Winter guitarist, Rab Beggs, recently paid this tribute to the great Gary Moore, who sadly died last week in Spain.
“Gary was an absolutely paramount influence on me & probably is the reason that always inspired me to keep playing the guitar. When i started listening to rock it was Angus Young i was listening to & good as it was & is, looking back he was about the fastest kind of player about at that time & he just hammered the hell outta the old Blues scale, beating it in every which direction in the early days. As years went on Angus’s solos started to take on a more structural approach but then probably down to maturity of course by that stage. So to get back to it…that was all well & good but then i heard Gary Moore & he truly blew my mind!!
Not only did he seem to be much faster but he was so melodic with it & thats what really truly made the difference because you could remember bits & the way he played ballads & the touch & feel he had to accompany any mood of song that he would undertake at any given time & that kind of approach went on to completely inspire me when i got down to putting the Winter piece together. I had the basic theme & melodies done in 1987 in my bedroom in Lisburn, before i joined Winter, 24 years back … holy sh*t!!.
Gary put his heart & soul into everything he did. People don’t appreciate how much he did but if you start to research & see things like film scores & the like that he played on []ie: Lloyd Webber got him to play on Evita & in the early days before he was a name he would’ve played in America on Rush’s supports of all bands just to get known so I bet some of the Winter guys didnt even know that when ironically our influences between us would have covered those acts….weird isnt it??
He wasnt derivative of anybody, he is & always will be one of the originals, thats what endeared me to him. Why mess around with the copies when you have the originals but he could make the guitar, laugh, cry, sing, he could even make it talk, it really was special & for me there’ll never be any body like him. If you havent heard it check out the Loner from 1987, another emotional piece recorded on a Rockman sustainer would you believe it but you’ll recognise the sound instantly.”
Rab Beggs