Delaware guitarist Vinnie Moore has been releasing records and blowing minds with some amazing guitar playing for over 40 years. His first appearance on vinyl was actually more than 40 years ago, as a member of underground metal band Vicious Rumors on their debut LP Soldiers of the Night (Shrapnel Records 1985), but his name soon after became synonymous with shredding, jaw-dropping instrumental guitar rock on his solo debut album Mind’s Eye (also on Shrapnel Records) in 1986.

Moore has been nothing less than prolific in the four decades since, releasing ten solo albums (his most recent, Double Exposure, dropped in 2022 on Mind’s Eye Music), as well as doing time in Alice Cooper’s band (with whom he toured and appeared on the 1991 Hey Stoopid record), and joining up with legendary British heavy rock titans UFO in 2003, touring extensively and co-writing and playing guitar on six UFO studio records over a span of 20+ years.

This August, Moore is undertaking an East Coast/Midwestern US tour with guitarist Adrian Vandenberg (ex-Vandenberg/Whitesnake) and bassist Marco Mendoza (ex-Thin Lizzy, Ted Nugent and Black Star Riders, amongst others), during which Vandenberg will highlight his Whitesnake years, and Moore and Mendoza will play a selection of tracks across their respective heritages.

That tour hits New York for two shows: August 7 at Sony Hall in Manhattan, and August 9 at Sharkey’s in Syracuse. We recently spoke with Vinnie about the upcoming tour, as well as his UFO years, touring with Alice Cooper, and his solo career (including the 40^th anniversary of solo debut Mind’s Eye) and future plans.

John Moore: We’re here to talk about this upcoming August 2026 tour where you’re teaming up for a co-headlining tour with Marco Mendoza and Adrian Vandenberg, which starts in New Bedford, Mass. on August 3rd, runs through the end of August in Atlanta, with two New York dates in New York City and Syracuse. How did this whole thing come to be?

Vinnie Moore: Well, I met Marco a few years ago, and we had talked about potentially touring together at some point. And he called one day, telling me about this [tour with Vandenberg], and I was like, yeah, man, I’m on board for that for sure. So, pretty much…that’s it!

JM: So what will the show look like? I’m gleaning from the press release that you’ll be doing a set with Marco, and Vandenberg will be doing his own Whitesnake set?

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

JM: Will you guys be playing with Adrian at some point, or is there a separate Marco set and a separate Vinnie set, and then an Adrian set? How’s the whole thing going work?

Vinnie Moore: Well, Marco and I, we’re sharing a band, and he’s going to come out and start the show and do some of his tunes. I’m eventually going to come up, do some of my tunes, some UFO covers, then I’m going to play some Thin Lizzy covers with him – because he was in Thin Lizzy. And then of course Adrian comes up with his band, and he’s doing ‘My Whitesnake Years’.

JM: Who is going to be singing for the UFO and Thin Lizzy portion of the set?

Vinnie Moore: Marco sings with his band, so he’s gonna sing the UFO with me, and yeah, should be a lot of fun.

JM: Do you have two guitar players for the Thin Lizzy portion of it?

Vinnie Moore: There’s a guitar player named Peter Coleman in Marco’s band, so he’s going be also sitting in on my stuff and playing the Thin Lizzy songs of course too.

JM: Obviously, the big question is how do you pick a set list? You know, I think that the press release said you’ll have like 75 minutes. Marco’s got solo records. You’ve got 10 solo records. You’ve got 6 or 7 UFO records. How do you pull all that together into 75 minutes?

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, it’s not easy, actually. Basically, Marco chose the songs he was gonna be doing for his set, and the songs that he wanted me to guest on with him. I chose 5 songs, and you know, it’s not the longest set, and we have to share, so each of us can’t do our full set, but…it’s still gonna be a lot of fun. And you just try to pick the songs that people know most, and that you’ve played live before and get the best response from. But yeah, I had to leave some stuff out, and that’s always a little bit of a bummer. But that’s the game plan.

