Remembering Rory Gallagher: The People’s Guitarist

Born in Ballyshannon and raised in Cork, Rory was a self-taught guitarist. His parents didn't own a record player. Like many future musicians growing up in the bland land of the BBC, he received his early blues-rock education by listening to R&B greats on that premiere music school of the airways, Radio Luxembourg. He started touring as a young teen with a cheap guitar, hitting the clubs of Ireland and England - even Hamburg, Germany, where The Beatles cut their teeth. He used the money he made from gigging to make payments on a 1961 Sunburst Fender Stratocaster. He worked that guitar so hard during his marathon performances that the alkaline from his sweat stripped the instrument of its paint. That guitar became his trademark.

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