Gary Moore

For the public, "Still Got the Blues" is the song that put Gary Moore back at the centre of the map: a slow blues from 1990, with the guitar stretching notes until they sound like a human complaint, which turned a hard rock virtuoso into one of the great bluesmen Europe has produced. For a Munich court it is plagiarism. On the third of December 2008, eighteen years after that record, the German courts ruled in favour of Jürgen Winter and his group Jud's Gallery: the solo in "Still Got the Blues" was too close to "Nordrach", a track they had recorded in 1974. That ruling appears in almost no profile of Moore, and it is worth telling with its dates, because it leaves an uncomfortable question hanging over the genre to which he devoted the second half of his life.

Dublin, Lynott's bass and a 1959 Les Paul

Robert William Gary Moore was born in Belfast in 1952, and "Gary" was his third given name, not a stage nickname. Around the middle of 1968, at sixteen, he left home for Dublin to join Skid Row —the Irish band, nothing to do with the American one from the eighties—, where he replaced guitarist Bernard "Bernie" Cheevers. Skid Row had formed in August 1967 with Brendan "Brush" Shiels on bass, Noel "Nollaig" Bridgeman on drums, Cheevers on guitar and Phil Lynott on lead vocals.

And that is where something happened that explains half the history of Irish rock. Shiels decided to carry on as a trio and sing himself, so he moved Lynott away from the microphone; by way of compensation, he taught him to play bass. In other words: the reason Phil Lynott is a bass player —and the reason Thin Lizzy sounds the way it does— is that he was pushed out as the singer of his own band. With that line-up, Skid Row released Skid in October 1970, which reached number thirty on the British albums chart, and 34 Hours in early 1971, nicknamed after the hours it took them to record it. Moore left in December 1971, shortly before a planned American tour, because of the group's limitations; he signed Grinding Stone in 1973 as The Gary Moore Band and then joined Colosseum II, with whom he recorded three albums between 1976 and 1977.

In January 1970, moreover, he got hold of the guitar you would recognise him by with your eyes closed. Peter Green, the founder of Fleetwood Mac, sold him his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, the one with serial number 9 2208, for some hundred or hundred and ten pounds. Moore offered him a hundred and sixty, what he had made selling his Gibson SG, and Green refused to take more: he told him he would never ask for it back. It was not a sale, it was a gift disguised as a sale. And the nasal tone everybody puts down to Moore's fingers begins with a workshop mistake: Green had taken the neck pickup out looking for a different sound and it was put back in reversed, out of phase, by accident. That fault has had a name of its own ever since, the Peter Green mod. Moore recorded Blues for Greeny with it, released on the twenty-ninth of May 1995, a whole album of Green's songs, and in 2006, short of money, he sold it to the dealer Phil Winfield for a figure the press put at between seven hundred and fifty thousand and one million two hundred thousand dollars. Today it belongs to Kirk Hammett, of Metallica, who bought it in 2014 for a price the sources do not agree on.

Three times inside Thin Lizzy

He joined and left Thin Lizzy three times, and none of the three lasted long. The first ran from January to April 1974, replacing Eric Bell, who had walked out on New Year's Eve 1973: he managed to leave three songs on Nightlife, among them the co-writing credit on "Still in Love with You", and he left over friction with Lynott about health and creative control. The second ran from January to March 1977, filling the gap left by Brian Robertson, who had hurt a hand in a fight with bottles at the Speakeasy Club in London while defending Frankie Miller; Moore did the American tour opening for Queen and then turned down Lynott's offer to stay.

The third began in mid-1978 and is the only one in which he appears as a full member: that is where Black Rose: A Rock Legend belongs, released on the thirteenth of April 1979. From that period too comes "Parisienne Walkways", issued as a single on the sixth of April 1979 and taken from the 1978 album Back on the Streets: Lynott sings it and the two of them, Moore and Lynott, share the writing credit, which tends to be forgotten. It reached number eight on the British singles chart on the nineteenth of May 1979 and held on for eleven weeks. And on the fourth of July 1979, at the Day on the Green festival in Oakland, California, Moore played the set with the band and left. Halfway through the tour, from one day to the next, and he was the one who left: he was not sacked. Scott Gorham, his partner on guitar, told it years later without any trimmings: he was furious, he said, you do not do that to anyone, all the work they had put in and he simply walked out the back door. Midge Ure came in to finish the tour and a third guitarist, Dave Flett, was added afterwards.

With Lynott, on the other hand, the bond never broke. In 1985 they recorded together again on "Out in the Fields", co-written and sung as a duet, and it is worth saying because it is often confused: it came out before Lynott's death, it is not a posthumous tribute. Lynott died on the fourth of January 1986. Moore played on the seventeenth of May that year at a one-off Thin Lizzy reunion at Self Aid in Dublin, and what he dedicated to him was not a song but a whole record: Wild Frontier, from 1987, is dedicated to his memory, with two words on the back cover, "For Philip". In 2005 he went back to Dublin to play at the unveiling of Lynott's statue, with former members of the band.

