Rory Gallagher: Original Album Classics (5 CD Box Set) 2008 - URBANASPIRINES

 Mo' RORY

The biography of Rory continues and covers this classic five album set but the text is superbly written and sad at once impressively researched and heartbreakingly sad as it covers his alcoholism and untimely death at a mere 47 from complications from his liver transplant

Rory Gallagher - 5 Original classics - Urbanaspirines

More on Rory and his Stratocaster '61. . . . 

Rory Gallagher got his first guitar when he was nine and taught himself to play, using tutorial books. When he was l5 he bought the sunburst Fender Stratocaster which he used for the rest of his life: 

"It's a 1961 model. I got it second-hand. It was 100, which was an absolute fortune at the time. It was in good condition then, but it's got so battered now it's got a kind of tattoo quality about it. There's now a theory that the less paint or varnish on a guitar, acoustic or electric, the better. The wood breathes more. But it's all psychological. I just like the sound of it. It's also a good luck thing. It was stolen one time and it came back. It's kind of a lucky charm."

Unfortunately, in 1967 Rory Gallagher Stratocaster was stolen (together with a Telecaster) from the van in which he held his instruments; upset, Rory went to the producers of the Garcia Patrol TV show of the only Irish TV station of the time asking them for help, and they made a report on the incident. As a result the guitar, now too compromising for thieves and fences, was abandoned in a moat, where remained in the rain for many days before being found. 

"I had it stolen one time, following a brief appearance at the Five Club to visit Pat Egan about the Dublin scene, and it got very beaten up then. I had borrowed a Telecaster, and it and the Tele were nicked. " 

Both guitars were found (with the assistance of some exposure on Garda Patrol on RTE) behind a front garden wall on the South Circular Road, with some of the strings missing and the bodies knocked about but, thankfully, they were OK," Rory remembers. This inconvenience, in addition to the very frequent use of his Stratocaster and the guitarist's sweat, defined by many as "acid", contributed to consume almost all the paint of the instrument and to transform it into what at Fender they call a "battle axe".  

- Fuzz Faced

Rory Gallagher: I always liked the raw acoustic. I don’t like records that are overproduced. I mean, I like Muddy Waters’ because they were so rough and echoey, but the right kind of echoes, you know what I mean. Even to this day I don’t like some of the mixes that people do. They take the rough edges off some very good pieces of music. A lot of the new equipment is designed to do that in fact, whereas some of the older recording equipment and echo machines – their deficiencies helped make the sound of that time. So when I go to the studio, I always look around for the older bits of equipment and compressors and things like that, you know.
Solid state is another sound. Like, most rock or blues guitar players would tell you that they don’t like using solid state amps. They don’t have the full warmth of a tube or a valve.

Transcribed from tape on November 5, 1995 by Shiv Cariappa.

Photo by Dany GIGNOUX

Rory Gallagher’s beloved 1961 Fender Strat, Vox AC 30 & Rangemaster Treble Booster

Rory in his prime and in happier times

 

As far as I am aware this is long out of print and no longer commercially available in the UK but if you know otherwise please get in touch and I will take appropriate steps