JM: Any plans of mixing it up from night to night just because you have such a huge catalog or combined set of catalogs to pull from?

Vinnie Moore: I think that sort of thing usually happens when you’re out there on the road, and you start talking, like, hey, maybe we can do this song, maybe we can do that, and we’ll just have to see what happens.

JM: I’m interested to hear you’ll doing some of the Lizzy stuff. Were you personally a Thin Lizzy fan back when Phil Lynott was still with us back in the day?

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, I was definitely a fan. I used to play “Jailbreak” in one of the bands I was in in high school, so I’ve always been familiar with their music and liked it.

JM: And an obvious question is the UFO selections you’ll be doing. You played all the hits with UFO when you toured with them. But you did some great records with UFO. Are we going to hear any songs from the ‘Vinnie Moore era UFO’, or will it be more the Doctor Doctors and Lights Out and Rock Bottoms and things like that?

Vinnie Moore: Well, none of the songs you’ve mentioned, but we are going to do some of the classic UFO stuff from the 70s, because that seems to be what people resonate with when they hear UFO. But I was on a lot of records, I wrote a lot of songs, I believe we did maybe 6 records together. But you’ve gotta go with what the fans want, and it seems like they want to hear the classic stuff from back in the day. People always romanticize the past, and those songs they heard when they were really young, as I did as well, and…those just resonate. You can’t deny it.

JM: As a young guitar player, were UFO a big band for you as a kid when you were coming up? Were you a Michael Schenker devotee, one of those guys who dissected Strangers in the Night [iconic 1979 UFO live album]?

Vinnie Moore: I was really into UFO, I was really into a lot of things, but yeah, I was into Lights Out, Obsession, and Force It. They were the big records for me. And I learned some of those songs and even did them with a band back in the day. They were definitely a big influence on me growing up.

JM: You were with UFO for a long stretch. Some really great records. Is there any regret on your part as a member of UFO that the band sort of fizzled out before doing, like, a big victory lap or a final show, because of Phil Mogg’s health [UFO were forced to end a 2022 farewell tour mid-tour due to singer and bandleader Phil Mogg having a health emergency]?

Vinnie Moore: We had more shows scheduled, we were gonna end up in Europe, and the last show was actually scheduled to be in Athens, Greece, which was really kind of crazy and ironic, because the first gig I ever did with them [in 2003] was in Athens, so it would have been, like, bookends, you know? And of course it didn’t happen, because of Phil’s health. And in a way it’s almost good because how do you react when you go on stage knowing that this is the last show ever? You know, it would be very emotional, and I would have found it kind of difficult. So our last show ended up being in Germany at an outdoor festival [at Lieder am See 2002, Strandbad Enderndorf, Spalt, Germany, July 16, 2022], and we didn’t know it was the last show, and…you know, so be it. It was probably better in a way.

JM: Has there ever been any talk of putting the band together just to do something like a final London show, or something just to put a pin on it at the end?

Vinnie Moore: Well, a lot of people have mentioned that actually, but I don’t think Phil’s really up for it at this point. I don’t believe he’s into touring and I just don’t think that’s where his mind is at this point. But I would be up for it.

JM: The last time I saw you with the band, I think you had sprinkled in some Paul Chapman-era UFO [Paul Chapman was the Welsh guitarist who replaced iconic UFO guitarist Michael Schenker for touring and four studio albums 1979-83]. I think “We Belong to the Night”, maybe one other one. Did you enjoy playing Paul’s stuff, too?

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, that was also a lot of fun, and we were getting a lot of comments from fans that they wanted to hear some of that era, too, and I really didn’t know that much about that [Paul Chapman] era, to be totally honest with you. You know, as you kind of get older when you’re playing guitar, and you just start, like, going in other directions, and I was into so many different things that, for whatever reason, I didn’t follow that era of the band, so a lot of the songs were new for me. I hadn’t even heard them before. But I’m glad we did them. They were good songs.

