Moore now moved to Los Angeles and signed a recording contract with Jet Records. It was here that he wrote and recorded the album “Dirty Fingers”, a great guitar-based hard rock album with some of the best material he had ever put together at that time. And yet, this album did not see the light of day for another three years, initially only in Japan but a further two years later with a worldwide release. In its place, either through the insistence of Moore himself or more likely the record company he had signed with, Moore gathered together a group of musicians and put together an album under the band name of G Force, a very different sounding album than what he had already recorded. The album carried the name of the new band, and was released in the hope that it could find a way to break into the commercial viability that was currently around the hard rock scene. It had a few hurdles to clear if it was going to be able to do that.
The album mixed in different attributes from the genres that were popular in 1980, along with the abilities of the band members themselves. Tony Newton was a well renown bass player from the great R&B and soul bands of the 1960’s and 1970’s, while Mark Nauseef had filled in for Thin Lizzy and Ian Gillan’s band on occasions. Willie Dee came in to provide co-lead vocals and backing vocals with Moore himself as well as keyboards. They came from a wide range of influences, which all appeared to bubble to the surface in regards to writing, recording and production this album.
The writing partnerships on the album also bring a degree of variety to the songs as presented on the album. Gary Moore has his hand in wirting all but two songs on the album, with the two tracks that open side two of the album being composed by Tony Newton and Willie Dee. They also come across as the most commercial songs on the album as a result.
The album opens with “You”, written by Moore and the second single released. It has the standard Moore feel about it – a hard rock style of verse chorus verse, his signature guitar solo in the middle of the track, and settling into the kind of routine that everyone could like or nobody would notice. It is standard fare, the kind you would expect from a single release. Much better comes with the following track, the Moore instrumental guitar piece titled “White Knuckles” that then pounds straight into “Rockin’ and Rollin’”, co-written by drummer Nauseef. It is the fast paced, rollicking guitar based track that Moore became renown for, and it is pulled off perfectly here. And yes, this is exactly the style this album should have focused on, but as we now know, Moore had already produced an album like that called “Dirty Fingers” which had been shelved in favour of this project, and we will see why there are few similarities between the two albums. This is by far the best song on the album.
“She’s Got You” is another Moore / Nauseef composed track, this one dragged back in tempo with co-lead vocals It’s the dual lead vocals that help to make this track enjoyable, even with the almost reggae strum of the guitar for a moment or two in the middle. The forward mixing of the bass beat underneath Gary’s soloing guitar also blocks out to the end of the song with the guitar solo fading out the track to its conclusion. “I Look at You” is a Moore solo-composed track, the longest on the album at just over six minutes. It’s another slower paced song tempo-wise, a tempo that does hold back the song, which depends more on its use of string arrangements and keys to draw in the listener than anything amazing from the guitar virtuoso who is present during the song.
The second side of the albums opens up with the two non-Gary Moore songs, and they both holds their charms. Both are upbeat, they pick up the tempo from the last two tracks of side one, but yes both have a less guitar focus about them. Willie Dee sings both tracks, sending both of these songs in a far more commercial direction. “Because of Your Love” has a much funkier tone about the bass guitar, especially under Gary’s guitar solos through the middle of the song, while the vocals hold themselves in a much more radio-friendly canter. It is an interesting song. This is followed by the 70’s R&B styled and themed rock track “You Kissed Me Sweetly”, again focused around the more prominent bass guitar work along with the use of the string arrangement infused through the track and keys as well. The dominance of the writing partnership of both of these tracks is not in question when you listen to them. “Hot Gossip” settles into a fairly standard hard rock song of the era, exhibiting little of the great characteristics that Moore would fill his songs with for the next decade. It sounds like it has been written purposely for a charter, but the charter wasn’t completed because the song was recorded. “The Woman’s in Love” again stylises itself with the strings being incorporated into the track, this one in a more upbeat fashion, and then bringing in the saxophone as well to complete the “this sounds nothing like what I came into this album for” track. The album concludes with “Dancin’”, the closest you can come to in regards to a song you expect from Gary Moore the hard rock guitarist. The tempo ramps back up to something that comes closer to the optimum speed for this kind of music. All four members of the band are credited on this song, which then poses the question – if this is what all four of them think the album should sound like, then why didn’t they do it in the first place?
I came across Gary Moore reasonably early on during my years of discovering the dark arts of heavy metal music, mainly through the obsession of one of my closest high school friends who found him himself, and then more or less pushed that obsession onto the rest of us. My first main memories of Gary Moore are of seeing the video clip of the live version of “Wishing Well” on Rage, the late-night music video program on ABC TV in Australia. That song stuck with me from the outset, and then getting a copy of the album “Rockin’ Every Night – Live in Japan” from my heavy metal music dealer sealed the deal. I eventually began to collect his other albums, slowly and when they were able to be found.
When it came to “G Force”, it was at the very end of the line. I was trawling through the shelves at Redback Records in Wollongong in 1990 when I came across one of those fatboy CD cases that had two different albums for the ‘theoretical’ price of one, and this had two albums that I did not know at that stage existed. One was a Gary Moore live album “Live at the Marquee”. The other was one called “G Force”. It was at a time that I was buying CDs left right and centre, and as this added to my collection nicely I bought it on sight.
On playing it when I got home, I immediately recognised “Rockin’ and Rollin’” as it had been on that live album I had first gotten four years earlier. As for the rest... I had no idea. So I played it a few times, and while it was okay, there was little jumping off the album to grab my attention. Part of that was because 1990 had some pretty fair albums released that were consuming all of my listening pleasure at that time, and this, at least during that time, was no match for the power and energy they were emitting. So this went back on to the shelves, to wait for a time when I could listen to it and perhaps appreciate it more than I could at that time.
Over the years I had had several occasions where I have binged Gary Moore albums, certainly through the 1990’s when he was concentrating on his blues albums, and then again after 2012 when he passed away. And on all of those occasions this album has come back out and had its chance to shine. Which, unfortunately for it, it rarely has. It is an album beset by problems. The main one is that, compared to the album that was shelved so that this could be released, “Dirty Fingers”, it cannot hold a candle to it. It must have been obvious at the time as well, because the band had basically broken up by the time the album was finished and before its even release. So although the idea was obviously to promote Gary Moore in a commercialised setting, it was so little a success that it collapsed almost before it had even been completed.
I’ve had a good solid 7-10 listens to this album again over recent days, and to be honest perhaps for the first time I’ve listened carefully, and tried to actually critique it rather than just not enjoying it as much as I do all of Gary’s solo album output. And while I had found some things that interest me, such as Newton’s funky bass looking to dominate on the songs that he helped compose, and the strings and sax brought into some tracks that obviously do not help improve tracks where the star should be the guitarist whose being brought in to provide the star guitar tracks. In the end, despite a couple of the songs here actually being quite good, the album itself is not. My advice to everyone out there who enjoys Gary Moore’s work, or is looking to check out his work, then steer clear of this album. The couple of high points do not compensate for the several boring flat spots.
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