Gary Moore
How Blue Can You Get PROVOGUE
Blue is still the colour.
Despite buying Peter Green’s legendary Les Paul as a precocious teenager in Skid Row in the late 60s, it took Gary Moore another 20 years to ‘come out’ as a blues guitarist. During that time he built up a formidable reputation as a rock/metal axeman, much of it within his rumbustious relationship (to put it mildly) with Phil Lynott. But it left him dissatisfied – “like a dog chasing his tail”, as he put it.
He finally made the career change with 1990’s well-received Still Got The Blues and never looked back, although his commercial minders managed to eek a few more hard rock throwbacks out of him. Moore released a dozen or so fine blues albums before his premature death in 2011, and left behind a pile of unreleased tracks, from which How Blue Can You Get was collated.
There’s no information about when or where these eight tracks were recorded, or the other musicians involved, which is a shame. And some of the tracks could have done with a remix.
Half the, with Moore’s mean, gritty voice sliding all over the place and his vicious guitar phrases doing much the same. That’s followed by the instrumental , originally by pianist Memphis Slim before Eric Clapton adopted it. Moore follows Clapton’s template for one verse before heading off in his own direction, never losing sight of the opening riff.
