As some of you know, over the past six months, I’ve been working on a new academic study exploring the 2024 Bonhams auction of Rory’s instruments. I’ve been interviewing people who purchased something in the sale, learning what those items mean to them and examining the broader cultural and personal significance of owning a piece of Rory’s legacy. At least two papers from this project are scheduled for publication later this year.

One of the participants was Sheena Crowley, who, of course, played a key role in the campaign to bring Rory’s Strat back to Ireland. Our interview was so engaging that it felt a shame not to share more than just select quotes in the academic papers. With her permission, and that of my university, I’m delighted to share an edited version of the full interview below.

The start of this Valentine’s Day weekend feels like a fitting occasion to post it, as I can think of no stronger bond than that between Rory and his beloved guitar—especially when intertwined with the determination of the daughter of the man who sold it to him, to return it to its rightful home in Ireland. Enjoy!

Lauren Alex O’Hagan (LAO)
I usually start by asking people how they became Rory fans, but obviously that’s very different in your case, so I’ll just ask you about your personal connection to Rory through the Strat and your early experiences of him and his music.

Sheena Crowley (SC)        
Yeah. Well, I suppose I always knew of him from my father growing up. I met Rory many times because my father sold him the Strat, as you know. I remember meeting him when I was four. He reached down and half shook my fingers. That was in the shop on Merchant’s Quay. I met him quite a few times over the years with my dad. I even met him in Douglas once when my dad was driving us down there for something. He was just walking down the road and my dad shouted out the window at him, so they were buddies. He was my dad’s friend. Ultimately, to me, that’s what he was. As I grew older, I became more aware of his skills as a guitarist and how established he was. What I loved was how I could see a pride in my dad’s face whenever he spoke about Rory. I knew he was important to my dad and, so then, he was important to me before I even started listening to the music.

LAO   
Aww that’s really lovely. So, let’s move onto the day when the news came that Rory’s Strat was up for sale. Where did you hear the news and what was your initial reaction when you heard it?

SC     
I think it was the first thing I heard that morning. I’d been up a few hours doing stuff around the house and the next thing, my neighbour contacted me and said, ‘Did you hear the news about the Strat?’ I didn’t even have to go, ‘Which Strat?’ I just knew immediately. I think it had come out in the news or the papers earlier that morning. My head was all day long concerned with the news and contacting people and going, ‘What the hell? What are we gonna do? That can’t happen’. There was a mad panic. That’s what I would call it. Just a panic. A sense of panic. How could this be happening? At the same time, I could understand why, of course.

LAO   
And that motivated you to get into action and think, ‘We need to set up a campaign and try and save the instrument’?

SC     
Yes, but I didn’t want to go into something that was very personal for Dónal and Rory’s family. I didn’t want to be jumping on something and going, ‘Guys, we need to do something!’ So, I was being careful and sussing out the vibe on Facebook and from the fans. But from the word go, I was like, ‘Well, let’s raise the money!’. So, then I sent an email to Dónal just to say, ‘Would you be okay if I set up a campaign to try and raise the money?’ and his response was lovely and he just said, ‘Go for it. I wish you all the best’.

LAO   
So, with the campaign, what did you hope to achieve for Rory’s legacy and for the local music community.

SC
Honestly, from that moment at 9am when the news came out until the auction itself and even after that, I would say I never stopped. My head never disengaged from it. Never. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was just an instinctive reaction. ‘Go for it’. And I had people coming up to me, ‘Sheena, you’re mad’. And I’m going, ‘We have to do it. We have to do it’. It was like there was no rationale. There was no sit down and think about this carefully [laughter] It was just an impulse. So, my thinking was absolutely first off, it has to stay in Ireland. It has to stay somewhere connected to the family. That it would be in the hands of somebody that Dónal could come and look at it. So, I just felt it had to stay close to us somehow. I know a lot of people would think this is mad, but this is what I personally would have liked: that the guitar was bought by people – the people of Cork or Ireland – and it was kept somewhere in a very secure place like the National Museum or something like that, but that it would be accessible to musicians. You have all these conflicting opinions and it’s impossible to keep everybody happy. But for me, it was a case of try and secure it in some way and then all that could be debated afterwards.

