That time I told Gary Moore it was the shits that he wasn’t coming to Vancouver with Rush

By Steve Newton

I figure it’s time to post another audio excerpt from my one and only interview with Irish guitar legend Gary Moore, one of the finest players to ever pick up the instrument.

It was May 11, 1984, and Moore was opening for Rush on their Grace Under Pressure Tour. He had a day off between gigs in Las Vegas on May 10 and Reno on May 12 (“We’re playin’ all the gambling joints this week,” he joked.)

I was expecting Moore to contact me directly on that day, but his tour manager called me up and gave me the phone and room numbers for the Reno hotel that Gary was staying at.

The main reason I was doing the interview was because the Rush tour was scheduled to hit Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum on May 19, and I was definitely gonna go. But Moore totally surprised me when he said that he wasn’t gonna be playing because of some Canadian “tax law or something.”

As it turned out, he did actually open for Rush in Vancouver eight days later, so there’s a happy ending to this blog after all.

Have a listen:

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