Rare Guitars: Rory Gallagher’s battered 1968 Martin D-35

Rory’s acoustic playing is oft-forgotten, but he was a fine flat-top player – and for most of his recording career, this battered and bruised D-35 was his favoured instrument.

“This is the one. It’s his acoustic for everything,” Daniel, Rory’s nephew, confirms. “From Taste onwards, it was all done with this. It features heavily on the new Blues album, as there’s one disc that’s all-acoustic in the three-CD package. He loved playing blues on acoustic, that’s why I wanted to make a whole disc of it.

“He’s so associated with that screaming Strat sound, but I think his acoustic playing is so excellent and it might be my favourite part of the album. He’s playing either this or the National (1932 Triolian Resonator) and the National was more for slide.

“But it’s on tracks like Blow Wind Blow and a track called Prison Blues – which we’d never even heard before! We found it on a tape that was marked for the Blueprint album and it was just him and Lou Martin on piano, and him on the Martin. It’s a finished song! They recorded it, it sounds fantastic, but for whatever reason, it didn’t make the album and no one ever saw it again! But this was by far his favourite acoustic and he just loved playing it.”

Check out more of Rory’s guitars here.