Freddy Moore

Songwriter, Frederick George Moore born in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he picked up a few guitar chords and an obsession with the newly popular Beatles before moving to San Francisco, California in June 1964. He grew a Beatle cut and got into hassles with surfing, hot rodding school associates. "I didn't have any friends and really didn't want any. I just sat in my room and played Beatle songs and wrote my own." Moore poured through rock fanzines, absorbed and dissected every Beatles album that came out, and listened exclusively to the Fab Four and the Kinks. By October 1964 he had unequivocally decided his vocation was playing rock and roll music and he started writing. "I noticed that the Beatles wrote their own songs, so I figured that to be a rock musician you had to write your own songs."

"In the summer of 1964, right after 'A Hard Days Night' came out, my cousin Danny Wick and I spent two weeks making wooden replicas of the Paul McCartney bass, the John Lennon rhythm guitar, George Harrison's lead guitar, and Ringo Starr's drums. We used to lip-synch to records. Danny and I wanted to play real music, the others wanted to lip-synch, but we finally got them going. We learned 'You Really Got Me' by the Kinks, the Beatles' 'And I Love Her' and my first original composition 'Baby Be Mine'."

Moore pursued his musical ambitions with the same vigor most 13 year-olds apply to major league baseball aspirations. He started putting together bands and teaching reluctant copycat cohorts to play his songs. His narrow interests and extreme diffidence made finding other players difficult. "When I was in the tenth grade, a new guy moved into our neighborhood. I had heard he played guitar, so one day when he was walking down the street I put my amp in the window and played my guitar at him to attract his attention." The two got Moore's first serious group together, but in January 1966 Moore returned to Richfield with his parents.

Moore continued his apprenticeship with the media in Minnesota, keeping to himself, teaching friends to play, writing prolifically, and growing up with the music, always one step ahead of the trends. He and friend, Steve Brenner spent summer afternoons writing more songs and arranging them for ensembles of fluctuating size. The groups would meet early in the day, rehearse the previous day's song, discard it or tape it, and then begin work on another song. (When Brenner was not available Moore collaborated with his cousin David Burdick another prolific songwriter).

Moore did the same thing with other people's music playing through works like the Beatles 'white album' at a rate of two or three songs per day. "During the summer of love, we sat in the basement and turned out all the lights and jammed out ]]San Francisco]] music. We alternated rhythm and lead for a million hours." By the end of the summer, Moore was a creditable lead guitarist.

Moore's listening interests broadened and he continued to single-mindedly pursue guitar virtuosity and related skills like arranging and recording music. When he graduated from Richfield, Minnesota High School in 1968, the outside world intruded in the form of the draft. To escape, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota in Music Theory and Musical composition.

For Moore, who had spent most of his youth hunched over a guitar and tape recorder in his bedroom, his college years were a watershed experience. "I found an organ in Scott Hall, and I was playing around with that one afternoon and somebody came in. I thought I must be using his organ time or something, but he said it was alright, and that he'd show me how to use it, which he did." The organist Randy Pink said he was forming a group The Pink Project, which never made it beyond the rehearsal stage, but before his association with Moore ended, he had interested him in Thelonius Monk and other jazzmen, besides starting him on keyboards. "I'd go to school and play piano all day, and I started missing classes."

"When I got into U music, my theory professor would illustrate his points by pounding something on the piano. It always came out sounding like The Mothers. I thought it was pretty cool, so I started listening to The Mothers more." Frank Zappa joined Lennon, McCartney, and Ray Davies as an audible influence on Moore's writing.

Moore's Richfield reputation grew on a small scale. The local cover band (Escher, Winger, Weiss and Bates) paid a visit to the reclusive songwriter and asked him to join. Moore refused politely, but said they could join HIS group.

