed to raise $1 million to buy the guitar and have it as a centerpiece at a new museum in the town. Bonamassa himself was a keen supporter of the campaign, pledging a chunk of cash for the cause.

The guitar was a history-maker before it even reached Gallagher’s fingertips. It was the first Fender Stratocaster to ever reach Irish shores, but quickly ended up for re-sale after the original purchaser had accidentally ordered the wrong color. Gallagher, via a finance deal, was quick to capitalize on that other player’s error. Until he died in 1995, the guitar never left his side.

Now, on the eve of three tribute shows in the town where Gallagher first started making his name, Bonamassa headed to Crowley’s to pickup a sunburst Stat of his own, from Sheena Crowley no less.

“I've always wanted to buy a sunburst Fender Stratocaster from Crowley’s Music Centre in Cork,” he says via Instagram. “Today I did. Big thanks to Sheena and all the great folks I met today.”

Bonamassa, a blues rock icon with a similarly weighty reputation, says the upcoming Gallagher tribute shows, where he will tip his hat and crank his Dumble amp to his earliest guitar hero, represent “the biggest challenge of my musical life.”

He’s already been gifted Gallagher’s Number 1 Range Master treble booster, a quintessential part of his sound, after the pedal bypassed October’s auction – and this new Crowley Strat, which we imagine will see some action during the shows, will make a fine addition to his collection.

And while Gallagher’s Strat sold for a sizable $1.16 million and was donated to the National Museum of Ireland, Sheena Crowley’s campaign raised over €75,000 (approx $86,400) that was spent at the same auction.

Speaking to Cork Independent, she revealed that several other lots from the sale of Gallagher’s gear, which included guitars, amplifiers, and pedals, have been bought and are now on display at a new permanent exhibition in Collins Barracks in Cork.

Joe Bonamassa’s latest cash splashing comes just weeks after he announced the acquisition of his ninth Dumble.

Eddie Van Halen is the guitarist most people think of when the word ‘Frankenstein’ is uttered in guitar circles, but Rory Gallagher had one of his own, and it’s just sold at auction for $50K.

A Dave Edwards custom-made Strat, it served as Rory Gallagher's number two guitar in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when his main squeeze, his timeless and time-worn 1961 Strat, started playing up, or simply needed a rest – and now it’s made quite the journey to the auction block.

As per the Irish bluesman's website, the guitar was his personal Frankie because it became the testing ground for new pickups and wiring setups, ensuring his beloved was saved from the scalpel until completely necessary.

“Around 1979 Rory’s main Strat was playing up,” the website reads. “He put a new neck on the guitar for a few years to let the original one dry out. So when the Strat was not working right during a show Rory would pick up this Dave Edwards Strat or his Fender Musicmaster.”

Featuring a natural finish double-cut ash body, maple neck, and Indian rosewood fingerboard, it has the serial number 015 on its neck plate and comes loaded with two DiMarzio pickups and Kluson Deluxe tuners.

At one point, however, it left Rory's ownership, and another Irish music heavyweight, U2, took it under their wing. In 2019, the guitar was later gifted to long-time crew member Sam O'Sullivan for his 60th birthday, in recognition of his hard work on the road.

Its history likely played a role in it selling for more than 10 times the typical price of a high-end Strat. According to Bonhams, who oversaw the guitar's sale, it bears signs of heavy usage with the back of the body and the frets most obviously affected.

It was sold as it was presented to Sullivan by U2 and also includes a letter from Rory's nephew, Daniel Gallagher explaining how and when Rory used the guitar on stage.

Sullivan reportedly worked with U2 for 40 years, embarking on his first tour in light of the release of their debut album, Boy. Alongside fellow Cork-based colleague Joe O'Herlihy, who was Gallagher's sound tech in the '70s, the crew earned the nickname ‘The Cork Mafia’.

For more information on the guitar, head to Bonhams.

Last month, we started looking into the playing style of the legendary Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher, who is without doubt one of my all-time favorite players.

Rory always played with a fiery intensity and communicated great emotional depth in every performance. He was also a brilliant slide player, which is the focus of this month’s column.

When playing slide, Rory often tuned to an open tuning, such an open A, G, E, or D. For this month’s examples, my guitar is in open A tuning. With my low E, high E and A strings tuned normally, I tuned my D, G and B strings up a whole step, to E, A and C, respectively.

Who’s That Coming is a great example of Rory’s prowess as a slide player. Figure 1 presents a slide lick played in his style on this track.

Picking the strings with my bare fingers and wearing a metal slide on my fret-hand ring finger, I begin by sliding up to the 3rd fret on the 2nd string to sound E, followed by G at the 3rd fret on the 1st string, describing an A7 sound.

I then slide back down the 2nd string from E to D, followed by a slide up to C on the 3rd string’s 3rd fret, and then pull-off to the open string, sounding an A root note. At the end of the bar, I add a low A note on the open 5th string for punctuation and to bring some low end into the lick.

I play this phrase three times, with slight variations, and follow it in bar 4 with slides into C and D chords. This bar ends with a high A chord, sounded by laying the slide across the strings at the 12th fret.

In Figure 2, the riff is moved up an octave higher, starting on the 15th fret on the top two strings, and the melodic line and phrasing are similar to the initial melody. Notice how cool it sounds to pull off from the 15th fret to the open 1st string. In bars 4 and 5, the C - D - A chordal figure is played twice.

Rory often used open A tuning for his slide playing, sometimes along with a capo, as on Bullfrog Blues. Capoed at the 2nd fret, the open A tuning sounds an open B tuning. Figure 3 illustrates a ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ chordal figure fretted without a slide.

Rory had a great slide vibrato and achieved a very sharp attack by using a pick. I myself usually fingerpick when playing slide, but I’ll use a pick if I want to emulate Rory’s slide attack, as demonstrated in Figure 4.

Bars 1 and 2 are played up in 12th position, followed in bars 3 and 4 with a shift down to “open” position, accentuating the use of open strings. When playing slide, Rory didn’t do much muting with either hand, so you’ll often hear the sound of many strings ringing together.

Like Gary Moore, Rory played and sang with incredible intensity, and within the world of slide guitar, he is one of the greatest ever. Be sure to check out his acoustic slide recordings as well, such as Too Much Alcohol.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
• Breakthrough is out on 18 July and is available to preorder via J&R Recordings.

This column is dedicated to legendary Irish blues-rock guitarist Rory Gallagher, whose last name I recently learned should be pronounced, “Galla-her.” I’ve been saying it wrong for my whole life!

Later this year, on July 1, 2 and 3, I will be playing a three-night tribute to Rory at The Marquee in his hometown of Cork, Ireland. The shows are sanctioned by Peter Aikin, who was Rory’s promoter, as well as Rory’s brother Donal and Donal’s son, Daniel. While I was preparing for these shows, it was politely mentioned to me the proper pronunciation of Rory’s last name.

During rehearsals, the default for the tunes we’d be playing was Rory’s landmark double live album, Irish Tour ’74. The songs we focused on were Bullfrog Blues, Cradle Rock, Who’s That Coming? and a few others.

When I was a kid and first heard Figure 1, which is along the lines of the initial notes of Cradle Rock, the explosive opening track on this seminal album, I was floored!

The intensity of Rory’s guitar playing – the emotion, the sound and his incredible attack – was mind-blowing for me. These riffs are based on the E blues scale (E, G, A, Bb, B, D).

Figure 2 is along the lines of the song’s primary main riff, which moves from single-note phrases, performed with fast hammer/pulls from the open A string to B at the 2nd fret, to accented G5 and A5 chords.

Rory had a great way of choking down on the pick and picking hard, resulting in an array of fantastic sounding pinch harmonics (P.H.).

Figure 3 offers an example of E blues-scale riffs, with each note sounded with an aggressive downstroke in order to accentuate these harmonics.

Rory also possessed a fast and expressive vibrato, as demonstrated in Figure 4. This four-bar phrase is based primarily on the E minor pentatonic scale (E, G, A, B, D) and moves to the E blues scale in bars 3 and 4.

I begin in 8th position, and after the initial whole-step bend and release from A to B at the 10th fret on the B string, I land again on the A and apply heavy vibrato.

I then repeat the bend-and-release and follow it with E, on the G string’s 9th fret, which I again aggressively shake. As I move through the rest of the phrase, I add a similarly heavy vibrato to each held note.

Rory was also an incredible slide player, in a variety of tunings. Cradle Rock is played in standard tuning, and Rory would grab a slide and play blistering solos, which can be heard on every live version of this track.

An added bonus is that Irish Tour ’74 was filmed, so you can watch a lot of performance footage featured on this recording.

Next time, we’ll delve into a deeper examination of Rory’s slide playing. He also has a great acoustic catalog, which included covers of Mississippi John Hurt songs played on a Martin D-28 or a D-35, and Rory’s voice was, of course, phenomenal.

Definitely check out as much of Rory’s music as you can!

Despite their enormous success and equally profound influence on the development of rock, Cream disintegrated barely two years into their existence.

That very success had taken a heavy toll on the trio, which teamed Eric Clapton up with the famously always-at-loggerheads rhythm section of bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker.

Tired, among other things, of being sandwiched in between the volatile personalities of the latter two, Clapton was particularly eager to exit the fold.

“On the last US tour, after a gig in Texas in 1968, Eric came to me and said, ‘I’ve had enough.’ And I said, ‘So have I,’” Baker told Guitar World in 1997. “And that was it. We decided, for different reasons, that it was all over. When Cream died, it died. Short of murder, we couldn’t solve a problem between us.”

Grief, of course, has many stages, and according to Dónal Gallagher, brother of guitar legend Rory Gallagher, Cream's management – when faced with the lucrative band's breakup – definitely went through a pronounced denial stage.

According to Dónal, the band's representatives, aware of Clapton's disillusion, decided to try and nab a replacement: his brother.

Though held in high esteem in guitar circles (An oft-repeated, perhaps apocryphal story goes that Jimi Hendrix was once asked how it felt to be the greatest guitar player in the world, to which he said, “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Rory Gallagher”), Gallagher hadn't followed Clapton's road to commercial triumph. A gig with Cream would certainly have given him a push in that direction.

Nonetheless, the fiercely independent Gallagher had no interest.

“It was very much a management thing – ‘Find somebody to replace Clapton,’” Dónal Gallagher told Guitar World in a 2009 interview. “Rory was known to them, and they got on well. But Rory wouldn't have any of it. He said, ‘Musically, there's no way I'd try and fill somebody else's shoes, especially Eric's.’”

But what of the potential rewards – the fame, the money?

“Yes, it would have been a fast track,” Dónal said. “But he felt that he would never be his own man.”

Though quite a bit of it sadly only came after his untimely death in 1995, Gallagher has now received widespread recognition as one of the great blues-rock guitar heroes of his or any age.

Proof of this newfound recognition could be found last October, when Gallagher's most beloved guitar, a heavily-worn '61 Strat, sold at auction for an incredible $1.16 million.

The sale of the guitar was seen as so significant that it attracted the attention of significant figures in the Irish government, who endorsed a grassroots fundraising effort to keep the guitar in Gallagher's native country.

The guitar was purchased for that princely sum by Live Nation Gaiety Ltd, with the intention of donating it to no less than the National Museum of Ireland.

By now, “Joe Bonamassa buys interesting piece of vintage gear” isn’t exactly breaking news. After all, the bluesman arguably owns the biggest cache of vintage gear gems out there – but his latest acquisition is worthy of the headlines.

His latest coup, unveiled via a fresh Instagram post, has seen him take custody of Rory Gallagher’s Number 1 Rangemaster treble booster. Gifted to him by the late guitarist’s family – who, until last year, had been charged with the safekeeping of his iconic 1961 Strat – Bonamassa says he’s “beyond blown away” by the gesture.

Some of Bonamassa’s buys have come under challenging circumstances – he underwent a tireless 15-year search for Lowell George’s Dumble Super Overdive Special – so it’s nice to hear that this one was more of a saunter in the park.

“There are moments in my life when I need to step back and pinch myself,” Bonamassa reflects in the post. “Tonight before our show @beacontheatre in New York, my friend Daniel Gallagher, with his father Donal's blessing, gifted me Rory's number 1 Rangemaster.”

Ever the eagle-eyed gear boffin, Bonamassa had spotted the booster box went walkabout ahead of the recent mass auction of Gallagher’s gear. His relic’d Fender Stratocaster headlined the collection and faced backlash as a result, but this equally crucial part of the late guitar great’s rig didn’t feature. It turns out the Gallaghers had a different plan for it.

“I had noticed it had gone missing from the auction a few months back, and I am beyond blown away that this is now in my possession,” he continues. “We plugged it in, and it turned that tweed Vibrolux into [Gallagher’s live album] ‘Irish Tour 74’. I am so honored; you will see it onstage again in Cork! Humbled and blessed.”

For the uninitiated, the Rangemaster is a treble booster that, when paired with a Vox AC30 amp, became a crucial part of Gallagher's envy-generating guitar tone. It’s also believed that this is the exact pedal that prompted Brian May to employ the same setup – one he has since become even more synonymous with.

A young May had snuck into London’s famous Marquee Club venue after Gallagher’s show with Taste, where he was able to ask the guitarist how he got his guitar to sound so good.

“He said, ‘Well, it’s easy, I have the AC30 and this little box, and I turn it up and it sings for me,’” May reported. “The next day, I went to a guitar shop and found two secondhand AC30s for £30 each.”

The rest, as they say, is history, as May’s tonal trio of his Red Special guitar – which is in line for a Gibson reissue – a Vox AC30, and a treble booster, has underpinned Queen’s entire discography.

Bonamassa, meanwhile, is set to play a series of special Rory Gallagher tribute shows in Cork, Ireland, this summer. He has called it “the biggest challenge of my musical life”.

Before the blockbuster Gallagher auction, Bonamassa had the chance to play some of his other guitars – a Fender Esquire and his ‘other Strat’ – and expressed his hopes for the future of Gallagher’s beloved gear.

“The worst-case scenario,” he had said, “is if you just hang the guitar on the wall and brag to your rich buddies that you bought it. These things are tools to make music.”

After pledging his support for the 1961 Strat to remain in Ireland after its sale, Bonamssa was front in line to celebrate when, after selling for a staggering $1.16m, it was revealed that it was to be donated to the National Museum of Ireland.

Certain elements of Brian May’s gear are imprinted in the consciousness of guitar players. The Red Special is, of course, as inextricably linked to May as his halo of curls. His devotion to the Vox AC30 comes in at a close second.

Now, more than half a century after the release of Queen's self-titled 1973 debut – and with the recent reissue of the Queen I box set, a reworked version of the album that started it all – May looks back on those early days and tips his cap to the legendary guitarist who converted him into a Vox disciple.

“[The AC30 and Dallas Rangemaster treble booster] was there from the moment I saw Rory Gallagher,” May tells Guitarist. “I managed to stay behind at [legendary London venue] The Marquee when everyone had gone home.

“I asked him, ‘Rory, how do you get that sound?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s easy, I have the AC30 and this little box, and I turn it up and it sings for me.’ The next day, I went to a guitar shop and found two secondhand AC30s for £30 each.

“I found a treble booster. I plugged in with my guitar, turned all the way up and it just melted my stomach. That’s my sound. And it’s different from Rory’s. His is much more bright.”

In an interview for the film What's Going On - Taste Live At The Isle Of Wight [below], May discusses the same meeting – and how he would watch Gallagher and his band Taste on a near weekly basis during the latter’s residency at the London club in the late ’60s.

“We were boys and we hung around and hid when The Marquee was at turning-out time and then we strolled over as if we ought to be there...” remembers May.

“He was incredibly patient. He was packing up his own gear – that’s the kind of man he was... and he had the grace to speak to us. He didn’t go, ‘Get out of here!’”

Later in the Guitarist interview, May reveals that he also experimented with Fender Strats and Gibson Les Pauls during that period – and even recalls one ill-fated gig in which he tried running through a Marshall stack.

“I plugged into a Marshall stack with my guitar and treble booster, turned it all the way up – and it sounded so awful. I could hardly play,” May tells Guitarist.

“I didn’t know what to do. It sounded like an angry wasp. It didn’t have any depth or articulation, I couldn’t play chords. It was a really hard experience for me.”

May notes with good humor that the night’s headliner – Jimi Hendrix – did not suffer from the same issues with the Marshall.

For more from May, plus new interviews with Eric Johnson and Rosanne Cash, pick up issue 521 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

A new statue honoring late electric guitar great Rory Gallagher has been unveiled in his “second home” of Belfast, but it hasn’t gone down particularly well with some of his fans.

Unveiled by Belfast Lord Mayor Micky Muray and designed by Anto Brennan, Jessica Checkley and David O’Brien of the Bronze Art Ireland, the statue immortalizes a particularly famous pose once struck by Gallagher, which can be seen on the cover of a 1972 issue of Melody Maker.

On said cover, Gallagher can be seen with a Fender Telecaster slung around his shoulders, with his arms aloft onstage mid-gig. It is one of Gallagher’s most enduring images and the statue has rather accurately translated it into statue form, but its final appearance has stirred up some discontent among fans.

Taking to social media, many fans critiqued the statue’s choice of guitar, owing to the fact that Gallagher was more commonly associated with a Fender Stratocaster – a 1961 Strat, to be precise, which sold at auction recently for $1.16 million.

