the lineup

24 November

November will see not just the release of a new Gary Moore collection called Blues And Beyond (see review, page 50), but also the long-awaited official biography, I Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow. In addition, there will be a special boxset that includes both together. It’s set to be the definitive book on the late guitar legend, and author Harry Shapiro has already written the authorised biography of Jack Bruce, as well as works on other icons including Hendrix. Guitarist talked to Harry to find out more about telling Gary’s incredible story. In the preface of the book you use the phrase ‘hidden in plain sight’ to describe Gary. What did you especially want to address with this book? “Without sounding too pompous, my main aim in all the music biographies I have written, is to encourage people either to revisit music they might have forgotten about or to discover something new. In Gary’s case, most people who asked me about my current book project could just about recall Gary as a member of Thin Lizzy, and then only after prompting by me. Yet he has a substantial track record as a solo artist, which just seemed to have disappeared from public view.” There were many sides to Gary as a personality and they must have fed into his music – how important was it for you to portray an accurate picture of the man he was, including the less positive sides? “There is this theory with biography that you should separate the work from the life. I’ve never subscribed to that. And this is important when writing an ‘official’ or ‘authorised’ biography. The assumption is the book will be some kind of simpering whitewash. But I made it clear from the get-go that I wouldn’t write a very long press release and to their credit, all of Gary’s close family and friends bought into that. I think the character of the person comes out in the art and it is hard to understand the art unless you know something about the person, good or bad. Gary’s music was highly emotional, honest and raw – and that was Gary.” Who did you speak to from his inner circle that knew him well and did more people want to be involved than you expected? “Ha! This is the upside of ‘authorised’. Everybody I wanted to speak to was very cooperative and I think I ended up talking to more than 100 people. So often, when I interviewed somebody they would say, ‘You know who you really need to speak to?’ And that person would not be on my list. “Some of the key people included Graham Lilley who started out as Gary’s guitar tech but ended up as his Director of Operations; Darren Main, his personal assistant for many years and Gary’s wife Jo. I had some very insightful conversations with Jon Hiseman, Don Airey, Jack Bruce, Gary Husband, Ian Paice, the producer Chris Tsangrides, Brush Sheils from Skid Row and Gary’s schoolfriends from Belfast. And the list goes on – ex-girlfriends, road crew, producers, engineers, managers, record label bosses – many great interviews.” Gary is understandably held in high esteem by many guitar players, but do you think as a musician he’s remained underrated and even misunderstood? “I think Gary suffered from when he sat in the pantheon of guitar gods. He was too young to be regarded as one of the sixties heroes, which he surely would have been, but too old for the Van Halen/Satriani/ Malmsteen/Vai generation – and so he sort of fell between marketing stools. That said, he had a huge following in Europe and Japan, even though he never cracked the US market mainly because he hated going on long tours. So simply, from a public profile point of view, he was underrated even though other guitarists like Kirk Hammett were in awe of him. What made him special refers back to what I said about his character – the intense, emotional honesty in his playing, the like of which I had never heard before until I started listening in earnest to Gary Moore. My hope for the book is that many more people will do the same.”