I’m not sure if it was you or Jane [Layr] who contacted me first and Dave McHugh as well in the same frame of mind. All wanted to do the same thing. And I loved that you were based in the UK and yet you’re saying you want it to be kept in Ireland. I loved that. I’d see that there was constant debating on Facebook. All the social media was arguing about where it should go, why it’s up for auction and as you, Jane and Dave were, we were constantly defending because, for Dónal’s sake, he’d been minding this guitar and caring about it for so long and the expense of that. People don’t realise these things and you’d start to see all the opinions that were out there. They were very uninformed opinions, so you’d be trying to explain things to them and Jesus, it was taking up a lot of time, as you know. Consuming yourself [laughter]

I would say I lost my fitness in this period. I will never sit at a computer for any length of time because I feel it’s not good for my joints, so I will always be getting up and doing things, but that period, I didn’t fecking move at all. I was just on it, on it, on it, on it. My daughter probably thought, ‘Is my mother after disappearing?’

LAO               
Yeah, it was mad. So, did you anticipate the way that the fan community would respond? And I guess I mean that in good and bad ways, so those that donated to the campaign or those that were more critical.    

SC     
I was very shocked in some ways by people being negative and saying mean or nasty things, whether it’s about me or whether it’s about the family. I found the need to defend myself. Some people would be saying things like, ‘Oh, she’s gone off to the Bahamas’. I saw one guy saying, ‘Who are you? Why are you weighing in on this?’ and I’m going, ‘I’m not thinking I’m anything. This is just what my response to the auction was’, so you’re defending yourself and your character was being assassinated on social media by somebody you’ve never met. And I had one or two who just wouldn’t let go. At first, you’re responding to it and then you realise it’s pointless, so, then I’d laugh about it, ‘Oh, here they go again!’ The other side of it then from a positive point of view, the response was incredible. You know, I went to a couple of funerals over those few months and I literally was going into a funeral home in Ballintemple here in Cork and there’s a winding backway that goes up several levels and at different levels, I heard, ‘Bring that guitar home!’ The crowd is in this morose state because we’re all going to say our goodbyes to somebody, but ‘Get that guitar! Bring that guitar home!’ [laughter] At a few different funerals, that happened. And I’d be going along, walking along the road, and somebody would wind down the window and shout out at me. There was so much goodwill behind it. And people who knew me know that I’m just excited. I’m not doing anything other than trying to do my best.

LAO   
That’s really nice. That outweighs the bad in a way, doesn’t it? So, how was it going into Bonhams and viewing all the instruments before the auction?

SC     
I flew over the day beforehand. I was gonna go over the week before for the special viewing, but then I thought I’d be flying over and coming back, flying over and coming back, and I’d missed a hell of a lot of work, and the shop was only just starting its second year, so I remember thinking, ‘No, I can’t go’. I had to weigh up being there for the shop and pull back a bit, but I got there the day before and had a look around. A buddy of mine, Dan, came over for the auction with me. He’s a very good businessman, so I was going, ‘I need somebody whose head is screwed on’. I am too emotional. Because if I went over on my own, I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, what are we gonna do?’ I got too excited. So, Dan was there to keep me anchored and not get carried away.

LAO   
By the time you went over there, I think it was clear that we hadn’t raised enough money to get the Strat, so had your strategy shifted at that point and what were you thinking about then in terms of what to do?

SC                 
Yeah. Big time. So, with so much goodwill and so many good intentions, so many people were saying to me, ‘Sheena, get this, get that. If you can’t get this, get this’. Almost everybody was saying that to me, so I thought it was just curtains, we didn’t make it, we haven’t made enough, but then I was constantly getting emails and messages and texts endlessly communicating to me that, ‘You have to go and you have to do something and bring something back from Rory’. So, then I thought, ‘Yeah, I’d better go over’. When you think about it, I was thinking, ‘We can raise one million. Of course we can. All we need is for everybody to put one or two euros into it’. A kind of naïve way of looking at something. But just because it’s naïve, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try or whatever. In theory, it’s a very easy thing, but there was backlash. I remember being on a radio show, Newstalk, discussing it and there was somebody from the crowd in Dublin who were there for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Museum. They were running a campaign and we were running a campaign and I was getting messages from Germany. ‘How do I know you’re the one to go to?’ Because of the conflicting things, the million people that I thought would give a euro, some of them didn’t know what to do.

LAO   
Yeah, that was such a shame.