However, Gallagher of course did play a range of guitars throughout his career, including the Telecaster that featured on Melody Maker and that was chosen to accompany the statue. Gibson Les Paul Juniors and a Gretsch Corvette were just some of the other guitars Gallagher was partial to using.

“Wrong guitar,” wrote one fan, while another lamented, “Rory owned a Tele. But his… STRAT was his iconic trademark.” “No Strat? Not too clever,” voiced a third.

But criticisms of the new tribute didn’t just stop at the guitar of choice, though, with others slating the appearance of the statue itself for its apparent dissimilarity to Gallagher himself.

To that end, others commenting on the YouTube video of the statue’s unveiling argued it had a “feminine” appearance, with one likening it to “Kim Deal with Bruce Springsteen’s guitar”.

“I don’t know who that is supposed to look like but it ain’t Rory Gallagher!” said another. “Looks more like Madonna,” wrote a third.

Irish musician Thomas Walsh, meanwhile, posted a photo of the statue to Facebook with the caption, “Ireland has unveiled its latest statue celebrating the life and career of one of our most beloved rock icons – KT Tunstall.”

Regardless of the negativity surrounding the unveiling, the statue still hopes to honor Gallagher’s memory in a city that has been so profoundly affected by his influence, and stand as a tribute to his legacy.

“It has been many years in the making, and we are incredibly grateful for the support we've received from fans, fellow musicians, and all those who continue to show their commitment to keeping Rory’s legacy alive,” said Frank Girvan, a member of the Rory Gallagher Statue Project Trust.

“We hope more people will join us in these efforts, as we continue to celebrate the music and spirit of a man who changed so many lives.”

“It’s fitting that the city he loved so much is where his memory will be celebrated for generations to come,” added Donal Gallagher, Rory's brother and former manager.

Gallagher died at the age of 47 in 1995. Belfast City Council’s Planning Committee green-lit development of the statue in 2016.

When Irish blues-rock icon Rory Gallagher’s guitar collection went under the hammer at Bonhams of London on 17 October, all eyes were on the fate of his celebrated ’61 Strat – which sold for £889,400 including premium and, happily, is to return to Ireland to be exhibited at the National Museum of Ireland after being bought by Live Nation Gaiety Ltd.

However, while the spotlight fell squarely on the Strat there were other guitars Rory used to blistering effect that deserve more attention. In the days before the auction, Guitarist was lucky enough to play two of the best: Rory’s two Gibson Les Paul Juniors – built in 1958 and 1959 respectively but separated by different body styles and, in the case of the single-cut Junior, a series of tour-focused mods.

Dynamic Duo

The 1959 single-cut is notable for having what appears to be a gold Leo Quan Badass bridge (or a variation on that theme).

Steve Clarke, who prepared the guitar for auction at Bonhams, had this to say of it: “Those particular bridges, mid-’70s or something, were a nice replacement. They tilted forward a little bit, but they gave you the intonation that Junior-type guitars needed more – especially with the gauge of strings that were coming in.

“What I noticed with the Badass bridge is that when you thread a string through the front of the bridge and it comes out the back, it goes over the back lip of the Badass bridge before it makes contact with the saddles and, because of that, it’s almost like a tune-o-matic bridge and tailpiece all combined.

“There is a difference in the tone compared with just the simple wrapover, which resonates more in your body; I could actually noticeably feel that difference between it and the 1959 double-cut. They’re both completely different. They sound and behave differently because of these slight differences. And, of course, the double-cut will sound different for starters because it’s [made with] less wood.”

While preparing the Juniors for sale, Steve was able to take precise measurements of their relative weights, reporting that the 1958 single-cut weighed 3.5kg (7.76lb), while the 1958 double-cut weighed in, as anticipated, a half-kilo lighter at a very comfortable 3kg (6.74lb).

Steve adds: “Both the ’58 and ’59 have the original pots and wiring. The Sprague bumble bee caps are the paper-in-oil type with the small tube at one end.”

When Guitarist gave both to Barrie Cadogan – whose stellar playing has lit a fire under the music of Little Barrie, The The, Primal Scream and others over the years – to try out, we observed that the double-cut had a lovely woody expressive voice whereas the single-cut had terrific punch and a soul-searing voice that worked perfectly for slide. The latter should be unsurprising given Rory’s virtuosic touch with slide guitar.

Final cut

Rory’s nephew Daniel Gallagher explains that one of Rory’s Juniors was used on the superb tracks Kid Gloves and Walkin’ Wounded from Rory’s final album, Fresh Evidence, though, alas, no record remains of which of the two Juniors made the cut.

Given both their historic connection to Rory and their intrinsic tonefulness as instruments, it’s unsurprising that these classic late-50s Juniors fetched final prices of £21,760 for the ’58 single-cut and £19,200 for the ’59 double-cut.
Guitarist would like to thank the Gallagher family and Bonhams of London for their generous help in producing this feature.

After going under the hammer for a whopping $1.16 million, it has now been revealed that Rory Gallagher's iconic 1961 Fender Stratocaster was purchased by Live Nation Gaiety Ltd, with the intention of donating it to the National Museum of Ireland.

Commenting on the sale and impending donation, Catherine Martin, Ireland's Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport, and Media, told the BBC: “The purchase agreement ensures the famous Strat will now be preserved in the ownership of the state, and made available to view for the public and Rory Gallagher's fans around the world.”

She further commended the “special effort made to ensure the guitar will return to Ireland on a permanent basis.” Plans for the donation will follow the procedure outlined in the discussions between Live Nation, the department, and the museum.

This good news follows nationwide discussions about keeping the guitar in the country as a historical artifact.

It has even been the subject of a grassroots fundraising movement, which gained the support of several Irish government officials as well as Joe Bonamassa, who clarified that he never intended to bid on the prized guitar and that it should indeed remain in Ireland.

In fact, upon hearing the news, the blues heavyweight commented: “The best news I have heard all year. Bless them for keeping this guitar in Ireland. Congratulations to the Gallagher family for such an incredible auction. I know it was a heavy and emotional day.”

Dónal Gallagher, Rory's brother and steward of his guitar collection, said the family has been “overwhelmed by the response to this auction” and the outpouring of love for the guitarist's immense legacy.

“It has been nearly 30 years since my brother's passing, and though it was a difficult decision to part with this collection, I am grateful that these treasured instruments can now tour the globe as Rory did, spreading his music and memory.”

To see the full auction results, visit Bonhams.

Back in July, it was announced that Rory Gallagher's guitar gear would, three decades after the blues-rock titan's untimely passing, go up for auction.

Now, the pearl of the lot, Gallagher's iconic, well-worn 1961 Fender Stratocaster, has sold for a tidy sum of £889,400, which equates to roughly $1.16 million. This makes the Strat – cited by auction house Bonhams as “one of the world’s most recognizable guitars” – one of the most expensive guitars ever sold at auction.

The Strat in question has such significance that significant figures in the Irish government endorsed a grassroots fundraising effort to keep the guitar in Gallagher's native country of Ireland. The initiative also garnered the support of Joe Bonamassa, who recently said in light of it that he would pass on bidding for the guitar.

Though nothing, of course, fetched as much dough as the Strat, the auction featured some other significant sales.

Gallagher's gorgeous '30s-era National Triolian resonator, for one, fetched over £95,000 (~$125,000), while his 1968 Martin D-35 acoustic guitar brought in £102,000 (~$132,000).

His 1963 Gretsch Corvette sold for £25,600 (~$33,000), which isn't too bad considering Gallagher bought it for the princely sum of $150.

One of the quirkiest models in the guitar legend's collection, a 1968 Coral 3S19 Electric Sitar got £11,520 (just under $15,000), while his '61 Kay Value Leader went under the hammer for £14,080. Gallagher's '59 Fender Esquire, which once had the misfortune of being crushed on an airport runway, fetched £95,650 (~$125,000).

Asked by Guitarist in a recent interview why he decided to sell his brother's gear, Donal Gallagher said that there were several factors that went into his decision.

“One, I suppose, is the conveyor belt of life and you have to look at your own situation. Next year it’ll be the 30th anniversary [of Rory’s death], and obviously that puts a lot of things into focus – especially as we’ve been completing a new documentary on Rory ahead of the anniversary.

“When I looked at the instruments [while making the documentary] I couldn’t help thinking, ‘What happens after my demise?,’ for instance,” he continued. “And I suppose being hospitalized myself [Donal underwent successful treatment for cancer not long ago] brought that into sharper focus.

“I knew all the difficulties I faced, holding the collection, which I never get to see anyway. Because you can’t just hang the Strat up over your fireplace, so it’s not an object for the family to enjoy.”

To see the full auction results, visit Bonhams.

Rory Gallagher's 1961 Strat is as distinctive as its player, with its worn, battered, and bruised finish making it one of the most instantly recognizable Fender Strats in the world. Over the years, there was speculation over whether the relic’d finish was intentional. However, Dónal Gallagher, the full-time steward of his brother Rory’s guitar collection, has set the record straight.

In the late 1960s, Gallagher had achieved enough success in Ireland with his blues-rock band, Taste, to springboard from Cork to London. At one of their shows at the famous Marquee Club in London's West End, Gallagher noticed that the paint on his guitar was chipping away.

“He was backstage in the Marquee and he was cleaning off his guitar, and he said, ‘Look!’” Donal recalls.

“And he almost was crying – the paint was starting to come away in chips. And also, they gave you this silicon polish which, I'm sure would do [more] damage than it would [actually prevent something like this from happening] to the guitar,” Dónal Gallagher recalled in a Q&A ahead of Bonhams' Rory Gallagher guitar collection auction.

“But he was actually really upset about that. It was losing the paint. It was never intentional. Nor did he take a hammer, chisel, and a saw, as most people used to think. That's when it really started.”

As demonstrated by the number of guitars featured in this auction, Gallagher was a collector of all kinds of models. However, the Strat's unique look continues to capture fans' imaginations, making it as inextricably linked to Gallagher as his music and playing style.

Since news of its sale broke, this particular guitar has also been at the center of much debate, from a grassroots movement in Ireland raising funds to keep the guitar in the country, to Joe Bonamassa clarifying that he never intended to bid on it, and even to the involvement of Irish government officials.

Following the public discussion, Dónal spoke to Guitarist about why he decided to put this prized guitar up for auction.

For more information about the auction, which takes place on October 17, visit Bonhams.

If there's one word that describes Barrie Cadogan's playing, it's versatile. In addition to leading his own band, Little Barrie, the English guitarist has played with the likes of Primal Scream following Robert Young's departure, stepped into Johnny Marr's shoes in The The, acted as a sideman for The Chemical Brothers, and joined Oasis' Liam Gallagher's touring band, playing alongside John Squire of The Stone Roses.

Cadogan's latest role? Testing out the late Rory Gallagher's guitars before their much-anticipated auction on October 17. The Irish legend's 1963 Gibson Melody Maker is one that particularly attracts Cadogan due to its relative simplicity.

“I suppose it's not as cosmetically luxurious, but I guess that's part of the thing, why this sounds so good,” comments Cadogan.

Gallagher was a big fan of Melody Makers – even though they're largely considered budget guitars due to their stripped-down design and specs – and eventually owned four of them. His 1963 model, equipped with two pickups, four gold reflector control knobs, and a three-way selector, was purchased in London sometime in the ’80s.

“He seemed to get so much out so little, didn't he?” ponders Cadogan. “He probably would have plugged this in, and he could just do the rest, couldn't he? If it was a good sound straight away.

“It was only later on in his career, wasn't it, that his setup got a bit more involved but still not that intricate by today's standards. But through the ’70s stuff, it’s just so, so simple... All those sounds, all those different feelings, were just coming from him.”

Alongside the ’63 model, Cadogan also tests out Gallagher's 1959 and 1958 Gibson Les Paul Juniors, as well as his 1960 Melody Maker – which Gallagher primarily used for slide.

Fontaines D.C. guitarist Carlos O'Connell was also among the lucky few to try out Rory Gallagher's guitars, including his prized 1961 Strat, which recently found itself at the center of controversy.

We recently photographed Rory’s guitars, for perhaps the final time, in the Royal Albert Hall – the scene of some of Rory’s most glorious moments. So perhaps it’s only fitting we share a story about the one occasion where Rory, the consummate live performer, was lost for words and paralysed by stage fright at the Royal Albert Hall in the presence of his childhood musical hero.

“To Rory, Lonnie Donegan was the first guy [to inspire him to play roots American music] – even though he wasn’t an electric guitarist,” explains Rory’s brother, Donal Gallagher. “But it was that introduction to blues music and Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, you know – Lonnie really was bringing it through… he was the guy who was passing the torch down the line.

“In December ’75, we’d been on tour as usual with Rory non-stop and I hadn’t managed to find him a present for Christmas. And this was the first concert at the Royal Albert Hall since The Nice set fire to the American flag on stage in July 1968 – which curtailed all rock at the Albert Hall. So it was a very important concert, not just for Rory but for rock, generally. Everyone behaved. Prior to that, Rory had played there with Taste for the Cream farewell gig and a few other shows.

“So we had set up in the afternoon and Rod de’Ath, the drummer, had got himself a new drum kit made by an offshoot of Arbiter who dealt with Fender here in the UK. The guy who brought the kit was a drummer himself and I got chatting with him. I said, ‘Who do you play with?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Lonnie Donegan, when he’s in town,’ and I went, ‘Oh my God, where is Lonnie now?’ Because he’d kind of gone off the radar quite a bit.

“And he said, ‘Well, he’s in town as it happens.’ So I said, ‘Would you ask him along tonight?’ And so he took me down to a pay phone at the back and he dialled the number, put the sixpence or shilling in, and just literally handed me the phone. So it was a cold call to Lonnie Donegan.

“Lonnie came on the line and I explained how much Rory and I admired him and told him that Rory was playing the Albert Hall that evening and, despite the short notice, would he consider coming to the gig. And he kind of went, ‘Oh, well…’ and hemmed and hawed. Then he said, ‘Well, look, if you meet me at the stage door I’ll come – but I don’t want any messing around getting in and all that,’ and I said, ‘I’ll be there.’

“So I was waiting there when he arrived and he came in a dress suit and we were all in our casual Western shirts and jeans and what have you. And he was flabbergasted because in his day playing the Royal Albert Hall was like going on the BBC to read the news – you had to wear a dress suit. It was quite formal.

“So I engaged with him anyway and just said, ‘Look, I didn’t want to disappoint Rory by telling him, but then you weren’t able to make it or something like that.’ And I said, ‘But would you do us the honour of announcing Rory on stage?’

“He said he would, provided I announced him on stage because he didn’t want to go on cold – he said, ‘No-one in this audience will know me.’ But I said, ‘Don’t worry, they will,’ you know? And I said that this was to be a surprise for Rory, his Christmas present.

“Anyway, I went on and introduced Lonnie Donegan and explained how Rory was one of his biggest fans and he was such an inspiration to Rory, and the crowd took to their feet and gave him a very warm reception, and Lonnie came on and said a couple of words and introduced Rory.

“I was looking around to see where Rory was, but there was no Rory. Normally, he came on like a bullet, straight across the stage, in his usual form. The band had come on, but no Rory: most unusual. But, in fact, Rory was in a state of shock and couldn’t bring himself to step on stage!

“Afterwards he said, ‘It was lovely, but never do this to me again.’ He’d actually got stage fright because he was performing in front of one of his heroes.”

• The Rory Gallagher Collection will be auctioned at Bonhams in New Bond Street, London, on 17 October 2024.

Much like Rory Gallagher before him, Fontaines D.C. guitarist Carlos O'Connell is carrying the mantle for Irish guitarists who have made a significant mark on the international music scene.

Gallagher's legacy has deep roots in Ireland, inspiring generations of musicians like O'Connell – who, fittingly, has shared his thoughts on the Irish guitar legend and paid homage by playing some of the prized guitars that are up for auction on October 17, including Gallagher's iconic 1961 Fender Stratocaster.

“It feels a bit intimidating, to be honest. It's so personal. It's like looking at an old couple,” says O'Connell when he's handed the Strat. “You know, it's been through everything. It shows how fragile important things are, you know, but also how you don't have to be too cautious with things that are fragile.”

“It feels a bit wrong, in a way, to play it. But at the same time, I don't think anyone that has a guitar that they love would want the guitar to never be played after their death.”

O'Connell goes on to explain that he actually owns a Fender Custom Shop Rory Gallagher signature Strat, which was painstakingly modeled on the 1961 Strat. While Fontaines D.C. were on tour, he happened to pass by Chicago Music Exchange, where he spotted one of these relatively rare models.

“I just asked, ‘Can I play it? I haven't seen one of these.’ And I just plugged it in. I played it. They did a really good job with those replicas, you know. The sound is amazing – I fell in love with it.” In fact, O'Connell liked it so much that it's now one of his main guitars, as he switches between this one and his red ’60s Mustang.

In addition to the 1961 Fender Strat, O'Connell also tries out Gallagher's 1963 Epiphone Coronet, with its custom green finish and single P-90 pickup which Gallagher was a massive fan of; his 1959 Silvertone, which featured prominently on the classics A Million Miles Away and Cradle Rock; and his 1968 Martin D-35, the main acoustic guitar he used throughout his entire career.

