Gary Moore became a star when he signed on as a member of the legendary rock group Thin Lizzy in the ’70s. In addition to his stint with Lizzy, he has enjoyed a very successful solo career, which began even before he joined the group. He also worked as a session player, appearing on numerous albums with a variety of prominent artists, as well as joining up with the prog rock/fusion group Colosseum II for three albums in ’76 and ’77. His solo career really took off in the ’80s, with his albums delivering many hit singles like “Nuclear Attack,” “Run To You Mama,” “Victims Of The Future,” “Murder In The Skies,” “Back On The Streets,” “Empty Rooms,” and “Parisienne Walkways.”
By ’90,
Moore had discovered that his true calling was to play blues, and that year he proved he had made the right decision by changing directions when he released
Still Got The Blues. The disc quickly became the most highly acclaimed album of his career, and included collaborations with several of the legendary bluesmen who had greatly inspired him—Albert Collins, Albert King, and B.B. King.
From his home in Brighton, England, Moore spoke with us in detail about the process of writing and recording the material for his latest album, Close As You Get. He told us what influences him as a songwriter and how he went about selecting the few cover songs included on the disc. We also talked about the gear used to create the assortment of sounds, and how the tracks were recorded in the old-school way—by capturing the band performing live in the studio. This was a goal Moore has always strived to achieve, and making Close As You Get is a longtime dream fulfilled. This disc is sure to impress listeners, confirming that his fiery guitar playing is better than ever, and showing that Moore is a master musician who undoubtedly ranks among the greats.
Ultimate Guitar: Most people are familiar with your work and your history. Tell us how your influences have changed in recent years, if they have at all.
Gary Moore: Well, they kind of have and they haven’t. I started off playing guitar in the ’60s, when I was just ten years old. The people who were popular at that time were Hank Marvin and the Shadows. There weren’t really many guitarists around. The next big change was when the Beatles came along, and I was really into George Harrison. I loved his melodic style and his inventiveness. Then the real big turning point came when the British blues boom hit with Eric Clapton, John Mayall, Peter Green, and then Jimi Hendrix came along. I started listening to all the blues guys like B.B. King and Albert King. It kind of still goes back to those guys, and I think my playing is a combination of all of those elements, really, but at some point it came together and became my own style.
What do you listen to for inspiration?
I still listen to blues. I was doing a blues program for a radio station in London recently called “Planet Rock,” and I did a six-part blues series of two-hour shows every week. So I was digging back into all the really old blues stuff, like listening to Son House. In fact, I found a lot of the material for the new album through that radio show. I was listening to Leadbelly, [harmonica player] Sonny Terry and [his partner, guitarist] Brownie McGhee, and all the acoustic stuff that I never got into when I was a kid. So I kind of saved it up for later in life and I’ve rediscovered a lot of that stuff recently. I ended up including some of the songs on this album, particularly the Son House song called “Sundown,” which is my first-ever acoustic blues track on record.
Was “Sundown” played on an acoustic resonator guitar?
Yes. It’s called an Ozark. It’s like a cheap copy of a National with a skinny body. So it’s very comfortable to play, but it still has a really good sound. I used an open-G tuning like Son House.
You played slide on that one. What type of slide did you use and which finger do you place the slide on?
I did it with a brass slide on my third finger.
On the opening track, “If The Devil Made Whiskey,” you played electric slide. Which guitar was that played on and what type of slide was used?
That track was done on a 1968 Telecaster tuned to an open E chord and then dropped down a whole step to D, but with the same intervals. I think I used a glass bottleneck slide on that one for the different vibe. I played through an old 1960s Vox AC30.
Both songs were great choices as opening and closing tracks. I think the running order of the songs on the album was well selected.
Thank you! I think it’s really important to try and get that right. I approach it like a live set to give it the right dynamic and start with something strong, then take it down it one place and build it up again.
There are a wide variety of tonal textures heard throughout the album. What types guitars and amps were used throughout the recording, in addition to the Ozark resonator, Tele and AC30?
