Mr Moore, 58, was, originally from Belfast, and was a former member of the legendary Irish group Thin Lizzy.
Adam Parsons, who manages Thin Lizzy, told the BBC that Mr Moore had died in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Mr Moore was originally drafted into Thin Lizzy by its singer Phil Lynott. He later gained acclaim for his solo work and was a former member of the Irish group Skid Row.
The Northern Ireland guitarist was only 16 when he moved from Belfast to Dublin in 1969, to join Skid Row, which featured Lynott as lead vocalist.
He was later brought into Thin Lizzy by Lynott to replace the departing Eric Bell, another guitarist from Northern Ireland.
Mr Bell told the BBC on Sunday he was still “in shock” at Mr Moore’s death.
The hyperlink at the top goes to the rest of the article.
My personal favorite of Gary’s work with Thin Lizzy was their ’78 album Black Rose. His fiery, signature leads were all over tracks like “Toughest Street in Town,” and “S&M,” and he was always there to give Phil Lynott a square kick in the ass and make him crank out his best work. “Do Anything You Want,” is a very great example of Moore meshing perfectly with Scott Gorham on guitar:
Gary’s solo work started off as your average, 70s blues-based hard rock. Here he is on Old Grey Whistle Test w/ Lizzy doing a slow jam of “Don’t Believe A Word:”
Later Gary got deep into 80s hard rock and kinda went glam metal for a while. His Victims of the Future record is still a favorite of old headbangers. This era has not aged well at all, kind of sounding like music that would go on a Tom Cruise movie of that time. Nonetheless Phil was there with him again for “Out in the Fields,” and considering we lost Phil back in ’86, it’s one of the last documents we have of him.
Gary moved away from the glam rock stuff in the 90s and got down into 60s style English blues rock for the rest of his career and life. He marketed himself as a blues musician, but really his guitar tone was so searing and saturated, that he sounded more like John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers and early, Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac. This blues era got Moore the most critical acclaim he’d seen in decades, a signature guitar from Gibson, and exposure to a wider breadth of fans. His final studio album, 2008′s Bad For You Baby, was given 3.5 stars by Allmusic. While his music by that point hadn’t diverged much from where he’d started with 1990′s Still Got the Blues, he was not going through motions and craved to wrench every inch of emotion he could from his voice and guitar.
What’s cool about this next video is seeing Gary rock a Telecaster, which was out of the norm for his blues period, as Gary preferred a Les Paul for much of this material. Also it’s very evident Gary hadn’t slouched nor laid back as he approached his 60s. This performance sweats and swaggers.
Gary died today in a hotel room in Spain. The cause of death remains unknown at the moment, but damn it sure is sad. Thanks for all the great music, Gary. You were gone too soon.
Step 1: Don’t play guitar. Play bass guitar, keyboards, drums or better yet, learn tosing.
See this? It’s the Musicians page for the St. Louis Craigslist. Notice how people need drummers, bassists, singers and such more than they need guitarists. This is because when people think they want to take up an instrument, they go, “Oh dude, I should learn to play guitar!” Then this happens:
- Dude buys crappy guitar OR overpriced guitar they aren’t ready to invest in
- Dude takes lessons or attempts to learn through the internet
- Dude jams with other guitarists on the 1-2 songs they know, very badly, with little results
- Dude decides to form a band, becomes one of the umpteen guitarists looking when everyone already has a guitarist.
Guitars look and sound really cool, I understand. I’ve played guitar for 16 years. Yet I made the same mistakes over and over like a lot of guitarists, thinking that there were enough gigs for me when it was clear that most people needed other kinds of musicians way more than another guitarist. Eventually I bought a bass guitar. It opened up my guitar playing in ways I never expected, gave me appreciation for a whole different instrument, and the gig potential was much more open than before. Plus basses are huge and look awesome when you are playing them.
Another thing: try learning to sing. Seriously. You’d be amazed at how few so-called singers in bands don’t know thing one about pitch, key, rhythm, breathing, basic music theory or tone. A lot of them don’t even own microphones or PA systems. Most singers are overly sensitive types who scrawled words in a notebook and wanted to be in a band without doing any of the work of the other members. They saw a singer on TV and thought they could do it, and all they had to do was show up and belt it out. We musicians and music geeks know this as “Lead Singer’s Disease.” You on the other hand could get a leg up, actually learn to sing, and instantly be better than 80% of all singers in your local scene.
Buy a PA system from a pawn shop, secondhand music store, or from Craigslist. Get a couple mikes, cables and some stands, and you’ll have all the equipment you’ll need for practices, jam sessions, recording, and gigs at places lacking a PA. David Lee Roth owned a PA and got the Van Halen gig because they rented his gear, and hired him because he was the only singer around who bothered to buy any.
