Shane’s Rock Challenge: GARY MOORE – 1990 – Still Got The Blues

Shane’s Rock Challenge: GARY MOORE – 1990 – Still Got The Blues
By Shane Pinnegar
8/10

Depicted as a child on the front cover, young Moore is in his bedroom playing a guitar, surrounded by Hendrix and James Dean posters, vinyl albums strewn everywhere, while on the back Moore the elder is in a similar position in a hotel room. The message is simple: after a clutch of albums full of hard rock histrionics and power-riffs, Still Got The Blues was him getting back to his blues roots.

He always had the blues in him though, even while rocking hard with Thin Lizzy, or playing lightning fast metal solos to Nuclear Attack or hitting a rock groove with Lizzy on Waiting For An Alibi, he would deliver something like the amazing Parisienne Walkways, or the Celtic influenced Over The Hills And Far Away.

Still Got The Blues saw Moore drawing a line though: no more hard rock for it’s own sake. From this point on he’d be a bluesman – a rocking one, sure, but always with the blues as his touchstone.

So, he did what anyone with his address book would do: he called up Don Airey, Nicky Hopkins, Bob Daisley, Brian Downey, and even former Beatle George Harrison and asked them to play on the record… not to mention blues legends Albert King and Albert Collins.

The resulting album is excellent: the title track and Walking By Myself swagger like they mean it, Too Tired sees Collins’ flammable lead guitar punctuate Moore’s light hearted vocals, and the presence of Albert King on Oh Pretty Woman ups the wow factor exponentially. Likewise, having Harrison on slide guitar makes That Kind Of Woman even better than it could have otherwise been.

Still Got The Blues opened the door for a whole new career for Moore, and he never looked back, right up until his tragic death in 2011.

Category: Shane's Rock Challenge