Rory Gallagher: the Irish bluesman who kept playing Belfast | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

RORY GALLAGHER was a live player first. The battered Stratocaster and the long, loud shows are what people remember, and his official site says sweat wore the paint off that Strat.

He also kept playing Belfast through the Troubles, when plenty of bands stayed away. Irish Tour ’74, the live album and Tony Palmer’s film of those shows, is still the place most fans start.

More than 30 years after his death there are memorials to him in Ballyshannon, Cork, Dublin and Belfast, and the Rory Gallagher International Tribute Festival in Ballyshannon held its 22nd year in May 2026.

Early life and training

He was born William Rory Gallagher on 2 March 1948, at the Rock Hospital in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, and grew up in Cork. His brother Dónal later became his manager.

There was no record player in the house. He found rock’n’roll and then the blues on American Forces radio. “The more I heard, the more I got addicted!” he said.

He was learning guitar by nine. As a teenager he played in showbands, the dance bands that toured Ireland, and he knew all along they were a stop on the way to blues and rock.

Career chapters

1. 1948Born in Ballyshannon
2. 1963Buys his 1961 Stratocaster at Crowley’s in Cork for £100
3. 1967Moves to Belfast
4. 1968Taste’s residency at the Marquee in London
5. 1970Taste at the Isle of Wight Festival
6. 1972Live in Europe, UK number 9; tops the Melody Maker poll
7. 1974Irish Tour ’74
8. 1975Plays with the Rolling Stones in Rotterdam
9. 1995Dies in London, aged 47

Taste mid-1960s to 1970

Taste were a blues-rock power trio. Sources disagree on the year they started, but by 1967 he had moved to Belfast, a city the Ulster Hall calls his “second home”.

In 1968 Taste had a residency at the Marquee in London, and they supported Cream and Blind Faith. They made two studio albums and two live ones, including Live at the Isle of Wight, recorded at the 1970 festival, where they shared the bill with Jimi Hendrix, Who’s Who number 6 and the Who. Arguments over management ended the band, and his official site puts the farewell show in Belfast on New Year’s Eve 1970.

Going solo 1971 to 1974

Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin’s manager, helped him land a deal with Polydor, Record Collector says. He also played on other people’s records, including Muddy Waters’ The London Sessions in 1972, Jerry Lee Lewis’s The Session and Albert King’s, Who’s Who number 1 Live.

Live in Europe reached number 9 in the UK in 1972. That year Melody Maker readers voted him top guitarist, ahead of Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3.

Then came Irish Tour ’74, recorded on the tour that took in his Belfast shows.

A week with the Stones 1975

In January 1975 the Rolling Stones’ Ian Stewart asked him to audition to replace Mick Taylor. He flew to Rotterdam and played with the band for several nights. Record Collector says four, and accounts differ on why he didn’t join. He went back to his own band.

Later years 1977 to 1995

In 1977 he headlined the Macroom Mountain Dew festival in Cork in front of more than 20,000 people. He kept making records until Fresh Evidence in 1990.

Dónal has said a fear of flying in the late 1970s led to prescribed tranquillisers that damaged his liver. In January 1995 Rory collapsed on stage in Rotterdam. He had a liver transplant in London and seemed to be recovering, but he died of complications, including an MRSA infection, on 14 June 1995. He was 47.

Craft, sound and style

He played loud and he played live. Brian May, Who’s Who number 20 remembers him explaining his amp and “little box” in a few words: “I turn it up and it sings for me.”

The sound came from that Stratocaster through a Vox AC30, with a Rangemaster treble booster in front of it, in May’s, Who’s Who number 20 telling.

The Strat is a 1961 sunburst. Its first owner, Jim Conlon of the Royal Showband, had ordered a red one, and when that finally arrived he traded the sunburst in at Crowley’s music shop in Cork. Rory was still at school when he saw it there, in August 1963. “I saw it in a shop window for £100,” he said, and he bought it on hire purchase. His mother worried they’d be in debt for life. Rory’s answer, as his brother Dónal tells it, was that with a guitar like that he could play rhythm and lead himself, earn more and pay it off.