SC     
It was a pity. It’s fair enough that they ran a campaign. It’s fair enough anybody who decided to run a campaign. But I just wanted everybody to get together on the same thing. But when we realised that we weren’t raising that money… we were trying right up to the very end, weren’t we? And I believed 100% that somebody would have come through here. And I honestly thought Bono would do something, The Edge would do something. I thought that collectively the musicians who were serious musicians would have weighed in. I thought rich people in Cork would have weighed in. But then I think it was a few days beforehand, I sent an email to all those who were funding the campaign and just said, ‘It looks like we’re not gonna make that, but I’ll go over and try and see what I can get, but we just need a knight in shining armour to step in now’. Because also, there was a couple of businessmen who were pitching ideas and things like that. They’ll do this and they’ll do that, but some of those things would fizzle away, so you’re being pulled everywhere. So, then when we didn’t have a million, 70,000 roughly had come in. So, when I had got to Bonhams, I had already looked through the catalogue. I had been sent the catalogue by Bonhams because somebody contacted me. ‘Are you the lady who’s running the campaign?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s me’ and they said they’d send me a catalogue and I was going, ‘Oh great’, so I got the catalogue and I was looking through it and I was just going, ‘Oh my God’, drooling over everything. What do you pick out of this because there’s nowhere near the money that you’d want. But anyway, when I went into the exhibition, I just thought, ‘This whole thing should be in Cork. The whole thing’. I think even Dan Boyle, the Lord Mayor at the time, he would probably have said the same and a few others. That should have been bought by the government a long time ago. It’s crazy. Which Dónal tried to do. You’d go into the Crawford Art Gallery and you’d see these beautiful pieces and you’d get something out of it and it’s a lovely thing for the country. It should have been exactly the same for the Gallagher guitars. It’s a frigging no-brainer to me.

LAO   
Absolutely. The same. When I walked in there, I just felt a huge sense of loss. Exactly what you said. This could have been a big room in a museum or something of the sort and yet, this is the last time all of these instruments are gonna be in one place together. It was a really weird feeling.

SC     
Yeah. It was impactful, wasn’t it? But see, something that I really constantly feel is that there is very little value in music and musicians and this whole industry, even selling instruments, it’s totally undervalued. It seems to be just taken for granted. That was a magnificent exhibition in itself. Just to go in there and wander around. And people were going around there like it was viewing the Holy Grail. So, musicians have got this massive appreciation of instruments and they know the history and they know who made it and why it’s this way or that way and so on, so you’re looking at all this and you’re drinking it in and going, ‘What a wasted opportunity’, but anyway, now we’re looking at, ‘Holy fuck, all these are gonna be gone in all different corners of the earth’ and what is gonna happen to the Strat? The day before, I don’t know how many hours I spent in there just wandering around again and again and I remember Claire, the auctioneer, the blonde lady, she came over to me and said, ‘Sorry, you have to leave now’ [laughter].

I was just in a dream. So, I literally decided there and then what ones I’d go for. I had an idea before I went over and then I thought, ‘I’m gonna try and get that. I’m gonna try and get that’. If I got one instrument for 50 grand, that might have been it, so I was thinking if we could at least have a representation in a museum of some sort, a Rory corner, so that’s the way I was going then. So, I rang Dan Breen from the Cork Public Museum before I went over and I just said, ‘Can you take these so that they’re safe somewhere?’ I didn’t want to bring them home to my house or even in the shop. They would have been a big security issue. So, when he said he would, I aimed at getting several guitars and a couple of amps, but when it kicked off, I nearly had a heart attack.

LAO   
Yeah. That’s what I was coming to now, the actual auction itself. It was bad enough online, the tension that I felt, but I can imagine in the room, it must have just been horrible.

SC                 
It was incredible. In a way, it wasn’t horrible because it was the most exhilarating rush you could possibly have. Because what was very interesting, Lauren, is everybody was together. They were really together. The anticipation was huge, the energy was huge, the shock of how high the prices went… everybody was feeling it. I’d say nearly 100% of people wanted to do right by Rory. I’ve never experienced such a high, but also extreme emotions. To my left was the crowd from Ballyshannon. They were a couple of seats away from me. I had never met them before, so I didn’t know that they were them, but I just knew they were looking at me and I was looking at them and we were excited. Then there was a row of men in front of me and there was a man sitting next to me as well, a really lovely man from the UK, so these guys from the UK in front of me and one beside me and then my buddy Dan was on my right. And when the English guys began to notice that I was particularly going for specific instruments, they said that they would withdraw their bid. I nearly started crying. I had to keep it together. It moved me so much. Yeah, they just said, ‘You’re the one who’s trying to save the guitar’, so they knew what I was about, so they just said, ‘Okay, if that’s what you’re going over, we won’t bid on that’. I was fucking blown away.

