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He didn’t have the scars on his face for nothing
Louder Sound has a feature on Gary Moore. Of interest in our quarters are several episodes when his path crossed with members of the Purple family, particularly his collaborations with Glenn Hughes.
It was also in 1979 that Moore met former Deep Purple singer/bassist Glenn Hughes. Lizzy were in Los Angeles, where Hughes now lived, readying for a US tour. Scott Gorham introduced them at LA’s numero-uno rock star hangout, the Rainbow, and by the end of a very long night they were best buds till the end.
The self-titled G-Force album, released in May 1980, was heavily tipped for the top but sank without trace, helped on its way by the fact that Hughes was nowhere to be found on it – not instrumentally, not vocally, not even any co-writer credits. The two Gs had fallen out after a heavily coked-and-boozed Hughes tumbled over a table at his birthday party and Moore had laughed. They didn’t speak again for years.
Moore was used to people he worked with smoking dope and snorting coke; it was the 70s. But despite an over-fondness for downers when he was younger, Moore didn’t do drugs. He was a drinker. So he tolerated Hughes’s coke habit. Hughes recalls: “Gary didn’t tell me not to do it until 1984, when I was properly high around him.”
Read more in Louder Sound.
Thanks to Georgius Novicianus for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
The ups and downs of his life and career are, to me, forever fascinating.
May 21st, 2025 at 18:27Confirms to me how Gary was a handful, perfectionism and Irish temper are a volatile combo, let me tell you.
I don’t agree that he really worked with Thin Lizzy, the most organic and jointly creative Lizzy guitar duo were Robertson/Gorham, those two just gelled, ask any Lizzy fan. Moore had the unfortunate habit of dwarfing Gorham on stage, his ego didn’t really allow him to play with a second lead guitarist even though Gorham, always the adult with TL, already tried to make room for and accommodate him.
Here’s an unreleased track from the Run For Cover sessions with Glenn on lead vox as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdm2OnmkFY8
It is what it is, to me Moore’s attempts at AOR always sounded stiff and forced. It’s something Yanks just do better.
May 21st, 2025 at 21:33Thanks for the track, Uwe! Never had heard of it before. Nothing much to writw home about though… I always liked All Messed Up very much. A lyric GH surely could relate to back then. I wonder how it feels…singing a track like that while being all messed up yourself.
May 22nd, 2025 at 06:38#2 Thanks Uwe for the track, which I’ve never heard before either. I’d be incredibly interested in the version of “Empty Rooms” with GH. It’s a shame that nothing came of that collaboration.
Uwe, I agree with you, Gary wasn’t suited to a lead guitar duo because he could hardly hold back, so his solo efforts made perfect sense. By the way, John Sykes was just like Gary live with Thin Lizzy. I can still remember that his Les Paul was always louder and more present than Scott Gorham’s guitar.
In an interview with a German rock magazine, Don Airey, when asked which his dream band would be, answered:
May 22nd, 2025 at 10:13On guitar – Gary Moore, on drums – Cozy Powell, on bass – someone from the jazz genre (he didn’t want to commit to one), and on vocals, what a surprise – Graham Bonnet
@.. Uwe, shame, but would have loved to see Gorham/Sykes combo stick it out for a couple of albums but the band and Phil’s health and drug issues where taking toll. Phil and John really got along great at the time and John was a real kick in the ass that Phil and the band really needed, the band where heading into a harder more Metal type sound at the time.
May 22nd, 2025 at 12:30Timmi, I actually saw Thin Lizzy’s final gig in Nürnberg – Monsters Of Rock (Whitesnake was headliner, it was there where DC fell in love with John Sykes). They were a fucking shambles. Lynott and Gorham must have been low on quality heroin or it didn’t do the job anymore. Brian Robertson, who had played with Motörhead on the bill before, was watching from the side (and he joined for Boys Are Back In Town and The Rocker I think), he looked devastated at what his former band had become, it was a car accident unfolding in slow motion. John Sykes seemed enthusiastically oblivious to it all – an over-excited puppy peeing on the rug constantly.
For me, John Sykes was too NWOBHM for Lizzy – to me Lizzy were never a metal band nor should they have been -, I preferred Snowy White with them (who of course had loads of more experience than John Sykes, so the comparison isn’t fair). And if you press me to say which INDIVIDUAL GUITARIST of Thin Lizzy was the best, then I’d say Eric Bell, he is to me the one closest to Ritchie as a consummate solo guitarist.
I’ve seen John Sykes with Lizzy and with Whitesnake. Both times he had severe timing issues in his solos as he frenzied them over the music – sorry, but something like that bugs me big time. If you can’t stay in time, you don’t belong on a stage.