In recent news about the Rory Gallagher auction, Joe Bonamassa has publicly confirmed that he never intended to bid on the 1961 Strat – which has found itself at the center of a grassroots campaign to keep the guitar in Ireland.

The auction of Rory Gallagher's iconic 1961 Fender Stratocaster has provoked an emotional reaction, with a grassroots movement in Ireland – now supported by some government officials – campaigning to keep the guitar in the country as a “national treasure.” A GoFundMe for the campaign seeks to raise €1m, and sits at €65,000 at the time of writing.

Bonamassa had been rumored to be one of the guitar collectors interested in bidding on the highly coveted instrument. However, he is now setting the record straight by backing the Irish campaign.

When news of the Stratocaster’s sale broke, Bonamassa says he received over 150 texts asking if he planned to bid on the guitar. He has since publicly ruled himself out, stating that the guitar “should never leave Ireland.”

He tells HotPress, “I don’t want to own it because it’s not my story, it’s part of Rory’s story, it’s part of Ireland’s story. I think it’s a national treasure that should stay here. I threw in a couple grand [into the GoFundMe] anonymously.”

Bonamassa will continue to honor Gallagher's legacy with two shows in the Irish legend's hometown of Cork next summer. The concerts, scheduled for July 1 and 2 as part of the annual Live At The Marquee series, will commemorate the 30th anniversary of Gallagher’s death.

To announce these special shows, Bonamassa showed up in person in Cork, and fittingly, picked up a Strat to deliver his rendition of Gallagher's Cradle Rock from 1973's Tattoo.

The guitar is set to be auctioned at Bonhams in London on October 17. Donal Gallagher, Rory's brother and the steward of his guitar collection, recently revealed the reasons why he decided to put the guitar up for auction in the first place.

“John Hammond Jr is the son of John Hammond, the great A&R man at CBS who signed Bob Dylan. Oddly enough, he never signed his son, but Rory loved John Hammond Jr’s albums and his playing, and one of his ambitions, once he got out to the States, was to meet up with him. This was on the ’69 tour, and Rory was trying to track him down in New York.

“In the end I think Eric Clapton provided a number for John, but Rory didn’t connect with him on that tour – it was when we went back in ’71. Rory called him up and had a chat and obviously, like all good guitar players, he knew where the best guitars were, and Rory was particularly after something to play blues on.”

“So John took him down to 11th Street down in Bleecker Street [near] the Bowery, which was not a fashionable area back then, but there was a store there that John knew about, a kind of pawn shop, and on the second floor Rory found exactly what he was looking for.

“Rory brought it down and [as one familiar with New York haggling] John took control of the situation to get Rory a good deal. But the lady wanted $500 for the guitar and wasn’t budging.

“But then Rory interjected himself and spoke to her, chatted to her, and as John later said, that beautiful thick Irish accent that could melt anyone’s heart. And the lady ended up selling the guitar to Rory for $50!”

• The Rory Gallagher Collection will be auctioned at Bonhams in New Bond Street, London, on 17 October 2024.

This 1960 Melody Maker was nudged in a more Les Paul-like direction, with the addition of a humbucker at the bridge, when Rory Gallagher acquired it in 1985 originally for slide work. However, when a certain member of Guns N’ Roses turned up at a Los Angeles gig to pay homage to Rory, it came in handy for another purpose, as his brother Donal Gallagher explains.

“In March of 1991, we’d arrived back in LA after a long flight from Sydney. Oddly enough, we’d left Australia on 2 March, which was Rory’s birthday. I’d kind of planned the flights so that Rory would get two birthdays [after crossing the International Date Line].

“The first gig in LA was at the Roxy down on the Strip. Anyway, thanks to this sort of Lost In Translation flight experience, everyone was not in the best of humour. So I was just trying to get everyone’s spirits up for the show and kick off the whole tour at the Roxy.

“And somebody said that Slash from Guns N’ Roses was there and the bass player, Duff McKagan, and that they’d come to see Rory. So I went backstage and said to Rory, ‘There’s a guy out there called Slash, who’s come to see you.’ I didn’t personally know too much about him.

“I kind of knew of the band but not much about him as an individual – but Rory’s eyes lit up and he went, ‘Oh my God.’ I said that they were asking if Slash could come up and have a jam. And Rory said, ‘All right.’”

“Rory gave me chapter and verse about how Slash was great and a brilliant player and then he said, ‘Oh, go and find the Gibson Melody Maker’ for him. A lot of the gear still hadn’t arrived by airfreight from Australia at that point, but luckily the Melody Maker had and it was just out in the truck, so I brought it in.

“Rory said, ‘Oh, he’ll like playing that.’ If Rory ever invited another guitarist up for a jam session, he’d make sure that they got a guitar that Rory considered they’d be very comfortable with.”

“So, anyway, at the end of the show we signalled that it was time for the jam session and Slash comes up and I said, ‘Oh, Rory wants you to have this guitar for the jam.’ He strapped it on [with approval] and went, ‘Oh my God, a Melody Maker, how did he figure that out?’ But that was Rory. And it was an excellent jam.”

• The Rory Gallagher Collection will be auctioned at Bonhams in New Bond Street, London, on 17 October 2024.

It’s well known that Rory used an electric Coral Sitar for tracks such as Philby, but less well known is how much his devotion to its atmospheric sound ended up costing. 

The 19-string instrument, made by the Danelectro sub-brand Coral in collaboration with session guitarist Vinnie Bell, was surprisingly rare and reputedly only around 50 were ever made, many of which were already owned by well-known players such as Pete Townshend. So Rory simply hired one for touring. But, being a scarce item, doing so cost him an arm and a leg.

“I’d got to the point of frustration with touring costs and budgets,” Donal Gallagher recalls, adding that he tried to find Rory a Coral Sitar he could buy and so do away with hire costs. 

To Donal’s further chagrin, a seemingly perfect example that he found for sale on tour in Australia was rejected by Rory, leaving him back at square one, paying the sitar bills. However, Donal eventually spotted another one for sale for $1,500 in New York. 

Taking matters into his own hands, he decided to buy it on a business trip and bring it back for Rory. Little did he know that the Coral Sitar would once again end up costing dear. 

Donal takes up the story: “I had to make a short trip out to the States as we were negotiating a new record deal with Mercury Records at the time,” he says. “I had an accountant and a lawyer with me so that the deal could be done within a week – it was quite a pressure. But I took the time then to look up one of the guitar traders out in New Jersey who had a Coral Sitar listed on its sales pamphlet, and picked it up. 

“On the last night before we were flying back, the accountant and the lawyer said, ‘Oh, as it happens, Cliff Richard’s in town tonight doing a gig. Would you like to go along with us?”’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s great.’ I hadn’t seen Cliff, and it was unusual to see him in New York, because he wasn’t so big in America. 

“So it was a lovely theatre and a great gig and I had a quick chat with Cliff after the show. He told me he was going back to London the next day and asked me when I was heading back, so I said, ‘Well, we’re booked to fly back in the morning at 10 o’clock.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I’m on the 10 o’clock as well. See you on board.’”

“Well, it turned out he was on the 10 o’clock Concorde. However, we had been given seats in first class by the record company. So I got to the airport and said to the guy at check-in, ‘The 10 o’clock is Concorde, isn’t it?’ ‘No, no, no,’ he replied. ‘It’s a different flight – but they go out at the same time.’ And I said, ‘Well, what’s the cost to change and go on Concorde?’ 

“Because it was due to be taken out of service, even then, and I wanted to fly on it at least once. So he said, ‘Would that be cash or charge?’ and I said, ‘Cash, if it’s the right price’ [laughs]. So in a New York fashion, I gave the guy cash and so the next thing we’re on. 

“So the sitar came back on Concorde, and then everyone sort of got their baggage at Heathrow. Cliff had an impressive entourage with him and the two guys I was with both had a suit and tie on. So I decided that I’d walk through the ‘Nothing To Declare’ lane with them, though the sitar was in an embarrassment of a guitar case at that point.”

“Anyway, I got the nod and was pulled over by the customs inspector. I said something like, ‘Well, I’m just bringing it back from my brother. I’m not a player. It’s something that was picked up in New York for him as a gift.’ And the guy says, ‘Oh, well these things can be worth a lot.’ So I was going, ‘Are you serious?’ 

“And he said, ‘Well, you have to pay something for it [in import tax]. Hang on there a minute.’ And he went off and came back with a manual. Not only that, within the manual, he had the pamphlet from the guitar trader that I bought the Coral Sitar from in America with the price on!

“So it became an even more expensive guitar – but worth every penny and I paid the charge to Customs.” 

• The Rory Gallagher Collection will be auctioned at Bonhams in New Bond Street, London, on 17 October 2024.

Fans of Rory’s famous Irish Tour ’74 album – one of the great live rock and blues recordings of our time – will know the National as the guitar used on the track As The Crow Flies, with its metallic yet soulful voice evoking so many of the old blues and roots recordings that inspired Rory growing up.

“I remember Rory picked it up in Denver, and he was particularly after a resonator like the one Scrapper Blackwell played,” Donal Gallagher recalls. Rory himself added more detail about the purchase in a 1977 interview with International Musician, stating that: “I got it from a guy in the States. You get these travelling guitar salesmen going round. I got it for a very reasonable price – about £100.

“I feel it sounds better than the steel-fronted model… It’s got more of a banjo sound and it’s got the old classical machineheads… The resonator caved in, believe it or not, so I had that beaten out again…

“The National is really good, though, even for a beginner to pick it up and play it, it almost plays you. I can tell you, it brings power to your hands, you move from that neck to the Strat and it’s like running your hand across a jelly.”

Despite its powerfully projecting sound, the guitar – serial number 513W – often struggled to be heard above the cheering of Rory’s fans on tour. Donal says this ongoing issue led to the guitar being superseded by a newer National late in Rory’s career.

“Rory didn’t have a pickup on the guitar, he just played it into the mic and let it carry,” Donal says. “I think we attempted various bugs and things, but also the paint was inclined to flake, so putting anything like glue or epoxy on it never ever worked.

“In fact, at the end of a tour Rory did in 1991, he discovered that National had brought out a solid version [of the resonator concept], called the Resolectric, which had built-in pickups. And Rory managed to get one of those, even though there was something like a year’s waiting list. In other words, they let Rory jump the queue and get his hands on one.

“I remember we were on our way from San Francisco back down to LA and an arrangement was made with National, who were based in San Luis Obispo, where they agreed to drive out to the highway with the guitar. We were on the highway and we had to time it so we could pick the guitar up at a roadside truck stop.”

“The thing we had to deal with was that when Rory was playing live, his audience loved the acoustic songs, so they’d really start cheering and clapping along.

“So you were forever trying to get the volume on that guitar up above the audience as much as you possibly could; it would then start to squeak and squeal quite a bit. That Resolectric guitar eventually solved the problem of feedback.”

• The Rory Gallagher Collection will be auctioned at Bonhams in New Bond Street, London, on 17 October 2024.

Rory’s 1959 Fender Esquire, the earliest photos of which date from live gigs in Milwaukee, 1971, saw many changes over the years. A crude engraving on the guitar’s neckplate, still visible today, gives a clue to the guitar’s origins, reading: “Property Of Buzz Harding, Greensburg Kansas”.

But once in Rory’s possession it would never leave his side. In fact, the only time its place in his collection was in serious jeopardy was when it was crushed on a runway and then inadvertently refinished in a colour Rory hated. Donal Gallagher takes up the story.

“Back in the early ’70s, we were touring America. We had arrived at some airport on a regional flight – it was a small jet, maybe a DC-9 – and we’d got off the plane. It was in the Midwest, I think it was the afternoon flight to Columbus, Ohio, or some town like that.

“Through the [arrival hall] window, you could see there was a conveyor belt with the instruments coming down in their cases out of the plane’s hold. They weren’t even flightcases, when I think about it. Crazy, it was. We always managed to get the Strat on board the plane with us though.

“So we were watching the Esquire and the bass being unloaded from the plane [from inside the arrivals terminal] and put on a luggage trailer, when I saw the Esquire case fall to the ground, and the guitar just fell out of it, and I thought, ‘Oh Jesus.’”

“We were looking through the plate-glass window, and kind of shouting and banging. As we were waving at the guy driving the tractor, he did a full circle, to go back – and drove straight over the guitar! And I thought, ‘That’s it – dead.’”

“The gig that night was important for Rory and so I remember getting to the venue and thinking, ‘Oh Jesus,’ and plugging the Esquire in. They’re as tough as nails, Esquires, but the body was completely scraped and scored and it was actually outshining the Strat as being the most worn guitar on stage that night!”

The Esquire needed extensive repairs to the body and crushed bridge hardware when it returned to London, which were completed by Chris Eccleshall. During the repair, Chris fitted ’60s-style threaded steel saddles to the bridge and a new scratchplate, swapping out the seven-screw single-ply scratchplate present on the guitar at time of repair for a white five-screw single-ply one.

As Rory was due to go out on tour again, Chris decided the original nitro finish couldn’t be replicated in time and used a faster-drying poly finish during the repairs, which left the guitar with an unfortunate greenish hue in certain lights.

Donal says Chris Eccleshall joked that this was perhaps appropriate for an Irish artist when he presented the guitar to Rory. Rory was, however, unamused.

“It just was the most awkward moment. You know? Rory was a peaceful man, but I thought he’d thump poor Chris on the spot,” Donal jokes, adding that the guitar was soon refinished by Chris a second time and today sports a solid black paint finish.

• The Rory Gallagher Collection will be auctioned at Bonhams in New Bond Street, London, on 17 October 2024.

Rory Gallagher’s ’61 Stratocaster is one of the most iconic guitars of all time. Fender’s Custom Shop replica of it is a good guitar, make no doubt, but no craftsperson could truly recreate what that guitar has been through, where it’s travelled and what it represents.

Bought in Crowley’s music store in Cork when Rory was just 15, the guitar was purchased when his mother took a leap of faith to underwrite the hire-purchase agreement for an instrument that was, at the time, beyond the means of most pro musicians.

And yet how he repaid her trust – the 14 solo albums that Rory recorded before his untimely death in 1995 remain a benchmark for all guitar players. Not only for the headlong, ecstatic energy of tracks such as Big Guns and Walk On Hot Coals but also the tender poignancy of songs such as I’ll Admit You’re Gone and I Fall Apart.

Not all of his songs were recorded with the Strat, of course – Rory was a collector of all kinds of guitars, most of which he put to use in the studio or on stage – yet the ’61 Strat somehow contains them all, embodies all he was as a musician.

In the dark years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the sound of Rory playing this guitar in Belfast’s Ulster Hall brought people together, dispelling the shadow of gunman and car-bomb for a few fleeting hours. Its voice rang out from the Isle of Wight festival in 1970 and inspired a young Brian May with a lifelong love of how single-coil pickups could sound when they howled at full tilt through a Vox AC30.

Today, the exposed grain of its alder body has become as grey as sun-bleached driftwood with use, the little that remains of its original sunburst finish mere flakes of lacquer and colour, scattered like islands in a jagged archipelago – a map, somehow, of all the places the Strat has been. A document of genius, written in battered wood and faded paint.

It means a lot, to a lot of people, that guitar. It was, therefore, all the more surprising when the news went out that the Strat (and the rest of Rory’s collection of guitars) was being put up for auction at Bonhams in London this October. Some found it hard to accept – especially in Ireland, where Rory Gallagher is rightly venerated as a pioneer of Irish rock and blues, a hero for the ages.

The possibility that the Strat, in particular, might end up in the hands of a private owner overseas led to calls for the Irish government to intercede, and fans have even begun crowd-funding appeals to buy the guitar for posterity.

It’s understandable that the guitar is so well loved – less palatable are cynical accusations that the sale was motivated by greed, taunts that must surely hurt the guitar’s custodians, Rory’s family, especially as no-one knows what that guitar means, in emotional terms, better than they.

“I’m putting blinkers on, to be honest,” Rory’s brother Donal Gallagher reflects. “I mean, it was the main evening news last night on television in Ireland and the radio news as well. And then the Mayor of Cork, who is a Rory fan, has come out and demanded the government makes sure it stays in Ireland, so it’s going to go into that political sphere, as well as everything else.”

Letting Go

In the 30 years since Rory’s death, Donal has become a full-time steward of Rory’s guitar collection as well as an ambassador for his musical legacy. However, in recent weeks, he’s been besieged by calls about the sale – calls from journalists and fans, government bodies and even Vatican officials. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion on the 100-plus-item sale, which includes nearly all of Rory’s guitars, amps and effects.

As custodian of all this gear, it was ultimately Donal’s decision – in close consultation with the rest of the family – to sell Rory’s instruments. So why do so? And why now?

“Well, several factors,” Donal says. “One, I suppose, is the conveyor belt of life and you have to look at your own situation. Next year it’ll be the 30th anniversary [of Rory’s death], and obviously that puts a lot of things into focus – especially as we’ve been completing a new documentary on Rory ahead of the anniversary.

“When I looked at the instruments [while making the documentary] I couldn’t help thinking, ‘What happens after my demise?’ for instance. And I suppose being hospitalised myself [Donal underwent successful treatment for cancer not long ago] brought that into sharper focus.