LAO   
That sense of community is so lovely. I’ve spoken to quite a few people now and a lot of them have said that. I think that’s so unique, isn’t it? Nobody was pitted against each other. As you said, it was a community thing. Just wanting to do right by Rory.

SC     
Oh, it was incredible, yeah. There was two columns of seats and over on the left side, I could hear the Dublin accents and I actually was convinced they’re there for U2 or something. I was convinced there was somebody from U2 and I’d shout out something to them and they’d shout out something back to me and then afterwards I met them all, I was introduced to them and one was Owen McQuail from Some Neck Guitars. He bought quite a few. It was my first time meeting them. It was brilliant to meet them. And a few other guys. A bond made for life just because we had this intention that was about Rory. It was incredible.

LAO   
That’s amazing. And the first item that you got, the Epiphone Coronet, wasn’t it? You’d been bidding on several things before and got outbidded because I remember the guy said something like ‘Oh, I can see your smile from here!’ [laughter]

SC     
Yeah. The auctioneer was absolutely amazing. An outstanding guy. He had a tall, lanky build, so he had these long arms that would reach out and he just looked like an eagle spreading his wings. I was probably about 13 rows away from him, but it was as if he was reaching down to me. ‘Madam, are you going to bid?’ [laughter] It was surreal. It was very surreal. And it sounds like he was willing me to go for certain things, which is obviously what a good auctioneer will do to you anyway, but it felt like he was hoping I was gonna win something. And there was some lovely woman very close to me too and I knew she wanted me to win something. Actually, there was one person who bid against me on something and he was from Cork! I met him afterwards – a young fella bought a Burns, I think. That was one of the things I was after and it turned out to be a Corkman who got it.

Literally, the bids were flying up and up. I was like, ‘Oh my God’ and Dan was beside me and he goes, ‘Don’t be surprised if you can’t get anything’ because it’s big money. So, I was nearly deflated and I was trying to hold off to get to a point where I had to let some things go anyway and you’re weighing it up and you’re on the fly and I remember putting my hand up for a couple of things, but I was too late putting my hand up, so your man is going, ‘Going, going… and my hand is up but he didn’t see it. And then Dan was going, ‘Stand up or something’.

LAO   
But making that decision in a split second is so hard and doing the calculations because you have to work out the fees you’re gonna be charged as well.

SC                 
Exactly. Yeah. That’s what part of the problem was for me. I had to think, ‘Okay, if it’s that and then there’s another 20% or 30%… and then how much is it gonna be? So, you’re going, ‘It’s after going from 2,000 up to 10,000. What does that mean?’ It was mad. But yeah, an amazing, amazing experience.

LAO   
And then the next day, I remember you were at the airport and you were still bidding on the online stuff [laughter]

SC     
Yeah! So, I had never experienced an auction before. I didn’t know what purple paddles were or any of that kind of stuff. It was a whole new world to me and my buddies Vivian and Noel were saying, ‘Oh, did you see the amps? I’m gonna go after them’ and I’m going, ‘The auction’s finished’ and they’re going, ‘No. No. There’s other stuff up for auction’ and I’m going, ‘What?’ and then I tuned into that and I was on my way to the airport going through Heathrow and putting in a bid just as it got to the section where you have to put everything into this plastic tray and I was going, ‘Shit!’ So, I put in as much as I could and you remember, there was a little piano… so, I put in a big bid thinking that by the time I get through, it should be okay because I jumped ahead with it, but literally, I got over, your woman’s about to search me and she goes, ‘Madam, phone please’. I am going, ‘One more bid!’ and she grabs the phone [laughter] and I came out through the other side, grabbed my coat and my bag. The next thing, the auction’s over, I had lost. But I picked up the Vibro Champ that way, I think. And one of the Burns that wasn’t in good condition. It needed work on it.