JM: So your studio period with UFO, like you said, 6 records [You Are Here (2004), The Monkey Puzzle (2006), The Visitor (2009), Seven Deadly (2012), A Conspiracy of Stars (2015), and The Salentino Cuts (2017)] is there a particular one that’s your favorite, or favorites in that catalog, you know, “this is the one where we really nailed it”?

Vinnie Moore: I might say Seven Deadly, but as any artist will tell you, we don’t listen to our own records. I know I don’t. It’s kind of painful to hear stuff I’ve played on.

Because I’ll still criticize and think I should have done this differently, or whatever. Like, your work is never done. You’re always thinking critically, and you can’t let it go. So I don’t listen to the stuff. In fact, you could name some songs, and I couldn’t even tell you what record they’re on. That’s how little I’ve paid attention to it.

JM: It was kind of an interesting sort of journey you took with UFO because, you know, the fans were hearing all this drama that was going on with Schenker at the time [early 2000s]. And then he was out of the band. And when UFO came back, it’s with Vinnie Moore on guitar, Jason Bonham [Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham’s son] on drums. Which was really interesting. How did it end up, not only you getting into the band, but the band hooked up with Jason Bonham, of all people, as a drummer?

Vinnie Moore: Well, with Jason, he was playing for a while in a band called the Quireboys from England, and Spike from the Quireboys is really good friends with Phil. So I’m going to assume that [happened], you know, through Spike.

JM: What about your entry into the band? Was that a Mike Varney thing [Shrapnel Records boss who’d helped Phil Mogg find guitar players in the past] or was it something else?

Vinnie Moore: No, what happened is I actually toured with Michael Schenker back in 1999. I had a record out called The Maze [Shrapnel Records 1999], and we toured in America. We did 32 shows. And so I got to know him [Schenker] a little bit, and I got to know his manager, Peter Knorn from Germany. So when UFO was looking for a guitar player, in whatever it was, 2003, they first tried to get someone from England, they wanted to find an English player, and they were unlucky, couldn’t find anybody, so they expanded their search to Europe, so I’m told, and they couldn’t really find anyone from Europe either, so then they had to go global with it. And so Peter, who I had known, recommended me for the gig. And so I put together a compilation of some of my own songs, threw them on a CD, mailed them to Phil. I didn’t really think much of it, to be honest, and maybe 2 weeks later, I heard that Phil liked the stuff and wanted me to do it. So I joined the band.

JM: And how easy or difficult was it for you to form a songwriting relationship with Phil Mogg? Because it was prolific. I mean, it was you and Phil writing most of all of those records.

Vinnie Moore: Yeah. Paul [Raymond, late UFO keyboardist/second guitarist] wrote some tunes. And I think I would write, like, 6 or 7 on each record, maybe, something like that, and I would just come up with a bunch of ideas. Sometimes I had, like, 20 different things, maybe 15 different things, and he [Mogg] would kind of sift through, and choose the ones that he liked the best. And then we’d go into rehearsals. He wouldn’t have any vocals or lyrics, of course. He’s famous for that. And so we would just rehearse the songs and the arrangements instrumentally. Then we’d go into the studio and just do the record. Do the drums, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, solos, and then he’d do his thing at the end.

JM: So those famous Phil Mogg lyrics are kind of made up at the last minute?

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, I mean, I think he writes some in advance, but he holds them real close…he doesn’t like to let anybody see his work while he’s working on it. You know, he kind of keeps that to himself, so you never know how much he’s already written versus how much he’s come up with on the spot in the studio. That’s a little bit of a combination of both.

JM: There’s an anniversary for one of your UFO records, The Monkey Puzzle [SPV/Steamhammer Records 2006], which I think turns 20 this year in September.

Vinnie Moore: Wow, that’s crazy.

JM: [Iconic UFO drummer] Andy Parker came back into the band then, so it was basically you with the Lights Out/Obsession lineup [Moore with Mogg, Parker, Raymond and classic-era UFO bassist Pete Way]. Did you ever, like, pinch yourself, and say “wow, I’m in the Strangers in the Night band”?

