Gary Moore - "Cream's Jack Bruce Is "Probably The Most Talented Musician I Have Ever Played With"

Despite his love of the blues, UK guitar legend Gary Moore has kept an open mind throughout his career, gaining credits for collaborating with everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to Andrew Lloyd Weber.

“I have played with some great people,” he tells Eveningnews24.co.uk. “Otis Rush, BB King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, George Harrison, Mick Jagger….I even played on a Beach Boys album! Who am I most proud of? Well Jack Bruce is very talented, I loved him in his Cream days. He's probably the most talented musician I have ever played with.”

Moore's most renowned collaboration though is his time with Thin Lizzy and their infamous frontman Phil Lynott.

The pair met one another in the late '60s when Moore joined Lynott in his pre-Lizzy project Skid Row, where they played together for a matter of months before Lynott went off to form Island's finest while Moore stayed to make two albums with Skid Row before turning solo.

In 1974 Moore temporarily joined Thin Lizzy in between solo albums, an association that was rekindled when he joined their ranks again in 1979 to play on their 1979 album 'Black Rose: A Rock Legend'.

“I'll tell you how it started,” remembers Moore. “He said 'meet me tomorrow at nine in morning' and I thought 'what? Nine in the morning - how rock and roll is that?'

“Then I went to meet him and we had a walk round Belfast and he took me to a Chinese restaurant and made me order something he knew I wouldn't like that meant he got to eat mine as well - and it didn't stop there - he always took what was mine, booze, women… but I loved him to bits. I still miss him today.

“Phil was a great catalyst for what was going on. If you felt uncomfortable abut what was going on you could always go round and he would trivialise it - I was worried about punk and he said 'that's just rock with safety pins'.

“We were hanging out with the guys from the Sex Pistols - I think Thin Lizzy were accepted by the punk community because we weren't so much older than then. Bands like Yes and Led Zeppelin were really shunned, they were seen as dinosaurs.”