Quotes from Gary Moore

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

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.

These guitar institutes and things like that, I think they take away people's identity and they're actually encouraging a lot of people to play who are not naturally good players anyway, but they're telling people that anyone can learn to play.

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

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.

Most of the bands that come out of L.A. now have singers that all sound like Daffy Duck.

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.

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

A friend is someone who walks into a room when everyone else is walking out.

The main character, Gene Moore, is shown how much of his identity is wrapped up in his career and potential in that career. When he comes home from war no longer able to see himself as a baseball prospect, he isn't sure who he is. This is thoroughly reinforced every time one of his acquaintances identifies him by baseball or inquires about his status. How much of our identity and worth is wrapped up in our job title or the one we are aspiring to?

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.

Heavy metal to me is this cartoon idiom where people have their hair stuck-up all over the place dyed blonde with black roots showing through and Spandex trousers and chains around their neck, eating raw meat on stage. It just doesn't mean anything to me.

Most musicians make the same record every time, and that's fine. But the people I respected when I was growing up, like Jeff Beck - they weren't afraid to try something new.

We're losing the whole point: music is not to impress people, music has to stand up on its own and guitar solos are nothing to do with it.

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.

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

I usually don't go into record stores to buy folk music.

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.

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.

I think all my albums have concentrated on songs, I've never taken the typical Van Halen route to try and become a guitar hero.

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.

If you are an expressive player, people can feel that. It is an emotional thing and becomes an extension of yourself.