Gary Moore
A gifted guitarist who could turn his hand to any style of music, “he never really got the acclaim”.
He was one of the greatest rock guitar players of his generation, but Gary Moore would squirm and pull a face if you ever dared suggest as much. “I don’t even listen to rock music any more,” he shrugged disdainfully the last time we spoke, shortly before his death in 2011.
Never mind that he’d been an influential member of Thin Lizzy, one of the greatest rock bands of all time. “I’m too old for dressing up,” he snapped.
Surely, then, one of the greatest blues guitar players of his time? “Wrong again,” he insisted. “BB King, that’s a great blues guitarist. Not some white guy from Belfast.”
Not known for going out of his way to please people, it was exactly this indifference – hostility, even – to others’ opinions that made Gary Moore such an astonishingly accomplished and distinctive guitar player. And, paradoxically, one of the most overlooked.
As guitarist Eric Bell, Moore’s predecessor in Thin Lizzy and another Belfast boy, who first met Moore when he was just 11, says now: “There was never any half-measure with Gary. Such a nice guy when we were on our own, laughing and joking. But if he didn’t like something he’d soon tell you to fuck off.”
Indeed he would tell Lizzy to fuck off, in effect, no less than three times. This, in spite of the fact that nearly all of Moore’s significant commercial successes came from his love-hate relationship with Lizzy mainman Phil Lynott.
“Phil was like an older brother to me,” he recalled of the pre-fame days when the two of them shared a flat in Dublin. “He was such a workaholic you wouldn’t believe it.”
That alone, though, wasn’t enough of a draw to keep Moore in the band for long. “Gary always had his own thing going on,” says former Lizzy drummer Brian Downey. “He didn’t see himself playing second fiddle to anyone, not even Phil.”
At the time Moore was brought in to replace Eric Bell, in 1974, Lizzy were seen as a busted flush. Having failed to followup their novelty hit Whiskey In The Jar, while Moore was happy to play on demos for their next album, Nightlife, he was already busy fronting his own Gary Moore Band, whose album, Grinding Stone, displayed a range of Moore’s talents, from rock and blues to piano ballads and dreamy, Santanaesque instrumentals.
When the album failed to hit, and with Lizzy now luxuriating in a blazing new direction with the addition of twin-leads Brian ‘Robbo’ Robertson and Scott Gorham, Moore joined progressive jazz-rock ensemble Colosseum II.
“Gary could play literally any style,” says his old friend Bernie Marsden, the former Whitesnake guitarist. “But that whole area where it’s more jazz than rock, I think that’s probably where he felt most comfortable, musically speaking.”
It was the era of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, of all-of-one-side-of-the-record musical exploration, of a great big melting pot of ideas and risks and innovation. It was also, certainly in the case of Colosseum II, a commercial flop.
Three very ‘thought-provoking’ albums, three stiffs, by the end of 1977 when the band broke up, Moore felt justified in, as he put it, “putting my feet up for a while in Thin Lizzy”.
With Lizzy let down again by another errant guitarist – this time the flame-haired (and tempered) Robbo – Moore had stepped in to help the band through an all-important US tour opening for Queen.
“Finding myself in the back of limousines and being treated like a rock star definitely appealed to me at that point,” he told me. “Honestly, I needed the money.”
But not so much that he took Lynott up on his offer to become a full-time member. “For guys like Phil, turning every night into a party is just how they were. But it destroys me after a while.”
“Ah, man, Gary was so serious,” says Lizzy’s most famous guitarist, Scott Gorham. “Me and Phil used to beat the shit out of ourselves with all the drugs and the drink and the women. Gary was totally on the other side. No drinks, no drugs. He was all about the guitar, all about the music. I remember we were in the Bahamas, and Phil and I were constantly out by the pool in our swimming trunks, and Gary would walk down in black trousers, black T-shirt, sitting under the umbrella. ‘Gary, loosen-up. Come on, buddy!’ ‘No, I’m gonna go back up and play my guitar.’ ‘Oh, jeez, all right.’”
His talent, though, was never in question. Gorham recalls their first rehearsal: “When he strapped on the guitar and started playing, it was: ‘Holy shit, man! I gotta keep up with that? This guy’s gonna dust me!’”
When Robbo bailed on Lizzy for the second
“With Gary every night had to be spot on. But very few shows ever are. That would torment Gary.” Brian Downey
and last time, in 1978, Moore finally agreed to join permanently. Their first album with him was Black Rose, the only Lizzy studio album Moore ever fully worked on, now regarded as one of the band’s best, and it’s certainly their biggest-selling.
Moore was still unhappy, though, and, just three weeks after the Bahamian holiday Gorham speaks of, walked out on the band mid-US tour. “He couldn’t have picked a worse time,” Phil Lynott told me, still clearly furious, not long after the band returned home.
Lizzy had just wowed 60,000 people at Oakland Coliseum, opening for Journey on the annual Day On The Green show. But what looked like a major opportunity from the outside had begun to feel to Moore like the ultimate cop-out. According to Brian Downey, “there were some nights, Christ, man, I don’t know how Phil got up and played, he was so out of it.”
Or as Moore told me: “Phil was still okay when I re-joined the band and we did the Queen tour in seventy-seven. But by the time of Black Rose the drugs had definitely kicked in and I saw a big change in him. He’d lost a lot of his energy and it was very difficult. I left the band [again] basically because of all that shit. I just couldn’t stand it any more.”