“I knew all the difficulties I faced, holding the collection, which I never get to see anyway. Because you can’t just hang the Strat up over your fireplace, so it’s not an object for the family to enjoy.”

Donal adds that, over the past three decades, the idea was to tour the guitars through high-profile museums, guitar shows and national institutions. But, especially post-Brexit, staging such international events has become prohibitively difficult on a number of levels.

“It was great to do the Guitarist exhibition at Olympia [in 2018], where you could show the guitars off and people could enjoy them,” Donal recalls. “But opportunities to do that kind of thing have become limited. To have a touring exhibition, visiting different countries… nowadays it’s just so difficult. For instance, we sent the Strat out to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for their ‘Play It Loud’ exhibition and it required all sorts of special licences.

“But when it went out to the States, Covid hit and so we didn’t see the guitar for nearly three years because of the closure of the museum at that time… So then you have sleepless nights any time the guitar travels, because when are you likely to see it again?

“It’s great that other people are seeing it and visiting it, but you start thinking, ‘What if something happens? If there’s a fire or whatever.’ Obviously it’s insured for its value, but that doesn’t begin to compensate…”

It’s completely understandable that Rory’s fans should want the best for the guitars and for them to remain accessible and in responsible hands. But beneath all the strong, sincere feelings people have about these iconic instruments lie practical realities that cannot be ignored – including the high cost of keeping them secure.

While Donal doesn’t name any exact figures, it’s clear the annual cost of insuring and storing the guitars safely could buy a respectable vintage guitar collection in itself. And Donal’s under no illusion that when his own time comes, that cost would be transferred to his surviving family.

All this has led some to suggest that the guitars should simply be donated to a museum for posterity. It’s an attractive thought – and Donal says he has looked into the possibility many times over the years. But, he argues, simply giving the guitars to a public institution isn’t as straightforward as one might think.

“There are institutions, particularly in Ireland [that could potentially host the guitars]. For example, I’ve had lots of contact with Cork City Hall, and the Music Library in Cork is named after Rory, so initially that’s where the guitar collection was going to go.

“They were building a brand-new library that was going to be five storeys, with two basement levels, and the whole library was going to be themed around Rory, and either part or all of the collection was [proposed] to be housed there. Now, that was first discussed back in 1998 – but the building is still on the drawing board. In the meantime, you’re holding this collection, waiting for government bodies to build these buildings, you know?”

Likewise, prior attempts to lodge the guitars with private museums have met their own set of problems, Donal says. “There was a museum out in Germany where we were going to put an exhibition on, and that was government-funded in Germany, [it was] their main music one. But by the time we got around to the exhibition, they’d closed it down as they’d run out of funding.

“Another place was the Fender Visitor Center in California. I got invited out to the opening of that, and, you know, it was a wonderful place near the factory, and I thought, ‘Oh, well this would be a great location,’ but sadly that closed down just a couple of years after it had opened.

“And then there was The Beatles Museum in Hamburg, which was amazing, but that’s also closed down. So you have no certainties with giving the guitars to an institution, as to what happens to the guitars [in the years that follow donation].”

While one imagines it might be possible to draw up some kind of agreement to return the instruments to the family in the event that a host museum closes down, that would, of course, take things back to square one – with fresh arrangements having to be made for their secure storage by the family.

That open-ended, long-term responsibility became all the more daunting, Donal says, after the lockup where some of the guitars are currently housed was broken into recently.

“Actually, the people who broke into the unit were targeting other units next to us,” Donal explains. “[There were] six guys dressed as emergency gas men with bolt-cutters and angle grinders. It was horrifying just how quickly they got into our unit – obviously [what was in there] wasn’t what they were after, but it had the same effect [as if they had deliberately targeted it] and you kind of go, ‘Wow, that’s scary.’”

Next Life

Clearly, the decision to sell the collection was not taken lightly – and that both personal factors and long-term practical obligations weighed in the balance. When the decision was made, Donal did so in close consultation with his wider family.

One concern raised by fans is that Rory’s Strat could end up in some collector’s bank vault. But Donal says the irony is that the Strat, due to its high value and historic status, already is kept in a bank vault, out of view most of the time.

“Put it this way, if I was a man who could play guitar and enjoyed playing it, that’d be one thing,” he reflects. “If the family had wanted to keep it, that would be another thing. If I didn’t have to worry about the safety aspect of it and that all goes with insuring an instrument like that and it was in my house all day… it still wouldn’t get any use.

“I always saw it as having a life of its own. I mean, you can still watch the footage of the guy who originally had the guitar [before Rory] on YouTube – he was called Jim Conlon and he was in a showband called the Royal Showband.

“It’s so difficult. The guitar has got a life of its own and it’s got to move on. And put it this way: I think that the life it’s got at present isn’t necessarily the kindest one it could have. To be sitting in a bank vault is not the way. And whatever few years I might have left…

“I mean, it’s about trying to pass it on before the inevitable happens, you know? You hope that if somebody wants to bid on it and buy it, that they’ll cherish it, and they’re doing it for all the right reasons. But either way, hopefully the instrument gets played and used or featured somewhere.”

While it’s unlikely that everyone will be reconciled to the idea of the guitars being sold, it’s certainly a lot more comprehensible in the light of what Donal has to say on the matter. It would be nice to think that another leading guitarist will buy the Strat – but there are no guarantees. And in the instrument’s life to date there have been few of those anyway.

If Rory’s Strat hadn’t been returned after being stolen early on in his career, none of this would be taking place. If Rory hadn’t died, all too soon, perhaps he’d be playing it yet. Perhaps, maybe, what if? It’s only human to ask those questions. But in reality, to paraphrase George Harrison, all things must pass.

• The Rory Gallagher Collection will be auctioned at Bonhams in New Bond Street, London, on 17 October 2024.

The news that Rory Gallagher’s legendary Strat is to be sold at auction later this year has caused quite a stir in recent months, but the Gallagher family has explained how increasing concerns for the six-string's safety ultimately forced them to sell it at auction.

The 1961 Fender Stratocaster – said to be the first to ever reach Irish soil – was by Gallagher’s side throughout his career, after he bought it second-hand for £100 from Michael Crowley of Crowley’s Music Store in Cork.

It’s been in Gallagher's family’s possession since his passing in 1995, but they recently announced it would head to the auction block – along with some of his other gear – where it is expected to fetch around £1,000,000.

Speaking in the new issue of Guitarist Donal Gallagher, Rory’s brother, discussed the family's decision to sell the guitar collection at auction, citing “several factors” behind their choice – with the safety of the iconic guitar top of the list.

The costs of insuring and storing the guitar are considerable, and a recent scare at a storage unit that housed some of Rory's gear accelerated Donal’s desire to give the Strat a new home.

“[There were] six guys dressed as emergency gas men with bolt-cutters and angle grinders,” he says. “It was horrifying just how quickly they got into our unit – obviously [what was in there] wasn’t what they were after, but it had the same effect [as if they had deliberately targeted it] and you kind of go, ‘Wow, that’s scary.

“Next year it’ll be the 30th anniversary [of Rory’s death], and obviously that puts a lot of things into focus – especially as we’ve been completing a new documentary on Rory ahead of the anniversary,” he continues.

“When I looked at the instruments [while making the documentary] I couldn’t help thinking, ‘What happens after my demise?’ for instance. And I suppose being hospitalized myself [Donal recently underwent successful treatment for cancer] brought that into sharper focus.”

The guitar has been toured around in previous years but that hasn’t been without its complications. The guitar was in the US when Covid lockdown restrictions came into force, meaning the family “didn’t see the guitar for nearly three years”.

“You have sleepless nights any time the guitar travels because when are you likely to see it again?” he continues. “It’s great that other people are seeing it and visiting it, but you start thinking, ‘What if something happens?”

Discussions regarding making the Strat a museum piece have taken place over the years, with Donal saying one took place as far back as 1998, but none have come to fruition. And so the decision to sell the guitar and the wider collection of Gallagher gear has been made with a heavy but practical heart.

“The guitar has got to move on. The life it’s got at present isn’t necessarily the kindest one it could have,” he admits. “I knew all the difficulties I faced, holding the collection, which I never get to see anyway. Because you can’t just hang the Strat up over your fireplace. It’s not an object for the family to enjoy.”

Nearly three decades of caring for the guitar has taken its toll on the family, and that long-term responsibility has therefore forced the family’s hand. The Strat is due to go on sale on October 17 via Bonhams in London, with the guitar just one of 150 pieces of Gallagher-owned gear – including amps and pedals – set to be sold.

A campaign has been launched by Sheena Crowley – the daughter of the man who originally sold Gallagher the guitar – which has received the support of government officials. The campaign wants to raise enough money to buy the guitar and have it as the centerpiece of a museum dedicated to Cork’s musical history.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the newest issue of Guitarist.

As Rory Gallagher's guitars head to auction this October, Joe Bonamassa has paid tribute to the Irish blues-rock legend with a retrospective on his influential career, including a hands-on session with Gallagher's heavily-modded '59 Esquire

“I grew up in a very blue-collar part of the world, and my father showed me a Rory Gallagher record. It was called Live in Europe,” says Bonamassa in a new Guitarist interview.

“Here was this guy with long hair and a flannel shirt who looked like he just came out of an auto factory and playing some of the most gutbucket blues and rock you've ever heard. I go, ‘Wow, I can relate to that because people around here look like that.’

“He was a working-class hero that transcended just being Irish, and into a global thing. Everybody can relate to a working-class hero. He’s one of my guitar heroes.”

Bonamassa talks about the fact there's a preconceived notion that Gallagher only used one guitar, namely his '61 Strat. He sets the record straight, revealing that despite being closely associated with the legendary Strat, Gallagher actually owned and played a variety of guitars and amps.

“If everybody in the '70s knew that these guitars were going to be five figures or more, you know, if you had a straight '59 Esquire, you're looking at $20,000-$25,000 guitar. If everybody knew that when they were buying them, nobody would modify them.

Bonamassa goes on the play Gallagher's Esquire and after analyzing it, comments, “The front pickup sounds good. May want to look at the back pickup, and they need to be rewound.

“Guitars sitting for 30 years tend not to work. You know, they need a little bit of maintenance. But you know, it's up to the buyer whether they want to keep Rory's strings on it or get it rewound or get it back up playing.

“It seems like it was set up for slide, it's got big frets on it. He tended to like monster frets. It's a great, honest instrument that should make music again.

“I think the worst-case scenario is if you just hang it on the wall and brag to your rich buddies that you bought it. These things are tools, and they should make music again.”

In other Rory Gallagher news, his '61 Strat has recently been the subject of a grassroots-led movement in Ireland to keep the prestigious instrument in the country.

Rory Gallagher is one of the most influential guitar heroes of all time, having wielded his legendary 1961 Fender Stratocaster – and a host of other electric guitars – to carve his name into the annals of blues rock history.

But, as is usually the case with most high-profile guitar players, Gallagher had some heroes of his own, and at one point actually crossed paths with one at a gig – and he was so phased by the unexpected interaction that he was almost too shocked to go on stage.

In a new interview with Guitarist, Gallagher’s brother, Donal, recalled the time he secretly invited Lonnie Donegan to see Rory play at London’s Royal Albert Hall as part of a surprise Christmas present.

It all began in December 1975, when drummer Rod de’Ath bought himself a new kit. The individual who brought it over let slip that he played with Donegan whenever he was in town, which gave Donal – who knew his brother idolized the blues/folk/country icon – a brilliant idea.

“I went, ‘Oh my God, where is Lonnie now?’ Because he’d kind of gone off the radar quite a bit,” Donal recalls. “And he said, ‘Well, he’s in town as it happens.’ So I said, ‘Would you ask him along tonight?’

“He took me down to a pay phone at the back and he dialled the number, put the sixpence or shilling in, and just literally handed me the phone,” he continues. “So it was a cold call to Lonnie Donegan.

“Lonnie came on the line and I explained how much Rory and I admired him and told him that Rory was playing the Albert Hall that evening and, despite the short notice, would he consider coming to the gig.

“He said, ‘Well, look, if you meet me at the stage door I’ll come – but I don’t want any messing around getting in and all that,’ and I said, ‘I’ll be there.’”

True to his word, Donegan showed up to the gig, and even entertained Donal when he asked whether he would say a few words to introduce Rory before he took to the stage.

“I went on and introduced Lonnie Donegan and explained how Rory was one of his biggest fans and he was such an inspiration to Rory and the crowd took to their feet and gave him a very warm reception, and Lonnie came on and said a couple of words and introduced Rory.”

“Rory, of course, had absolutely no idea that any of this was going to happen, and was so taken aback when he saw his hero introducing him to the stage at the Royal Albert Hall that he simply froze.

“I was looking around to see where Rory was but there was no Rory,” Donal goes on. “Normally, he came on like a bullet, straight across the stage, in his usual form. The band had come on, but no Rory: most unusual. But, in fact, Rory was in a state of shock and couldn’t bring himself to step on stage!

“Afterwards he said, ‘It was lovely, but never do this to me again.’ He’d actually got stage fright because he was performing in front of one of his heroes.”

Over the past five years, Fontaines D.C. have cemented themselves as one of Ireland's biggest musical exports. It is perhaps fitting that guitarist Carlos O'Connell's workhorse instrument, then, happens to be the signature guitar of fellow countryman Rory Gallagher.

While recording their upcoming album Romance, O'Connell opted for two ’60s Fender Mustangs and a Fender Rory Gallagher Strat, which he says “records brilliantly.”

“I was thinking of selling it for a while to get another Strat that I could make more ‘my own,’ but the sound is so great, and it’s such a workhorse that I decided to just keep it,” he says in the latest issue of Guitar World.

“I saw it on the wall in a store in Chicago and thought it looked interesting, as it was so distressed to look like his old guitar. I tried it and thought it was just a brilliant instrument.”

The original Rory Gallagher Stratocaster has recently become the focus of a campaign to keep the guitar in Ireland as a cultural artifact. This movement gained traction after it was revealed that his 1961 Strat is expected to fetch between £700,000 and 1,000,000 at auction (up to approximately $1.3 million) this October.

In response, Sheena Crowley, the daughter of Michael Crowley, the man who originally sold Gallagher the guitar for £100 in 1963, launched a GoFundMe campaign with a goal of raising €1 million. At the time of writing, €29,760 has been raised towards this goal.

Shortly after this grassroots campaign, Tánaiste Micheál Martin pledged to find ways for the state to purchase the guitar.

The Lord Mayor of Cork Cllr Dan Boyle also called on the government to intervene, telling The Irish Times: “Rory Gallagher’s guitar is a very distinctive and is probably one of the most recognizable guitars in rock history because of the fact that the varnish wore off because apparently Rory’s sweat was very acidic, and it just stripped off the varnish over time.

“But Rory was one of the first to put Irish rock on the international stage so it’s an important item culturally, and I think it’s important that it should be kept in the State.”

Fontaines D.C.'s fourth album, Romance, will be released on August 23 via XL Recordings. Official discussions about the Irish state's involvement in buying back Rory Gallagher's original Strat are still ongoing.

For more from Fontaines D.C., plus new interviews with Trey Anastasio and Simon McBride, pick up issue 582 of Guitar World at Magazines Direct.

Rory Gallagher's iconic ’61 Fender Stratocaster is expected to fetch between £700,000 and £1,000,000 at auction this October. However, a representative of the Irish government recently announced that the government is considering purchasing Gallagher's guitar to keep it in the country due to its national significance.

Cork, the city where Gallagher bought the guitar, is now leading the way in a campaign to keep the guitar in Ireland. Tánaiste [the second-ranking member of the government of Ireland], Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defence Micheál Martin publicly said he is working to bring the matter to the attention of Catherine Martin, the country's Culture and Heritage Minister.

“I would love to [keep it in Ireland] if we could,” he stated. “Obviously I will talk to [Minister] Catherine Martin and see what is possible. But it would be lovely if we could get that guitar back on Leeside.”

Mr. Martin also revealed that when he was Lord Mayor of Cork, he hosted a small civic reception for Gallagher. Furthermore, he had the opportunity to see Gallagher perform live.

Martin admitted that it's still unclear what the government can feasibly do in this unique case. However, he claimed that he's exploring every avenue to keep the guitar in Ireland due to its cultural significance.

Gallagher's Fender Strat has become as recognizable among guitar enthusiasts as Gallagher himself. It originally belonged to Jim Conlon, who allegedly ordered a red Strat but received the wrong model. When the red Strat eventually showed up, he put the unwanted model on sale. In 1963, Gallagher purchased it for £100 from Michael Crowley of Cork's Crowley's Music Store.

Alongside Martin's efforts, a grassroots fundraiser has been set up to keep the guitar in Ireland. Sheena Crowley, the daughter of Michael Crowley, is leading the GoFundMe campaign.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise funds for the purchase of Rory Gallagher’s 1961 Fender Stratocaster in order to keep it in Ireland.

Earlier this week, Bonhams announced “The Rory Gallagher Collection” auction, which will oversee the sale of numerous items from Gallagher’s gear collection. His iconic Strat was unveiled as the first lot to lead the way.

The Strat in question is synonymous with the late Irish blues rock guitar legend, who used the heavily worn ‘61 Fender to cement his position as one of the all-time greats of guitar music.