The 1990 record and the players who came to it

Still Got the Blues came out on the twenty-sixth of March 1990 on Virgin, and it was the record on which Moore left hard rock behind and gave himself to the blues without a safety net. It reached number thirteen on the British albums chart and number eighty-three on the Billboard 200; the title single stopped at ninety-seven on the Hot 100, and that modest placing hides an enormous fact: it was the only single of his entire career to enter that chart. It sold enough to go platinum in the United Kingdom, with three hundred thousand units, and gold in the United States on the twenty-sixth of November 1995, with some three million copies around the world. On the fifteenth of June 1996 it topped the official British jazz and blues chart.

The ones who mattered came to record it. Albert King plays on "Oh Pretty Woman" and Albert Collins on "Too Tired", with Nicky Hopkins on piano and Don Airey on keyboards. And there is an extra track, "That Kind of Woman", with George Harrison on guitar and backing vocals, which hides another story: Harrison wrote the song on his own, and had offered it earlier to Eric Clapton for Journeyman, also from 1990. Clapton recorded it and left it in the drawer. The version the world heard first was Moore's.

The real measure of his stature, though, lies in two recordings with B.B. King. The king of the blues sings and plays on "Since I Met You Baby", the fourth track on After Hours, from 1992. And that same year, in November, the two of them stretched "The Thrill Is Gone" out over some ten minutes at the Town and Country Club in London, a version that ended up released on Live Blues. He was not a rocker paying a visit: King told him that night, on stage, that he was hot, youngster.

Munich, 3 December 2008

The suit was brought by Jürgen Winter, leader of the German group Jud's Gallery, and it aimed at one thing only: the guitar solo in "Still Got the Blues". Winter maintained that it was his track "Nordrach", from 1974. On the third of December 2008, a Munich court agreed with him.

What is interesting is the reasoning. The court found the solo too close to "Nordrach" not to have been copied, and it did so even knowing that "Nordrach" was not commercially available on record when Moore wrote his own: it held that he could have heard it on the radio or at a concert. At the same time it stated expressly that there was no evidence of deliberate theft, and ruled that copyright infringement does not require proof of intentional copying. Moore denied ever having heard the track. He and his label were ordered to pay damages, the amount of which does not appear in what was published at the time.

That sentence from the court —there is no evidence of deliberate theft, and it makes no difference— is what turns the case into something more than a court report. The blues is a genre built on phrases that have passed from hand to hand since the Mississippi delta: turns, cadences and bends that are inherited, stolen and handed back, and that almost nobody ever took to a judge. Moore spent the second half of his life playing inside that tradition, and in 2008 a ruling told him that the most his own thing he had ever written had another owner. Both things are true at the same time, and there is no comfortable way of holding them together.

Estepona, 6 February 2011

Moore was not on tour. He was at the Kempinski Hotel Bahía in Estepona, in the province of Málaga, on a six-day holiday. His partner found him dead at around four in the morning on the sixth of February 2011. He was fifty-eight.

The cause became known a year later, in February 2012, and it has to be stated the way the analyses state it: according to the toxicology, heart failure brought on by acute alcohol poisoning, with three hundred and eighty milligrams of alcohol per decilitre of blood. No illegal drugs were found in his system. In Spain an examining magistrate opened an investigation, the normal procedure when a foreigner dies. What does not exist anywhere is a finding saying that he died in his sleep, which is what you usually read: what there is, is the hour at which he was found and a figure in a laboratory result.

What to remember

Gary Moore was one of those very rare players who could play fast and play deep at the same time, and his work has two clearly separate lives: that of the hard rock guitarist who joined and left Thin Lizzy three times and walked off a tour in Oakland, and that of the bluesman who in 1990 finally found the place where his way of stretching a note made all the sense in the world. Albert King, Albert Collins and B.B. King treated him as one of their own, and there are dates and records to prove it. The guitar he did it with came from Peter Green and sounded that way because of an assembly mistake nobody corrected.

And at the centre of all that there is a ruling from the third of December 2008 saying that the solo that made his name was not his, without accusing him of having stolen it knowingly. When that long trembling note sounds, the one nobody held the way he did, the whole trade is right there: a man playing inside a tradition made of borrowed phrases, convicted for precisely that. And if you or someone you know is facing problem alcohol or drug use, in Chile you can call SENDA's Fono Drogas y Alcohol free and confidentially on 1412, twenty-four hours a day.

