25 years since he death of Irish blues-rock legend Rory Gallagher, the great man’s work is showcased ina collection released this month. The Best of Rory Gallagher features classic tracks recorded with power trio Taste and as a solo artist, plus a previously unreleased 1973 cover of The Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, on which Rory played alongside one of his heroes, rock’n’roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis.
In this photo from 1979, shot for his album Top Priority, Rory is playing the guitar for which he was synonymous - a battered 1961 Fender Stratocaster, his most prized instrument, but he didn’t treat it with kid gloves. As his nephew Daniel Gallagher told Guitarist editor Jamie Dickson: “There is footage of him in 1979 in Montreux, and he drags the Strat across the stage - but it was front-side down. It sounds mad because he’s got a phaser running at the same time, and I think he damaged the neck pickup when that happened.
“While that was being repaired he had a black DiMarzio single-coil pickup in there for a while. Around a similar time he found that the neck wasn’t holding tuning properly because he actually needed to dry it out - there was that much sweat in the neck - that he took it off for a year or so. He put it above a fireplace on the mantelpiece and just let it dry out.”