But even the harmonicas went for “£1,200, didn’t they? And there was I thinking I could get them for a couple of hundred and have maybe the piano, a couple of guitars and an amp and if I could have got the sax, I would have. Because I was thinking about diversity of display. Say, if it was in one hundred years’ time, who was this guy Rory Gallagher? He could do so much with so many different things as opposed to having the guitars, so I was thinking about it from the long-term as well. Then, even in the airport, the flight was delayed. It took me the whole day to get home. The whole day, I was travelling. I left the hotel at 9am, I got home at something like 10pm that night! Some issue with the weather. But all the time I was there, I was getting phone calls from reporters and people who had bought stuff saying, ‘Sheena, what are you gonna do? How are you gonna get the stuff home?’ So, I was on it all day. My ear was burnt off me nearly [laughter]

LAO   
And how was it when you finally got home?

SC     
I was on an incredible high. The next day, I went into work and the lads came out to meet me from the shop and they gave me a hug and were shaking my hand and saying, ‘Well done’ and I didn’t know until that moment that I had done anything that mattered in any way. What I mean is it ran deeper than just going after some guitars for the fans. It meant something to do this for somebody from Cork, a fellow musician. So, when they were shaking my hands and giving me a hug, I felt as if I had achieved something, even if I didn’t get what I set out to do. And I had people who contacted me and were saying, ‘We opened a bottle of wine to watch the auction’. People back here in Cork were filming it and watching it and taking the afternoon off or skipping work. Yeah, it was unbelievable. I felt like there was so many people with us, behind us, pushing for it and hoping for it, even though we knew that we hadn’t reach the target. But holy fuck, when it came to the Strat…

LAO               
Yeah, I was just gonna say about that. How was that? Because it was bad enough online. It just felt like all the energy in the room sucked out at that moment.

SC                 
Yeah. Literally, I’d say everybody was holding their breath. There was a sort of whirlwind right up to this… it was manic. The money was coming and there was loads of energy going, going, going and the prices of everything was going up, so it was fast and furious. Then, it came to the Strat. Everybody was paused and there was silence and then I didn’t know that you’d have to have X amount of money in your account before you could bid for something at that level, which makes sense, so that’s where the purple paddles came in. And I was going, ‘I don’t see anybody with purple paddles’ and then they opened the lines for people privately… and then when they said £700,000, I was going, ‘What the fuck? How could it only go for that?’ I was deflated. But Dan says to me, ‘Don’t worry, Sheena. I’m pretty sure the government just bought it’ and I go, ‘What? What?’ and he goes, ‘Yeah’ and I went, ‘The government bought it! I can’t believe the government bought it!’ Obviously, there was a bit more to it than that…

LAO   
Yeah, like you said, it was really anticlimactic. I was like, ‘What? It’s only gone for that amount of money after all this!’ and then I was hoping that there’s got to be something more to it and then when the auctioneer went, ‘The Strat is coming home to Ireland’, oh my God! It was just amazing.

SC     
We were all sitting with our jaws dropped going, ‘What the fuck has just happened?’ There was a wave of info, Chinese whispers took over and then everybody was even more excited once they knew. We were okay because we knew then it was going back to Ireland and then there was a massive sense of relief and then when Harvey said it as well [gasps] What a moment! They should do a movie on it. I was saying Aidan Quinn’s brother – Declan Quinn – should do a movie on it because he was going to do a movie about Rory. He should definitely do a movie on the auction.

LAO               
Yeah. That moment when he announced, it was amazing. I couldn’t think straight. The next ten lots or something, my head was all over the place [laughter]

SC     
That was ultimately the joy, so here we are building up to this moment and everything after that became insignificant to me almost because the Strat had gone back to Cork, to Ireland. Jesus, it’s funny how it means that much. It’s incredible. Obviously, it’s all to do with Rory because many Strats have been out there down through the years that have huge legacies as well. Like I love Jeff Beck, but it wouldn’t have the same impact to me if his Strat was up for sale. It’s just not so personal, I suppose. We are clannish in Cork as well, so you would see all that debating between Ballyshannon and Cork. ‘Why should it go to Cork?’ I didn’t care once it was in Ireland.

LAO               
Exactly. I feel the same way. So, in terms of you getting the actual items, you got someone to come over and collect them and bring them back, didn’t you?

