to anything that was particularly useful!” Daniel
chuckles. “He’d no doubt have gone, ‘That looks
mad... four pickups – okay, just break off the tremolo
arm and we’ll be sorted!
“I’ve seen him talk about having this, although
I haven’t found any references to him actually
playing it for anything, so I think it’s definitely
‘one for the collection’!
“I could never imagine Rory being a double-neck
player live! For someone like Jimmy Page,
it’s obviously cool as hell, but for Rory it’s just a
bit too pompous. So I think part of it must have
been Rory thinking, ‘Yeah, okay, they do look cool...
but I can’t get a fancy Gibson one! I’ve gotta get
the Mosrite!’”1965 TEISCO DEL REY
Our final leftfield electric comes from Teisco. The
Japanese budget brand might have been recentlyreborn as a maker of oddball effects, but during
the mid 1960s, it was bringing its eccentric design
approach to guitars such as this offset. “This is such
a mad thing! It’s so cool – it’s got a handle, nobody
needs a handle!” Daniel laughs.
“I feel like this is another one of those guitars
where he saw it and thought, ‘That’s mad, nobody
else is playing one, I’ll take it!’ And it probably only
cost him a couple of hundred dollars, if that!
“When he was on the road, especially in America,
he would just go into pawn shops and buy loads
of Kays, Harmonys, Tokais and Teiscos. He wouldn’t
be interested in buying that year’s new Strat or
whatever. If he was here now, he’d be ignoring
all that,” Daniel continues, gesturing to the wall of
old Gibsons and Fenders in New King’s Road Vintage
Guitar Emporium. “He’d be looking at the Nationals,
the Teiscos, the Silvertones, asking ‘What’s that?
What does it sound like? Can I break the tremolo
arm off it?’”
It’s still perhaps a surprise to fans accustomed to
seeing Rory blazing away with his iconic Stratocaster
that so much of his guitar collection is taken up with
these unusual instruments that weren’t exactly trendy
at the time – and a lot of it comes back to his deep“WHEN HE WAS ON THE ROAD,
ESPECIALLY IN AMERICA,
HE WOULD JUST GO INTO PAWN
SHOPS AND BUY LOADS OF KAYS,
HARMONYS, TOKAIS AND TEISCOS”
THIS SPREAD Another
contender for the weirdest
guitar in Rory’s collection,
this Mosrite double-neck was
probably bought for its looks
RORY GALLAGHER52