What happened to the Strat

The Strat was stolen in 1966 and found in a ditch. Over the years it was rebuilt bit by bit, and the estate’s Strat page lists the changes. The scratchplate was replaced in the mid to late 60s. The tone controls were rewired so one works as a master tone, with a five way switch. The tremolo was blocked off, and the tuners went from Kluson to Schaller to Sperzel. The original pickups failed in the mid 1970s, and the bridge pickup was changed again around 1982. Which pickup went in is disputed. The story that it was the first Stratocaster in Ireland is unproven, and the estate says it has no conclusive proof. Fender’s replica started in 1998 according to the instruments archive, and the estate’s sale page says Fender has sold one “since 2004”.

The other guitars

His slide guitar was a 1963 Gretsch Corvette from a pawnshop, bought in the late 1970s for $50 to $80. In 1991 he kept it in open G or open A, with heavy strings and high action. A 1958 Strat bought on a US tour in 1976 was for the studio. A 1960 Silvertone is on A Million Miles Away and Cradle Rock. A 1968 Martin D-35 went on the Deuce sessions, a National Triolian resonator is on As The Crow Flies, and a 1942 Martin mandolin is on Going To My Hometown. He played alto sax too.

AC30, Bassman and a booster

He used a Vox AC30 “for twelve, fifteen years”, he said, with a Dallas Rangemaster that “was great” on it. From 1973 a 1950s Fender Bassman 4x10 took over. In 1991 he said most of his lead parts on record were through a Bassman miked front and back, with rhythm on a Vox and a Marshall panned left and right. In 1977 he used a Fender Concert, “an old brown one, from around 1959”, with a Hawk booster “to roughen it up a bit”. He took a tweed Fender Deluxe to the Rolling Stones audition in Rotterdam in January 1975. Johnny Marr remembers him swelling notes with the guitar’s own volume and tone knobs.

Tunings and slides

He mostly played in standard tuning, Walkin’ Wounded slide included. Out on the Western Plain is in DADGAD, which he credited to Davy Graham. Ghost Blues and Empire State Express are in open G. He used a pick and his fingers. His slides were a Coricidin bottle on the ring or little finger, brass on the National and a steel bottleneck on electric. Glass sounds smooth and sweet, he said, and brass or copper harsher. Marr remembers him saying that without acoustic skills you’re “only half a player”.

Stories people still tell

1. The question at the Marquee.

   In the late 1960s Brian May, Who’s Who number 20 stayed behind after a Taste set at the Marquee to ask how Gallagher got his sound. By May’s, Who’s Who number 20 account the answer, an AC30 and a Rangemaster treble booster, set him on the way to his own.

2. Macroom, 1977.

   One of the crowd at Macroom was The Edge, Who’s Who number 7, then 15. He later called the show “an absolute eye-opener, a mind-blower”.

3. Back into the blues.

   Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3 credited him with “getting me back into the blues”.

4. The price of the life.

   “The blues is bad for your health,” he once said, and he left it at that.

Legacy

In March 1996 The Edge, Who’s Who number 7 won the first Hot Press Rory Gallagher Rock Musician Award, and in 2006 he helped Dónal unveil a bronze Stratocaster on Rory Gallagher Corner in Dublin.

There’s a sculpture in Cork (1997), a bronze statue in Ballyshannon (2010), a statue at the Ulster Hall in Belfast (January 2025) and a Rue Rory Gallagher in Paris. Slash, Who’s Who number 43 and Johnny Marr are among the guitarists who name him. Marr called Deuce “a complete turning point for me as a guitar player”.

On 17 October 2024 the Strat went under the hammer at Bonhams in London for £700,000, or £889,400 with the buyer’s premium. Live Nation Gaiety bought it to give to the National Museum of Ireland, and the arts minister, Catherine Martin, said she was delighted that “Rory’s guitar is coming home to Ireland”.

Dónal’s book, Edged in Blue, has a Dublin talk on 18 October 2026.