Bill Ward, 2010. Photo courtesy of Bill Ward.

By Pat Prince

Black Sabbath has had several incarnations, and eight different drummers, over its 41 years. But most fans think of Bill Ward as the drummer who represents the band.

And “Paranoid” as the album that defines Sabbath so perfectly.

To mark the 40th anniversary of “Paranoid,” Eagle Rock Entertainment has released, through its “Classic Albums” series, a DVD documentary on the famous 1970 album that was originally going to be called “War Pigs.” It’s a peak inside a band that — at the time — was huddling together to survive, yet still created some of the most dynamically somber and provocative music ever recorded.

Bill Ward remembers “Paranoid” as the album that changed it all for Sabbath. It gave the band recognizable songs in “Iron Man,” and even gave Sabbath its few Beatles’ moments of screaming fans (mostly British teenyboppers) chasing unprepared musicians down the street.

Over the years, Bill Ward has become a genuine spokesman for the band, as well as the guy who keeps its natural beat. At 62, he is still willing and ready to summon up the energy for a full Sabbath tour, at any moment, almost matching the same enthusiasm he had during the “Paranoid” sessions.

A younger Bill Ward in the studio

Recently, Goldmine had a chance to speak with the legendary drummer, who is busy working in the studio on his latest solo album, a labor of love in its final stages (there is no release date as of yet).

What are your feelings about the way the “Paranoid” documentary DVD came out?
Bill Ward: I’m okay with it now. When I first saw it, I had some grumblings about the pace and the general production. I made my point of view heard to the producer and I got some feedback, and everything became amicable. Things got sorted out a little bit.

My biggest concern was that there was quite a long period of exchange between Tony (Iommi) and Geezer (Butler) without any other artist’s verbiage. And it was pointed out to me that that was what the show was about. And I said ‘I understand that, I’m quite a huge fan of the show. I think I’ve seen every band that’s appeared on there. I get that but I still think that it’s too long.’ Anyway, I was able to settle in and be okay with that, but that was the only rub that I had with the DVD.

But I like it because it is a little bit different. For me, I’ve never seen Black Sabbath given a slightly different look from a slightly different angle. I think in that sense, it’s quite fresh.

How do you feel about the album “Paranoid” getting this sort of reexamination?
Ward: I like that it’s being looked at again and that it’s been given some credit. I think it deserves some credit, in the sense that we were just playing it as who we were. We didn’t have a process of thinking the whole thing out. There wasn’t anything contrived about it. It was very much almost a phenomena of four guys playing together, being as one, being a band, a real band.

Did you realize how special the album was while creating it?
Ward: There were several things that I felt back then but I knew that we were into something different. I mean, I think we all did. We knew that we were tapping into something we enjoyed very much. But we knew that it was different. And we knew that it was fragile as well, in the sense that this might not last more than five minutes, you know. Because there were so many opponents in, for lack of better words, higher places that were out to get that album and not give it any time at all.

As with many Black Sabbath albums, there’s quite a lot of substance. In a way, it’s too bad that the album wasn’t called “War Pigs” as it was intended because it would have made an even greater statement.
Ward: Well, we wanted to call it that but nobody seemed to understand. I don’t blame them, you know. Vietnam, a lot of people were being killed there every day so … I can appreciate them not using the name, in that sense.

But it was quite an effective anti-war statement.
Ward: I think we made a good statement and we put a lot of force into it. When we still play it today … well, that last time Sabbath toured — which was about four years ago, as the original band — “War Pigs” was still a very traditional favorite for everyone. So it still stands. Unfortunately, it still stands in today’s dynamics as well with Iraq and all the different places where there’s so much trouble and death going on. That’s the downside of it but we made a good record and a good statement.

The fact that the music is still relevant today is a huge testament to the power of the songwriting on the album. A lot of bands don’t have that running power.
Ward: When we played these songs originally, like I said earlier, we didn’t know if it was going to last or not. It was actually quite fragile in many ways. But then Sabbath became generational. I guess that happens, where other bands become almost cultish. The life of Sabbath has been dependent upon others who have been influenced by Sabbath’s music, just by granddad telling grandson: ‘Hey, check this band out.” That’s been amazing that part. We started to notice that when the guys showing up now are 50, 60 years old, and the kids there as well are, like, 10 years old. It’s really neat, actually. It’s very nice to see all that. I’m quite pleased how it’s turned out to be influential with other musicians, too. To me, those are the things that are like silent gifts that you get when you get old. I hope that I received them with a modicum of humility and not big-headed about it.

