Top 30 Gary Moore Quotes

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

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

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

Like a lot of the newer bands, like the more poppy kinda bands, although they make really good records and they produce them really great and everything, they don’t really deliver onstage. And I think that’s where like the heavier bands kinda score.

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 learnt fairly quickly that that was what I wanted to be – a guitarist – because it was the first thing I ever done in my life that really felt like it was something that I belonged to. I don’t know… from the moment I picked it up it felt right.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The blues needs to be everything to you, otherwise it’s not going to come across. That’s what I think.

When I’m playing I get completely lost in it and I’m not even aware of what I’m doing with my face – I’m just playing.

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

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

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

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

I did play with Dr. Strangely Strange a couple of years ago – that difficult third album, ‘Alternative Medicine,’ 1997. It was great to see them all. They’re very special people and they were very good to me in Dublin in the 1960s.

I drove my Mum crazy, because I wouldn’t go out and play football or join the Boy Scouts, I’d just sit at home and play the guitar.

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 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.

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.

When we came to America before, we opened shows in arenas for groups like Rush. It’s always been a case of playing for 45 minutes for someone else’s audience.

Songs that are just a vehicle for a guitar solo are very empty, just an excuse for a guitarist to show what scales he practiced last month.

I came in touch with music at an early age. My father was a show band promoter, who took me along as a little nipper of five and put me up on the stage with the musicians to sing.

At some point the label ‘hard-rocker’ began to get on my nerves, and I decided to break those chains. My music definitely doesn’t sound like AC/DC or the Scorpions – nothing against either of these bands, they’re okay. But I was fed up with that image.

I didn’t actually start to play till I was about 10. My father came home from work a Friday and he said: ‘Would you like to learn to play the guitar?’ I said: ‘Yeah! I’d love to try!’ But I didn’t think for one moment that I’d be able to do it.

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