Gary Moore
| Videos | |
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| Gary Moore With Skid Row |
Gary Moore With Thin Lizzy |
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| Gary Moore Plays "Still Got The Blues" |
Gary Moore Guitar Solo |
| Guitarist Quick-Facts |
| Name: Gary Moore |
| Born: April 4, 1952 |
| Guitar Gear |
| Guitars: Gibson |
| Amplifiers: Marshall |
| Bands: Past & Present |
| G Force, Skid Row, Solo Artist, Thin Lizzy |
Gary Moore was born on April 4, 1952, in Belfast, Ireland. At the age of 8, Moore picked up a battered guitar and began to play it. Despite being left handed, Moore learned to play on the right handed guitar. He got his first quality guitar at the age of fourteen. The boy's early influences were Elvis Presley and the Beatles. When he saw Jimi Hendrix and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers live, his style took on a distinctively blues influenced feel.
At the age of 16, Gary Moore replaced Bernie Cheevers as the lead guitarist for the band Irish blues band Skid Row. After Gary joined the band, they recorded the single “New Places, Old Faces” / “Misdemeanour Dream Felicity” for Song Records. Before a full album was released, vocalist Phil Lynott was fired and bass player Brenden Sheils took over his job on vocals. Sheils taught Lynott to play bass after he was dropped by the band, and he went on to found Thin Lizzy as the bass player and vocalist.
With Sheils on vocals, the band recorded their second single, “Saturday Morning Man” / “Mervyn Aldridge”. Skid Row opened for several rock bands of the 60s. One of the bands was Fleetwood Mac. Gary Moore was a big fan of Peter Green and considers him a major influence. When the two bands played together Peter was also impressed with Gary's playing and set the band up with Columbia Records.
Under the wings of a major label, Skid Row released a third single in 1970, “Sandie's Gone (Part 1)” / “Sandies Gone (part 2)”. Later that year the band released their debut album, “Skid”. Their next album took only 34 hours to record and was called, appropriately enough, “34 Hours”. It was released in 1971 after the single “Night of The Witch” / “Mr. Deluxe”. On March of that year, Skid Row performed on the German television show, Beat Club. Gary Moore recorded on the band's third album, but left before it was finished.
In 1973, Gary Moore began his solo career with the release of “Grinding Stone”, which was released as being by The Gary Moore Band. In 1978, he reconnected with former Skid Row vocalist, Phil Lynott. By this time Phil had established himself with his new band, Thin Lizzy. Phil lent his voice to a track on Gary Moore's second solo album, “Back on the Streets”, the song was called “Parisienne Walkways”. In exchange, Moore contributed his considerably guitar skills to the Thin Lizzy album “Black Rose: A Rock Legend”, which became a number 2 hit. Because his previous album was released as the Gary Moore Band, “Back on the Streets” was Moore's first real solo album.
The opportunity to tour with Van Halen presented itself to Moore, and he put together a more straightforward hard rock group than his previous blues based efforts. The new band, dubbed “G-Force”, consisted of Tony Newton as vocalist, Willie Dee on bass, and Mark Nauseef on drums. The band produced a self-titled album and the tour with Van Halen was successful, but the band broke up shortly afterward.
In 1987, Sebastian Bach's American Heavy Metal band Skid Row, bought the rights to the band's name from Moore for $35,000. Sebastion Bach explains how the deal went down, “When (Skid Row) got signed to Atlantic, Gary Moore heard about it and said we could have the name for $35,000 U.S. dollars. 'We have to pay Gary Moore 35 grand to use the name,' and so we, as a band, did buy the name from Gary Moore. We were all glad to do it because it is a great name for a band. I remember saying, 'Wow, that's a lot of $, but we gotta do it!'” Brenden Shiels was upset by the deal, and felt like the American band “stole the name”, he still performs occasionally under the name Brush Shiel's Skid Row.
Moore continued with the hard rock sound for several more albums before releasing “Still Got the Blues” in 1990. The album saw Moore return to his blues based roots. 18 years after the album was release, in 2008, Moore was sued and lost a court case claiming copyright infringement by a little known German band named Jud's Gallery. Moore argued that he could not have possibly heard their song due to it's unavailability in the states, but lost the case anyway.
