Having a world renowned guitar hero for a father has its pros and cons. While Jack Moore, the son of late Irish blues virtuoso Gary Moore, acknowledges that “there’s not many better teachers,” than the former Thin Lizzy man, there came with it a sense of strictness and expectation.
“He used to send me to my room to practice my vibrato,” Moore. recalls in a new chat with Guitar Player. “He identified that as a weakness in me at first. So he was like, ‘Get to your room, practice.’
“I went and I listened to a lot of Hendrix. I kind of honed it, playing for hours, trying to get his approval.”
His father had shot to fame with Skid Row, before replacing founding guitarist Eric Bell in Thin Lizzy, and swiftly launched his solo career after 1979’s Black Rose. He was also a key part of the short lived power trio BBM (Baker, Bruce and Moore), so with such a pedigree as he had, Jack learned that half measures wouldn’t ever cut it in the Moore household.
“I remember one occasion,” Jack says, “I was just playing in the living room, he walked past and he shot me this look of ‘Do that again.’ So I bent the string up and he gave me this nod of approval. Then he just walked off.”
The young guitarist started his career playing by his dad’s side in 2008 and has shared stages with a notable bunch since, including Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, and Joe Bonamassa.
He’s since relocated to Barecelona, and is currently holed away in Poland with his musical partner, multi-instrumentalist Quentin Kovalsky, where the pair are writing an album together.
He released his first single, In My Shoes earlier this year, and it finds the guitarist paying tribute to the legacy of Irish blues rock.
“I think my father would have loved this song,” he told Guitar World of the track. “There’s a nod to Thin Lizzy’s unmistakable dual guitars in there, too. I think it’s very much up my father’s street in terms of style.”
Though other rockstar offspring look to separate themselves from their parent’s shadows to make a name for themselves in their own right – Wolfgang Van Halen is a prime example of that – Moore, like Dweezil Zappa before him, is embracing what came before him. He continues to honor his father’s legacy with the chops his father bestowed him.
He’s toured consistently with the Gary Moore Tribute Band and guested on Bob Daisley’s album, Moore Blues For Gary (A Tribute To Gary Moore), ripping a solo on This One’s For You.
In 2017, on what would have been his dad’s 65th birthday, he released the song Phoenix with fellow guitarist Danny Young, and donned one of Moore’s Gibson’s for the occasion.
Gary Moore passed in 2011, and as his son embarks on his next musical chapter, his father’s lessons still ring through his head.
“He instilled a lot of the hard work in music for me, and to never take anything for granted,” he concludes. “He also gave me the passion to do my own thing, go create and have my own unique style and identity. He was a great dad in so many ways.”
Plans for a Gary Moore statue to be erected in Belfast, Northern Ireland, were launched in January, and the project has Jack Moore’s full backing, saying his family would be “proud” to see it unveiled in the city in which he grew up.
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