Can you elaborate more on your use of the word “fragile”?
Ward: Back then, when we were making “Paranoid” — and when we made our first album — we were still very much a band and we were very tight. There was the band, then the road managers and then the other people who would drive us around and take care of us, you know. There was probably ten of us, ten people together, and in a lot of ways there was a lot of internalizing. You know, we took care of each other’s back and we looked after each other. We were really like one. I often referred to it as the Four Musketeers. It felt like that because there was so much coming from the outside. Between the media and tv and all the new audiences that we were were reaching, all the new countries that we were traveling in. There was still very much this newness to everything. And I guess a sense of mistrust. We come from a really really hard, tough area in Birmingham so we learned to grow up with one eye always open, so to speak, we weren’t stupid, in that sense we were pretty street smart.

Keeping that in mind, as we were passing through record companies or talking to lawyers or anything like that, we were much very private. We huddled down and discussed everything and what was going on. We had just come from a huge two-year of touring in Europe where we would share our food. We were quite penniless so when we were playing the Star-Club and going through the Reeperbahn and doing all the things in Denmark and Sweden and so on and so forth, when we were doing those gigs prior to 1970, we had to learn how to survive because we were basically living for food and playing for food and things like that. So that really does breed a tough veneer, if you like. So we had that for some time. That traveled with us into the new world and the new changes that we were going through, or were about to go through. And that’s what I meant by ‘fragile.’

New York:  July 20, 2010 —
After a heated year-long court case looming between Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi over the use of the name Black Sabbath,  the suit has been officially dropped today in the  New York Courts.

In a statement issued today on behalf of Black Sabbath:

“Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi of the legendary heavy metal band Black Sabbath have amicably resolved their problems over the ownership of the Black Sabbath name and court proceedings in New York have been discontinued. Both parties are glad to put this behind them and to cooperate together for the future and would like it  to be known that the issue was never personal, it was always business.”

It was back in May of 2009 that Ozzy Osbourne filed papers in court taking legal action against Iommi after, according to an Ozzy rep, “three years of trying to resolve this issue amicably” over profits stemming from continued touring and merchandising using the Black Sabbath name.  In the same 2009 statement Osbourne said “The name “Black Sabbath” now has a worldwide prestige and merchandising value that it would not have had by continuing on the road it was on prior to the 1997 reunion tour.  Tony, I am so sorry it’s had to get to this point by me having to take this action against you.  I don’t have the right to speak for Geezer and Bill, but I feel that morally and ethically the trademark should be owned by the four of us equally.”

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(Chrysalis/Brian Cooke, March 1978)

By  Peter Braidis

As the wild-eyed, flute-toting frontman for Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson has always been … well, a little different.

In this classic interview from 2002, the always-entertaining Anderson regales us with, among other things, tales of cleaning toilets, winning a controversial Grammy, his interactions with Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne, and the days of “Jethro Toe.”

Well actually I’m going to start with something that I was curious about that I read once. I believe you used to clean toilets way back when, and you kept one of the urinals in your house as a memento. Is that true?

Ian Anderson: Yeah, I did for a short time. When I first tried to become a professional musician, I did take a job as a cleaner in a movie theater in the South of England, and unfortunately, it was my job to clean out the toilets, which was a particularly unsavory part of the job. I don’t know if it’s the same today, but for some reason when people go to the movie theater they seem to have their minds on other things and their point of aim is somewhat distracted. (Laughs) So it was a messy job.

Yeah, I don’t think times have changed.

IA: No. Well, perhaps not. In Europe if you go on the trains in Germany, there’s a little sign telling men that it is advisable to sit down on the toilet to have a pee in order that they don’t wet the seat or the area around for subsequent customers.

I’m not sure how many men obey that, but it certainly seems quite a good idea.

