love of blues and blues history. “Rory loved collecting
blues memorabilia – vinyl, posters, photographs – and
he was fascinated by what the old blues guys would
play,” Daniel explains. “And they would play cheaper
guitars, because that’s what they could afford. And so
he would say: ‘Well I’ve got to get that, because that
makes a great blues sound,’ rather than a luxury Les
Paul or whatever.
“I remember hearing the story of how he was on
the Blind Faith tour in New York, and he wanted a
particular guitar, an old Kay I think, because he’d
seen Lonnie Johnson playing one on an album
cover. And he asked Clapton if he knew anywhere
in New York where he could one of these guitars,
and Clapton tells him to speak to this guy, John
Hammond Jr, the blues player.
“So he met up with him, and John tells this lovely
story about how they met for the first time and then
went guitar shopping in New York in 1969. Andthey find the guitar in the attic of this guitar shop on
like 32nd Street or something, and then John says to
Rory: ‘Look man, they’ll try to pull something here
because you’re foreign... I’ll take the guitar over –
how much do you want to pay for it?’ And Rory says:
‘I don’t know, $50?’ ‘Right, we’ll get it for $50’.
“And so he goes up to the desk, asks this really
New York owner how much he wants for it – $500.
And he’s like, ‘No, it’s a piece of shit!’ and the owner
is like, ‘Nah, $500.’
“And so Rory walks over and says: ‘Watch this...’
and he does the big Irish brogue – ‘Oh, I’ve come
over from Ireland and I’ve been trying all day to find
this guitar of my hero...’ giving it all that, and in the
end the owner’s like, ‘Alright, $50’. John was like, ‘I
still don’t know why he wanted it, it was a piece of
shit!’ And think this was the late 60s in New York,
you were tripping over all these golden-era Strats and
Les Pauls and he was like, ‘Nope, I want a weird
guitar with barely any wood for a bridge!’”Rory Gallager’s Blues is out now in both standard and deluxe
three-disc formats via Chess/Universal. Special thanks
to Rick at New Kings Road Vintage Guitar Emporium for
providing the location for this feature“RORY LOVED COLLECTING BLUES
MEMORABILIA – VINYL, POSTERS,
PHOTOGRAPHS – AND HE WAS
FASCINATED BY WHAT THE OLD
BLUES GUYS WOULD PLAY”
THIS PAGE Note the Teisco’s
‘monkey grip’, a voguish
feature predating Steve Vai’s
signature Ibanez models by
over two decades
RORY GALLAGHER54