May 22nd, 2025 at 16:27“In an interview with a German rock magazine, Don Airey, when asked which his dream band would be, answered:
On guitar – Gary Moore, on drums – Cozy Powell, on bass – someone from the jazz genre (he didn’t want to commit to one), and on vocals, what a surprise – Graham Bonnet”
Oh my, that would have been a relentless bunch, Crocco! 🤣 Basically this here with Graham Bonnet on top of it singing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAL2lJDsaWg
And here is Graham with Don doing a Rainbow song where the bassist for once does not sing flat like Roger always did (I never once heard him get it right):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxQMFrqq8zc
There was 12″ version of the re-recording of Empty Rooms where I believe you can still hear Glenn doing “ahas” and “on and on” in the background @03:10 and @05:39, but it might be just my imagination.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4oQPEZ1K2c
May 23rd, 2025 at 00:43Severe timing issues? I guess that explains why he was such a strong rhythm player then 😉 Or maybe it was someone else playing on Bad Boys.
May 23rd, 2025 at 09:16Not his rhythm guitar work (though he wasn’t a Bernie Marsden, Micky Moody or Mel Galley as rhythm & blues chops go – and in Lizzy he was definitely the weaker rhythm player to Scott Gorham), his solos live often careened out of time because he didn’t really listen to the music and got carried away. I’m sure that improved over time (and likely wasn’t an issue in the studio), but I found it grating back then. As a bassist, I have an ear for a guitar or a keyboard solo leaving time. It’s ok to sometimes play with that, but don’t make it a habit.
And I’m sorry Daniel, but Sykes’s galloping riff-rhythm guitar on Bad Boys in a totally overprocessed overdrive-orgy zillionly overdubbed is hilarious OTT to me. I barely see that as music, it is athletics in notes, designed to impress 14-year-olds. Horrible. I was already too old for that in 1987. Give me Keith Richards anytime.
Excellent rhythm guitar to me is eg this here:
https://youtu.be/zck2eerSzC4
May 24th, 2025 at 14:34But you do agree Sykes played a big part in 1987 making the splash it did? He was perfect for that album.
May 24th, 2025 at 16:22No question, Daniel: The guitar sonics on 1987 are John Sykes’ work and his work alone – and let’s face it: they were never properly replicated live convincingly by either Vandenberg/Campbell or Vandenberg/Vai. And that’s not just my view, but also John Kalodner’s. I’m not denying that 1987 is among the, say, ten most pivotal pop-metal albums of the 80s. I also consider it a mistake that DC let Sykes go/ousted him, he should have swallowed his pride and appreciated the magic the two had. But he preferred to have 100% of something less rather than 50% of something greater. Some people are like that, not just in the music business.
Sykes would have likely though refused a second guitarist in the band when touring 1987 – he essentially wanted to be EvH and DC to be be his DLR with a voice like Hagar. But he sure was instrumental for DC cracking America.
May 24th, 2025 at 22:32I saw Thin Lizzy on the T&L tour in 1983 at Wessex Hall, Poole Arts Centre. They were superb and Sykes was a very good fit. A shame they didn’t have longer to bed in as a group and refine their performance and produce a couple more albums.
Neither Don Airey on keyboards, Graham Bonnet on vocals or Cozy Powell on drums would be anywhere near my dream line up. Respectively, overly flowery keyboards, shouty vocals and relentlessly hammering drums with that line up.
May 25th, 2025 at 08:59@7 What would that line up produce other than another piece of “classic” hard rock? When one puts together a supergroup, the whole point is to transcend the limitations of each musician and make a whole that would be bigger than the sum of the parts. In this case, we’d have another strong yet unexceptionable album. And the one to drag them down would be Gary. If you look at his career, he was consistently sliding down the scale of complexity of music: from the fusion of Colloseum II to slick hard rock to twelve bar blues of his solo albums. It would have been another HTP or BCC, good but not truly great.
May 25th, 2025 at 12:16Gary Moore didn’t really know what he wanted, his career veered back and forth, with very little development. I hear a lot more development in John Sykes’ (a Gary Moore acolyte by his own admission) playing from Tigers of Pan Tang to Blue Murder than I hear in Gary’s career. And no, I don’t think he was a great Blues singer and Blues guitarist, much too forceful for that, nothing Gary as a Blues artist did ever achieved for me what Ten Years After/Alvin Lee or Rory Gallagher had if you are talking about British & Irish electrified Blues. Not a popular opinion I know.
