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WOGary Moore performing “Need Your Love So Bad”
The song is sixty years old and has passed through three distinct lives. Little Willie John first recorded it in 1955 as a rhythm and blues ballad, a tightly wound plea for love unlike the usual R&B fare of the era. In 1968, Peter Green brought it to Fleetwood Mac after John Mayall encouraged him to cover it. Green slowed it further, let the strings breathe around it, and turned it into something spectral.
Then it reached Gary Moore.
Moore recorded it in 1995 for Blues for Greeny, a tribute to Peter Green. The album was recorded using the same 1959 Les Paul Standard that Green had played on the original tracks. Green had loaned Moore the guitar years earlier, then sold it to him after leaving Fleetwood Mac. Moore didn’t borrow the instrument. He carried it forward.
Moore was careful not to call it a tribute album. “The guy’s alive,” he said at the time. “It’s more a thank you album… Peter helped me a lot. He helped us get management sorted out and a lot of what has happened to me is through meeting him.”
Moore died on February 6, 2011. He was 58. The Greeny Les Paul is now owned by Metallica’s Kirk Hammett. The guitar has now passed through three hands, each time carrying everything the previous player left in it.
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