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, in a way, it was surreal, because, you know, as I said, I was a fan of those guys growing up, and never could have imagined, when I’m 16 years old, that I would someday be in this band, so yeah … but as you’re doing it, you don’t think about that a whole lot. You just kind of go with the flow and do what you’re doing.

JM: The Monkey Puzzle was the last record with [late UFO bassist] Pete Way. And he was pretty honest in his book about why that all happened [Way wrote in his 2017 book ‘A Fast Ride Out of Here’ that, at the time he had such a severe heroin addiction that doctors could not find a vein for a required blood test for a UFO American tour, leading to Way being fired from the band]. But he was such a sort of mythical figure in the band. Was it a big change from your perspective as the guitar player when Pete left and they had to bring other guys in for different tours and albums things like that?

Vinnie Moore: It was really cool working with Pete. He was a funny guy and always joking. He’s like a prankster, but he called me the prankster, because I’m a bit of a joker, too. So there was a lot of playing jokes on one another and stuff like that, and it was a lot of fun.

It’s kind of sad that he wasn’t really in a state of mind where he could continue with the band, and…when other people came in, and there were a few others, they kind of filled in nicely and just stuck closely to his parts, so it was kind of like still playing with a band that he would have been in, because the bass player always kind of stayed close to his parts.

JM: Yeah, it seemed like there was no real regular guy playing bass with UFO after Pete until Rob DeLuca [who played bass on the last two records Moore did with UFO] at the end. Was the idea that the door was sort of left open for Pete to come back by bringing different guys because it seemed to be a different guy in every album and tour until Rob came in?

Vinnie Moore: I don’t think that was the plan that Phil was considering, ever considering him coming back, to be honest with you. Because it was more unstable, unfortunately, when he was in the band.

So yeah, we just kind of [used] whoever was available at the time and, you know, once we found Rob DeLuca, he stayed with the band pretty consistently, which is a good thing. It’s always good to have consistency.

JM: Okay, last UFO question. I’m curious about the very last album you did with the band, The Salentino Cuts [Cleopatra Records 2017], that covers record. And one of the selections you covered on there was really interesting. You did a cover of the Mad Season song “River of Deceit” … a lot of the tracks on that record were older songs, you know, many by bands that preceded UFO, but that one was a 90s song by a 90s band. How did that come to be recorded on that record?

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, that one surprised me too, but that was 100% Phil’s idea. He was listening to that song a lot on his phone on tour and stuff, and it just seemed to speak to him. He really loved the song. And yeah, so it was his idea. And I never would have anticipated that he would have chosen that song, but I was happy to do it because I love the song as well.

JM: I can imagine Mike McCready must have been pinching himself, because, you know, he’s the guitarist in Mad Season, the guitar player in Pearl Jam, and allegedly a huge UFO fan who has his own UFO cover band.

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, I’ve heard that. So yeah, it must have been cool for him.

JM: Switching gears a little, another anniversary this year is the 35th anniversary of a summer 1991 tour from 35 years ago, the ‘Operation Rock & Roll Tour’ [a festival tour which featured Judas Priest, Alice Cooper, Motörhead, Metal Church and Dangerous Toys]. And you were in Alice Cooper’s band for that, right? That tour played Orange County Fairgrounds in Middletown, NY in August 1991. What are your memories of that tour?

Vinnie Moore: Oh wow. Right, yeah. It was a lot of fun. I had a blast playing in his band. I, you know, grew up being a fan of his as well. To play some of those old tunes was really cool. Yeah, it was a great experience for me. We played all across America, some shows in Canada. And it was cool being out with Priest, and Motörhead, and Metal Church, and Dangerous Toys were on the bill, too.

JM: You also played on the Hey Stoopid album with Alice [Epic Records 1991].

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, two songs [Moore appears on the tracks “Hurricane Years” and “Dirty Dreams”].

JM: Was there any thought of sticking with the Alice band longer than what you did? What was the reason for moving on?