But the urinal that I liberated from the store in the cinema was a slightly cracked, damaged, chipped porcelain urinal and it certainly wasn’t anything they were going to use, because it had a little chip out the side. So I liberated this from the store and I took it back to my little one-room, cold-water apartment, and I kept it for a year or two. But when I got married it was decided it wasn’t quite the thing to have around the first marital home. So it didn’t make the transition to the rest of my life.

I was just wondering what you’ve done with your Grammy.

IA: I wish I could answer the question. I’ve really no idea. I talked to my wife about this a few weeks ago. I said, “You remember that Grammy thing — that sort of horrible, plastic-y thing that came on little wooden splints?” I said, “Whatever happened to that?”

She said, “I really don’t know. It’s around somewhere.”

But you know, no one knows where it is. That shouldn’t be taken as a sign of disrespect for the Grammy Award system, or, indeed, the accolade of winning a Grammy, because after all, it’s not just a bunch of drunken bums from the world of records, radio or even the press that makes these decisions … but the problem is, I’m just not a keeper, a hoarder of trophies and reminders of things. I don’t have any gold albums.

Regarding the Grammy itself, how shocked were you when you found out you were nominated in the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal category?

IA: Well, I was very shocked that we were nominated. That was very surprising when I heard that we had been nominated. I was truly, truly surprised and questioned this with the record company. I said, “Look, this is a kind of weird thing to happen. We’re not really hard rock or heavy metal,” and the record company said, yeah, well we just kind of put your name up for nomination because, well, frankly there wasn’t another category that we thought of. This was actually the first year for this new category…

It was announced in the Grammy system. But prior to that, there really hadn’t been a category in which they felt it was worth putting us forward. I mean I was never going to win Best Male Vocalist or we weren’t going to win Best Group, because you know, that’s usually reserved for more popular, pop music kind of acts. And they didn’t have a category for best one-legged flute player, so I guess the record company just shoved us into this new category and figured, what the hell, let’s give it a spin.

And then strangely, of course, it was accepted, and I suppose the fact that we were the unlikely nominees alongside, if memory serves, Metallica, Iggy Pop, Jane’s Addiction — whatever they were — and one or two more that I can’t remember the names of. But at that point, I said, “Hey look, we’ve been nominated and that’s pretty weird. Maybe, maybe it’s not so unlikely that we might actually win,” because apart from Metallica, who were the hot shots around town in terms of hard rock and that kind of metal approach, it was early in their careers. And I thought, well, for all we know, the voters might think, oh good old Jethro Tull, they’ve been around for a while and no one ever gave them a Grammy before, so perhaps we’ll favor them.

So I remember actually saying to the folks at the record company, “Well, who knows? We might actually win this. Maybe Metallica will do it, but it wouldn’t surprise me.” However, the record company didn’t feel the same way. They thought it was completely unlikely, and we were lucky to be nominated and they sort of felt pretty sure that Metallica was going to win, and they didn’t want pay for me or any other members of Jethro Tull to fly to Los Angeles for the Grammy Ceremony. They said well, we’ve got Pat Benatar and Huey Lewis going, and that’s as far as the budget would stretch.

That’s right, this was Chrysalis Records.

IA: Right. So they didn’t want us to go. And we were basically working in the studio that evening when there was a phone call very late at night, and our publicist in the record company rang us up and said, “You won’t believe this, but you won the Grammy.” And I said, “Oh great, great, I’ll tell the other guys, thanks very much,” and that was it. That was all that happened really, no big deal at all.

Until the next day when we found that it had been, to put it mildly, a controversial win. And then having subsequently seen a tape of the show, poor old Alice Cooper had to hold up the Grammy with no one coming to collect it and to be greeted with resounding boos (laughs) from the rafters from both the Metallica fans, who were mightily pissed off that their heroes hadn’t won, and, indeed, from all the press contingent who were outraged that Jethro Tull had won this Grammy.

And I thought that was very weird because at the point when we were nominated, there wasn’t a peep.