SC     
Yeah because people were asking me the value of the item and then accordingly giving me the price of what they’d charge to bring then over, so everything was probably £1,000 or £2,000 each to bring over. ‘Fuck this, I’ll go over myself and get them’. So, eventually, I got this guy who picks up art often in Bond St, so he’s very, very careful and cautious, so he was asking me, ‘Does this have a case?’ and ‘Does that have a case?’ and I said, ‘Look, some of them are just in bags, so he built wooden cases for them. He was really good, so, I was lucky to find him as well. He dealt with all the customs, all the paperwork, so I didn’t have to do that. I wanted the driver to come back from the UK to Cork and come straight to the shop and then go over to the museum, but he then was talking to the guy in the museum and he was going, ‘Look, I’ll meet you in the museum on Saturday morning’, so they ended up making that arrangement and they didn’t come to the shop. I ended up going mad, but at the same time, I was glad it was all done and dusted and I didn’t have to worry about the security or the care of them.

LAO   
So, did you not get to see them or did you go over to the museum later?

SC     
No, I didn’t get to see them. I went to see them then maybe a week later.

LAO               
Really? I didn’t know that. That’s a shame.

SC     
Yeah because I did really want to get my hands on them. And then the exhibition was coming up in the City Hall in June. I think Eoin contacted us around January or something and said, ‘Will you do a bit of work on Rory’s first guitar?’ The machine head button was gone and we couldn’t get one in time for the exhibition, so Dave made one out of beeswax. But the lads who work in our workshop agreed to fix Rory’s guitars, but then how much do you fix them? Alan had to do a set-up on the Burns and one of the guitars needed a few strings. I think Dave also used marker on the strings, so they didn’t look shiny bright, but they decided to leave almost everything as it was and didn’t work on them too much. At one point, somebody says, ‘Maybe you can clean this up or change the paint’ and Alan was going, ‘No. No. Jesus, leave it exactly as’. Yeah, we all thought the same. So, we were almost at the point of getting ready for the exhibition and thought that we were going to bring the college up to see the instruments and have a special viewing and all that, but it was coming up to the Christmas period and we were too busy, so it didn’t really happen then. There were loads of things you could have done, but…

LAO   
But it was all like a whirlwind, wasn’t it? It all just happened so quickly.

SC     
You know what’s amazing is that I never thought of buying something myself for the shop. That’s fucking dumb [laughter], especially when you think about what Owen did in Dublin. I work hard not to be jealous of what he did because that was a spot-on thing to do for the shop, so I should have just bought something for the shop for myself, but I was so focused on the mission to get something for the museum or for the fans. Also, you had to keep everything exact and transparent, so people don’t ask, ‘Where did you get that?’ and ‘How did you get that?’ People could doubt what you are up to, so I suppose that I just resigned myself to the fact that it’s probably better to stay out of it personally, but it’s a pity I didn’t have something. Because a knock-on effect of that was so many people coming to see the shop and then, of course, they are coming expecting to see something and there’s nothing there [laughter] and I’m going, ‘You can go up to Some Neck Guitars and you will see all them’. But in fairness, what I like now is people can go to Ballyshannon to the gigs and festival, then they can go to Dublin to Some Neck Guitars and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Museum and they can come to Cork and see some stuff.

LAO   
It’s quite nice that it’s all spread out and available for everyone. Like you say, it’s not like they’ve gone into some private collection never to be seen again. It was for the greater good what you did, Sheena.

SC                 
But I thought it was great that Denis Desmond did what he did and he obviously worked with the government and the museum, but I do wish that they had brought it to Cork for the festival. That would have been a nice thing to do. My understanding of it was that everything was in place and the Strat would be there. I was on Facebook the day before, ‘Come and see the guitar. The bits and pieces in the museum’ and then the next thing, I hear an English couple going, ‘Where’s the guitar?’ And then somebody in the museum, one of the guys working there goes, ‘Sheena, these people have travelled to see the Strat’ and I’m going, ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know… And then we were getting ready for the gig and organising sound and the next thing, I happened to walk through there and it was in that moment that I knew that there was no guitar, so I nearly had a collapse. I couldn’t believe it. And then when I went to the gig and Joe Bonamassa said about the guitar too, I think he was really peeved. It was kind of relayed back to us that the guitar wasn’t ready. And I was going, ‘That’s bullshit. The guitar will be fine’. There’s violins that are 500 years old and they’re fine because they’re being played. But again, the most important thing was it was in Ireland, so I just let go of the idea. I felt myself that I’d done what I had to do my end, so there was no more I could do, but if I’d known in advance that the guitar wasn’t coming down on the day, I’d have been onto them and I’d have been annoying them. I’d have been ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing. I would have just worn them down [laughter] It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know!

