The Guitar Magazine – July 2019

Marquee, saw the Stones and saw Brian Jones play
slide, thought, ‘Okay that’s pretty cool!’ and went and
got a slide. I would imagine that at some time he saw
this guitar in a shop and thought, ‘Oh, Brian Jones!’
and that was it.
“I have a photo of him playing it live, from the
late 70s, but I can’t imagine what he’d have been
actually playing with it, because he did have touches
of 12-string on his recordings to embellish the sound,
but the only time you really remember him playing
something with extra strings was the Coral Sitar. He’s
not playing blues on a 12-string!”

1965 NATIONAL AIRLINE
A couple of decades before Jack White made the
Res-O-Glas-bodied catalogue guitar iconic, Rory
Gallagher was again ahead of the curve, picking
up this red and white beauty and using it onstage
in the 1980s.
“He played it a bit in the mid 80s,” Daniel confirms.
“There’s some nice footage of him playing it on What
In The World at Montreux in ’85. Again, he liked it
for slide, but it didn’t want to stay in tune a lot!
I think it’s something about having that neck on
that plastic body isn’t the best for stability!

“He thought guitars like this were cool, that

nobody else was paying attention to, but to him

they’re blues guitars! JB Hutto played an Airline, and

Rory covered Too Much Alcohol, so he’d have had his

albums and saw that thing and gone, ‘What is this

mad thing?! I want that guitar because it’s on the

front of his album.’

“Another thing would be on the road – certainly

in America – he had a couple of incidents early on.

Obviously, his Strat and Tele got stolen in 1965,

the Tele got run over by an airport trolley and he

watched it happen... so he wouldn’t go and pick an

expensive guitar, because he knew with his luck, it

would get smashed on the way back!

“So by getting these ones that were $50 here and

$75 there, he wouldn’t feel too bad if they fell off a

luggage cart or something!”

1968 MOSRITE JOE MAPHIS DOUBLE NECK

Perhaps the most leftfield guitar in from our selection

is this double-neck Mosrite – “Double Ramones!” as

Rick exclaims when the guitar comes out of its case.

And at first glance, it doesn’t seem to be the most

‘Rory’ of guitars... “He liked Joe Maphis, but this is

definitely out of the ‘looks cool’ section as opposed

THIS SPREAD Despite the

retrofuturistic appearance of

this 1965 Res-O-Glas-bodied

instrument, Rory saw it as

an authentic blues guitar

©

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RORY GALLAGHER
GUITAR MAGAZINE 51