No one said a word. Because, I guess we were considered such unlikely people no one got upset at that time. But when we actually won, (laughs) they got their knickers in a real twist. It was something that upset them greatly, and it was at that point that I thought, “Damn, I wish I’d been there. It would have been so fantastic to be out there at the Grammys and have everybody boo when I walked out there.”

It would have been like a “Spinal Tap” moment.

IA: To walk out at this showbiz award type of thing and have just a wall of people booing would have been unbelievable, and I’m sure some pissy and utterly wicked comment might have parted my lips (laughs).

I believe you would have been capable of that. Here’s a question for you. Your very first single, I think it was anyway, “Sunshine Day” …

IA: It was actually made prior to Jethro Tull being Jethro Tull. It was a demo, actually.

Yeah, they just kind of threw it out there. Did they not actually list you as Jethro Toe?

IA: Yeah, and we were never really sure why, whether it was an genuine typo or whether the producer at the time, in some hope that he might circumvent actually having to pay us or run foul of our management — because it was released without any real approval — he just went ahead and did it, and we were called Jethro Tull at that point. But he put this thing out calling it Jethro Toe, which sounds like he might have been trying to capitalize on the name, whilst legally saying no, that’s just a coincidence, that has nothing to do with Jethro Tull.

But whatever it was, it really didn’t matter. It only sold about 23 copies (laughs) — just a collector’s piece for those strange folks who go to those strange occasions called record fairs and actually buy pieces of scratchy old vinyl and take them home to hoard in the privacy of their own homes, into a world of a … I don’t know what kind of disease would go with collecting vinyl.

Your song “One Brown Mouse,” which is actually my favorite Jethro Tull song, although it’s a bit obscure, I think I read that it was inspired by a Robert Burns poem. Is that right?

IA: Well, that’s right. There’s been more than one mouse that was the hero of penned ditties. So it was Robert Burns, the famous Scottish poet who wrote [the] ode, “To A Mouse.”

I had a mouse when I was a little boy, and I used to sit and watch it and wonder what went on in that tiny little brain as it sat there in its little cage, playing on one of those wheels for exercise. But Syd Barrett, in the early days of Pink Floyd, I think he had a song … he had the words, “I’ve got a … I’ve got a…”

“Bike”?

IA: It was a song called “Bike” yeah. “I’ve got a mouse, and he doesn’t have a house, and I don’t know why I called him Gerald, he’s getting rather old, but he’s a good mouse.” So that’s a silly non sequitur, but that’s Syd Barrett for you! (laughs) But that’s another same kind of thing. I think the mouse is the villain of the domestic animal world, you know, someone who infiltrates our houses as a rather unwelcome guest. But I guess we all have that soft spot for that little mouse who kind of hides under the floorboards and in the rafters.

Now I’m a huge, huge Black Sabbath fan, and even though it was only for a few weeks, I know Tony Iommi filled in for you guys for a while in the late ’60s …

IA: Well, let me put that one in perspective. Tony met us … actually, when, I’m not sure. There might have been other guys who became part of Black Sabbath, when Black Sabbath was actually Black Sabbath, but in a band that supported Jethro Tull, towards the end of 1968.

Tony Iommi was there playing with whoever, and we sort of talked to him. He was a very nice guy, and when Mick Abrahams departed from the band at the end of ’68, amongst about, I don’t know, four or five other guitar players that we … I don’t want to use the word auditioned.

When Tony came … he and a few other guitar players, we just kind of got together for a couple of hours — three hours, four hours, whatever — in the afternoon and just played a few things. And I ran a few new ideas by them to see how they reacted, but it wasn’t like a formal audition. It was more just like people that you met: David O’List from The Nice — if you remember a band called The Nice, featuring Keith Emerson in his pre-Emerson, Lake & Palmer days — came along, you know, and we played together for a while, in my little room for an afternoon. Martin Barre came along. He didn’t get the job, but he did later, and Tony was one of those folks.

The only time he was really sort of involved in the band, professionally speaking, was when we were asked to “The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus.” We didn’t have a guitar player, and Tony kind of came along and stood in on guitar — not actually playing, he was miming to the backing track. I was singing and playing live, but the other guys were on tape. So that was Tony’s only appearance with Jethro Tull. It was literally as someone we met before and was a nice guy, but he wasn’t really right for Jethro Tull. He knew that and I knew that. It was, well we played together for … I recall being in a rehearsal room somewhere in London, but I know we spent an afternoon together and played two or three things.