Vinnie Moore: Well, it’s a kind of a long story. I’ll try to condense it, but basically I had a record coming out I had already recorded. It was called Meltdown [Relativity Records 1991]. We finished recording in January and it was all scheduled to come out on Relativity Records in October. And then I got the call about playing a couple songs on Alice’s record, which was very cool. I actually drove up to Bearsville Studios in New York. And just for one day, did those two songs and, you know, that was pretty much it.

And then maybe a couple months later, I got a call saying, hey, would you be interested in joining the band? They’re interested in having you. So, it was after recording the songs for the record, and ‘Operation Rock & Roll’ was coming up. And so the original plan was they were supposed to do Operation Rock & Roll, and then Alice was gonna go back out again after that, and tour with, you know, as a headliner, which would have been great. I wanted to be a part of that, because I had a new record coming out, and I’d be touring all over America. You know, just perfect.

But somewhere during the Operation Rock & Roll tour, Alice and his management just, you know, shifted gears, and they decided they weren’t going to do America, they were going to go to Europe and tour there instead. So my record label was saying, well, it doesn’t make any point, you know, to put your record out in October, because you’ll be in Europe for six months, so we’ll just push it back until next year.

And I had already been, like, going crazy waiting for it to come out, because, you know, as I said, we finished in January, and they weren’t releasing it until October, which is already a long time. And so I had to make a decision, though. Do I want to stay with Alice, and go to Europe for 6 months, or do I just want to not do that and, you know, have my record come out and do my own tour? And, you know, unfortunate that I had to [do the latter], that the timing didn’t align on that and I had to make a choice. But my heart was really into my own record and developing my solo career.

And so I decided to go that way, and then we ended up opening for Rush [on Rush’s Roll the Bones tour, late 1991].

JM: So really, it worked out pretty well!

Vinnie Moore: It worked out pretty well. But, you know, part of me has always felt that it, you know, would have been so awesome if the timing aligned better.

JM: You guys played some really big New York shows on the Rush Tour. You played here at the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany on that tour [December 12, 1991], which was, you know, the biggest place to play here. And you also played two nights at Madison Square Garden with Rush [December 6-7, 1991].

Vinnie Moore: Right, yeah. That was pretty amazing, actually. And most amazing for me was that the tour started at the Spectrum in Philadelphia [December 1 and 3, 1991], and that’s where I went to see all my concerts as a kid. And so the dream was always, you know, wow, it would be great to play the Spectrum someday. You know, and I actually got to do it 3 times [in 1991], once with Alice [August 10, 1991], and 2 nights with Rush. And they tore it down, so it’s not there anymore, so it was kind of a dream come true for me. You know, one dream fulfilled on that one!

JM: Yeah, that’s a famous venue. Two nights there, and two nights at Madison Square Garden, too. I mean, you can’t complain about that.

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, definitely not.

JM: Another anniversary, if you don’t mind me continuing to hit these, is the 40th anniversary of Mind’s Eye [Moore’s debut solo album on Shrapnel Records, released in August 1986].

Vinnie Moore: Wow, am I that old?

JM: So 40 years in August, will you be commemorating that record at all on the set on tour this August, or at any point thereafter?

Vinnie Moore: Wow, I didn’t even realize it was the anniversary, and we are doing one song from that record, so…yeah, I guess so!

JM: That was on Shrapnel Records. And an amazing thing was the band you had on that record. You had Tommy Aldridge playing drums. This is your first solo record, right? And you have the guy from Black Oak Arkansas and Ozzy and Gary Moore and Pat Travers on drums! How did that end up happening?

Vinnie Moore: That was through Mike Varney. He went to do the record with me, and I finished a bunch of songs. I think there were nine songs on that record, and he started suggesting players. He knew a lot of people, of course, and he’s the guy who recommended Tommy Aldridge and also Andy West on bass from the Dixie Dregs, and Tony MacAlpine on keyboards.

So, yeah, he was very instrumental in putting the whole band together, which was great.