The manner of the final split, however, would taint Moore’s reputation for ever. While before he was seen as being a little too ‘serious’, he was now viewed as a rat fleeing a sinking ship.
“Gary broke the code of the road,” says
Gorham. “You’re unhappy, okay, we get it. But you don’t leave the band in the shit. No way.” In retrospect, no one should really have been surprised by Moore’s actions. He simply did not stand still for anyone. This was no guitar-slinging gun-for-hire, happy to tether his horse to any passing wagon that paid the big bucks. This was a shooting star blazing its own trail. If only other people didn’t keep letting him down.
But he had a plan. Well, a chance. In the UK that summer, he had enjoyed an unforeseen success with his first solo single, the misspelled but otherwise perfectly poised Parisienne Walkways, which reached No. 8 in the UK in June. Although it became known for its impressively backarching guitar solo, Parisienne Walkways owed its success equally to Lynott’s purring, instantly recognisable vocals.
Indeed it took a while for it to sink in even for long-time Lizzy fans that this wasn’t just the latest production-line hit from their favourite badass band. When it became known that Downey also played the drums, and that Lizzy had included it in their live show, it only added to the belief that
Parisienne Walkways was actually a Thin Lizzy track. The implication was that it would never have been such a sizeable hit had Moore, not Lynott, been on lead vocals. The fact that the album it came from, Moore’s
Back On The Streets, released nine months earlier to little interest, also featured Lynott and Downey on several tracks, in what at the time was considered to be an act of fraternity, now appeared almost an embarrassment.
There was a war of words in the music press in which Lynott was said to be considering having his vocals wiped from Moore’s records. To which Moore responded that he might also insist that his guitar work be removed from Black Rose.
But this was not a feud Moore was ever likely to win. Reviewing his Back On The Streets, Creem,
then the hippest rock magazine in America, quipped: “The ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist and no-show is a rare case of an artist saving all his worst material for his solo LP.”
N“In Thin Lizzy, Phil was the leader – except when Gary joined.” Brian Downey
either side really recovered. But while Lizzy slid slowly downhill, becoming a parody of themselves, before throwing
in the towel just four years later, Moore appeared energised, revved-up by the challenge. He still wanted the money and the fame, he just wanted it on his terms, or as close to that as he could manage and still look himself in the mirror.
“Gary knew he wanted to succeed,” says Don Airey, “but he was so good I don’t know if he was ever really happy. He was a perfectionist, but it was often to his own detriment.”
Holed-up in Los Angeles, there was talk of him joining Ozzy Osbourne, newly sacked from Black Sabbath, in a solo venture. But he’d tired of, as he put it, “being second banana”. What really moved him now was fronting his own band, G-Force.
Hooking up with ex-Deep Purple singer/bassist Glenn Hughes, this was going to be Moore’s fullon
“Gary could play literally any style.” Bernie Marsden
assault on the early-80s rock and metal scene, replete with Van Halen-style shredding and monster riffs. But then the two G’s fell out after a drunken row and, despite a successful tour opening for Whitesnake (with Hughes replaced in the line-up by Willie Dee and Tony Newton), Moore was gone again within months of the album’s release in 1980. First to joined Greg Lake for his debut solo album, then even more swiftly pivoting back to revive his solo career with the album Corridors Of Power, the first of a series of formulaic 80s albums that
took Moore into the Top 10 everywhere in the world, it seemed, except America.
Success, when it came, always seemed to surprise Moore. Despite his apparently limitless talent on the guitar, he always seemed like he was trying just a little too hard to keep the show on the road.
His second big singles success, the 1985 hit Out In The Fields, was yet another hook-up with Lynott. No matter how many times they released his generic power ballad, Empty Rooms, it never quite became the hit Moore seemed convinced it was – or rather thought it should be.
As Downey explains: “With Gary every night had to be spot on. But very few shows ever are. That would torment Gary.”
Even when Moore finally seemed to find his true musical identity with the multi-platinum international success of his 1990 album Still Got The Blues, the shadows never left him entirely.
The album’s title track was itself an almost identikit sonic template for his original – and still best – hit, Parisienne Walkways. All that was missing was that laconic lead vocal from Lynott, who had died four years earlier.
“Gary was so talented I think it actually haunted him,” says Don Airey. “Once he got the guitar on, he seemed to connect. But without that guitar he had no peace.”
Certainly there seemed to be something dragging Gary Moore down in the last years of his life.
“The last time I saw Gary was about a year before he died,” Airey recalls, “and he looked terrible. I was shocked.”
While Airey was reluctant to speculate on what the cause of the Moore’s distress might have been, others I have spoken to in the years since allude to a serious drinking problem. Despite a fondness for pills and dope when he was younger, Moore had never been a serious drug man; Eric Bell recalls nearly being thrown out of Moore’s Brighton home for having the audacity to light a hash pipe.
“Gary hated drugs,” says Bell. “Drink was his thing. But I’d never thought of it being anything serious. Until I heard he’d died.”
“Every time I saw Gary, he hogged the stage,” says Downey. “Even in Thin Lizzy. Phil was the leader – except when Gary joined. Now it was like we had two leaders, which wasn’t very clever.”
“He could be very moody,” says Airey. “The trouble with Gary was he wasn’t really in control of what was coming through him. He couldn’t stop it. He was a genius, really. And I suppose that sort of thing always comes at a price.”
“Once he got the guitar on, he seemed to connect. But without that guitar he had no peace.” Don Airey
How Blue Can You Get is released on April 30 via Provogue.