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Sources

Robert William Gary Moore (Belfast, Northern Ireland, 4 April 1952 – Estepona, Málaga, Spain, 6 February 2011), Northern Irish guitarist and singer; "Gary" was his third given name. Around the middle of 1968, at 16, he moved to Dublin to join the Irish band Skid Row, formed in August 1967 by Brendan "Brush" Shiels (bass), Noel "Nollaig" Bridgeman (drums), Bernard "Bernie" Cheevers (guitar) and Phil Lynott (lead vocals); Moore replaced Cheevers. Shiels moved Lynott off vocals in order to leave the group as a trio with himself singing and, by way of compensation, taught him to play bass. With Moore, Skid Row released "Skid" (October 1970, no. 30 on the UK Albums Chart) and "34 Hours" (early 1971). Moore left the group in December 1971, shortly before a planned American tour; he released "Grinding Stone" (1973) credited to The Gary Moore Band and then joined Colosseum II, with three albums between 1976 and 1977. He passed through Thin Lizzy in three spells: January-April 1974, replacing Eric Bell, with three songs on "Nightlife" (1974), among them the co-writing credit on "Still in Love with You"; January-March 1977, covering for Brian Robertson, who had injured a hand in a fight at the Speakeasy Club in London, on the American tour opening for Queen; and from mid-1978 until 4 July 1979, the only spell in which he appears as a full member, with "Black Rose: A Rock Legend" (13 April 1979). He does not appear on "Live and Dangerous" (1978), recorded in the gap between his second and third spells. He left the band mid-tour after the set at the Day on the Green festival in Oakland, California, on 4 July 1979; he was replaced by Midge Ure and a third guitarist, Dave Flett, was added later. Scott Gorham has publicly stated his anger at that departure. "Parisienne Walkways", credited to Gary Moore and Phil Lynott and sung by Lynott, was released as a single on 6 April 1979 (MCA 419), taken from the album "Back on the Streets" (1978): it reached no. 8 on the UK Singles Chart on 19 May 1979 and spent 11 weeks on the chart. "Out in the Fields", co-written and sung as a duet with Lynott, was released in 1985, before Lynott's death on 4 January 1986. Moore took part on 17 May 1986 in a one-off Thin Lizzy reunion at the Self Aid concert in Dublin, dedicated the album "Wild Frontier" (1987) to Lynott's memory with the inscription "For Philip" on the back cover and in 2005 played at the unveiling of his statue in Dublin, recorded on "One Night in Dublin: A Tribute to Phil Lynott". "Still Got the Blues" was released on 26 March 1990 on Virgin: no. 13 on the UK Albums Chart, no. 83 on the Billboard 200 (16 February 1991) and no. 97 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the title single, the only one of his career on that chart; BPI platinum in the United Kingdom (300,000 units), RIAA gold in the United States on 26 November 1995 and around 3 million copies sold worldwide; on 15 June 1996 it topped the official British Jazz & Blues chart. The album features Albert King on "Oh Pretty Woman", Albert Collins on "Too Tired", George Harrison on "That Kind of Woman", Nicky Hopkins on piano and Don Airey on keyboards. "That Kind of Woman" was written by George Harrison alone and offered earlier to Eric Clapton for "Journeyman" (1990), who recorded it without releasing it on that album. B.B. King sings and plays on "Since I Met You Baby", the fourth track on "After Hours" (1992), and the two of them performed an extended version of "The Thrill Is Gone" at the Town and Country Club in London in November 1992, released on "Live Blues". The 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard with serial number 9 2208, known as "Greeny", was acquired by Peter Green for some 60 guineas in the mid-1960s and sold to Moore in January 1970 for some 100 to 110 pounds; Green turned down the 160 pounds Moore offered him. Its neck pickup had been reinstalled reversed and out of phase by mistake, the origin of its characteristic tone, today known as "the Peter Green mod". Moore recorded "Blues for Greeny" (29 May 1995) with it, an album paying tribute to Green, and sold it in 2006 to the dealer Phil Winfield for a figure reported at between 750,000 and 1.2 million dollars; in 2014 it was acquired by Kirk Hammett, of Metallica, for a price on which the sources disagree. On 3 December 2008, a Munich court ruled against Moore in the plagiarism suit brought by Jürgen Winter, leader of the German group Jud's Gallery, concerning the guitar solo in "Still Got the Blues": the court considered it too close to the track "Nordrach" (1974) not to have been copied, despite the fact that "Nordrach" was not commercially available on record, and held that Moore could have heard it on the radio or live. The court stated expressly that there was no evidence of deliberate theft and ruled that copyright infringement does not require proof of intentional copying. Moore denied ever having heard the track. Moore and his label were ordered to pay damages, the amount of which does not appear in what was reported. Moore was found dead at around 4 in the morning on 6 February 2011 by his partner at the Kempinski Hotel Bahía in Estepona, province of Málaga, during a six-day holiday and not on tour; he was 58. According to the toxicology analyses released in February 2012, the cause was heart failure brought on by acute alcohol poisoning, with 380 mg/dl of alcohol in the blood and no illegal drugs present. In Spain an examining magistrate opened an investigation, the usual procedure for the death of a foreigner. There is no record of any British judicial investigation with a named coroner, court, hearing date or recorded verdict: all the available documentation corresponds to Spanish forensic and toxicological results, and there is no finding whatsoever establishing that he died in his sleep. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Official Charts Company, Irish Examiner, Premier Guitar, Variety, Guitar Player, Guitar World, Blabbermouth, Associated Press, Ultimate Classic Rock, udiscovermusic and American Songwriter.