Its upper estimated value of £1,000,000 – which could even be exceeded when the auction rolls around on October 17 – is testament to the musical and cultural significance it holds.

However, the guitar is seen as equally significant for the citizens of Cork – the Irish city in which Gallagher lived – who want to raise enough money in order to buy the guitar and keep it in the country.

The fundraiser has been set up by Sheena Crowley, the daughter of Michael Crowley, who first sold Gallagher for £100 in 1963. As Sheena explains, Gallagher has been a hugely influential Irish figure, and has been an idol for many of the country’s musicians.

“This guitar means so much to us in Cork, and we need to become the custodians of that magical guitar,” she writes on the GoFundMe page. “We feel tied to him and the guitar is a symbol of what he represents for us.”

The GoFundMe has a target of €1,000,000. If successful, the campaign will approach the City Council, the Department of Heritage and “wealthy benefactors” to match the €1,000,000. If the fundraiser doesn’t meet its target, all donations will be refunded. At the time of writing, €5,990 has been raised.

“Rory was someone who pushed the boundaries even at a time when 'Rock n Roll' was considered to be the devils music!” Crowley continues. “He gigged in places that were being bombed. He dedicated his entire life to it.

“We must do this for him because we got so much from him, but we must also do it for our heritage.”

The fundraiser is the first step towards establishing what Crowley describes as a “music museum” that honors Cork’s heritage. The Strat, and a wider Gallagher exhibition, would be the key feature.

“The main attraction would be a dedicated Rory Gallagher section with an interactive theme to it,” Crowley says. “Fans from as far as Japan, Iceland, Germany, and so on would want the guitar to remain in Cork! We will have to move mountains.”

The auction is set to take place on October 17.

Visit the ‘Help Bring Rory Gallagher’s Strat Back to his Home Town’ GoFundMe page and Bonhams to find out more.

To explore the Strat in greater detail, check out Total Guitar's deep dive into Gallagher's gear, and watch Guitarist demo his various live rigs.

Rory Gallagher’s legendary 1961 Fender Stratocaster – which the blues rock virtuoso used to cement himself as one of the all-time greats of guitar music – is set to be sold at auction via Bonhams.

It’s the first lot from “The Rory Gallagher Collection”, which will oversee the sale of numerous items from the guitar master’s gear collection, from his most iconic guitars to a selection of amps and accessories.

Given its significance, the ’61 Strat – deemed one of the most recognizable Strats in rock history – is leading the way, and is set to be offered with an estimate of £700,000 – £1,000,000.

Few Strats are as easily identifiable as Gallagher’s. The Irish icon played a handful of electric guitars during his career – including a ’59 Fender Esquire and a ‘63 Gretsch Corvette – but it’s the heavily battered Strat for which Gallagher is best known.

As the story goes, it had originally belonged to Jim Conlon, who had allegedly ordered a red Strat but was forced to play the sunburst model when the wrong model showed up.

Once the red Strat eventually did make it to Conlon, this particular example was put on sale, and Gallagher purchased it for £100 in 1963 from Michael Crowley of Crowley’s Music Store in Cork.

As such, it was reportedly the first Strat to ever land on Irish shores (an American instrument in Ireland in the early ’60s would have been remarkably rare) and quickly became synonymous with Gallagher and his music.

The Strat is particularly noted for its heavily relic’d state, which is the indicator of its long career in the hands of Gallagher.

And, during the pair’s prolific partnership, the Strat underwent numerous modifications that made it the instrument it is today.

Among those mods were a handful of pickup changes, a neck replacement that was temporarily required (due to the moisture and sweat the original absorbed during gigs), new tuners and a replacement pickguard.

Then there’s the state of the guitar’s once-sunburst finish. As per Gallagher’s official website, one of the main reasons behind the Strat’s stripped condition is the fact it spent days in a rainy ditch after it had been stolen from Gallagher in 1966.

Since Gallagher’s passing in 1995, the Strat has been in the possession of Rory’s brother and former manager, Dónal, who believes now is the right time to let other people “cherish” the instrument.

“Since 1995, I have always felt that there was a mission to be fulfilled to cement Rory's legacy and widen the knowledge of his music,” Dónal says. “So, in what is one of the most difficult and sensitive decisions to reach, I have decided to facilitate the release of his instruments for sale, so that these emblems of his legacy can be enjoyed by others.”

“Rory Gallagher’s 1961 Fender Stratocaster is one of the world’s most recognisable guitars,” adds Claire Tole-Moir, Head of Bonhams' Popular Culture Department. “It was an enormous part of Rory Gallagher’s life and was with him from the very start of his career right until the end.

“It could be said that it was on this guitar that he carved out his legacy of being one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Bonhams is honoured to be entrusted with bringing this iconic Stratocaster to auction and is excited to announce the landmark sale of Rory Gallagher’s extensive collection.”

It’s set to be one of 2024’s most notable guitar auctions, and if it gets close to the upper end of its estimate, Gallagher’s ’61 Strat could end up becoming one of the most expensive guitars to ever sell at auction.

“He was one of a very few people at that time, who could make his guitar do anything. It just seemed to be magic,” Brian May says of Gallagher and his guitar. “I remember looking at this battered Stratocaster and thinking, 'How does that come out of there?'

“One of the reasons I do what I do is because of Rory.”

The auction will take place on October 17.

Head over to Bonhams to find out more.

To explore the Strat in greater detail, check out Total Guitar's deep dive into Gallagher's gear collection, and watch Guitarist demo his live various rigs.

Guitarist Jim Kirkpatrick is arguably best known for his work in British melodic rock band FM, whose new album Old Habits Die Hard is released in May. Jim also plays in Band of Friends, performing the music of Rory Gallagher with members of the late Northern Irish trailblazer’s own band. 

When he connects with Total Guitar, he’s just returned from this year’s International Rory Gallagher Tribute convention, where he played through the actual amps heard on Rory’s famous recordings, nailing all the tones and techniques to keep that legacy alive… 

Though he did occasionally use other models, it was usually a Stratocaster in Rory’s hands. Why do you think that is? 

“It’s an interesting story. I’m not sure if he purposefully chose it to start off with. I believe there was a Strat in a shop window when he lived in Cork. He had his first guitar already, something like a Futurama, and apparently somebody had ordered a Strat in the wrong colour. 

“It was most likely the first Strat in Ireland! It got taken back to the shop and Rory recognised it from players like Buddy Holly and Hank Marvin. An American instrument in Ireland back in the early ’60s would have been rare.”

He was fairly loyal to Fender over the years. There are only a handful of photos of him with a Les Paul, for example.

“He had a big guitar collection. There was a white Telecaster he used to play slide on. He never really replaced that one. There were a lot of one-off guitars, especially things he might use on a certain track, but few lasted the distance. A lot of those instruments were given to him, but you can tell he was the kind of person who had two or three guitars that did the job and didn’t feel like he needed anything else.”

Can you talk us through the rig you use to get the Rory tone?

“He was really associated with a Vox AC30 and a treble booster. That was his sound for the mid-’70s, but he did move away from that to Marshall later on, which a lot of people tend to overlook. I’ve got the Rory signature treble booster and I was using it with one of his actual AC30s not long ago at the Rory convention. 

“There’s a guy I know in Ireland who has Rory’s Marshalls, and when I play over there, he brings Rory’s JMP 2x12 combo. Obviously I don’t get to use that gear all the time, so I tend to stick with a Vox or a JMP-style Marshall.”

Like most players back then, he didn’t use too many pedals…

“It was few and far between. There was the treble boost, plus a flanger that got used on a couple of songs like Shadow Play. An octave pedal on a couple of later tracks. There was a Boss overdrive at one point, but he kept it simple.”

So what are your main instruments for the tribute shows?

“There are two that I’m using at the moment. There’s a Nash Strat that’s been worn down to look like Rory’s. And there’s another guy who runs DY Guitars down in Worcester. He does affordable copies of signature models and made me a Rory guitar. I don’t think he builds the bodies and necks, he assembles them and then winds the pickups himself. It’s a £600 guitar that sounds fantastic and plays well. Then I have a Telecaster for the slide things. That’s all I need!”

What do you think were Rory’s strongest suits as a player and what are the hardest songs to replicate?

“I think Rory was a really underrated acoustic player. He’s primarily known as an electric guitarist and most people’s vision of him is Irish Tour ’74 or Live in Europe – mainly those albums from that period. 

“But he always did an acoustic segment. His fingerstyle playing and slide was fantastic and never given enough credit. Those are usually the hardest things to learn, songs like Barley & Grape Rag and Out on the Western Plain.”

And how about his electric material?

“He was advanced for his time. Take a song like They Don’t Make Them Like You Anymore – it’s like a swing tune. Nobody else was doing anything like that. His playing was great on Moonchild.

“Then there’s stuff like Edged in Blue where he went in more of a Jeff Beck direction. He liked using different tunings and capos. I learned how to play in open G and open A through songs like Souped-Up Ford and Bullfrog Blues. 

“He also had his mandolin! There were a lot of different sides to him as a player, like the jazziness of When My Baby She Left Me, which is a Sonny Boy Williamson tune. That one’s tricky to learn! 

“A lot of slide players like Duane Allman to Derek Trucks tend to work in open E, while Rory was often using open G like Ry Cooder, with a lot of drive from his amp. He’d turn the tone down on his Telecaster to get rid of the scratchiness – that’s how he controlled the noise.”

As you say, he was a lot more than just a blues guitarist.

“There was a big Irish influence, particularly that kind of rhythmic jig. He grew up around it, those Celtic flavours would have been inherent. His playing was very green in that sense – just listen to the intro to A Million Miles Away!

“He was a lover of the blues, but it was the Irish side that helped him stand out against Eric Clapton or Peter Green. He came from a different country with its own influences.”

A lot of his music lived in that Mixolydian world, where he would twist major and minor pentatonics together.

“Definitely! He also played in natural minor as well – you can hear it on A Million Miles Away, Shadow Play and Bad Penny. Those are the songs where he’d drop a few extra notes in. Even though his health wasn’t great towards the end and his performances were subdued, his guitar playing got better and better. If you watch Live At The Cork Opera House from 1987, he’s blinding!”

It is alleged that Jimi Hendrix was once asked how it felt to be the greatest guitar player in the world and his answer was “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Rory Gallagher…”

“I don’t know if it’s true. I’ve tried finding the source online and there’s nothing concrete. From what I know, someone might have insinuated Jimi saying something like that and Rory’s brother Dónal, who was also his manager, grabbed hold of that and ran with it. Jimi might have said it, but there’s no proof. It’s just one of those folklore things!”

• Old Habits Die Hard is out now via Frontiers.

When it comes to guitar auctions, artist connections rule. The world’s most expensive electric guitars and acoustic guitars have been refinished, refretted, and beaten up, but thanks to their rock star provenance they’re worth more than any mint condition 1959 Gibson Les Paul.

The list that follows, containing the most expensive guitars ever sold at auction, is all the evidence you need to prove such a theory. The list itself looked very different, up until March 2026, when the greatest guitar auction in history took place in New York.

The Jim Irsay Collection auction – hosted by Christie's and comprising some of the late collector's storied possessions – shattered records, smashed estimates, and obliterated expectations, completely flipping the list of the most expensive guitars of all time on its head.

Private sale prices are notoriously hard to confirm. As a result, we’ve left out Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock Stratocaster (reportedly sold for $1.3m in 1993 to Microsoft’s Paul Allen) and the infamous Peter Green/Gary Moore Les Paul, for which Kirk Hammett allegedly paid $2 million in 2014.

Everything else goes, though, so read on to find out which instruments make it into the list of the most expensive guitars to go under the hammer.

22. Eric Clapton's "Blackie" Fender Stratocaster

Sold: New York, 2004
Price: $959,000

"Blackie" set a world record auction price at the time of sale, but now barely scrapes into the top 11.

When Clapton fancied a Fender Stratocaster in 1970, he bought the entire stock from Nashville’s Sho-Bud. He gave three to his friends George Harrison, Pete Townshend, and Steve Winwood, and assembled his ideal Strat from the rest: a ’56 body, ’57 neck, and a third guitar’s pickups (two '50s models and one 1970 grey bottom).

Clapton played it almost exclusively from 1974 to 1985. By the end, the neck was so worn that the low E string hung off the edge, which must be why it didn’t quite reach the one-million mark.

21. Bob Dylan's 1964 Fender Stratocaster

Sold: New York, 2013
Price: $965,000

At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan went electric, toting this 1964 Stratocaster, which he subsequently left on a private plane. Pilot Vic Quinto picked it up, and it stayed with his family for nearly 50 years.

Auction catalog photos show it in excellent condition for a gigged guitar, with the Three-Tone Sunburst largely free of dings or fading. As an example of a pre-CBS Stratocaster, this was a fine specimen even before you consider the history.

With original strap and case included, it was expected to fetch up to $500k. In the event, it stole "Blackie"’s crown.

20. Rory Gallagher's 1961 Fender Stratocaster

Sold: London, 2024
Price: $1,160,000

The announcement that Rory Gallagher's family would be selling his legendary 1961 Fender Stratocaster – along with a load of his other gear – quite literally sparked international interest. Members of the Irish government endorsed a grassroots fundraising effort to keep the guitar in the late blues rock great's native country of Ireland. Joe Bonamassa endorsed the idea.

Owing to the significance of this particular Strat (legend has it it was actually the first to ever reach Irish soil), no one will be surprised to see it make this list. Gallagher wielded this heavily aged guitar throughout the course of his career, and used it to cement himself as one of the all-time greats of guitar music.

When the auction rolled around in October 2024, the hammer eventually went down at £700,000 (£889,400 with the added buyer's premium), which equates to $1.26 million. Fortunately for those who wished to see the Strat stay in Ireland, the successful bidder donated it to a national museum.

19. Duane Allman's 1957 Gibson Les Paul

Sold: Dallas, 2019
Price: $1,250,000

Guitar nerds may be surprised that the most expensive Les Paul is not in fact a Burst, but this 1957 Goldtop. It was used on first two Allman Brothers albums, as well as Derek & the Dominos’ Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, before Duane traded it for a sunburst model. Allman insisted on keeping the pickups, so this guitar now has the humbuckers from the Burst.

A subsequent owner refinished it badly, before Tom Murphy restored it to glory. Former owner Scot Lamar frequently loaned it out, so you’ve seen it on stage with the likes of Billy Gibbons, Kirk Hammett, and Derek Trucks.

18. John Lennon's 1963 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins

Sold: New York, 2026
Price: $1,270,000

One of three John Lennon guitars on this list, his Gretsch 6120 Chat Atkins was used during the recording sessions of Paperback Writer and Rain. The 1963 model also sold for $1,270,000 – a figure justified by the influence it had during one of the Beatles’ most innovative and creative periods in the lead up to Revolver.

It stayed in Lennon’s home studio until late 1967, when he gifted it to his younger cousin. By then, it had already been etched into Beatles lore.

17. John Lennon's 1964 Rickenbacker Model 1996

Sold: New York, 2026
Price: $1,270,000

A few John Lennon guitars went under the hammer for the Jim Irsay Collection auction in March 2026, and while none pipped the Framus or the J160E, his stage-played Rickenbacker– used during the Beatles Christmas shows in 1964 and 1965 – crept into the top 20 when it sold for $1,270,000.

Lennon and Ricks go hand in hand, hence the price of this one. Notably, this one has traditional f-holes instead of the usual Rickenbacker ‘slash’ soundholes. In 1968, it was gifted to Ringo Starr. So, a double-whammy for Beatles fans.

16. Kurt Cobain’s 1993 Fender Mustang “Sky Stang I”

Sold: Nashville
Price: $1,587,500

March 1, 1994 marked the date of Nirvana’s final show with Kurt Cobain – and the Sky Stang I featured heavily in that performance, having become the frontman’s go-to guitar for the majority of the band’s In Utero tour dates.

The instrument was one of 10 ordered by Cobain in July 1993. It was built in Japan at the iconic Fujigen factory by custom luthier Scott Zimmerman.

Why Japan? Well, at that point, Fender’s US custom shop did not produce left-handed models, so the task fell to Zimmerman – the man behind the necks on Cobain’s first Jagstang builds.

Following Cobain’s death, the Sky Stang I passed to his brother Chad Cobain before eventually going to auction in late 2023. The guitar was purchased by Japan-based businessman Mitsuru Sato, so after 30 years abroad, it seems the instrument headed home.

15. David Gilmour's 1954 Fender Stratocaster

Sold: New York, 2019
Price: $1,815,000

Here’s a guitar that would have been collectible even without the Pink Floyd provenance. Its serial number, #0001, makes it confusingly not the very first Strat (that was #0100) but nevertheless among the first pre-production Strats given to Fender endorsees.

The first owner was country star Rex Gallion, and en route to Gilmour it was owned by Seymour Duncan. The fact that it was also used to record the Nile Rodgers-esque rhythm parts on Another Brick in the Wall was just a bonus. Auctioneer Christie’s guide price of $100-150k proved unnecessarily pessimistic.