Now okay, some guys just have innate talent to play guitar, and that is really what they should be doing. Yet the majority of guitar players would be better off just watching from the sidelines, or better yet, simply switching to a different instrument with higher demand. How many good pianists and keyboardists have you seen lately? Do you know how damn hard it is to find a proper drummer? It’s ridiculous.
Far be it from me to discourage someone from playing at all, but quite honestly the world really could use more musicians of more kinds. Just sayin’.
Shred; Verb. To cut something into teeny, tiny pieces. Useful in offices for reducing clutter and disposing of sensitive information, and for making nachos. For guitarists though, shred has a whole different meaning. It describes the subgenre, or maybe subculture (?) in rock and heavy metal music where a guitarist pushes his technical expertise and playing speeds into very fast tempos.
Shred has been around in many forms for a long, long time, taking its cue from classical music. Composers like Bach and players like Paganini laid the ground work hundreds of years ago, making music that crystallized the techniques and laid the veins which future musicians would mine ceaselessly. Long after these men maid their mark, rock and roll was invented in 20th century America. While rock was a blend of blues, gospel and country, and it would largely stay that way at its core, rock music was wildly popular amongst laymen for its rebellious image and musicians for its fluidity. The sparseness of the blues begged for wide interpretation and improvisation.
Gradually rock musicians influenced by classical music attempted to graft the techniques and motifs of classical composers to rock. The earliest tinkerers with this included Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple, Rainbow), Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Steve Howe (Yes) and others. Shred as it’s known today though was recognized as a unique entity in the later 70s and early 80s, due primarily to three guitarists: Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhodes (Ozzy Osbourne) and Yngwie Malmsteen. All three had classical training in their backgrounds, and each integrated classical music and frenetic tempos into their form and technique. From those three a storm erupted and it dominated a whole decade of heavy metal music.
What a mid-80s shredder looked like
The 1980s are primarily associated with new wave and preening hair metal bands. What the latter brought to the table though were stable after stable of talented, technically proficient guitarists. Names like Reb Beach (Winger), Vito Bratta (White Lion), and George Lynch (Dokken) were all over magazines and their songs played on numerous radio stations. They had MTV’s captive attention and this huge presence inspired talent scouts to seek out other teased-haired, spandex-clad shredders. Thus names like Steve Vai went from being underground, go-to pro players to household names, and lesser names like Vinnie Moore and Michael Lee Firkins achieved cult status. Saturation was as fast as these players’ guitar solos, and by the early 1990s, America welcomed iconoclastic rock bands that shattered hair metal’s dominance and drove the shredders back to their woodsheds.
The 90s for heavy metal was actually a watershed period in some ways, for while shredders had to get day jobs as laborers and guitar instructors to feed themselves, shred wasn’t technically dead. The early 90s was the zenith of Florida’s death metal movement, while the Nordic countries spawned a litany of movements in metal music, like black, death, melodic death, folk, and power metal. Not all but many bands in these various waves had guitarists directly inspired by Vai, Van Halen, Joe Satriani and others, along with a list of classical composers like Beethoven, Bach and Tchaikovsky. So while the airwaves were dominated by alternative and punk (Which had been the underground in the 80s), metal was underground music and in that environment it reaped great creative profits. The flame was still carried for shred, the bearers just didn’t wear stone washed jeans and permed hair anymore.
What a shredder looks like today
It was the 00′s which saw shred resurface in public consciousness. Heavy metal, punk and hardcore punk had been in bed together so many times they had produced offspring such as post-hardcore, metalcore, deathcore and others. Names like Killswitch Engage, Terror, Atreyu, Norma Jean, Trivium and others featured a wide variety of guitarists who weren’t afraid that yes, they actually like Judas Priest, and even a little Poison from time to time. The stage was set for a shred comeback. It just needed a catalyst, which it got in the form of Guitar Hero videogames. These games were packed with classic rock from the 70s and 80s, right when the first wave of shred crested. This renewed public awareness of fast-paced, highly-technical playing was seized upon by musical instrument makers, guitar magazines and last but definitely not least, the internet. Youtube is a hub of guitarists offering everything from free lessons for beginners to advanced players, to live concerts, covers of rock and metal classics, demos and videos of guys just showing off.
It is now fairly common to see publications like Guitar World and Revolver featuring one of these modern day shredders. They often cite their love for Iron Maiden, Yngwie Malmsteen and Megadeth, but now include groups like Death, Emperor, Mayhem, and even Pantera in their list of influences. Modern shredders are possibly even more concerned (if that’s possible) with technique, much more focused on tone (a subjective category on making their guitars sound as good as possible), and not so worried about fashion as their forebears.
