Gary Moore Quotes

I remember seeing The Who at the Top Hat.

If you put a Mars bar in one of Glenn Hughes’ hands and a bass in the other, he’ll choose the Mars bar.

The rhythmic feel of ‘Dark Days In Paradise’ is completely different to anything I’ve ever done before. There’s a lot of drum loops on there, but used in conjunction with real drums: a lot of influence from hip-hop and dance music, with the keyboard sound and sequencing.

I mean, if you go to a rock gig and someone plays a ballad it can still really come across, even though there’s a hundred thousand people there.

My father was responsible for me starting in music. He’s always stood behind me.

I always loved the Yardbirds when I was a kid, you know; I was always into Jeff Beck and everything.

When I was about 14, I went to see Cream play. I thought they were the best band in the world.

I don’t like concert-halls where everyone is sitting down and it’s all very formal.

If you take a long time over a record, you end up making something different from what you intended.

Whenever I was in the dressing room on my own, I’d start playing blues to myself. One night, Bob Daisley, the bass player, came in and said, ‘You know, Gary, you should make a blues album next. It might be the biggest thing you ever did.’ I laughed. He laughed, too. But I did, and he was right, and it was.

I didn’t want to end up in Hollywood having facelifts and my hair dyed blond so I could appear on my own album cover.

I always think it would be great to play clubs again, and then when I do I don’t like it because I just feel sometimes it’s a bit too intimate.

I wasn’t really worrying too much about what anybody thought: if you do that you shut yourself down.

I’ve been listening to a lot of dance, hip-hop, drum-and-bass, reggae, R&B – very rhythmical music.

I think that a lot of people are going so wrong by analysing music too much and learning from a totally different perspective from the way I learned. I mean, I just learned by listening to people. People I learned from learned by listening to people.

A lot of guitar players, in every genre, are afraid to leave space. They’re afraid to leave a hole, afraid they’ll fall down it or something.

When you get into the habit of leaving a space, you become a much better player for it. If you’ve got an expressive style, and can express your emotions through your guitar, and you’ve got a great tone, it creates a lot of tension for the audience. It’s all down to the feel thing.

I’m not one of those people who get emotional.

I’m not as a studied, technically, as you might think. My technique has really evolved naturally over the years from watching other guitarists and trying to develop my own style.

Lots of kids when they get their first instrument hammer away at it but they don’t realise there are so many levels of dynamics with a guitar. You can play one note on a guitar and it really gets to people if it is the right note in the right place played by the right person.

I found reading musical notation frightfully boring.

As time has gone on I’ve felt less and less need to play too many notes. That’s something you do when you’re younger, you play far too much and too fast.

This is very much becoming a reality in churches across the country.

I sang a song called ‘Sugar Time.’ That was it. I had the bug.

Irish music makes you want to get up and jump around.

Most musicians make the same record every time, and that’s fine. But the people I respected when I was growing up, like Jeff Beck – they weren’t afraid to try something new.

The first time I saw Peter Green play was at the Club Rado, which was a very rough club in Belfast, and at that time he’d just replaced Eric in the Bluesbreakers. I’d gone up there to sort of hang out and see if I could meet this guy Peter Green, because I’d read about him and everything.

I think a good guitar solo sounds so much better within the context of a good song.