Quotes from Gary Moore

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.

Whatever I do, whether it sells or not, at least I mean it at the time and I'm honest about it. Which I think is the only way to be.

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.

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.

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

There was a great blues scene in Belfast during the late '60s.

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

Obviously I don't play the same way as Peter, but I could do a passable imitation of Peter Green; if you gave me a guitar I could sit here and probably get closer than anybody else.

I don't wanna play like that anymore: Widdle, widdle, widdle, up and down the neck as fast as possible.

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.

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.

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

I think that a lot of people are going so wrong by analysing music too much and learning from a totally different perspective from the way I learned. I mean, I just learned by listening to people. People I learned from learned by listening to people.

I'm not as a studied, technically, as you might think. My technique has really evolved naturally over the years from watching other guitarists and trying to develop my own style.

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.

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

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 remember seeing The Who at the Top Hat.

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.

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

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.

I found reading musical notation frightfully boring.

I've been listening to a lot of dance, hip-hop, drum-and-bass, reggae, R&B - very rhythmical music.

A lot of guitar players, in every genre, are afraid to leave space. They're afraid to leave a hole, afraid they'll fall down it or something.