
Nadia Bellingeri
Sale Manager, Private Sales & Themed Sales
Sold for £19,200 inc. premium
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Rory acquired this guitar in London in the 1980s, and used it mainly for slide work, long before Jack White of the White Stripes popularised the model in more recent years. Rory can be seen with it onstage at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1985, performing 'I Wonder Who'.
Canadian guitarist Paul Fenton recalled seeing Rory with this guitar in 1982 when Fenton's band, Number One, was opening for Rory at The Spectrum, a club in Montreal. He remembered, "We watched Rory do his long soundcheck, and when he played 'Secret Agent,' he used a guitar he had just bought — a beautiful red Airline guitar. Not only did it look like a million bucks, but it sounded like it too. I thought to myself, 'I have to get one of these for myself.'"
Literature
Paul Fenton, The Origins Of Blues, www.paulfenton.com/?page_id=62.
Live Performance
Rory Gallagher, 'I Wonder Who', filmed July 1985, Montreux Jazz Festival, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7ITZgsd4x4.
Airline Guitars:
From 1958 to 1968 Airline was a store brand of consumer electronics and musical instruments originally sold by Montgomery Ward in Chicago. The original Airline guitar was the guitar of choice for many blues players of the time, including J.B. Hutto (1926-1983), after whom this model is named. More recently, musicians such as Jack White and P.J. Harvey have made this model well-known in the rock world.