The main guitar is a 1959 Les Paul Standard, which is the same guitar I used on Still Got The Blues. I’ve had it since about 1989, and it’s the one I use live a lot. It’s not pristine by any means, but it’s just a really great guitar and I’ve used it on lots of albums since Still Got The Blues. In fact, “Still Got The Blues” was the first track it was used on. That’s the first song we did that day, and I recorded it with that guitar. I thought that was a good indicator of what the guitar could do, so I’ve used it ever since. I used an ES-335 on “Have You Heard.” I think it’s a ’64. It has PAF pickups in it and it sounds a bit like a Les Paul. And then I also used the Telecaster. And that was it, really. For amps, I used that Vox on a couple of tracks—“Thirty Days,” the Chuck Berry song, and also on the opening track, “If The Devil Made Whiskey,” and then I used a Fender Vibroverb reissue with the 2x10s and the reverb, not the 1x15, which is the first amp that Fender had made with built-in reverb. It’s a reissue, but it’s practically considered a vintage amp now because it’s like 18 years old. I’ve had it that long. I used that on a couple of the slower ones like “Trouble At Home” and “I Had A Dream.” For the heavier-sounding stuff like “Have You Heard” and “Checkin’ Up On My Baby,” I used the Marshall DSL100, which is the JCM 2000 series head that I’ve been using since they came out. And I used an Orange Tiny Terror, which looks like a little toy amplifier with a hand-wired Marshall 2x12 angle cabinet. So that was it for amps.
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| "It sounds live because it is, pretty much, and that's the way I wanted to do it." |
There were a few effects used on some of the songs, too. What were they?
Yes, tremolo and vibrato. There was one place where I did use a pedal because I originally did the rhythm track on “Nowhere Fast” with the Vibroverb, using the vibrato built into the amplifier. But it was breaking up. I think the tube was going bad. So I just plugged into the desk and did it using a Boss tremolo pedal instead. The other effects that you hear, like reverb, a lot of the times, they are just the built-in spring reverbs on the Vibroverb and the Marshall. When we wanted to use studio reverb, we used an Alesis Midiverb II, which I’ve been using since the late ’80s for all my guitar sounds. I have favorite programs, but you can’t even store anything in it. You can press the buttons, and it goes from north to 30 or whatever, and you just put in whatever numbers you like in your favorite programs, then tweak it until it sounds good. But we didn’t use Lexicon or any sort of really expensive reverbs like that. For the guitar, I think cheap stuff is always best. Well, for me, I think it works really well. But for vocals, it’s a bit different.
The sound of a downward tremolo bar sound can be heard in the background at the very tail end of “Hard Times.” None of the main guitars you played have a tremolo bridge. Was there an additional guitar used on that track to create that sound?
Yes, you’re right. That’s a Burns artist guitar from the ’60s with a tiny body. A friend of my girlfriend’s was selling it. She didn’t play anymore and I thought it was really neat. It was great for playing the James Bond stuff on. It’s got the original Burns pickups and it was in really good condition. It had some cards, like the Ace of Spades, that someone had stuck on it. It looked like a really cool little kid’s guitar. So that was the whammy bar on that track. It’s just kind of there in a couple of places. You can hear the noise of the springs kind of catching at the end. That’s what you’re hearing. It’s got a personality. It’s important sometimes to have things like that. It just gives the song a little bit of character.
Other than on that song, did you often use just one guitar for each track?
It was generally one guitar. You can hear on the first track, “If The Devil Made Whiskey,” that it’s just one guitar all the way through. Then I just did the vocal again because I wrote that song that morning when I was sitting up in bed. I couldn’t sleep, and I kind of had the words, but I didn’t know what I was going to do with the song. I thought I would give it a really dirty slide and I would do it like that. So I just tuned it to the E and dropped it down to D, got the bass player and drummer, and we did it in about three takes. Then I stuck the vocal on, and that was it. On the track after that, “Trouble At Home,” the vocal and everything on it is live. You can hear the way the guitar plays off the vocal.
With the blues, the guitar and vocal parts will often play off of each other in a call and response style.
Yes, absolutely. That’s one of the really good things about playing blues, because when I used to play rock in the ’80s, especially live, it was really hard to keep the rhythm tight and keep the vocals right all the time. You were just never off because you had to play a lot more rhythm behind the vocal. And the good thing with the blues is that you don’t have to play all the time when you’re singing. You can actually just answer the vocal, like you said, in a call and response style, which leaves a lot more space in the music and I think it makes the vocal sound stronger.
