“If he didn’t like something he’d soon tell you to f**k off”: Why Gary Moore left Thin Lizzy mid-tour, according to guitarist Eric Bell

Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell says Gary Moore left the band in the middle of a tour – after they’d finished playing to 63,000 people at the Day on the Green festival in San Francisco – because of the partying after the shows taking precedence over the music.

Speaking to Classic Rock magazine, Bell says: “It got to the point where the party after the show was more important than the show itself.”

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It became well-documented that vocalist Phil Lynott was forgetting lyrics due to inebriation, and Moore had had enough. “There was never any half-measures with Gary. Such a nice guy on our own, laughing and joking. But if he didn’t like something he’d soon tell you to fuck off,” remembers Bell.

Thin Lizzy drummer Brian Downey remembers that “Gary always hogged the stage. Even in Thin Lizzy”. “Phil was the leader – except when Gary joined. Now it was like we had two leaders, which wasn’t very clever,” he says.

Bell recalls that he and Moore would plot to start their own band with Deep Purple‘s Glenn Hughes, G-Force, which became a reality and released a self-titled album in 1980. The only sore spot was that Hughes wasn’t on the record at all in the end. After an argument where Hughes, heavily intoxicated, is said to have fallen over a table at his birthday party which made Moore laugh, the two didn’t speak “for years”.

Earlier this year, Gary Moore’s hometown of Belfast announced plans to erect a statue in his honour. “As a proud son of our city and East Belfast, he blazed a trail and has left a lasting legacy for rock and blues fans across the world,” Belfast’s Green Party councillor Brian Smyth wrote.