Tony was great at doing some things, but there was some other stuff, particularly amongst the new songs that we were writing, that weren’t really up his street. It wasn’t stuff he felt really comfortable with and so, you know, it was a moment that came and went really. And I’m sure from Tony’s point of view it was the best bit of luck he had all that day, that he didn’t end up joining Jethro Tull. Otherwise, (laughing) he wouldn’t have gone on to enjoying the position he did with Black Sabbath. In many ways Tony became the prototype of the heavy-metal riffer.

And there’s the irony, that you guys won the Metal Grammy before they did.

IA: Oh well, there you go. I guess looking back on it he too probably feels rightfully quite proud of the role that he played, you know, back in the early days of Black Sabbath. They actually played with us in America. I don’t think they did very much because the guy, Ozzy Osbourne, inclined sometimes not to manage doing the show (laughs). I remember going to his dressing room and saying, “Well, aren’t you gonna bloody get up there and play?” And he’d say, “No, I can’t sing tonight. I have no voice. I can’t do this.”

Anyway, I guess in the early days Ozzy was the kind of — I don’t know — probably not as important a figure as the musical substance in particular that came from Tony. It more or less evolved, this style of playing these monophonic riffs. There was no rhythmic part. It was just doom-laden, monophonic unison riffs with the bass, although people like Cream had made a living out of doing bluesy based riffs.

This thing that Black Sabbath did was somewhat different. It didn’t really owe much to the blues. It was more of a kind of statement out there in the gothic land of metal before anybody really knew what the term meant. Not that I’m sure what they mean now. I think Tony was very much a key man. In fact, it was my great pleasure a few years ago when I was asked to present Tony with an award, at the Kerrang! Awards in London. And so it was good to see Tony again after a few years and give him whatever it was that, if he’s like me, he’s left in a closet somewhere (laughs) where he can’t put his hands on it.

I saw a car commercial not too long ago using “Thick As A Brick.” How did that come about?

IA: Well, [that was] through my publishers, Chrysalis Music, who phoned me up and said there’s this company, Hyundai, and they want to do an ad using some music from “Thick As A Brick” and they need your permission. And I said, “Well, I don’t have a problem with that,” but given that they wanted to re-record a sort of 30- or 60-second version of it, I said, “Well fine, but if they’re going to re-record it, maybe they want me to do it for them, because I can do that pretty quickly.”
So we agreed that I would re-record it, and they sent me a story board and specific timings, and I had a pretty good idea of how the ad was going to run. I just put together a couple of different versions and sent it back to them. And then they tore them apart and put them back together in a slightly different order, which wasn’t actually the way I intended it to be anyway. But, for whatever reason, they edited it the way they wanted it run, but it’s me playing. They left off all the nice flute-y bits at the end, which was the best bit, but it is actually me playing. So I took about three hours to play a few different instruments on that and put it together.

Well, it’s aired quite a bit over here, for what it’s worth. I don’t even remember what car it is.

IA: Well, they could have sent me the money or maybe about seven cars! (Laughs)

Or maybe a wheel?

IA: Well you see the joke’s on us, because Hyundai and, let it be put on record here, in terms of competitive professional motor sports was one of the top rallying cars in international off-road rallying last year, tremendously successful. I mean absolutely the peak of professional motor-sport vehicle, absolutely a winner, Hyundai. But not obviously the same car you get for about $15,000 or whatever you buy one for in America and travel to the mall with. This was their factory, specially prepared, super powerful, amazing off-road rally car.

Now, I know you love cats, as do I. I went on the website and saw what you’re doing for certain species. How did you get involved in all that?