Were you able to record your guitar and vocal parts at the same time on many of the songs?
Yes, sometimes I did, amazingly!
The album sounds very much like a live performance. Were the songs recorded that way? Did you play live with the band?
Yes. I had two things I had made up my mind about before I went in. One was to play live with the band, and do as many solos live as possible, which is what I did. There was only one overdubbed solo, and the rest of it was all just on the backing track. But I left the door open where my guitar was so that I would have to get it right, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get rid of the spill [from the other instruments]. The one solo I did overdub was “Have You Heard,” because I was playing too many Clapton licks from the original version. It was kind of ingrained. I had to change guitars after the band left, and you can hear a little bit of the spill of the original in there.
So it sounds live because it is, pretty much, and that’s the way I wanted to do it. In the past, I had often said I was going to record like that, but it didn’t end up working out that way because the band wasn’t getting the songs down quickly enough. We would be working out the songs, then I would peak with my playing, and you know how that goes when you play guitar. You do a couple of solos and you’ve already peaked, but the band still hasn’t got the song right. It’s frustrating. So this time we kind of learned them together. We didn’t rehearse anything before we went in. We just sort of made it up as we went along. I was very happy with myself because on the other records where we’ve tried to do it like that, it was a complete disaster. I just ended up not really getting what I wanted at all, but had to make due with what I had. Power Of The Blues was like that, and the production on it was a bit of a nightmare. It was a bit of a bad vibe. It wasn’t like this. This record didn’t even feel like we’d made a record because it was so easy.
Were your solos usually improvised or worked out beforehand?
They’re just improvised, mostly.
Was everything you recorded done entirely in the old-school way and on tape, without the use of Pro Tools?
Yes, everything was recorded to tape. I don’t really like Pro Tools all that much. I know the sound is one thing, and we can go on forever talking about that, but even the young assistants in the studio could hear a difference when we tried a mix in Pro Tools. My engineer suddenly decided he was going to do that, and it sounded different after he transferred everything into Pro Tools. So I said, “Can we not do this?” Because otherwise, it ends up where you’re mixing by committee. You’ve got the guy operating the Pro Tools and you’ve got your guy passing instructions on from you to a third guy, and I think it just ends up taking a long time. There are too many options in Pro Tools as well. People get carried away with all the options and they don’t want to commit anything. I like the old-fashioned 24-track one reel of tape. You know what you’ve got, and you know what you have to do. It works for me.
How do you like your guitars to be set up in terms of the action and string gauge?
Well, I don’t use a really low action. I don’t like it because it starts to get a bit “chinky” off the top. You’ve got to be really careful about that so I don’t like it too low. I used to use heavier strings than I do now, but a couple of years ago I injured my hand and I had to go down a gauge. I got used to how they felt and I liked it, and it didn’t really affect the sound. So I use .009-.048 now. I was using .010-.052 before. But I’m actually working my way back up again, because I started with .009-.046, and I’m trying to work my way back up to maybe up to .050s again. It’s more in the bottom strings where you notice the tone anyway.
What type of picks do you use?
I use a Gibson extra heavy. I like a really heavy pick. It just suits my style better. I used to use those gray Herco picks, which are lighter. I used those for years, even in Thin Lizzy. Everyone in Thin Lizzy used those picks, even Phil Lynott.
Describe your writing process and where the inspiration comes from to write a song. Does it typically start with a riff or a lyric?
It works better for me if I’ve got the lyrics first because there’s nothing I hate more than going in the studio, putting down a backing track, and then I haven’t got any words for it. Even if I’ve got a melody, everyone’s sitting around waiting for me to write the words. It’s just a nightmare. So this time, I wrote all the words first, and that really helped me, because all I had to do was put the music to it, and that was really easy for me. But to do it the other way around, I always find that much harder. I think a lot of guitarists would say that it’s harder to write the lyrics because we’re all so used to putting music together, and we’re all adept at doing arrangements and getting everything in place. But if you haven’t got anything to say and you’ve just got a backing track, it’s meaningless. I like to try and write songs that are personal to me. A lot of the time, they’re pretty autobiographical, and when they’re not, it’s about something that I’ve seen on the news, or a political thing. But they’re usually about something that’s meaningful to me.
