No tribute to Gary would be complete without a look at his first band, in which also was to be found a young Phil Lynott, and which would bring Gary to the attention of Fleetwood Mac's legendary Peter Green while Skid Row supported them, thus setting the young guitarist on the road to being properly discovered. Although he only stayed with the band for three years, returning briefly for their reunion in 1974, he was present on both their official albums, released in 1970 and 1971. There's no doubting that Skid Row gave Gary his start, and so it's only right and proper that we acknowledge the role of his first band.
Formed in Dublin in 1967 by Brendan “Brush” Shiels, the original incarnation of Skid Row didn't include Gary, who only joined the next year, but it did include a young Phil Lynott, who at the time was a vocalist and didn't know how to play the bass! When Shiels fired him in 1968 he taught him how to play the instrument as compensation, and gave him a bass guitar he had bought, and thus was one legend born. Gary stayed on till 1971, when he left just before the band's third album, which was subsequently not released till two decades later.
During his time with Skid Row, Gary participated in their tour of the USA --- his first time in the country, though it certainly would not be his last --- in support of Fleetwood Mac, where he met and impressed Peter Green. Green brought him to the attention of one of the major labels, and on returning home Gary soon decided to leave Skid Row and strike out on his own, forming his own band with whom he released what is generally accepted as his first solo album, “Grinding stone”, in 1973.
Gary was somewhat awestruck by Green, and the Fleetwood Mac guitarist remained one of his big influences, culminating in his tribute album “Blues for Greeny” in 1995, an album almost completely consisting of songs written by the man.
Skid --- Skid Row --- 1970 (CBS)
At one point, Skid Row seemed to be on the verge of becoming the “next big thing” in Irish rock, but changes to the lineup and internal wrangling seem to have basically done for the band before they could realise their true potential, and as Taste gave birth to a solo star in Rory Gallagher around the same time, Skid Row created two rock legends who would later go on to work together for a time, and remain fast friends up until their deaths. Created by “Brush” Shiels (who was generally known as “The Brush”), the original Skid Row didn't feature Gary Moore but did feature Phil Lynott, as related already above, but by the time of the release of this, their debut album, he had been sacked and The Brush was the main man on vocals. Gary was of course the guitarist, adding some vocals too. The trio was completed by Noel Bridgeman on drums.
The albums starts out on gentle, folky guitar and soft percussion, Shiels' voice putting me in mind of yer man from Dr. Hook (sorry, Brush!), and “Sandie's gone” remains laidback and gentle with a certain CSNY feel to it, very sixties hippy/folk, some really nice piano, which appears to go uncredited, while Gary's first guitar contribution is acoustic for most of the song, then later he switches to electric, while still keeping the tone laidback and relaxed. Nice little solo, presaging the huge talent he was to later become. “The man who never was” is a shorter track, jazz/improvisational with a frantic, almost psychedelic turn to it, much more uptempo, then changing the time signature halfway though, this I guess showing how versatile Gary could be, even in those early days.
“Heading home” is pure bluegrass country, with a very foot-tapping beat and some exquisite work by Gary, a great little solo to end the track, then we're into more jazz/fusion with “Felicity”.
(Look, I'll be honest here: I'm a little confused. I've never heard any Skid Row prior to this, and the track listing of the album seems to be different than that shown on Wiki, but it also appears that there were demo tapes recorded in 1970 which weren't released till 1990, possibly the third album spoken of in the intro, and I'm just not 100 percent sure which album I have here. As Gary later sold the rights to the band name to an American outfit, who went on to record many albums, it's hard to track down the original Skid Row recordings, so what I have here will have to suffice. If it's wrong, if I'm reviewing the wrong album, bear with me, as I'm no Skid Row aficionado.) Lots of scat singing on this track, pushing the jazz angle even further, and a tasty bass solo from Brush, the track running on for a good nine minutes, with plenty of jazz-style improv and jamming before we hit “Unco-op showband blues”, which as you might suspect is the first time we get to hear Gary indulge in his first, and what would become his abiding, love, the blues.
Nice slow track with some kind of jarring jazz flourishes which to my mind take away from rather than add to the song, which in fact metamorphoses along the way into a Zep/Purple slow hard rocker with Black Sabbath overtones. It does however provide an opportunity for Gary to again show what he can do on the guitar, carrying much of the song on his sweet soloing. “Morning star avenue” I find quite plodding and boring, that is, until Gary lets loose with one hell of a solo and just kicks the bejaysus out of the song! Noel Bridgeman goes a bit wild on the drums too, but the most appropriate thing perhaps about this track is in the lyric:
”Who wants to know?/ No-one wants to know!” Amen.
