“It’s a real honour to actually hold the man’s instruments and spend a few minutes playing them”: Watch Joe Bonamassa play throaty slide blues on Rory Gallagher’s Tele-modded ’59 Esquire and explain what made Gallagher a global guitar icon

Joe Bonamassa recently put Rory Gallagher’s 1959 Esquire through its paces and paid tribute to the late blues guitar icon, calling Gallagher a “working class hero” who whose global appeal was in part down to his authenticity.  

Gallagher, said Bonamassa, looked though he had just clocked off his shift before stepping up onstage. In an interview for Guitarist magazine’s YouTube channel, in which he demoes Gallagher’s 1959 Tele-modded Fender Esquire, Bonamassa explained why Gallagher in particular was a hero to him as a kid growing up in a blue-collar enclave of Long Island. 

“Here was this guy with long hair and a flannel shirt, and looked as if he just came out of an auto factory, and playing some some of the most gutbucket blues and rock you’d ever heard,” says Bonamassa. “I go, ‘Well, I can relate to that, because people around here look like that.’ 

“Everybody can relate to a working class hero, and that’s what he was until the day he died. He was that guy. And that kind of honesty and authenticity, you hear it in the music.”

A consignment of Gallagher’s electric guitars and tube amps is headed to auction in October. One of which will be the black Esquire Bonamassa plays in this video. As he explains, it would not have started of black. It would have originally only have been fitted with one pickup. And if it had, there is a chance that it might have been more valuable on the vintage market.

But no one knew then that an Esquire – ostensibly a Fender Telecaster with a single bridge pickup, though with a body routed for a second pickup at the neck position – would end up being worth a fortune in 2024, least of all Gallagher and his fellow pros who saw these guitars for what they were – for what they are, namely tools for doing a job.

Joe Bonamassa plays Rory Gallagher's 1959 Esquire - YouTube

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“If everybody in the ‘70s knew these guitars were going to be five figures or more, if you had a straight ’59 Esquire, you’d be looking at $20,000, $25,000 guitar,” says Bonamassa. “If everybody knew that when people were buying them in the ‘70s for $100 or £200, whatever he bought this for, nobody would modify them. These were tools. I wanna black guitar? Okay, paint it black. I want a pickup in front? Put a pickup in the front. These weren’t valuable collectibles.”

Gallagher’s Esquire most likely started out blonde, was refinished in black, with a single-coil pickup added to the neck position. That might make it player-grade but the fact it was owned and played by Gallagher adds a certain artist provenance that would inflate its value.

It certainly makes it cooler. Bonamassa is so reverential with it that he is playing slide. Why slide? Well, Bonamassa doesn’t want to tread too heavily on this; it is still strung with Gallagher’s original electric guitar strings. “I don’t want want to mess with the DNA before the sale,” he says.

Gallagher might be most famous for his ’61 Stratocaster, a guitar that has been his number one since he acquired it in 1963. That, too, is up for auction. That similarly has been modified. It wears the scars of a decades of use. As for the Esquire, it’s in decent condition. The new owner will have a big decision to make. Do they restring it? Bonamassa says its bridge pickup might do with being rewound.

“It’s up to the buyer if they want to keep Rory’s strings on it, or get [the pickup] rewound, or get it back up and playing,” he says. “I think the worst case scenario is just hang it on the wall and brag to your rich buddies that you bought it. Y’know, these things are tools and they should make music again, and I think a good part of this collection you’ll see back out there making music.”