Do you have a favorite track or a favorite solo on this album?
I like a lot of tracks on it, but I especially like the solo on the second track, “Trouble At Home,” because it’s the first time I’ve ever been able to nail what I do live and leave those big spaces in the phrasing, and with a really nice tone. I think it comes across as really expressive. As a guitarist, I’ve had to learn to leave some spaces. Guitarists have this thing where they’re scared to leave a hole because they think they’ll fall down in it. Where actually, the bigger holes you leave, the better. Albert King said something to me when I did “Oh Pretty Woman” with him years ago on the Still Got The Blues album. He was leaving the studio on the last day and he said, “Gary, play every other lick.” That’s such a profound thing—play every other lick. Those four little words meant the whole world. It took me a long time to really take it in. But he was absolutely right. If you leave that space, if you’ve got a good tone and you play expressively, and you can make people feel from your guitar, they won’t be able to wait for the next note. It creates that tension if you’ve got a great sound and great feel. I grew up listening to Peter Green, and he was amazing when he would leave that space. You would just go, “Come on and play the next note, man!” It just sounds so amazing just when you play one note with great tone and feel. So that’s one of my favorite solos. And one of my favorite tracks is “I Had A Dream.” I like the solo at the end of that one as well, which has a Telecaster, and it’s almost like country blues in a way.
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| "Guitarists will find out that it's something that I've really worked on a lot." |
What set up will you be using for live performances?
The same stuff. I use my ’59 Les Paul as my main guitar and play through a Marshall DSL100. I also use a Telecaster and sometimes a 335. I actually have four Les Pauls that I use live. There’s the ’59, my signature model which I use for “Parisienne Walkways” and a few other tunes, then there’s one from the Custom Shop which has the out-of-phase sound, and one I stole from the Gibson Artists Department about a year ago, which is a sunburst and has a skinny neck that I don’t really like so much, but it sounds really good.
I just got some new pedals by T-Rex, which is a company from Denmark. One is a Moller overdrive. It’s a double pedal with a clean boost on one side and a distortion on the other. I’ll use that on “Oh Pretty Woman,” and sometimes when I’ll bend one string up to the other to give it a Hendrixy sound. I’ve also got their Room-Mate tube reverb, Replica delay pedal, and Mudhoney overdrive.
Tell us a bit about the famous ’59 Les Paul which was owned by Peter Green before it became yours. You had been closely associated with that guitar for many years, and on the inside photo of Blues For Greeny, which was your tribute to Peter Green and his music, you included a split image of the guitar with your hand on one side and Green’s hand playing it on the other. It showed the connection between you, and how important this guitar was to both of you. Many guitarists are rather curious as to why you parted with the guitar and how difficult it was to do that.
It’s a long story. The instrument itself was a very special instrument, obviously. But it got to the point where I couldn’t take it anywhere. I didn’t want to sell it. I had to sell it for various reasons because I injured my hand a few years ago and the insurance didn’t pay up, and I had to cover the tour costs for canceled shows with my own money, and I didn’t get paid for any of the shows, obviously, or for anything. I ended up with debt. So it was kind of a financial thing, really, and that was the quickest way to do anything about it. So I never wanted to sell it. I mean, why would I? I kept the other ’59 Les Paul and I sold that one. That guitar was played by Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher played it, and I’ve played it. It was a very special instrument. Les Pauls are all so different. That one is a big old battle axe. Peter Green never really liked that guitar because the neck was too big. He wanted me to have it because he said he wanted it to go to a good home.
You’ve received some very valuable advice from a legendary musician. What advice would you offer to guitar players?
I couldn’t offer rock guitar advice to anybody because I think it is so far removed from me now. But within the blues, I think that space thing is very important. You’ve got to learn what Albert King said—to play every other lick. Don’t feel the need to fill every space and be like a really boring guest at a dinner party, where you’re just going to talk over everybody and think that what you’ve got to say is more important than anybody else. You’ve got to learn to leave that space, and I think if guitarists listen to this new record, they’ll find out that it’s something that I’ve really worked on a lot. I was doing it live, but this is the first time in the studio that I’ve really done it with that sort of control.
Interview by Lisa Sharken
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