Rare Guitars: Rory Gallagher’s 1967 VOX Mark XII Special

Without doubt the weightiest guitar on hand today is a late-60s Vox 12-string that perhaps doesn’t fit in with Rory’s general vibe, but was likely bought in tribute to one of his guitar inspirations. “He would have definitely got this because he was a massive Brian Jones fan,” Daniel Gallagher – Rory’s nephew – explains. “Brian Jones was the first person he ever saw playing slide guitar and that had a big, big impact on him. He’d heard it on Muddy Waters records, but I don’t think he’d actually seen anyone play it.

“He was over in London with the showband, and he went to the Marquee, saw the Stones and saw Brian Jones play slide, thought, ‘Okay that’s pretty cool!’ and went and got a slide. I would imagine that at some time he saw this guitar in a shop and thought, ‘Oh, Brian Jones!’ and that was it.

“I have a photo of him playing it live, from the late 70s, but I can’t imagine what he’d have been actually playing with it, because he did have touches of 12-string on his recordings to embellish the sound, but the only time you really remember him playing something with extra strings was the Coral Sitar. He’s not playing blues on a 12-string!” 

Check out more of Rory Gallagher’s jaw-dropping collection here.