Andrew, I’m sure that Thin Lizzy with Sykes had better gigs than what I saw as their final one in Nürnberg, I’m not judging Lizzy’s live legacy on that one gig. Even Scott Gorham has said how Nürnberg is etched in his memory as horrible because he and Phil were suffering withdrawal symptoms on stage. Sykes, not a heroin user, wasn’t affected, he was just proud to be there.
I also agree that “Airey, Bonnet, Moore & Powell” would have been a hefty outfit with little nuance. Interesting that Don seems to have a hang for musicians who deliver flat-out energy and intensity, but aren’t exactly known for subtle dynamics. No wonder he then found Steve Morse lacking in that department, because Steve is very nuanced in how he applies energy in his playing.
May 25th, 2025 at 14:44I look at Don’s comments on Gary Moore and Cozy Powell as being very nostalgic for both of them as individuals and good friends, first and foremost. As they are no longer in this world, Don has always said with a heartfelt tinge in his voice, how he misses them. Plus the days of rocking out harder than these days would also be there for him and why not. They all did some very good things musically if you listen to the solo Cozy albums from the late 70’s into the early 80s. Wonderful music. And there would be other times that they would have played live together I could imagine. Cheers.
May 25th, 2025 at 23:36@ 11- pop-metal?????????????????? man oh man are the metal heads going to be rabid about that ‘new’ genre being lumped in with theirs. Uwe, keep that draw bridge up in that castle that you live in. They will be baying for blood and trying their best to break it down seeking vengeance, Pop-metal, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, have the tabloid journos got hold of this one yet or is that were Uwe borrowed it from? For his sake, we hope he did. Cheers.
May 25th, 2025 at 23:45#14 I mostly agree with your analyses and explanations, but I have a completely different opinion about Gary. I can understand your point of view, but this is how I see it. GM was extremely good even at a very young age. He knew exactly what he was capable of and was never satisfied with compromises. He repeatedly encountered resistance along the way, which unfortunately never led to lasting collaborations. I would just like to cite the addictions of Phil Lynott and Glenn Hughes as examples. Therefore, he was always forced to find his own and new paths. He felt comfortable in several genres (fusion, rock, hard rock, blues rock, blues, jazz, and instrumental), so I would have considered it a waste of his talent if he had only tried to be a pure blues guitarist. His voice had improved enormously over the years, and he had also changed as a guitarist, and his playing had grown. For example, when I put on the album “Blues for Greeny,” it’s a stark contrast to his first two blues records. My favorite track is “Dartmoore” with Cozy and Don on Cozy’s album Octopuss. And that’s exactly what a drum kit should sound like
May 26th, 2025 at 11:09Great parts of 80s US hair metal were actually Pop with their focus on sing-along chorus parts, I thought that an established fact, no?
https://youtu.be/Xk5y4wvsLyY
I mean Poison never made any bones about where they came from:
https://youtu.be/P02FtDkrCFc
Nor did Quiet Riot:
https://youtu.be/ZxgMGk9JPVA
Now if that isn’t Pop, I don’t know what is …
https://youtu.be/Irc5j1gkihY
https://youtu.be/65o3MFsb0BY
Structurally, a lot of that music, especially in its chorus parts, isn’t so different from this here:
https://youtu.be/VuNIsY6JdUw
Let’s not forget that Ms Swift grew up with Def Leppard, her favorite rock band. And the Leps aren’t any less Pop than they are Hard Rock nor would they deny it:
https://youtu.be/HT3taNWL0gc
There are a whole lot of parallels between the Hair Metal Pop of the 80ies and the New Country Pop of today and the last two decades. What used to be AOR/melodic rock has very much found a new home/niche with New Country following the Nirvana/Grunge upheaval. Even most critics’ disdain for New Country mirrors their former dislike of Hair Metal Pop as a supposedly banal music form.There is a common thread going through all this.
May 26th, 2025 at 14:33Crocco, that‘s fine, I realize how Gary‘s guitar playing connected and resonated with a lot of people (being cited as a major influence by both John Sykes and Simon McBride is no mean feat either), just never with me. Corridors of Power was the first album I heard with him and I thought back then: Man, that guitar playing is unpleasant, always clamoring for attention.
Strangely, I found his guitar playing the least obnoxious in Colosseum’s athletic brand of fusion or on those jazzy instrumentals that inhabited Cozy Powell solo record like you mentioned.
Gary‘s aversion against heroin and coke addicts is psychologically interesting as he himself became an alcoholic and died as one. Some projection there.