14. Jerry Garcia's "Wolf"

Sold: New York, 2017
Price: $1,900,000

The only guitar here not built by a major manufacturer, the "Wolf" was luthier Doug Irwin’s bespoke creation for the Grateful Dead guitarist. Using laminated maple and purpleheart – an incredibly stiff South American wood – Irwin invented an instrument with a new shape, hardware, and controls.

An ingenious plate system allowed pickup systems to be dropped in and out, while two outputs let Garcia run his effects loop separately and switch it from the guitar. Iconic to Deadheads, the "Wolf" was the flagship of a Grateful Dead auction that raised $3.2 million for civil rights charity, the Southern Poverty Law Center.

13. George Harrison's Gibson SG Standard

Sold: New York, 2026
Price: $2,271,000

A new entry into the list as of March 2026, George Harrison joined John Lennon in the annals of expensive guitar history when his 1964 SG Standard sold for $2,271,000 as part of the Jim Irsay Collection auction.

It’s a lot of money for an SG Standard, of course, but the Fab Four connection here is the key. It was used extensively by the Beatle both on stage and in the studio between 1966 and 1968, making it one of Harrison’s longest-serving instruments. It was played during the sessions of both the White Album and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and was also used by Lennon during the making of Hey Bulldog in 1968.

Christie’s said “it’s impossibly rare for such a well-documented and extensively used Beatles guitar to come to auction”.

12. David Gilmour's Martin D-35

Sold: New York, 2026
Price: $2,393,000

Another Gilmour record-breaker, the Martin D-35 that he used to record Wish You Were Here was sold for $2,393,000 – a sizable increase from the mere $1,095,000 it sold for in 2019.

In 2003, David Gilmour told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs his Martin D-35 was the one luxury item he’d want if he were stranded at sea. “It’s the best guitar I own,” he said. “It’s the guitar that’s always by my side. I’ve written just about every piece of music using that guitar. My ideas come through that guitar.”

Most prominently heard on Wish You Were Here, it was used on every Pink Floyd album from Dark Side of the Moon (1973) to The Final Cut (1983). The 1969 D-35 proved not to be entirely indispensable, however, as Gilmour auctioned it to benefit the charity ClimateEarth.

11. John Lennon's Gibson J160E

Sold: Los Angeles, 2015
Price: $2,410,000

Whacking a pickup in a standard acoustic guitar was a Gibson masterstroke, giving rock ’n’ rollers exactly what they needed to be heard. John Lennon used this particular guitar to write hits like I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and to record most acoustic moments on Beatles songs from 1962-1963.

The acoustic was even on the Beatles’ first US number one, Love Me Do, but was stolen at a Christmas concert in 1963. Lennon replaced it and carried on using J-160Es for the rest of the Beatles’ career. Given its significance to rock history, it’s hardly surprising that it fetched a record price when it re-emerged in 2015.

10. Reach Out to Asia Fender Stratocaster

Sold: Qatar, 2005
Price: $2,700,000

Unique here in that it was never owned by a superstar, the Reach Out to Asia Strat was auctioned for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

It was a humble Mexican Standard Stratocaster bearing the signatures of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend, Mark Knopfler, Ray Davies, Liam Gallagher, Ronnie Wood, Tony Iommi, Angus and Malcolm Young, Paul McCartney, Sting, Ritchie Blackmore, Def Leppard and Bryan Adams.

New made-in-Mexico Strats sold for around $350 in 2005, making this objectively the most overpriced axe of all time.

9. Eddie Van Halen's ‘Kramer Ad’ guitar

Sold: New York, 2025
Price: $2,734,000

Built in the early 1980s, this was one of the very first Kramer guitars that Eddie Van Halen built and used, and was famously featured in Van Halen’s “It’s very simply the best guitar you can buy today” Kramer ad.

The Kramer was also one of the first builds the brand and Van Halen collaborated on together, and was modeled after Van Halen’s iconic Frankenstein, carrying over the black/red/white striped colorway from the OG six-string.

It was used on stage during a number of occasions across 1982 and 1983, in locations such as Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela.

8. John Lennon's Help! 12-string Framus Hootenanny

Sold: New York, 2024
Price: $2,857,500

In April 2024, at a special preview event shrouded in mystery, Julien’s announced its discovery of John Lennon’s 12-string Framus Hootenanny – a hugely influential Beatles instrument that was used extensively during the Help! recording sessions in the ‘60s.

Used to record the film of the same name – and seen during a performance of You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away – the guitar was found in the back of an attic, having been missing for 50 years. Its saviors were under no assumption: the Framus would be making headlines the world over, and could even set a new world record for guitar auctions.

While that didn’t quite happen, it did comfortably make it onto this list, smashing its absurdly conservative estimate of $800,000 and selling for $2,857,500 in May 2024. It also set a record for the most expensive Beatles guitar to sell at auction, beating out Lennon’s $2.4 million Gibson J-160E.

7. Eric Clapton’s 1964 ‘The Fool’ Gibson SG

Sold: New York, 2026
Price: $3,003,000

Three years after it sold for just over $1,000,000 in 2023, Clapton’s ‘The Fool’ SG entered the top 10 in March 2026 when it re-sold at auction for $3,003,000. It ticks a lot of boxes as far as historical, musical and cultural significance is concerned.

The Fool became Slowhand’s go-to guitar in his post-Bluesbreaker days while he and his Cream bandmates were piecing together the riff-orientated Disraeli Gears. It became the face of the psychedelic era, thanks to its wild artwork, and helped concoct Clapton’s heralded ‘woman tone’, which underpinned hits such as Sunshine of Your Love.

Another headline-stealer from the Jim Irsay Collection auction, it broke the record for the most expensive Gibson guitar of all time.

6. Eddie Van Halen's Hot For Teacher Kramer

Sold: New York, 2023
Price: $3,932,000

There’s been no shortage of Eddie Van Halen guitar auctions over the past few years, but when news broke that the late guitar legend’s Hot For Teacher Kramer was going under the hammer… well, it was apparent that this case was different from all the others, and that the striped Kramer in question would be rubbing shoulders with some of the six-strings on this prestigious list.

Exceeding its auction estimate by nearly $1,000,000, the Paul Unkert-built beauty was reportedly one of Van Halen’s primary instruments in 1983 and 1984, and most notably starred in the iconic Hot For Teacher music video. Owing to this history, it sold for just shy of the four million dollar mark in early 2023.

Few guitars of this caliber from the Van Halen camp are currently out in the wild, and we doubt those of greater significance will ever hit the auction block. As such, this might just be the most expensive Van Halen guitar that will ever sell at auction.

5. Eric Clapton's MTV Unplugged Martin 000-42

Sold: New York, 2026
Price: $4,101,000

For a long time, Cobain’s D-18E was the only acoustic in the top 10 of this list. Now, thanks to Clapton’s record-breaking Martin 000-42, it’s got company. The 1939 acoustic famously featured on that iconic MTV Unplugged performance, and when it sold for $4,101,000 in 2026, it became the most expensive Slowhand guitar to ever go under the hammer.

It was expected to sell for up to $1,200,000 but, of course, it smashed that ceiling. This Martin can be seen on the MTV Unplugged cover, and was one of four guitars used for that concert. With this, Clapton played eight of the 17 songs, including Layla, Before You Accuse Me, and Old Love.

4. Kurt Cobain's Martin D-18E

Sold: Los Angeles, 2020
Price: $6,010,000

In summer 2020, there wasn’t much to do apart from play guitar and bid on online auctions, which might be why Kurt’s guitar so comprehensively smashed all records.

The D-18E was used for Nirvana’s immortal MTV Unplugged set, including the goosebump-raising cover of Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World. Because that gig was televised and universally lauded, this iconic instrument is indelibly associated with Kurt Cobain.

Rode Microphones owner Peter Freedman was the man with the dented wallet after the auction. He has promised to exhibit the guitar on a world tour, although Covid-19 has thus far scuppered that plan.

3. Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang

Sold: New York, 2026
Price: $6,907,000

It wasn’t that long ago that Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang went under the hammer for $4,550,000. At the time, it was a big deal. It was the second most expensive guitar to be sold at auction in 2022.

Amazingly, it’s been demoted a spot despite the fact it’s actually gone up in value, with the Mustang in question – which helped catapult Nirvana into the stratosphere and cement Smells Like Teen Spirit as a grunge anthem – selling for $6,907,000. And, yes, it was another Jim Irsay Collection auction sale.

Known for its starring role in the Smells Like Teen Spirit music video – which in turn played a vital part in launching Nirvana’s popularity straight into the stratosphere – the Mustang’s near-mythical appearance has now been viewed on YouTube almost 1.5 billion times, after it made its debut on MTV’s 120 Minutes on September 29, 1991.

2. Jerry Garcia Tiger

Sold: New York, 2026
Price: $11,560,000

Somewhere further down this list, you’ll see Jerry Garcia’s Wolf guitar, which sold in 2017 for just shy of $2,000,000. Well, step aside, dear Wolf, because there’s another Garcia guitar in town now – the equally iconic Tiger, which fetched $11,560,000 at the Jim Irsay Collection auction in 2026.

It’s now one of two guitars not made by a major manufacturer on this list (something that no doubt heightens its appeal and prestige) and we’re not surprised to see yet another Garcia guitar get so much love. It was expected to sell for $2,000,000. It sold for a lot more.

1. David Gilmour's Black Fender Stratocaster

Sold: New York, 2026
Price: $14,550,000

When it sold in 2019 for nearly $4,000,000, David Gilmour’s legendary Black Strat became the fourth most expensive guitar ever sold at auction. When the Jim Irsay Collection auction swung around in March 2026, though, it was launched all the way to the top spot – selling for a staggering, record-shattering $14,550,000.

That’s a value increase of more than $10,000,000. Understandably, it holds a fair few records now. It’s the most expensive guitar ever. It’s the most expensive Fender Stratocaster ever. It’s the most expensive David Gilmour guitar ever. It is, quite frankly, an assortment of records that will probably never be broken.

Gilmour himself said he couldn’t tell the difference between the Black Strat and his signature model. But hey, you’re not paying $14,550,000 for just any ol’ Strat. It’s the Gilmour Strat, the one that played the Comfortably Numb solo. Its upper pre-auction estimate of $4,000,000 looks very silly now.

You only had to glance at Rory Gallagher to know the road was his natural habitat. The rumpled check shirt, the three-day stubble, the air of nomadic bliss: everything suggested a twilight creature to be spotted at the stage door, gas station and bolthole motel. 

As Joe Bonamassa once told this writer: “Rory was the guy who would pour out of the van after he drove for 17 hours, set up his own amp, plug in, play the best show you’d ever seen in your life, pick up his amp and guitar, get back in the van and drive to the next city.”

As Rory’s nephew – and the producer of his posthumous releases, including All Around Man, a new cut‑and-shut of two fierce London shows played in December 1990 – Daniel Gallagher knows better than most what it meant to his uncle to take the stage. 

And as he unboxes the fabled guitars, amps and pedals that have largely lain dormant since Rory passed in June 1995, Daniel recalls the startling gearshift from the gentle, shaggy-haired relative to the febrile showman flaying the last of the paint from his ’61 Stratocaster.

“I think that Rory came alive on stage, or certainly that alter ego he had. He was such a shy, quiet guy but then he became this animal. I knew him well as a kid, and I remember seeing him live for the first time at the Hammersmith Odeon in ’87. My dad pulled back the curtain at the side of the stage, Rory was already playing and I remember thinking, ‘That’s him?’ It was surreal knowing him from playing football in the back garden to this guy machine-gunning the crowd and going crazy.” 

If the road suited Rory’s temperament – “It’s my reason for living,” he once said – it also brought out his best as a player. Certainly, there is abundant gold in Gallagher’s 11-strong studio catalogue. But the impression endures that this restless road warrior viewed the studio as merely an echo of the intensity of live gigs. 

As mid-’70s keyboard player Lou Martin once noted: “Rory wasn’t at his most comfortable or happiest in the studio. If he didn’t have somebody to look at then he couldn’t feed off the energy.”

There’s no doubt Gallagher tapped his mojo most readily on the boards. Even if you never saw him live, the evidence is there on 1972’s Live In Europe, Irish Tour ’74 and 1980’s Stage Struck: all three widely viewed as some of the best live albums ever. 

“Rory’s passion was always seen on stage more,” says Daniel. “I remember Johnny Marr saying he was scared of him, the first time he saw Rory live, because he was so aggressive. People say that in the audience at a Rory concert, especially in the ’70s, you got so caught up with how much he put into it that you ended up sweating bucketloads as well.”

Gallagher’s Gear 

Unless you knew better, you might imagine Rory’s instrument and backline choices would be as relaxed as his wardrobe and demeanour, that he would plug in whatever was to hand and make it sing. 

But that notion evaporates as Daniel unloads the late guitarist’s historic gear in the Guitarist photo studio, assembling the disparate rigs that reflect the evolving musical direction, personnel and circumstances of Rory’s three-decade career.

Formed in Cork in late ’66, but making their mark after moving to Belfast a year later, Rory’s first serious band, Taste, was a fiery power-trio whose combustible telepathy rivalled Cream. Yet in this early period, the guitarist clung to the gear of his teen apprenticeship on Ireland’s showband circuit. 

He was already wedded to the ’61 Stratocaster – reputedly one of the first to arrive on Irish shores – that would become his closest thing to a calling card. “It was very easy to play from the start – it has a very flat kind of neck – and I’ve kept it ever since,” he said. As for the beat-to-hell aesthetic, Rory shrugged: “There’s a theory that the less paint on a guitar, the better.”

Daniel picks up the story: “He’d had a Rosetti Solid 7 and a no-name amp before that, but when he joined the Fontana showband at 15, they had a Vox AC30 and as soon as he plugged in his Strat, there was a love affair there – that would carry on to him starting Taste. He still had the AC30 with the Strat and then, in about ’67, he came across the Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster, which he ran into the Vox’s Normal Channel.

From ’68 – the second iteration of Taste – that’s when you really hear that combination. Taste were ferocious live, and how hard and high he ran the amp and the signal into the amp gave him that incredible tone. He’d have the amp all the way up then control the volume via the guitar. And the booster really made it scream.”

Arguably, the finest example of that holy trinity is Taste’s casually brilliant set at the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival. “Everyone else had walls of Marshalls, but Rory just turned up, put a Vox AC30 on two folded-out chairs and let rip,” shares Daniel in disbelief. “It’s a hell of a sound.”

In Bad Taste… 

Critically revered but living in penury due to bad management, Taste were nearing the end as they crossed the English Channel. The band’s sour split left its scars on Rory – he would never revisit Taste’s material live – but his backline was too good to dismiss. 

“He stuck with that sound through his first two solo records and 1972’s Live In Europe,” explains Daniel. “Rory’s first solo album [Rory Gallagher] had Wilgar Campbell on drums and Gerry McAvoy on bass, and it was almost jazzy. Even when they were loud, they went off in places and Rory’s guitar runs are quite jazzy and he has quite a clean tone.” 

Following that solo breakout, there’s an argument that the best year to watch Rory Gallagher live was 1974, as he returned to Troubles-torn Belfast for the incendiary shows that would be cherry-picked for the deathless Irish Tour ’74 album. At a time when most stars avoided Northern Ireland, Gallagher earned added kudos among his countrymen by lodging at The Europa, which enjoyed the dubious accolade of the world’s most bombed hotel.

“Irish Tour ’74 is hard to beat,” says Daniel. “I always found his cover of Tony Joe White’s As The Crow Flies a magical moment. You get this audience hush because he’s just playing his National guitar.”

At those rabble-rousing shows, eagle-eyed fans noticed changes afoot. “In about ’73, Rory had brought in a keyboard player [Lou Martin] and a new drummer [Rod De’ath]. I think he’d had to find his new place in the EQ spectrum. Maybe the ferocity of the Rangemaster and AC30 wasn’t fitting in with the piano, so he added a Fender Twin, which gave him a rounder sound. And then, going into 1975’s Against The Grain, that line-up got quite funky. He adds in soul covers like I Take What I Want, and I think the Fender fitted that.”

Around the same period, the gloriously battered Fender Bassman you see here entered the frame. “He fell in love with that amp and started going to the Bassman and Twin together,” says Daniel. “When Rory went on big US tours opening for Deep Purple and the Faces, they were playing stadiums. That might have been another reason to go for two 4x10 Fenders together, because the Vox wasn’t going to do it at Madison Square Garden, y’know?”

By the late ’70s – another unmissable period caught on 2020’s posthumous Check Shirt Wizard release – Rory had alighted on a third Fender combo. “He’d come across the Concert,” says Daniel. “So in about ’77 he’d start linking the Bassman and Concert with a Hawk II booster, which had that graphic-equalising effect. In the studio, he’d even drive the hell out of small Fender Champs, but on stage, it needed to be a 4x10. The two Fenders together did that for him for a good while.”

It was Rory’s growing heaviosity at the turn of the decade – summed up by 1980’s Stage Struck – that demanded a rethink. “Getting into that harder rock period of Photo-Finish [1978] and Top Priority [1979], Rory started messing around with Ampeg VTs. Then, by Stage Struck, he had two Marshall 50-watt JMP combos hooked together with this Boss DB-5 pedal that he used as an equaliser, pushing the mids on the two amps. 