IA: Well, I’ve always loved cats even as a child and some people grow up being doggy people and some people like cats. I mean the majority of cat lovers are women rather than men but so are the majority of flute players also women rather than men, which goes to demonstrate in at least part of my life, I show my feminine side. But that’s about as close as it gets, guys. I’m quite happy to recognize my more feminine traits as long as I don’t have to get in bed with your brother. (Laughs) Because I haven’t actually managed to have had a homosexual experience, which I’m a little bit disappointed about because somewhere along the line it would have been nice to been seriously propositioned, but sadly, I’ve never had a proposition, and I’m a bit pissed off about it really. I mean, what the hell’s wrong with me?

But even when I was a youth, I didn’t get any of those dirty old men trying to middle up to me on a park bench or put their hand on my knee on whatever. Yet, I’ve been around gay people for a lot of my life, I mean people I worked with or met, yes, loads of gay people and yet, they don’t seem to fancy me. It’s a bit depressing really. I mean in a way, I’m quite relaxed about it in the sense that they didn’t put me in a situation where I would have to offend somebody by spurning their advances, but it would have been quite nice to have been asked to the party.

Yeah, for the ego. Well do you know the Meow Mix song? You know for the cat food.

IA: No, I don’t believe we have that over here.

I was hoping you’d do an unplugged version of that some day. Something to think about anyway.

IA: Oh yes.

Well, now as far as the new live record, Living With The Past,  I just received it yesterday but I listened to …

IA: Well, you’re a lucky guy. I haven’t received it at all, I still haven’t got one — well let me see, no, no, I managed to download two-thirds of the artwork for some last-minute tweaks that the European company needs to do.

Well, the artwork’s pretty cool.

IA: Of course I’ve got a master copy of the record because I was there (laughs). I mean, I produced it and mastered it, but I don’t have an official pressing, as it were. But I’m looking forward to getting my copy.

Well you should because the sound quality and the production is just fantastic. It’s really cool to hear you doing stuff from every part of your career, from “Roots To Branches” to “Sweet Dream” and of course “Aqualung” and stuff like that.

IA: Yeah we tried on the CD not to just make it a part of the soundtrack of the DVD. We tried to, you know, include a few extra and sort of off-the-wall kind of things from other performances. The CD and the DVD kind of have their own identities although they basically show the same essential artwork and are very close cousins. But the CD was kind of fun, because it was mastering all the DVD material, which was two hours worth of music, and I got that done first. Then I went back to pluck from that, and find some other sources of material for the CD, you know, for the audio product. So it was pretty fun. I kind of listened to snippets of old recordings to find five or six pieces that were going to be something, not too ancient, but live performances of a different sort and I came across some stuff I had done a couple of years ago and got a couple of pieces, from about ten years ago that must have been done for radio. They were as you would describe, unplugged and more acoustic rendition of  things that were fun to do.

FURTHER READING: IAN ANDERSON’S TEN ALBUMS THAT CHANGED HIS LIFE

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Gary Moore made a 1995 tribute LP for mentor Peter Green, Blues for Greeny. Photo: Sam Scott Hunter.

Mixing a record is serious business, and Gary Moore needed to concentrate, seeing as how he’d never done it before.

A novice in the studio arts at the time, the ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist and a partner were struggling with “Parisienne Walkways,” an elegant, blues-stained beauty from the late ’70s — featuring Phil Lynott’s expressive vocals and a uniquely European flavor — that would become the biggest-selling song of Moore’s solo career.

At a critical point in the process, some unruly guests were being disruptive, and Moore couldn’t put them in a time-out.

“Behind us, sitting on the couch, [was] Black Sabbath, right?” remembers Moore. “So, Ozzy [Osbourne] is sitting there with Bill Ward and Tony Iommi, and Bill Ward is throwing up in a bucket. That was the funny part: We’re mixing this lovely, romantic song, and he’s throwing up in a bucket.”

Ward wasn’t the only one behaving badly. Continuing on, Moore relates, “And then Ozzy gets up and starts running at the wall with his arms down like an airplane, and he ends up smashing his head against the wall. And he had to go to the hospital, ’cause he had like really bad whiplash (laughs). So, there’s all this kind of mayhem going on behind us. Maybe that contributed to the mix.”

Despite his condition, Ward was quite taken with the song.

