“Fender execs were miffed that the brand was being represented by such a worn-out Strat. They gave Rory a new one to replace the ’61. It saw little use”: The story of Rory Gallagher’s ’61 Stratocaster, one of the most iconic guitars of all time

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.