“It was a ferociously loud band, with Ted McKenna, who was Rory’s hardest-hitting drummer. So maybe his thinking was, ‘This is my big tone for this hard‑rock period.’ He’d always played pinch harmonics, but the squeals he gets on Stage Struck are very particular from how hard he’s pushing those Marshalls.”

The Last Decade 

The received wisdom is that Gallagher was past his peak by the early ’90s, but that’s refuted by the stinging tracks on All Around Man: Live In London.

“There was nothing written on the tapes,” reflects Daniel of initiating the project, “but I could hear the songs were from Fresh Evidence [1990] and Defender [1987]. Then he calls out in the second song – ‘Great to be here at the Town & Country!’ – which is now the O2 Forum [Kentish Town].

“There’s always trepidation,” he admits. “You don’t think of Rory having bad gigs, but could it be one of those? But it’s just phenomenal. The line-up is Gerry on bass, Brendan O’Neill on drums, Geraint Watkins on accordion and Mark Feltham on harmonica, and they’re absolutely flying. 

Rory, at this point, is almost more groove-based. On Heaven’s Gate and Continental Op, his playing is lot more in the pocket. There’s an eight-minute version of Ghost Blues, really killer rhythmic stuff. Almost like Billy Gibbons: a very earthy style of playing, compared with the ’71 stuff. At one point he does these volume swells in Moonchild and it’s jaw‑dropping.”

For his last stand, Rory came full circle – with a twist. “He said once that the Vox was his favourite amp, hence starting out with it and bringing it back at the end,” reflects Daniel. “It was always there in the back of his mind, even when he was cheating on it with the Fenders! On the Vox, he had a slapback using an analogue delay, so that would be the Memory Man or DOD 680.

“For these London shows,” continues Daniel, “he’d gone for the Marshall into the Vox, into a Marshall stack. But it’s funny because having always been known for playing through combos, he didn’t want to go, ‘Well, now I’m the stack guy.’ So he covered up the 412 speaker cabinet and just showed the head of that Super Bass, which was converted to be more of a Super Lead. 

“Each of those three amps were mic’d up separately, so it was fun mixing them: the slapback echo on the Vox, the midrange’d Marshall 50-watt and the dirt from the Super Bass.”

By this point, Rory also had more underfoot. “The Boss octave pedal added colour to his solos and the Tube Screamer was to go even louder,” explains Daniel.

“For certain songs he’d add flanger: Shadow Play had those little touches, just for variety and mystique. He had the Dyna Comp on all the time in this period. And he still had the DB-5 into the Marshall. It’s funny how certain boxes ‘belonged’ to certain amps. Like, the Rangemaster belonged to the Vox; you don’t see him putting it into any of the Fenders.” 

As we break and box the iconic backlines that changed the course of blues-rock, it’s hard to shake the hope that Rory would smile down to hear his rigs roar once again. 

For the late Irishman, these careworn guitars and amps were the sound of the road, and for Rory Gallagher, the road was life. “I think it was his happiest place,” concludes Daniel. “I always got the feeling he was only himself for the two hours of every day he’d be on stage…”

• All Around Man: Live In London is out now via UMe.
• Guitarist would like to thank Rory Gallagher’s family and Michael Kelly for their kind and invaluable help in putting together this unique feature with Rory’s original gear.

With the help of some now-legendary electric guitar gear and a stacked vocabulary of blistering blues rock chops, Rory Gallagher became not only one of Ireland’s first rock stars, but one of the all-time greats of guitar music.

Those tones – and the various guitars, amps and effects pedals that helped Gallagher conjure them – were the topic of conversation in the latest issue of Guitarist, which recreated the exact rigs Rory played at some of his most famous live outings.

With the help of Gallagher’s nephew, Daniel, and guitarist Barrie Cadogan, Rory’s famed Fender ‘61 Stratocaster – reportedly the first to land on Irish shores – and Vox AC30 combo were pulled out of hibernation, as was the heavily modded Esquire, Marshall 50-watts and assortment of stompboxes that formed the late legend’s gear arsenal across his career.

Taking a chronological approach to Gallagher’s music, the demo above first traces the tones of his early days with Taste, paying particular attention to the band’s iconic Isle of Wight Festival performance – a show that featured Gallagher’s Strat, Vox and Range Master.

It was a simple-yet-devastating signal chain that, as Daniel notes, Rory retained for his first two solo records, 1971’s Rory Gallagher and Deuce.

In the early ‘70s, a Fender Twin and 4x10 Bassman – thrown into the equation to fit the mix of his expanding band sound – became part of his setup, which was further bolstered with a Fender Concert at the end of the decade.

On the pedal front, a Hawk II Tone Expander Booster found its way into the picture at this time to complement the changing amp setup – specifically, a dual Bassman/Concert rig – while even more stompboxes were utilized in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

With a new Marshall-centric backline, Gallagher drafted in a Boss DB-5 Driver Distortion for sound sculpting, and also relied on an MXR Dyna Comp, Ibanez Tube screamer, Boss BF-2 Flanger, Boss OC-2 Octaver and DOD 680 Analog Delay.

“It’s funny how certain pedals and boxes belonged to certain amps,” Daniel observed of Gallagher’s approach to pedals. “The Range Master belonged to the Vox. You don’t seem him putting it into any of the Fenders. It’s the same with the DB-5, it goes with the Marshall 50-watt.”

All of the above – including Gallagher’s modded Esquire set up for slide guitar – can be heard in the Guitarist demo video above.

To read the full feature, visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitarist, which also features an early look at Myles Kennedy’s new PRs T-type signature guitar.

Hello, and welcome to a new Spotify playlist-embiggened Essential Guitar Tracks. As you may well know, every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Our goal is to give you an overview of the biggest tracks, our editor’s picks and anything you may have missed. We’re pushing horizons and taking you out of your comfort zone – because, as guitarists, that’s something we should all be striving for in our playing.

So, here are our highlights from the past seven days… now with a Spotify playlist!

The Gaslight Anthem – Positive Charge

New Jersey’s classic-rock-channelling punks are back at it with their first new single in almost a decade, and from the absolute scorcher of an overdriven lick that smacks you in the face before frontman Brian Fallon even gets a word in, it’s clear that they’re out for blood. (JM)

The Smashing Pumpkins – Harmageddon

For a band now blessed with three outstanding guitarists, Smashing Pumpkins’ 33-track rock opera Atum is frustratingly synth-heavy. But when the alt-rock icons do let the axes loose, the results are more metallic than ever before. This guitar highlight channels Judas Priest in its NWOBHM chug, and features a blistering Billy Corgan lead that harks back to Siamese Dream. (MAB)

Nils Lofgren – Ain’t the Truth Enough

Every guitarist and their grandmother will tell you that "serving the song" is the most important thing to do as a player. Given that he plays in the long-serving backing bands of not one, but two, of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time – Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen – few are better at this than Nils Lofgren, who serves his haunting new solo single, Ain't the Truth Enough, with mournful, singing slide licks that paint as vivid a picture as Lofgren's lyrics. (JM)

Rory Gallagher – Continental Op (Live At The Town & Country Club, London, UK / 1990)

Part of a new collection of unreleased material, All Around Man – Live In London, this raucous performance finds Gallagher unleashing quicksilver slide leads and fiery pentatonic fury in support of what would be his final studio album, 1990’s Fresh Evidence. (MAB)

The Dirty Nil – Celebration

Kicking off with a pinch-loaded riff that wouldn’t sound out of place on an ’80s Ozzy album, Celebration marks a distinctly heavier turn from the Canadian punk-rock trio. It’s Marshalls-on-11 stuff. (MAB)

Voyager – Prince of Fire

The Australian prog band take on the bizarre perma-tanned pageantry that is the Eurovision song competition later this month. Prince of Fire showcases what they do best: big, grinding riffs and beautiful, bombastic melody. Set your pomp pedal to max. (MP)

Trev Lukather – The Sound

The first single from Trev – yes, son of Steve – Lukather’s upcoming debut solo album is a soaring ’80s arena rock power-ballad updated for today, not least by the appearance of an Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent model, whose whammy bar Lukather uses to deploy some wildly vocal phrasing. (MAB)

Boris and Uniform – You Are the Beginning

A collaboration between the long-running Japanese trio Boris and New York industrial metallers Uniform, You Are the Beginning sits at a gloriously filthy crossroads between thrash, punk, and pure noise, and is played out by a gonzo, ‘how is a wrist capable of that?’ solo that’ll have Michael Angelo Batio looking in his rearview mirror. (JM)

Bring Me the Horizon – LosT

The genre-bending British metalcore phenomenon turn their hand to pop-punk in this radio-friendly banger. With high-energy powerchords bolted to a chopped-up breakdown, it’s My Chemical Romance for the Spotify generation. (MAB)

Friendship Commanders – Fail

Co-produced by Kurt Ballou – a byword for gloriously filthy tones – this three-and-a-half minute riff blast from the Nashville heavy duo melds the worlds of ’90s grunge and contemporary sludge-metal in seamless, devastating fashion. (MAB)

Legss – Fester

London Sprechgesang practitioners will skewer you with their words, courtesy of Ned Green’s alternately louche and lacerating vocal. However, Green’s work with co-guitarist Max Oliver takes you on a more dynamic journey, chiming in and out of distorted euphoria amid screeching harmonics and rumbling rhythmic undercurrents. (MP)

Bethany Cosentino – It’s Fine 

With her band, Best Coast, on indefinite hiatus, Bethany Cosentino has struck out on her own with It’s Fine, a self-assured song that exchanges the sun-kissed surf-pop with which she made her name for an engaging country-rock strut made all the more irresistible by tasty, twangy, Southern-fried funk leads that complement the song perfectly. (JM)

M.A.G.S. – Sins

Like Bartees Strange and Willow, M.A.G.S. is part of a new wave of guitar-wielding singer-songwriters unafraid to switch up genres on a dime, and Sins draws a through-line between driving indie rock and post-hardcore breakdowns that’s bound to thrill fans of both. (MAB)

ROMES – Choker

An infectious, pacey new single from the Toronto duo’s forthcoming third album. The chorus recalls Cleopatrick’s chaotic, distorted rock-update, while there are a heap of nu-metal inspired tonal touchstones threaded throughout. (MP)

Like Moths to Flames – I Found The Dark Side of Heaven

This slice of savagery from the Ohio metalcore heavyweights is relentless in its brutality. Crushing breakdowns. Whammy squeals. Gojira pick scapes. All wrapped up in a wall of death-ready tone. (MAB)

The Hives – Bogus Operandi

A band as flamboyant as The Hives can’t just come back with any old song as their first new track in over a decade, and indeed Bogus Operandi has a meaty central riff that – with a big, irrepressible hook and Iommi-like power – will have its claws in you in no time. (JM)

Coach Party – All I Wanna Do is Hate

In the wake of Wet Leg’s international explosion, the Isle of Wight has suddenly become the hotspot of UK rock, and Wet Leg tourmates Coach Party should be next on your radar: All I Wanna Do is Hate taps into the ’90s grunge-pop revival, but abrasive chords and acerbic leads sharpen its edge to a punk sheen. (MAB)

Lifeguard - 17-18 Lovesong

Woozy and yet bracingly noisy in places, Lifeguard skip a merry line between drone and destruction, though admittedly, they don’t sound very merry doing it. Expect jarring harmonics, Wire-y melody and shuffling beats. (MP)

Infected Rain – Dying Light

Moldovan metalcore favorites Infected Rain adopt a Korn aesthetic – both in their guttural extended-range sonics and a fine line in dreadlocks – but it’s mutated via an injection of prog-metal riff DNA and eerie electronics. (MAB)

The Durutti Column - Pigeon (remastered)

Influential UK indie guitarist Vini Reilly’s 1998 album Time Was Gigantic… When We Were Kids is being treated to the full remaster treatment, with five new bonus tracks. This new mix of Pigeon sounds superb, all cut-glass delays and watery ambience. (MP)

Funkwrench Blues featuring Sadler Vaden – Crush 

Jason Isbell gets a lot of (well-deserved) press for his guitar skills, but his six-string sidekick, Sadler Vaden, is just as unique and distinct a player as he is – just listen to how much mileage he gets out of the first note he plays on Crush, a new instrumental track that sees Vaden backed by Funkwrench Blues. (JM)

Rory Gallagher’s estate has announced the release of a huge new collection of unreleased material, All Around Man – Live In London, which is taken from a two-night run at London’s Town And Country Club in 1990. 

Gallagher’s sets at the venue (now known as the Kentish Town Forum) took place in support of what would be his last studio album, 1990’s Fresh Evidence. As such, the set takes in a sizeable chunk of that final record, alongside material from its predecessor Defender. 

The first track Continental Op is already available to stream and the energy the late great Stratocaster master is channeling in the recording is remarkable, particularly considering it’s from the latter part of his career. 

There are two major solo sections among the five-minute performance – one features some electrifying slide work, while the second wrangles some outrageous bends and lightning runs from the neck. His tone is stunning, too – full of crunching, harmonic distortion and sounds that you can only get from digging in with a pick in just the right way.

Elsewhere, the collection looks to contain a fairly wide ranging set, taking in classics like Tattoo'd Lady, Shadow Play and Moonchild, alongside deeper cuts like Ride On Red On from 1982’s Jinx and Muddy Waters cover Mean Disposition. 

The full collection will be released on July 7 as a triple vinyl album and a double-CD, alongside the usual streaming and download options. Check out the full track list below. 

All Around Man – Live In London track list

1. Continental Op
2. Heavens Gate
3. Don't Start Me Talkin'
4. Kid Gloves
5. Mean Disposition
6. The Loop
7. Tattoo'd Lady
8. The King of Zydeco
9. Moonchild
10. Out On The Western Plains
11. Ride On Red, Ride On
12. Walkin Blues
13. Empire State Express
14. Shadow Play
15. I Wonder Who
16. Shin Kicker
17. Middle Name
18. When My Baby She Left Me
19. Ghost Blues
20. Messin' With The Kid
21. Keep A Knockin'
22. Bullfrog Blues
23. All Around Man

All Around Man – Live In London is released July 7. For more information and preorders, head to the Rory Gallagher store.

If you want something to do in the meantime, why not steal some tricks from the master and learn Rory Gallagher’s soloing techniques?

Belfast-born Dom Martin is fast becoming known as the heir to legendary Irish guitar hero Rory Gallagher.

Universal invited Dom to perform an acoustic set to launch the 50th anniversary edition of Rory’s classic album Deuce in 2021. Dom recently embarked upon a UK acoustic tour, and has electric dates lined up for October.

Are you performing Rory Gallagher songs on your acoustic dates?

“For as long as I’ve got breath in my body there will always be an element of Rory to the setlist! There used to be a lot more Rory songs in the set but we were a verging on becoming a tribute band. That’s not really what I was going for, because I have a lot of my own songs that have something to say.

“I just feel like I owe Rory an awful lot. As a kid growing up in Belfast, my dad gave me a tape with two of Rory’s albums on it – Blueprint and Live In Europe. That was my whole childhood! I still have it, but it’s sellotaped back together so many times it doesn’t work anymore. Rory was my only constant growing up. Nobody told me that he’d died and I found out when I was about 16. I was devastated!”

What were your other influences?

“My dad was like a mix of Ralph McTell and Tommy Emmanuel. We didn’t have a lot growing up, and music was our main food source if you will. There was a lot of playing in the house, always a lot of parties. 

“I was listening to all my dad’s old records, Rory Gallagher, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. You got beat up for playing guitar where I came from, so it was always that very insular thing learning how to play. It’s helped me through so much over the my whole life. I don’t know how people cope without playing an instrument.”

What else is in your acoustic set?

“There’s some Ralph McTell, a bit of John Martyn, bit of John Prine – all the Johns! It’s been great to get back to the stuff that me and my dad used to play years ago. The last couple of gigs I’ve done, it’s been great to get back to the acoustic. Instead of just blasting out songs you’re actually getting that feel and that groove again.”

How do you prepare for acoustic shows?

“I don’t really practise; it’s more of an addiction. When I get home from a gig in Ireland, it’s half-two in the morning. It’s time to try and switch off and I can’t because I have to play. I’ll be there at five in the morning just playing an electric guitar unplugged. I don’t do this because I want to do it. I do it because I need to.”

What’s your live rig?

“There’s a Strymon BigSky for ambience, a tuner and that’d be it for acoustic gigs. There’s no preamp, just whatever’s in the guitar. I just get lucky!”

• A Savage Life is out now.

This month we take a look at an unsung member of the late '60s guitar god hierarchy and one of Ireland’s first rock stars, Rory Gallagher. Despite his immense talent, prolific recording output and extensive touring, Gallagher never really achieved the fame or the guitar star status he so deserved.

Throughout his career he was determined in his rejection of compromise for commercialism’s sake, refusing to allow the release of singles to attract a wider mainstream audience that might well have brought him worldwide success. 

Regardless of this shunning of the mainstream, Gallagher earned a solid fanbase that has grown considerably in the years after his untimely death in 1995, aged just 47. Audiences around the world are still captivated by his primitive passion, his unwavering devotion to his roots-based sound, and to his mesmerising performances. 

The body of work he has left behind is remarkable for its consistency, honesty and earthiness, and his influence can be recognised in the generations of guitarists that followed.