“Bill Ward was saying (with Moore imitating the Sabbath drummer’s inebriated sincerity), ‘Oh, there’s so much love in that song. It’s great, isn’t it?’ in that real thick Birmingham accent,” laughs Moore.

No such difficulties hampered studio work on Moore’s latest blues-rock salvo, Bad For You Baby, another satisfying collection of smoky ballads and full-throttle hard rock from the Irish guitar master.

A bit more polished than its esteemed predecessors, bluesy outings like 2006’s Old New Ballads Blues and 2004’s Power Of The Blues, Bad For You Baby finds Moore at the height of his powers. With vocals more nuanced than ever before and solos that seem sharper and more defined, Moore, his playing always intense, dynamic and powerful, strides confidently through well-crafted originals and smartly arranged covers.

Moore says there’s a reason why Bad For You Baby (see pg. 57 for a review) is a great leap forward. “I think this album is a lot stronger than the one before it, because the one before wasn’t done on the back of a tour, whereas this one is,” says Moore.

Coming off the road in support of 2007’s Close As You Get, Moore wasn’t in the mood for rest and relaxation, because, as he says, “… your energies are up. You just feel like you’ve got a lot of energy and a lot of inspiration at that point, so I think it really helps the music.”

Always one for surprises, Moore pulls off a doozy with “Down The Line,” merging the blues with Johnny Cash-style locomotive country to concoct a furious, hell-bent rocker that roars along the tracks.

“It’s still a 12-bar, but it does have a very country feel to it,” says Moore. “I’d play some country-style guitar and kind of use it within the blue notes. So, we’re using the blue notes but with a country style of phrasing, which makes it more original, in a sense.”

Taking on the smoldering R&B of Donny Hathaway’s reading of Al Kooper’s “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know” might have been Moore’s biggest challenge on the new album.

“You can imagine it was quite scary for me to try and attempt it,” says Moore.

Repeated performances of the song live gave Moore the chutzpah to tackle it.

“What I did was put the track down, and then I went on the road for a couple of weeks and did 10 shows,” says Moore. “So, when I came back, I was very confident with the vocal, because I had already sung on it 10 gigs live.”

Slow-burners like that one, and the soulful ballad “Hold On” from Bad For You Baby, test Moore’s guitar playing in different ways than his hell-bent rockers.

“I think there’s a lot more room for expression on the guitar on the slower ones, you know,” says Moore. “Like, for example, ‘I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know,’ there’s a lot of space to that song, and you can really play much longer notes on the guitar, and you can really space it out more and dig into the blues side of it more.”

In contrast, “Umbrella Man” — an English term for a cuckold used and, later, tossed aside by a woman — and the menacing, crawling title track are anchored in the loud, hard-charging, yet melodic, rock that made Thin Lizzy international stars.

Moore served various tours of duty with Thin Lizzy, the first a short-lived stint as a replacement for Eric Bell. Then, he filled the shoes of Brian Robertson in 1977, before reuniting with Thin Lizzy for the “Black Rose” tour of 1978.

Moore, who helped Lynott considerably with the Black Rose album, thought by many to be Thin Lizzy’s finest hour, and Lynott go back further than Thin Lizzy. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1952, Moore was a child of the 1960s British blues movement, which overran his hometown. He remembers at age 13 hearing John Mayall Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton.

“I went to this guy’s house on a Sunday afternoon, and he says, ‘I’ve got the John Mayall album,’ and, of course, everybody was talking about it. There was a real buzz about it at the time. He just put it on this little, tiny record player, and I heard ‘All Your Love,’ and it just changed my life in about two seconds.”

Moore grew into a teen guitar prodigy, churning out fiery leads and roiling cauldrons of riffs for Skid Row (not the American heavy metal band of the ’80.) While with Skid Row, which signed a major-label record deal with CBS in 1970, Moore, who had moved to Dublin by this time, grew tight with Lynott, the band’s vocalist.

“Phil was in Skid Row when I joined,” says Moore. “He was the lead singer. He didn’t play bass or nothing. What happened was, he had a problem with his voice, and his vocals became unreliable, according to the bass player, so the bass player fired him from the band. And, of course, Phil went on to become a great singer, but, at the time, it just wasn’t working. I think the bass player wanted us to be a power trio.”