A nice bluesy intro to “O I'll tell you later”, which seems to be a proper ballad, though it would appear that with the somewhat fluid and often musically volatile nature of Skid Row you can never take anything for granted, or judge a book by its cover. And so it proves, as the song quickly picks up speed, then slows right back down again, and up again, then “Virgo's daughter” kind of comes and goes in a blur, and we close on the country ballad-like “New faces old places” (which I think was a single), with a very Neil Young sound. Somewhere along the line I think Gary sings, particularly on “O I'll tell you later”, but I can't be sure, this is such an obscure album and information so hard to come by.
TRACKLISTING
1. Sandie's gone
2. The man who never was
3. Heading home again
4. Felicity
5. Unco-op showband blues
6. Morning star avenue
7. O I'll tell you later
8. Virgo's daughter
9. New faces old places
34 hours --- Skid Row --- 1971 (CBS)
So titled, the legend goes, because it was recorded in thirty-four hours, this is a much shorter album, containing only six tracks, and clocking in at around thirty-five minutes total. Interesting: if it totalled thirty-four, then that would work out as one minute of music per hour recorded! Well, anyway, it opens on the longest track, another nine-minuter, “Night of the warm witch”, which starts off pretty weirdly, with odd sounds and then feedback guitar pulls the track in, and it goes into a kind of half-Santana vibe, with plenty of jazz movements, nice guitar from Gary and some pretty good bass from Brush too. It's a little overextended though, I feel.
Much shorter --- and faster --- is “First thing in the morning”, with the band totally rocking out, and it sounds like Gary on vocals, though as I'm unaware what Brush Shiels' voice sounds like I can't say for sure. Less than two minutes of finger-burning fretwork and it's over, and we're into “Mar”, opening with some nice bass from Brush and what definitely sounds like a pedal steel, though again no such instrument is credited. It's a nice ballad, very country-oriented, with a good beat: the bassline is close to hypnotic!
Much heavier and rockier, “Go, I'm never gonna let you” is more in the style that Gary would later adopt on his own albums, with sharp, hard guitar and heavy drumming from Bridgeman. It's another long track, almost as long as the opener, just short of nine minutes. You can hear the influence of Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green on this track; Gary was obviously trying to emulate the great man's style, and in the main succeeding. He rips off a fine solo here which more or less holds the song together. In the absence of any piano or keyboards, or indeed rhythm guitar, it ends up being the guitarist who becomes the focus of the band; while the rhythm section are of course very important, all eyes (and ears) turn to the man on the guitar for the solos, the riffs, the intros and outros that generally bass players or drummers don't that often get involved in. In many ways, in a power trio like this, the guitarist becomes the frontman, especially when the singer is not singing.
Gary fills this role with the comfortable ease of someone who has been playing in a band all his life, even though this is only his second year with Skid Row, they being his first band, and he only seventeen at the time. “Lonesome still” returns to the country themes, with squealing pedal steel, some accordion in there, maybe fiddle too. It's a mid-paced country song, quite infectious in its own way, though the swing from genre to genre is a little hard to get used to: rock to folk to blues to country to jazz and back, this album seems to wander amongst them all.
Closer, “The love story”, runs headlong back into jazz territory, very much a jarring change after the sweet country ballad, the beat quite syncopated and frantic, Gary's guitar chiming out here and there but generally subsumed for most of the song by Shiels' busy bass. Halfway through then it slows down again for some scat singing and bass improvisation by Shiels, then Gary takes over with a nice guitar solo, but if this is what's known as jazz fusion I have to say it's not to my taste. I wouldn't listen to much of this, 1970s or no 1970s.
As a vehicle to launch the careers of both Gary and Phil Lynott, I guess we have to give Skid Row plaudits, but their albums are in the main not my cup of Jack Daniels. I'm not a big jazz fan, and there's a lot of that in here, but even apart from that it comes across as a little rushed and confused. Maybe that's just me. Well, they certainly have gone down in musical history as the springboard for two of Ireland's most famous sons, so I guess that can't be bad.
TRACKLISTING
1. Night of the warm witch
2. First thing in the morning
3. Mar
4. Go, I'm never gonna let you
5. Lonesome still
6. The love story