Gary Moore

Biography

Gary Moore was a guitarist of rare dual genius: as a hard rock and heavy metal player he was among the fastest and most technically formidable of his generation, but his return to blues with Still Got the Blues (1990) revealed a depth of feeling and expressive sensitivity that surprised even those who had followed his career for twenty years. His vibrato, wide, slow, and weighted with emotion, was one of the most distinctive in rock, and his ability to squeeze genuine heartbreak from a guitar string placed him alongside B.B. King and Peter Green in the small company of players who make the instrument actually weep. He recorded with Phil Lynott, Greg Lake, and Jack Bruce before his death at 58, and his influence on players from Slash to Kirk Hammett is considerable. Blues Alive (1993) stands as one of the great live blues-rock albums.

Legendary Performance

Montreux Jazz Festival

July 17, 1990 · Stravinski Auditorium, Montreux, Switzerland

Gary Moore's 1990 Montreux appearance came at the moment of his most unexpected commercial success: "Still Got the Blues," released that year, had introduced him to an audience that had not followed his work with Thin Lizzy or his heavy metal solo career. The album's approach, slow blues structures, Les Paul lead tone built around the neck pickup, vibrato that could sustain a single note for longer than most guitarists could hold their listener's attention, was a deliberate simplification that revealed the blues at the core of playing that had always contained it. The Montreux performance brought this material to a jazz festival audience that took the blues tradition seriously, and Moore's playing that night matched the occasion's seriousness.

His vibrato technique, the element most discussed by guitarists who have studied his work, was audible across the Stravinski Auditorium in a way that made the technical discussion concrete: the notes he held seemed to be actively expressive rather than merely sustained, as though the pitch variation of his vibrato was language rather than decoration. The guitar he used was a Les Paul, but for much of his work from this period it was a specific one: the 1959 Les Paul Standard previously owned by Peter Green, known as "Greeny," whose unusual out-of-phase pickup wiring gave it a tone so distinctive that it has never been successfully duplicated.

Gear

"Greeny", 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard (1959)

Known for: "Still Got the Blues", Still Got the Blues, 1990

"Greeny" is one of the most storied guitars in rock history. The 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard was originally owned by Peter Green, who named it and used it to record the early Fleetwood Mac albums, including "Albatross" and "The Green Manalishi." Green sold the guitar to Gary Moore in 1973, who used it extensively throughout his solo career, particularly on the blues recordings from the late 1980s and 1990s that brought his playing to its widest audience. The guitar has an unusual tonal characteristic: one of its pickups was accidentally installed out of phase during a repair, and the resulting out-of-phase sound between the neck and bridge pickups gives it a thin, cutting, almost vocal quality that is unlike any other Les Paul.

Moore paid £100 for Greeny from Peter Green in 1973. After Moore's death in 2011, the guitar was purchased by Metallica's Kirk Hammett at auction for a reported $2 million, returning it to active use as a working musician's instrument. Its provenance, Green to Moore to Hammett, three of the most distinctive Les Paul players in rock, makes it a unique object, but its tonal character is the reason for its value: the out-of-phase sound is a property of this specific guitar and cannot be found in any other instrument.

Marshall Super Lead 1959 & Soldano SLO-100

Known for: "Parisienne Walkways", Back on the Streets, 1978

Moore ran vintage Marshall Super Lead amplifiers through most of his career, with the 100-watt Plexi-era heads providing the clean-to-mildly-driven headroom that his vibrato-intensive playing required. He needed an amplifier that would sustain a note expressively under bend and vibrato pressure without compressing it into a flat sustain, the Marshall's interaction between the preamp and power amp at high volume provided exactly this.

From the late 1980s onward, Moore incorporated Soldano SLO-100 amplifiers into his setup for higher-gain lead tones, the Soldano's tighter, more modern high-gain character complementing the Marshall's vintage warmth. The combination allowed him to access a wider tonal range within performances than either amplifier alone could have provided.

Signature Technique

Extended Vibrato & Les Paul Lead Expression

Gary Moore's vibrato is the most discussed single element of his technique, specifically its width, its consistency, and its duration. He could sustain a vibrato on a single note for longer than most guitarists can maintain listener attention, and the pitch variation was wide enough to be clearly audible without being so extreme as to sound out of control. This vibrato was produced primarily through the classical violin approach, rotating the wrist rather than bending the string, applied to an electric guitar in a way that extended the note's apparent emotional content rather than simply adding pitch modulation. The neck pickup of a Les Paul, with its warm, sustained output, suited this technique exactly: it gave the vibrato time and space to develop within each note.

His string bending complemented the vibrato: wide bends executed with the precision of a player who had internalised the target pitch so thoroughly that the bend arrived at it rather than searching for it. The combination of wide vibrato, wide bends, and the Les Paul's natural sustain produced a lead tone that sits in the continuum from Peter Green and Paul Kossoff through to the most expressive blues-rock playing of the 1990s. His playing on "Still Got the Blues," "Parisienne Walkways," and "The Loner" is the fullest demonstration of this technique: a guitarist for whom every note is an argument rather than a statement, always developing, never at rest.