Interview: Joe Bonamassa on playing Rory Gallagher's 1961

It was reputedly the first in Ireland, and was ordered from Fender by Jim Connolly, a showband member performing with The Irish Showband. Connolly ordered a cherry red Stratocaster through Crowley's music shop in Cork in 1961. When Fender rory gallagher strat year
 shipped a sunburst Stratocaster instead, it was put up on sale in 1963 as a second hand instrument, which Gallagher bought in August 1963 for just shy of ￡100 at Crowley's Music Store on Cork's McCurtain Street. "Sandi said to me one day, 'I'm going to give you your birthday present and your Christmas present all in one,' says Bonamassa. "So I'm thinking, OK, this is going to be pretty good, right? I had no idea that she would this off! She told me that she just spoke to Donal, and he was going to come to my London show…with the guitar! She said that if I wanted to play it, Donal would be happy to lend it to me. I was like, 'Are you kidding me?!'"