LAO   
That’s what I take from the whole thing. It was just a really positive outcome. Everyone coming together on the whole and that community feel, which I think just fits with Rory and who he was and everything, so I think it was brilliant.

SC     
Yeah. Because the one thing I think 99% of people didn’t want is that some rich guy gets it out of the country because they know this is a big deal and that it’s locked away for him to just show his rich friends. I think it was ultimately about the people and that Rory would be happy with the outcome. Although knowing his nature, I feel like he would have been a little bit embarrassed too. He’d feel a bit uncomfortable that he’s such a big deal. But sure, that’s just the way it is. He is a big deal.

But it’s almost like I was absent for those three or four months. I remember saying to my daughter, ‘Look, I’m gonna be really busy now. I’m really sorry. I’m gonna be at the computer here nearly all day every day’ and she was going, ‘It’s okay. I know what you’re doing’. But after the four months, she was like, ‘Jeez, I thought it was never gonna stop’. And even a few days after it, I couldn’t calm down. And I was thinking, ‘Fuck, I’m gonna have to get some alcohol or something’, so I had a few of them that night and I still didn’t calm down at all and then I had a few drinks the next night and then I went into this massive chest infection for two weeks. Completely run myself into the ground. Switched on nonstop for three or four months.

LAO               
That’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s funny how the body does that. It will just keep you going, going, going, and then it gets to that point and it’s just like, ‘Nope, that’s it now’ and all these bugs come.

SC     
Yeah, it allows you to achieve your goal and then goes, ‘You can fuck off now’ [laughter] It’s probably a good thing that I got sick because I got a bit addicted and I went straight onto another auction website to buy a guitar. I got such a buzz from it all that I wanted to do it again, so there’s Sheena Crowley on the Monday trying to get a guitar in some auction. Then I got so sick, it was gone. So, that was actually a good thing that happened to me because otherwise, I’d have been bidding all over the place [laughter] But yeah, it was just an instinctive response to something. It’s like part of your make-up, part of your existence. So, people were saying to me, ‘Why would you choose to do something like this?’ and my mother even said, ‘Why do you have to do it? Why are you doing it?’ I’m going, ‘Because why wouldn’t I? Of course, I’m doing it. I have no other way of thinking about it. Why would I not?’

LAO   
Exactly. It’s just something innate in you. And that was the same. As soon as I saw that the Strat was for sale, I was like, ‘I can’t just stand by. Something has got to be done about it’.

SC     
When I want to do something, I’m quite stubborn.

LAO   
I’m the same. Determined [laughter]

SC     
So, I found it frustrating that we didn’t raise way more money in one sense, but also equally, I was able to go, ‘Loads of good things came out of this’. Many people would have debated anyway, ‘The government should buy this’. In effect, they did, but they did it through Denis Desmond, so it was a very good outcome really. I’d love to say to him, ‘Thank you so much for stepping in’. He gave 1,000 euros within a day for our campaign, as you probably know. And when I saw that 1,000 euros, I honestly thought we were gonna make it. I really did. And then Micheál Martin was meant to meet me, then didn’t meet me. I don’t even know if he even knew that he was supposed to meet me. And then remember when he made a public statement about the Strat. I think if he hadn’t have done that, I would say we probably would have got there. Because what happened was people had started to turn it into a debate instead of, ‘Fuck, we have to do this’, so it became the government and this debate endlessly going on. I remember somebody sent me a message and it kind of frustrated me saying, ‘You’ve bitten off more than you can chew’ and I was going, ‘If we don’t have that attitude, then what’s gonna happen?’ So, everybody’s going, ‘A million euros. How the hell are you gonna raise a million euros?’ ‘Simply if everyone of you who are telling me we can’t do this give a euro’. Probably one of things I’ve learnt from this is how hard it is to get people on the same page, even if people have the same goal as you, so that was another learning curve. But wow, what a very special time. Fuck, my dad would have loved all this.