Gallagher was a traditionalist at heart. He had studied the masters with great attention to detail and commanded an authenticity that can only be earned from a deep devotion to the music. However, his unique style came from a melting pot of influences, perhaps most interesting being the inclusion of the traditional Irish folk that he grew up listening to.

If there was ever a contender for the king of Celtic blues, then Gallagher would surely be chief amongst them. He mixed these two styles along with elements of rock, country, jazz and everything else he could absorb. This gave him a unique approach to improvising, which was often based around full seven note scales compared to the more traditional pentatonic palette we might expect. 

He would include 2nds and 6ths and often created lines that weaved slurred patterns of notes along a single string, perhaps because he was also an accomplished slide player.

His playing was raw and ferocious, and his performances unmatched in their intensity. Gallagher's passion was visible for all to see as he put his heart and soul into every second of his performances, delivering solos littered with pinch harmonics and a powerful vibrato.  

At other times he was capable of real subtlety and tenderness, using volume swells to coax violin-esque sounds from his battered Fender Stratocaster. No one-trick pony, his sets would also include acoustic numbers, touching on the country blues and folk influences that often saw Gallagher sing with intent and passion (a side to his talent that’s so often overlooked). 

All in all, Gallagher was a master. His unwavering commitment to his craft and his virtuosic command of six strings have earned him legendary status, and it’s not difficult to see why. 

Get the tone

Amp settings: Gain 4, Bass 3, Middle 6, Treble 6, Reverb 3

Gallagher played his beaten-up 1961 Strat almost exclusively. He was a fan of Vox AC30s as well as numerous Fender amps, often using a treble booster to push the amp a little harder. To get close to his sound, aim for an ‘edge of breakup’ tone with plenty of mids and treble, keeping the bass quite low. A little reverb will add some depth to the tone.

Example 1. 

This first example shows how Gallagher might approach a 12-bar blues, with a more linear scale based lines than you might expect in this generally more pentatonic-based genre, this time leaning heavily on the Dorian sound. 

We also see his extensive use of hammer-on, pull-off and slide combinations that he was fond of. Aim to get close to Gallagher's intensity here by employing a strong vibrato and digging in hard with the guitar pick. 

Example 2. 

Study two is based on more of a blues-rock style, this time featuring a shuffle groove. This gives us the opportunity to develop our triplet feel which, when combined with Gallagher's scale-based approach, gives us some of the Celtic flavour that was a big part of his sound (we hear a little of this in Gary Moore’s playing but not to the extent that we do in Gallagher’s). We also see pull-offs to open strings and volume swells, two concepts often used by Gallagher. 

It may come as a surprise to many, but the late blues guitar legend Rory Gallagher had a profound impact on Johnny Marr.

Despite cutting his teeth with The Smiths and building a reputation as one of today’s most prolific indie rock musicians, Marr’s musicality was significantly shaped by the untamed blues rock licks that emanated from the Irishman’s 1961 Fender Stratocaster.

Such styles may differ significantly, but, in Marr’s own words, Gallagher‘s 1971 album Deuce was “a complete turning point” for him as a guitar player – a significant shift in his guitar-playing journey during which “the penny just dropped”, thanks to the swing of In Your Town and blues licks of Should’ve Learnt My Lesson.

That context provides an even greater level of significance to the video below, which sees Marr wield Gallagher’s iconic ‘61 Strat to pay tribute to one of his biggest heroes.

Not only that, Marr can also be heard playing the battered-and-bruised Stratocaster through Gallagher’s Fender Bassman – the streamlined setup that was the crux of Gallagher’s world-beating tone.

The video, taken from 2013, was first published on February 28, just days before what would have marked Gallagher’s birthday.

To celebrate the occasion, Marr – who had just received the God Like Genius Award from NME – picked up his hero’s Strat to noodle through a range of blues-y licks and classic Rory riffs.

Marr has been vocal about the influence Gallagher had on his playing in the past, telling The Guitar Magazine in January 1997 that the Irishman’s “straightforward street image” appealed to him at a time when he was “desperate for something to call my own”.

“He had a very straightforward street image – jeans, plimsoles, a really battered guitar – and it just connected with me,” Marr explained. “I went to see him in concert and he scared the life out of me, honest! 

“He was so intense I couldn't believe it,” he continued. “I wanted to get closer, but I was scared in case he made eye contact with me and the earth swallowed me up or something. I can remember staying off school for a couple of days pretending I was ill and trying to play along with his records.”

However, the transformative moment for Marr came when he was playing along to Deuce: “There was one day when I was playing along to his Deuce album, which was just a complete turning point for me as a guitar player. 

“I sussed it out, and the penny just dropped; ‘I can play!’” Marr went on. “It's funny, 'cos about six months ago I dug all the records from that period of my life out again, and I can hear echoes of what I do chordally in what Rory Gallagher used to do. I don't know if anyone else would pick up on it but for me it was quite shocking.”

Few Stratocasters are as rare or revered as Gallagher’s own ‘61 model. Purchased in 1963 for £100 from the owner of Crowley’s Music Store in Cork, Ireland, it was supposedly the first Stratocaster to ever enter the country.

After acquiring the guitar, Gallagher quickly made it his go-to instrument and treated it to many modifications over the years, including new pickups and tuners. He also swapped out the vintage three-way switch in favor of a more versatile five-way, and wired the bottom tone pot to act as a master parameter.

The Strat was briefly stolen in the late-'60s, though was eventually found abandoned in a ditch after it was featured on a segment of the Garda Patrol TV show – a domestic program that worked to reunite people with their lost possessions.

Though Gallagher played a handful of other guitars throughout his career, such as a white 1966 Fender Telecaster, it's the '61 Strat that is synonymous with the blues great, having served him faithfully right up until his death in 1995.

This month we are taking a look at the various styles of Irish guitar legend Rory Gallagher. 

Rory successfully fused together blues and rock guitar vocabulary with home-grown folk and Celtic influences, and his albums have sold over 30 million copies worldwide. The various key ingredients of Rory’s influences can be clearly heard, but they are beautifully blended together with his own nuances.

We have written five fresh tracks for you to learn. Each of these is in the style of a landmark Rory recording, and each highlights a different signature approach. One of the key ingredients of Rory’s style is to keep the delivery organic with the emphasis on feel and delivery, as opposed to clinical accuracy. 

Our first track is a slow blues inspired by tracks like I Fall Apart. We have included a chorus of rhythm work to learn and this acts as a springboard into the solo. The A Minor Pentatonic scale (A-C-D-E-G) provides the main road map for the lead lines here. However Rory was a master of incorporating Minor scale notes into this basic framework and this added to his signature sound.

Our second track is an up-tempo rock number inspired by songs like Shadow Play. Again, to kick things off there’s a bit of powerchord riffling to learn. Rory wasn’t afraid to turn it up and add a slice of rock to his blues. 

This time the solo uses D Minor Pentatonic (D-F-G-A-C). Again, two extra notes can be added to D Minor Pentatonic (E and Bb) to create D Natural Minor scale. This sound takes us further into the world of rock (think Gary Moore) and facilitates a more emotional delivery.

Our next track unleashes the bottleneck. Rory was a master of slide guitar and his style was aggressive and powerful. Our track uses open G tuning (D-A-D-G-B-D) which facilitates some of that classic electric blues slide guitar phrasing.

For the final two tracks we dust off the acoustic. Rory was not afraid to incorporate folk and Celtic influences into his style, and our fourth track is inspired by songs like Just the Smile. 

For this one we are using DADGAD tuning which provides a cool-sounding, ambiguous, modal tonality that is neither Major nor Minor. As standard chord and scale shapes won’t work with this tuning, the musical ear must take over. Using a different tuning can be a good way to break out of the same old patterns and boxes.

To finish up we have a simple yet effective bit of fingerstyle blues. Rory was a fearless fingerpicker and this track is inspired by songs like Wave Myself Goodbye, and features a repeated fingerstyle pattern. The continuous octave bass line provides this track’s driving feel.

You can use the three backing tracks to try out your own, Rory tinged solos using some of the ideas from our example pieces. But do resist the temptation to stay within a solely Pentatonic framework, but instead do as Rory did, bringing in chromatic tones to create Natural Minor, Dorian and Mixolydian sounds. It’s so much cooler. Explore, and have fun!

Get the tone

The Fender Custom Shop now makes replicas of Rory’s iconic 1961 Strat. He used a Vox AC30 with a treble booster pedal to coax it into singing sustain. 

To get the sound with your own set-up, select the bridge pickup (single-coil is most authentic, but a humbucker will work fine). Go for a light overdrive with plenty of sustain. Rory would run the guitar amp flat out, but if that’s impractical use a compressor or overdrive pedal to emulate a loud valve tone.

Technique focus: Finger vibrato and bending

Two techniques that are key to Rory’s lead guitar delivery are his finger vibrato and string bending. While his technique and approach is fairly blues orientated, it also works well when in rock mode.

The key to a good finger vibrato is the consistency of the width and rate. Rory used an aggressive touch that is most characteristically of a medium width and a fast rate. Rory adds this finger vibrato to normally fretted notes as well as bent ones. Rory’s string bending technique is appropriate to his blues and rock playing (when using the slide the rate and width of the vibrato is very wide and fast).

As with all string bending practice you should use a target tone to make sure you are bending perfectly to pitch. It will be easiest to work on the semitone (one- fret) bends first and then build up to a whole-tone (two-fret) bend. 

As with any electric blues, all the Minor 3rd intervals can be bent a quarter tone sharp. These quarter-tone bends help the notes to fit harmonically into the chords and this adds a nice sleazy sounding, bluesy flavour.

Track record

There are many Rory Gallagher recordings to choose from. These span from his early days with blues-rock trio Taste, through to his solo recording career and his prolific live output. 

His 1971 debut solo album, entitled simply Rory Gallagher, is a classic and is well worth a listen. But don’t miss Irish Tour 1974, often heralded as one of the best and most exciting blues-rock albums around.

Jam track 1: Slow blues in A minor

CHORUS 1: BARS 1-14

We have included a chorus of rhythm work to learn and this acts as a springboard into the solo. The bass notes of the Fadd9 and G chords are played with the thumb of the fretting hand, which curls over the top of the fretboard.

CHORUS 2 AND 3: BARS 15-END

The A Minor Pentatonic scale (A-C-D-E-G) provides the main road map for the lead lines here. Combining string bending and double-stops is a classic trick and we use this idea in bar 30. The open strings can be used as pedal tones and this really helps to fill out the sound.

Jam track 2: up-tempo rock in D minor

VERSE 1: To start off we have some strong powerchord riffing. Rory wasn’t afraid to turn it up to 11! Use palm muting to thicken the sound and add a percussive attack.

CHORUS: Rory often used motifs that can be repeated, providing something for the listener to latch onto. Our motif is simple to play and memorable.

Jam track 3: electric slide

Rory’s slide style was aggressive and powerful. Our track uses open G tuning (D-A-D-G-B-D) which facilitates the classic blues slide phrasing. Having a b3rd interval between first and second strings, a Major 3rd between second and third, and perfect 4th between third and fourth allows these intervals to be used freely.

Jam track 4: Celtic acoustic

Rory was fond of the acoustic guitar and incorporated folk and Celtic influences into his music. For this one we are using DADGAD tuning, so detune the sixth, and the second and first strings by a tone to create this modal tuning. We have notated the strumming pattern with its swung eighth-note rhythm.

To condense the chart we have used a fair few repeats and roadmap symbols. Hopefully after a listen through it should be fairly obvious where everything goes.

Jam track 5: Fingerstyle acoustic blues

To finish up we have a simple yet effective bit of fingerstyle blues. This track features a two-bar repeating fingerstyle pattern that we have notated. Starting slowly with this one is essential because, while the fingerstyle pattern is not overly difficult, you will need to get it nailed before bringing it up to tempo. 

The continuous bassline pattern (typical of Delta blues) provides the driving feel (think Big Bill Broonzy). We have overdubbed a lead acoustic part to provide some context and to finish off the track, but the main thing we are concerned with here is the fingerstyle acoustic backing, which is notated in full.

The recent 50th anniversary of blues guitar legend Rory Gallagher's second solo album, Deuce, is set to be celebrated with a massive reissue of the record.

Featuring a new mix of the hugely influential original LP, more than two dozen previously unreleased alternate takes and recordings from multiple live radio sessions, the 50th anniversary box set edition of Deuce will be released on September 30 via UMC.

The full, 4CD box set edition will also feature a 64-page hardback book with a foreword by Johnny Marr (who once said that playing along to Deuce was "a complete turning point" for him as an electric guitar player) unseen images by legendary rock photographer Mick Rock, essays, and memorabilia from the recording of the album.

Aside from the full 4CD set, the 50th anniversary edition of Deuce will also be available in 2CD, limited edition 3LP, limited edition single LP, deluxe digital HD and deluxe digital standard editions.

Like its self-titled predecessor – released earlier in 1971 – Deuce aimed to capture the explosiveness of Gallagher's live performances in a studio environment.

Gerry McAvoy – who played bass guitar on both Rory Gallagher and Deuce – explained Gallagher's no-frills approach to recording these early albums in a 2021 interview with Guitar World.

"All Rory’s heroes, like Muddy Waters, probably recorded with two mics in Chicago – and everybody wanted to have that live performance feel," McAvoy explained, in reference to Gallagher's debut. "If there were any overdubs, it was maybe the odd rhythm guitar track or whatever, or a tambourine that would happen afterwards. But basically, the vocals would be put down live. What he was after was a great performance: in his mind’s eye that’s what created a great song. 

“A lot of the other bands wouldn’t have done it that way, you know? I mean, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin would have done it in a completely different way, maybe, and overdubbed the solos. But Rory wanted it to be as live as possible, which sometimes can be detrimental, sonically. But that’s what Rory wanted and that’s the way it was."

All iterations of the 50th anniversary edition of Rory Gallagher's Deuce can be pre-ordered via Amazon.

Rory Gallagher – Deuce: 50th Anniversary 4CD Box Set tracklist:

CD1

1. Used to Be – 50th Anniversary Edition
2. I'm Not Awake Yet – 50th Anniversary Edition
3. Don't Know Where I'm Going – 50th Anniversary Edition
4. Maybe I Will – 50th Anniversary Edition
5. Whole Lot of People – 50th Anniversary Edition
6. In Your Town – 50th Anniversary Edition
7. Should've Learnt My Lesson – 50th Anniversary Edition
8. There's a Light – 50th Anniversary Edition
9. Out of My Mind – 50th Anniversary Edition
10. Crest of a Wave – 50th Anniversary Edition

CD2

1. Used to Be – Alternate Take 1
2. Used to Be – Alternate Take 2
3. I'm Not Awake Yet – Alternate Take 1
4. Don't Know Where I'm Going – Alternate Take 1
5. Maybe I Will – Alternate Take 1
6. Maybe I Will – Alternate Take 2
7. Maybe I Will – Alternate Take 3
8. Maybe I Will – Alternate Take 4
9. Maybe I Will – Alternate Take 5
10. Whole Lot of People – Electric Alternate Take 1
11. Whole Lot of People – 6 String Acoustic Alternate Take 1
12. Whole Lot Of People – Deuce Album Session/Alternative Acoustic Take
13. Whole Lot of People – 12 String Acoustic Alternate Take 1
14. In Your Town – Alternate Take 1
15. In Your Town – Alternate Take 2
16. In Your Town – Alternate Take 3

CD3

1. In Your Town – Alternate Take 4
2. Should've Learnt My Lesson – Deuce Album Session/Alternative Acoustic Take
3. Should've Learnt My Lesson – Deuce Album Session Outtake
4. Should've Learnt My Lesson – Alternate Take 2
5. Should've Learnt My Lesson – Alternate Take 3
6. There's A Light – Alternate Take 1
7. There's A Light – Alternate Take 2
8. There's A Light – Alternate Take 3
9. Out of My Mind – Alternate Take 1
10. Out of My Mind – Alternate Take 2
11. Out of My Mind – Alternate Take 3
12. Crest of a Wave – Alternate Take 1
13. Crest of a Wave – Alternate Take 2
14. Don't Know Where I'm Going – Home Demo
15. Maybe I Will – Home Demo
16. Should've Learnt My Lesson – Home Demo

CD4

1. Should've Learnt My Lesson – Radio Bremen 21/12/1971
2. Crest of a Wave – Radio Bremen 21/12/1971
3. I Could've Had Religion – Radio Bremen 21/12/1971
4. For The Last Time – Radio Bremen 21/12/1971
5. Messin' With The Kid – Radio Bremen 21/12/1971
6. Don't Know Where I'm Going – Radio Bremen 21/12/1971
7. Pistol Slapper Blues – Radio Bremen 21/12/1971
8. Used To Be – BBC In Concert - Live at The Paris Theatre, 13 January 1972
9. Should've Learnt My Lesson – BBC In Concert - Live at The Paris Theatre, 13 January 1972
10. Out Of My Mind – BBC In Concert - Live at The Paris Theatre, 13 January 1972
11. I Could've Had Religion – BBC In Concert - Live at The Paris Theatre, 13 January 1972
12. Crest Of A Wave – BBC In Concert - Live at The Paris Theatre, 13 January 1972
13. Messin' With The Kid – BBC In Concert - Live at The Paris Theatre, 13 January 1972