From WIKIPEDIA:
“During the early hours of 6 February 2011, Moore died of a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 58. At the time he was on holiday with his girlfriend at the Kempinski Hotel in Estepona, a town in Andalusia, Spain. His death was confirmed by Thin Lizzy’s manager Adam Parsons. The Daily Telegraph reported that his heart attack was brought on by a blood alcohol level of 0.38%, whereas a level of 0.40% is generally considered lethal and 0.08% is considered legally drunk. According to Mick Wall, a music journalist, Moore had developed a serious drinking problem during the last years of his life.”
That is a lot of alcohol to drink on one night while vacationing with your girlfriend. I couldn’t do it. Drinking that much and having it stay with you takes years of exercise. 🙁
May 26th, 2025 at 15:51I do prefer the U.S version of Slide It in over the English version, because the harder edge Sykes gives on that album.
May 27th, 2025 at 11:47And you’re not alone with that. Slide It In wasn’t a great or even just well-rounded album in its UK version: Micky Moody phoned in his performance and Colin Hodgkinson was at a loss what to play to a music he wasn’t accustomed to (that album contains some real awkward and perfunctory bass playing of his) + for me, even Mel Galley was nowhere near as good as he was with Trapeze, WS with Cozy drumming just wasn’t funky enough for him. I think both Sykes’ and Murray’s post-production overdubs made the album better for what it wanted to be – a rock record.
May 27th, 2025 at 18:08To me, Mel Galley playing guitar is this here, as funk influences go, this guy was decades ahead of most white players:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgPKa9YmNk
What he did with Whitesnake was banal kids’ stuff in comparison.
Listening to the drums, most people would find it hard to believe that this is the same guy who provided the stoic back beat for Judas Priest’s complete 80s phase. Say something enlightening, Herr MacGregor, don’t let me just ramble!
May 27th, 2025 at 23:06@21 I guess Colin was just a bit overqualified for more simplistic Whitesnake pieces. Sometimes you just need to play A throughout…)
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/bass-player-definition-moron-frank-103420021.html
Speaking of Gary’s struggles, I would say that he actually got away quite lightly with his drinking. He may have had a spare liver or something like some Celtic people do, so he was coping for a long time but then his system eventually gave up. Passing away at 59 is way too early and sad, but meeting your fate peacefully in your sleep, while being at Kempinsky together with your GF is still not the worst option. Some of the ’80s’ heroes met their end of cirrhosis in lousy motels, destitute, badly in need of another drink and still hoping to put together a band and be hip and cool again. RIP all fallen heroes of rock’n’roll.
May 28th, 2025 at 09:34@ 22… Uwe i do think Mel’s guitar tone and sound were a little thin on those Whitesnake albums.
May 28th, 2025 at 14:14I agree Timmi, the band just wasn’t his natural habitat like Trapeze was. Trapeze left space and room for his riffs rhythm guitar, WS began with Slide It In (the album) to opt for the wall of sound approach they would become known for in their US years which did not play to Mel’s strengths as a guitarist.
Thanks for the Scott Thunes interview, Georgivs, very interesting and entertaining to read!
Ironically, Colin didn’t play too much with WS, he played too little! Because he couldn’t fit his trademark “lead bass” style in, he reverted to the other extreme, playing minimalistic, but not confidently so. He was insecure what to do and didn’t enjoy his own playing. Add to that how it is difficult to put a stamp on things as a bassist if you play with Cozy Powell in any case, Colin must have seen it as an insurmountable obstacle. You have to be confident as a bassist if you play with Cozy (and survive sonically!) and Colin just wasn’t:
https://youtu.be/PU1SoiXmCUY
Neil played the same stomper like this – with bravado:
https://youtu.be/y3klAJTG-u8
Just listen to the difference between Colina nd Neil on the third and final verse (after the guitar solo), they’re worlds apart in groove. And while I will always prefer Neil with Little Ian to Neil with Cozy because of the greater freedom in playing Paicey’s more nuanced drumming accorded Neil, Neil could adjust his style to Cozy (he would describe it as “more physical”) while poor Colin was simply dumbfounded by it.
May 28th, 2025 at 21:20@ 22 – you are not wrong there Uwe with the Dave Holland drumming comparison. A lot more funk blues rock with Trapeze and then keeping it more straight ahead with Priest. By that time they (Priest) were well past there original blues rock phase, so Holland going there was sort of similar to Cozy joining Rainbow. In that sense of drumming harder and straighter to get the message across, for want of a better description. What I did not know was that Holland was linked to Justin Hayward for an album and tour. I am aware that Trapeze were on The Moodies Threshold label and they were a support at one stage to The Moody Blues (what a mismatch that was). Interesting times. Cheers.
May 29th, 2025 at 01:38