This has brought to the fore new names garnering cult followings. Today easily some of the most well-known new shredders include Gus G (Firewind/Ozzy Osbourne), Chris Broderick (Megadeth), Alexi Laiho (Children of Bodom), Corey Beaulieu and Matt Heafy (Trivium), Dan Jacobs and Travis Miguel (Atreyu), and Synester Gates and Zacky Vengeance (Avenged Sevenfold). They regularly incorporate similar licks and techniques seen on records past, while using them in different ways to develop their own sounds. Essentially shred has come full circle, but is not as omnipresent as it was in the 80s, meaning that a backlash could likely coexist in peace with these hair metal-loving headbangers.
That about sums up the whole lineage of shred and where it stands today. But it’s hard to describe a sound. So here are a few clips of contemporary shredding.
Down below is “Cut My Wings,” by Seasick Steve. Watch, listen, then read on.
Seasick Steve is literally one of those dudes who had been around forever, and then suddenly came from out of nowhere. He was born in 1941 in Oakland, CA, ran away from home at 13, lived the life of a hobo, started playing in the blues scenes of the 60s (He reportedly knew and was friends with Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell), and then traveled some more. He produced Modest Mouse’s first album and was friends with Kurt Cobain. He moved to Paris and was a busker, or street musician. Then he moved to Norway, and his first album ever came out in 2004, and is called Cheap. His breakthrough finally came in 2006 with appearances on the BBC. Bear in mind Steve was about 65 years old by that time. It took that long to get his day in the sun. Like I said, he’s been doing this his whole life, and then suddenly blindsided the world.
Steve’s music delves into the numerous odd jobs he’s held as a drifter and day laborer, moving throughout North America and the US, and stories about his abusive stepdad. His music consists of basically a 3-string guitar, cigar box guitars, his voice, and stomping his foot for percussion. “Dog House Boogie,” is one of those autobiographical accounts. Note how, like John Lee Hooker’s famous “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” it follows a steady, throbbing groove over which Steve freely improvises and narrates his verses. This is old style, storyteller blues that is not commonly touched on by the slicker, rock-influenced blues players dominating blues festivals these days.
Lots of hipsters out there have been throwing together lo fi, blues and folk influenced music, slapping the “indie rock” label on it, and getting tons of praise for their so-called authenticity. The White Stripes and Black Keys came along, and now there are tons of skinny white guys trying to throw down out of tune, dirty blues-inflected recordings in basements to show how “real” they are. Seasick Steve is real. He’s the guy Jack White wants to be. That’s all that really needs to be said about him. I put “Unsung Guitar Hero” on this entry largely because up until about 4 years ago, that very much applied to Mr. Steven Wold. It doesn’t anymore, thankfully. To close here is “One True,” which is yes, about Seasick Steve’s dog. And why not? Lightnin’ Hopkins would’ve sang about his dog if it died. Its the blues and that’s what the blues is about.
Dick Dale is the King of Surf Rock, or that’s what he’ll tell you. He came up with the famous “Misirlou,” instrumental that was used in Pulp Fiction. That movie revived interest in the song and in Dale, who is still performing today at 73. His son Jimmy plays drums in his band. Dale is one of the iconic players who put the Fender Stratocaster on the map and made it a sought-after instrument by other guitarists. I’d put Dale in an “Unsung Guitar Hero” series but really, he doesn’t need my help.
The first video is a late 90s performance of the song that made Dale famous. The second is a cut off his Calling Up Spirits album. I think this is actually the video featured on an episode of Beavis and Butthead, but I’m not sure. The song is called “The Wedge Paradiso.”
Again like with the Ventures clip in the last post, this is all great summertime driving music. Crank it.
If you grew up in the 80s like I did, then you know about the scene in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, where Pee Wee goes in to use the telephone and ends up dancing to “Tequila” by the Champs. It’s a great, catchy rock and roll song from the genre’s golden era, and it’s been done a dozen times over by many other artists. Among them are surf rock titans the Ventures, who are known for their original “Pipeline,” as well as renditions of “Wipeout” and many other popular numbers. Here is an old clip with Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (Of the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan and others) sitting in with the band while they perform the uber-catchy “Tequila.”
Igor Presnyakov is a fingerstyle guitarist known on Youtube for his inventive takes on pop songs using nothing but his classical guitar and randomly placed vocals. Here he does “Last in Line,” by Dio. Enjoy.
Here’s a great video of Electro Harmonix’s Bill Ruppert using nothing but an electric guitar and a selection of EH pedals to recreate the Dr. Who theme. The video goes through the pedals used to create all the swoops, sweeps, beeps, and thumps of the British sci-fi show.
I’ve shown stuff like this before with the Arc Attack video, who use a band and Tesla coils to create their music, but this was one guy, his toys and some recording software.
EH’s Youtube page is here if you want to see what other crazy compositions they’ve come with using their pedals. Also if you are not a musician this is a good intro to what effects pedals can do and how a guitarist uses them to create unique soundscapes.
Fresh off the BBC:
