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Early in the morning of February 6th, in a hotel room in Spain where he was on vacation with his lady, Gary Moore left this world, struck down by a heart attack. He was a fifty-eight-year-old Irishman from Belfast, a master of the guitar, singer and composer, an accomplished and respected musician.
In a personal commemoration of this unfortunate event, I choose to write a few words about an album from among the many in his extensive discography, to which I have a particular fondness. Released in 1997 amid his work dedicated to that “heavy blues”, traditional in structure yet noisy, hyper-amplified, and gritty—his trademark for some time—"Dark Days..." represents a great diversification, revealing itself as a collection of real songs even in the pop sense, tinged with techno and "modern" sounds, highly accessible, indeed somewhat charmingly slick, but also and primarily inspired and heartfelt, often genuinely beautiful.
In this instance, Gary especially benefited from recent, definite progress in his singing, thanks to the still recent time spent making records with his old mentor Jack Bruce, the obvious inspirer of our protagonist with his powerful and declamatory, passionate and generous vocal style. The best of this record is embodied in tracks number five and number nine, two superb and expansive ballads that blend elegant and updated sounds, convincing melodies, a warm vocal approach, and a vigorous, fiery guitar solo attack. In the first of these, “Like Angels”, a vaguely rhythm&blues vocal line bathes in an enveloping keyboard bed before exploding into a tumultuous refrain. Two grand, lyrical guitar solos, one central and one skillfully modulated with the wah-wah pedal in the finale, stretch this intense ode to optimism and self-confidence beyond seven minutes.
In the other, “Where Did We Go Wrong?”, the usual melancholic reflection on a love ended is set to a lovely acoustic guitar progression and the requisite, poignant Stratocaster singing, which surpasses the heartfelt and expressive vocal performance of the Irishman himself. The blend with 1990s clichés is most apparent in track number seven, “Always There for You”, founded on an obsessive drum&bass pattern over which a fluid and clean blues guitar evolves in the style of master Peter Green. The opener “One Good Reason” is instead played on the dynamic contrast between a subdued, heavily “telephone”-equalized verse and an explosive chorus, swollen with grungy power chords crossed with cloying Electric Light Orchestra model strings. Even more "modern" is the following “Cold Wind Blows”, a restrained and distorted blues, languid and alternative, that refuses to break free into a loud and powerful refrain and indeed does not do so, fading out after a rather ragged slide solo.
The most important track, in any case, is the final one, very touching to listen to again, now that this great Irishman has prematurely passed. The ironic title “Business as Usual” indeed hides a deeply autobiographical text, consisting of a true journey through his entire life, with the tough childhood in the then-violent Belfast, the arrival in London and the crucial meeting with his idol Peter Green, the apprenticeship alongside another sublime Irish soloist, Rory Gallagher, his service in various bands and then the emotional events, the drugs, the friends (like Rory) who have long since passed, the choices, the opportunities, the regrets that every man abundantly accumulates toward his maturity.
The story unfolds over a relaxed bed of acoustics and orchestra for minutes and minutes, then the tempo doubles to free the guitar, clean and relaxed just this once, in the style of maestro Green, proceeding unhurriedly, circular and melodic, to sketch out poignant melodies. By the time the conclusion finally arrives, nearly fourteen minutes later, one cannot count the shivers down the spine...
But it is not over: after a minute of silence, there is a ghost track, a hidden song that bears the album's title, a sort of semi-acoustic lullaby with which Moore takes his most intimate farewell from those who love him, so much so that they have made it this far, eagerly drinking from the source of his phenomenal, proverbial vibrato and his frank voice, lived-in and virile.
It's an album fourteen years old, but one I find highly relevant now that the great guitarist has intended to reach that musicians’ heaven that rightfully belongs to him (without Dark Days, though, for that would not be right). Thank you for everything, Gary... the old Green’s Les Paul that you've wielded for so many years with masculine sensitivity, giving it inestimable voice, will now remain silent... and another piece of good rock fades out.
Albums like this remain, to console us.
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