The Guitar Magazine – July 2019

Rory got this white Telecaster in the mid 60s

and continued to use it throughout his career with

Taste and as a solo artist. Perhaps most famously and

impactfully, he used the Tele on stage at the 1970

Isle Of Wight Festival – a performance that was

immortalised on a live album that would become

the trio’s swansong.

“My favourite bit of footage of him is when he’s

playing Gambling Blues at the Isle Of Wight,” Daniel

enthuses. “Early on, he liked a sharp attack with his

slide playing, so he used a brass slide with it so it

was really stinging and direct with the AC30 – when

you’re trying to get through to 600,000 people it

helps if you have a bit of bite.

“He loved that guitar for slide, for so much of his

slide work, he’d use the Tele. If you watch Irish Tour,

he swaps back and forth between the Esquire and the

Tele. I think he’d have, say, one in D, and that one in

A, then as he needed, he’d just jump on it.”

As is a common theme with Rory’s guitars, the Tele

has seen its fair share of modifications over the years.

“If we took the scratchplate off that, there’d be the

routing for a middle pickup,” Daniel explains. “He

went mad at one point and I think he got a Seymour

Duncan pickup and put it in there! I guess he just

wanted to see if it sounded like a Strat? But he didn’t

add a five-way switch, so he’d have had to wedge it

in-between, like they did with old Strats.”

Despite its rough life, it’s amazing that this still

remains a wonderful, inspiring instrument, with a

beautifully played-in neck and a weight right in the

Telecaster sweet spot zone at 3.3kg/7.3lb. Okay, so

it probably needs a new set of strings – given that

they’re corroded to the point of near-disintegration –

but with good cause, as the last person to change the

strings was Rory himself.

“It’s a bit of a moral quandary,” Daniel admits. “It

does feel like we should leave it as Rory left it. The

strings will eventually rust and break of course, but

most of these guitars still have the original strings

that he put on them.”

1968 MARTIN D-35

Rory’s acoustic playing is oft-forgotten, but he was

a fine flat-top player – and for most of his recording

career, this battered and bruised D-35 was his

favoured instrument.

“This is the one. It’s his acoustic for everything,”

Daniel confirms. “From Taste onwards, it was all done

with this. It features heavily on the new Blues album,

ABOVE Rory’s favourite
acoustic, the 1968 Martin
D-35 above, features heavily
on the new Blues album

©

(^) M
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RORY GALLAGHER
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