Still got the blues

for you.

R.I.P. Gary Moore.

Was watching the Super Bowl last night, thankfully had missed Christina Aguilera murder their national anthem earlier, it was half-time and the Black Eyed Peas were murdering my ears, hadn’t seen any news for a bit so decided instead of viewing the monstrosity unfolding in front of me it was time for some Ceefax or the digital equivalent.

There it came as a great shock to see the headline that Gary Moore had died.

Of course this being mainstream media it was all prefaced by “ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist”, now I know he’d been in and out of the band a number of times but never really thought of him as a Lizzy guitarist – that’s always been Eric Bell, Robbo and Gorham.

Strange that Moore wasn’t in that recent Lizzy documentary on the BBC.

Suppose it’s how you first encounter them how you think of them and it’s strange cos my first encounter would be “Parisienne Walkways”…

…with of course Lizzy main man Phil Lynott, who passed what 25 years ago last month.

Then I really associated him with the pointy headstock, full Floyd Rose whammy, shredding, widdly widdly of the 1980s. And even though I enjoyed a bit of that stuff and rated his playing I wasn’t a huge fan.

It wasn’t until 1990 I really paid more attention. You can hear the blues in his work, especially the two above – “Parisienne Walkways” & “The Loner” – but with the “Still Got The Blues” album it all came out. It did no harm that he was playing alongside some of the blues greats on the album such as one of my all time favs Albert King…

…who he described as “The King Of The Blues”

OK he may had played “too loud” as Albert observed, bit too much gain and widdling but still a quality album.

Albert Collins appearing on the album along with the follow up – “After Hours”

He then followed it up with a tribute album to God – Peter Green – which was gonna win me over no matter what.

And maybe that’ll be my overriding memory of Gary Moore. He was the lucky bugger who owned Peter Green’s Les Paul…