JM: Listening back to that record, it’s not only your playing that’s amazing, but you let those guys stretch out a little too. I mean during “Saved by a Miracle”, there’s this big Tommy drum solo, and Tony MacAlpine does all these amazing keyboard solos.

Vinnie Moore: Exactly! If you’re gonna have them on your record, you gotta let them have some space and do their thing, and shine also. When I found out Tony was going to do it, I kinda rewrote a couple of the songs to allow for some keyboard solo stuff. So yeah, just added basically some new parts to the songs I had already written.

JM: Mind’s Eye has aged really well. I mean, a lot of people sort of, you know, roll their eyes at the 80s shredder stuff, but that record just kind of has a sort of timeless quality about it, and it was kind of like a minor underground hit at the time, I remember.

Vinnie Moore: Yeah, it definitely created a lot of buzz for me, and helped pretty much launch my career. I never would have anticipated that it would have been as well-received as it was, and talked about, you know, this many years later, so it was…for me, it was a gift.

JM: Mind’s Eye was on Shrapnel Records, and you sort of forget how much significant kind of hard rock and metal and guitar music came out of that label. Not just you, but Tony MacAlpine, Greg Howe, Marty Friedman, Richie Kotzen, just tons of legendary guitarists started off with Shrapnel, and some significant metal bands too, like Exciter, Steeler, Vicious Rumors who, of course, you were involved with.

Vinnie Moore: Lots of monster players. And there was this, like, whole scene with that Shrapnel era, and yet I could have never foreseen that at the time. I mean, there were maybe a couple guys before me and there were lots after me. And yeah, it was really quite the thing back in those days.

JM: So, a question about future plans. You’ve got this tour going in August. What’s next on the docket for you? New record, more touring? The last Vinnie Moore record was, I think, what, 2022?

Vinnie Moore: That sounds about right, yeah. I have written a bunch of new songs and am in the midst of putting a new band together, so I have, like, enough songs for probably two records at this point. I’m itching to get it together and finally get a record out there, so there’s that. There’s talk of going to South America in late November with Marco, so hopefully that will happen.

JM: To finish up – if someone’s reading this and doesn’t know your catalogue, and If you were going point a new listener to a particular solo album or song and say, this is the song to check out to see what Vinnie Moore does, what album or song would you point them to check you out?

Vinnie Moore: It would be hard to only mention one song, because I think one of the things I try to do on my records is be diverse and cover a lot of musical territory stylistically. And, so I’d have to mention a record, I guess, and, man, I’ve been telling people, like: listen to my last four records, but you only said one, so… wow.

JM: It doesn’t have to be one. I’m saying that because, you know, we live in a sort of short-attention span culture now – like you said, Phil listening to a song on his phone, people now just yelling at their smart speakers for a song or looking at their phone for a song. Folks don’t put albums on turntables the way we did when we were kids. So it doesn’t have to be a song. It can be an album. But where would you point people just to get started?

Vinnie Moore: Exactly. So I would say check out Soul Shifter [Mind’s Eye Music 2019] and Double Exposure maybe. And if you like that, then go back to Aerial Visions [Mind’s Eye Music 2015] and Out of Nowhere [Mayhem 1996], maybe. And with UFO, probably Seven Deadly, I guess.

But, you know, there are some of my fans that are really into the first couple records [the aforementioned Mind’s Eye and Time Odyssey, PolyGram Records 1988], that were really fusion-y and neo-classically inspired, and, you know, some of the hardcore fans from those days like that stuff the best. That personally isn’t where my head is anymore at this point – because I’ve tried to grow and, you know, do new things over the years and cover new ground, break new ground, and so I’m always moving. It’s like an experiment. I’m a work in progress. Still trying to get it right!

JM: All right. Well, Vinnie, thank you for the time. I appreciate it very much.

Vinnie Moore: Thanks so much, John. Appreciate it.

Vinnie Moore will be on tour with Adrian Vandenberg and Marco Mendoza this summer, and plays the following two New York State shows in August

August 7 – Sony Hall, New York City

August 9 – Sharkey’s, Syracuse