Gary Moore – The Irish Bluesman Feb 6 2011

Today is a sad day for the fans of Guitar based Rock and Blues Rock music.  Sadly, guitarist Gary Moore died in his sleep last night and right now there is no other details available.  If you were to look up (or google) Gary Moore right now, most of the headlines will read “Thin Lizzy Guitarist Gary Moore dead at 58”. But, for fans like myself, he was more than just the guitarist for Thin Lizzy. Yes, he played in Thin Lizzy for a time. He was a good friend of Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott.  Gary Moore could also be credited for rejuvenating his career in the early nineties when he basically changed from being a hard rock guitar slinger to a soulful bluesman. Tonight, I’d like to talk about my memories of Gary Moore.
I first remember hearing about Gary Moore in my early teen years of reading Hit Parader magazine. I remember seeing his albums in the local record stores I would frequent in North Platte.  Drummer Ian Paice(from Deep Purple) had recorded and toured with Gary Moore in the early 80’s after Paice had been playing drums for David Coverdale in Whitesnake and between the much publicized reunion of DP in 1984.  So, I was familiar with the name but not his music.  Later, I obviously found out about involvement with Thin Lizzy. 
In my college years at Kearney State College, I would often try to find a TV to watch an MTV show called Heavy Metal Mania.  Since we didn’t have cable in the dorm rooms, you usually had to share the TV lounge with others from your floor or the entire dorm. So, I would sometimes try to find a lone TV (possibly on campus) at the student union and watch it there. I distinctly remember seeing a Gary Moore video where he was performing live with a small camera attached to the neck of his guitar. It looked very cool and sounded even better.  As I have been searching for this video, I have discovered it was a duet that Gary Moore was doing with his former Thin Lizzy bandmate Phil Lynott called Out in the Fields. I loved how the song sounded and felt. I still can’t express how cool it sounded.

 It wasn’t very long after that I started working for Dustys Records and found that the Gary Moore album Wild Frontier was one of the promotional records that the store had for in-store play.  I honestly believe that the first record I played as my first turn as a Dustys Employee was Gary Moore’s Wild Frontier.  I absolutely loved the Irish/Scottish Highland rhythmic feel to the song Over the Hills and Far Away. I had no idea what the geographical regions were. But, it sounded very unique, individualistic and downright cool!

I soon learned that in Dusty’s Grand Island store was another employee that had a love for Gary Moore. Jayson Obrecht was a guitar player and a fan of anything involving an electric guitar.  I would soon find out that he was a HUGE fan of Gary Moore. Gary would release another album in 1989 called After the War.  This featured drummer Cozy Powell who was a favorite of mine and it was generally a good rock album.
Then, in the summer of 1990, Dusty received a promo cassette of Gary Moore Still Got the Blues.  The tape didn’t have a lot of artwork on it and it didn’t seem to be anything fantastic by the packaging.  But, I remember popping in the cassette and just being blown away by awesome blues album he had put together.  By this time, I had become a big fan of the burgeoning blues-rock scene that had been spearheaded by Stevie Ray Vaughan.  In fact, Jayson offered me a ticket to go see Stevie Ray Vaughan at Fiddlers Green in Denver in July of 1990.  As we started our road trip to Denver, one of the first things Jayson asked me was “Have you heard the new Gary Moore Album?”  I had and we were both in agreement that it was good…very good!
In September of 1990, I moved to Grand Island and began working at Dustys there. I slept on Jayson’s couch for about a month while I found a place to live.  I then realized that Jayson was a BIG GARY MOORE FAN! He had all of his albums on CD and had some videos too. That’s what I liked about Jayson.  Many fans and musicians have an artist that they love and obsess about.  As a drummer, I had been a huge fan of Carmine Appice since 1982 and had collected many of his recordings.  Jayson was like that only his “hero” was Gary Moore. 
Jayson had done an in-store promotional display for the Still Got the Blues album.  It was very impressive. I had seen a Guitar magazine article (or review) for the album and I remember reading “You either love Gary Moore or you’ve never heard Gary Moore”.  I told Jayson this and he added that to the store display. 
We would listen to the album over and over.  The record company sent the store a promotional copy of Gary’s live concert titled One Night of the Blues.  Since Jayson was the major GM fan, it was definitely his to own..no doubt about it. I actually found it for a good price at a second hand record store in Omaha about 3 years later.  On this video, Gary had Mississippi bluesmen Albert King and Albert Collins playing with him.  That was when I found out that the song Oh, Pretty Woman was originally an Albert King song. Gary also paid tribute to the great blues players like Billy Gibbons and Stevie Ray Vaughan in Texas Strut.  He paid tribute to the father of British Blues John Mayall with a version of All Your Love.  It was then that I learned about lesser known guitarist Peter Green who had joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers after Eric Clapton.  I also found out that he would go on to form Fleetwood Mac with John McVie and Mick Fleetwood.
Dustys in Grand Island closed and I moved to Omaha in 1991 and eventually moved back to Kearney in 1994.  Jayson, myself and my brother Mike formed a blues trio called BOOGIE CHILLUN and (of course) we had to play Gary Moore blues tunes. We actually played All Your Love and Walking By Myself.

In 1994, Gary Moore joined up for a “reunion” (of sorts) with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce from Cream.  They called the band BBM(Bruce Baker Moore) and they put out an awesome blues trio album that Jayson and I ate up.  I can still remember being blown away by GM’s guitar playing on it. So, we added the song City of Gold to our blues trio set list. I loved playing Ginger Baker style drums. Mike was a fan of Jack Bruce and well….I already told you about Jayson.  I’ve got a video performance of BOOGIE CHILLUN.  I should try and get that transferred to put on as an attachment.

This morning, I played drums for my church Praise band and after the service was over, I checked my Droid phone for Facebook updates to find that guitarist Joe Bonamassa had reported that Gary Moore had died. I immediately googled the news story to find out it was true. I sent Jayson a text as soon as I could. I thought of him simultaneously.  I’ve been posting Gary Moore videos all day since I found out.
For me, Gary Moore was another artist that took me from my love of hard rock and helped me transition and educate me about the music known as the blues.  I don’t think I would have appreciated Albert King or Peter Green as much as I do if it weren’t for Gary Moore.  I am deeply saddened by his passing. I never knew him personally. But, I feel that if you are effected by the emotion an instrumentalist can convey without uttering a single word, or find something that resonates for you, then you know (maybe) just a little part of that artist.
Thank you Gary! You may be gone from this world. But, you won’t be forgotten!