IT’S ONLY NATURAL that Vinnie Moore has been making instrumental albums ever since Mike Varney featured him in GP’s “Spotlight” column back in the mid ’80s and immediately signed him to Shrapnel Records. After all, the first melody Moore remembers figuring out on his own as a budding teen guitarist was Jeff Beck’s “Blue Wind.” “At that point I couldn’t even bend notes,” Moore recalls. “I didn’t know what a bend was. I played everything straight.”
But like any rock guitar virtuoso who started playing in the mid to late ’70s, Moore was also profoundly affected by guitar acts with vocals — everyone from the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Robin Trower to Bad Company, Mountain and Michael Schenker–era UFO, the iconic German heavy rock band Moore has played