Being in Skid Row allowed Moore to make another meaningful connection. One night in Dublin, the band opened for Fleetwood Mac at “… a place called the National Stadium, which sounds really grand, but it’s not,” says Moore. “It’s just a hall; it’s a boxing venue actually, and they used to leave the boxing ring in the middle of the venue, believe it or not, and that was the stage. It was the early days of playing in the round (laughs).”

Moore didn’t get a chance to see Fleetwood Mac play that night, because Skid Row had another gig 60 miles away they had to get to. But, Fleetwood Mac’s legendary guitarist Peter Green, through a DJ at the hall, asked Moore to meet him at his hotel.

“So, I went and sat up all night with him, just playing guitars and talking, and he was so nice to be around,” says Moore.

Green, who eventually sold Moore his his trademark 1959 Sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar, an instrument Moore still uses and cherishes as perhaps his most prized possession, invited Moore to travel with him to Cork to see Fleetwood Mac play the next night. Meeting Green was serendipitous for Moore as Green convinced his manager, Clifford Davis, to sign Skid Row to the Columbia label. The two grew so close that Green confided in Moore that changes were in the offing for Fleetwood Mac.

“I went to his house one day, and he said, ‘I want to talk to you about something,’” says Moore. “And I said, ‘Fine,’ and he took me out to his car, and he said, ‘I’m leaving the band, you know. They’re a bunch of… whatever.’ He didn’t really have anything good to say about them let’s put it that way.”

Moore had his own issues with Skid Row. He split after recording three albums with the band. After a brief solo venture, Moore joined Thin Lizzy.

“They wanted to push me,” says Moore of his Skid Row bandmates. “They were like I was this puppet they would pull out of the box, you know, the guy who played really fast, and I was only 16 when I joined the band. When I joined Thin Lizzy, it was different because they were more melodic, and Phil was more of a songwriter.”

Outside of Thin Lizzy, Moore would develop as a solo artist and branch off into wild, new directions, including a short outing in the ‘70s with the prog rock/fusion outfit Colosseum II. He assisted Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Greg Lake on a pair of Lake solo records in the early ’80s and guested on a Cozy Powell solo album and the Traveling Wilburys’ song “She’s My Baby.”

In the ’80s, Moore reunited with Lynott, recording the “Out In The Fields” single and the 1987 Celtic-inspired Wild Frontier album before Lynott died in January 1986.

Troubled by how metallic his recordings were becoming, Moore made a triumphant return to the blues with 1990’s Still Got The Blues, which featured guest turns by George Harrison, Albert Collins and Albert King.

“Quite a cantankerous guy,” according to Moore, King didn’t quite take to Moore initially, as Moore flubbed a lyric while doing “Oh, Pretty Woman” from King’s Born Under a Bad Sign LP.

“I knew one of the words in the song wasn’t right, but I couldn’t really hear it on the original, so it got to the second vocal, and he jumped up and he said, ‘Stop the tape,’” relates Moore. “He looked at me and said, ‘See that line? It’s not ‘She is the rising sun.’ It’s ‘Sure as the rising sun.’ That’s how sharp he was.”

It was an interesting experience working with King. One day, while looking for a light for his pipe, King dropped something.

“I heard all this clattering on the floor, and I looked down, and there’s bullets everywhere,” says Moore. “And I say, ‘Albert, what the hell is going on, man?’ And he says, ‘Oh, I’ll show you something.’”

Pulling out cards from his pocket, King revealed to Moore that he was a deputy sheriff back home. Laughing about the memory, Moore recalls that by the time they’d finished working together, he and King had grown close… somewhat.

“He was going to the airport and his car arrived, and I said, ‘Thanks for everything Albert,’” says Moore. “And I went to give him a hug, and he said, ‘Now listen (laughs).’ He starts, ‘I want to get on your case about that loud playing.’ He said, ‘You and that Stevie Ray Vaughan, I can’t stand it (laughs).’ He said, ‘You and Stevie Ray are my god sons. Now, you understand that?’ And he gave me such a lecture.”

Surely, King, who died in 1992, is proud of what Moore is doing now.

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