The group became An English Sky, after one of Moore's songs. Mark Winger was among the members, and he and Moore collaborated on arrangements. "I would make up a guitar part and teach it to Winger, and he would teach the part he wrote to the other guitarist and then I'd make up another part." Moore taught the rest of the parts to the group members. By Fall, 1969, Frederick G. Moore had written out the chords, melody and lyrics for over 90 songs, forgotten or lost perhaps 90 more, begun his second year of college, learned to arrange, score, play guitar, piano, organ and drums, still wanted to be a rock star, and had rarely played in front of an audience. He was 19.

An English Sky were invited to perform at the rock festival an Edina, Minnesota junior high school was having on the school loading dock. Moore proposed the matter to An English Sky, and they turned him down flat. He went over to the Euphorium one night and taught some of his tunes to the band Euphoria, and did the gig solo - his first official performance as SKOGIE. Then followed several weeks of rehearsals with An English Sky with Moore, Euphoria, and Skogie with Euphoria. Finally the two groups formed one 10-man unit. Moore wrote a letter and fired everyone but himself and Goldstein, hired 3 people back, and formed Skogie and the Flaming Pachucos phase I. Rehearsals were 7 nights a week when there are no gigs.

The Euphorium was a corner basement room with 5 years of rock music caked on the walls in Day-Glo paint. The only window was splintered from having amplifiers pushed through. The Euphorium was carpeted with wires and partly lined with eggshell cartons. Mounds of crushed paper paid tribute to Moore's mania for list making: lists of songs, lists of equipment for every eventuality, and finally, the shirk list adorn the walls. Shirk list honors went in the form of shirk-iota’s to the man who dreamt up the heaviest method of circumventing work. Moore always won.

Skogie spent most of their rehearsal time working out complex song arrangements. Moore pulled thirty songs from the 200 he had written out or saved on tape and each week a new one was drawn out of a hat. A song was usually ready for performance after one week of arranging and an additional week of rehearsal.

The band would close down rehearsal at the Euphorium any time from 10:30 to 12 PM, and sometimes would go all night. Arranging the never ending stream of work from as prolific a composer as Moore, could get tedious and often did when ideas were sparse. The situation was complicated by the group's obsession with doing things unconventionally or conventionally, but better than ever before.

Moore's day would begin a few hours after the previous evening's rehearsal ended. Sleep and getting a driver's license fell into the same category for Moore: things for which he didn't have time. Getting out of bed in the morning, he reached for his guitar before his toothbrush. His suit coat was stuffed with lists, notebooks and guitar picks, as well as a portable toothbrush he could use when he had a moment.

No matter what time he got up, at 12:00 noon sharp he worked on one or more of the 13 songs he was presently writing. He usually didn’t write anything down until it’s completed, so as many were lost as finished. Afternoons were also the time he used to pursue his personal research projects.

Moore also had a massive tape collection, including reels of nearly every musical group he has ever put together. Some of Skogie's repertoire was in its fourth or fifth arrangement. Some songs such as "Magic Lock" go back to early 1967. "Colonel Arnold’s Cross," "Collins Park Rock," and "Wolfman Strikes Again" date back to 1968. Moore recalls how he wrote the latter: "I wrote that the night Morrill Hall at the U of M was seized. I saw something happening at Morrill Hall, and I got up on this thing to see, and I slipped and fell about ten feet down into this pit. I thought of the first line just as these guys were pulling me out, and I wrote the rest of the song as I was walking down the university mall. When I got home it was pretty hard to figure out the chords because all I had were these words and melody in the back of my mind."

Moore wrote whenever an idea hit him. He’s written songs riding his bicycle to the store (Blueberries For Baby"), lying on a pool table at MacPhail Center while waiting for a ride ("Tonight’s The Night") and when inspiration reaches out from a record he hears. Everything in his narrow, reclusive world and everything the media throws at him received his musical scrutiny: "I like to get onto something and thoroughly check it out. I might read about somebody I’ve never heard. So I’ll go out and get their record, and then I’ll read about their influences, so I’ll research their influences." "Every week I have a new favorite to listen to. Ray Charles, the Beach Boys.

Whoever I’m listening to, that’s my influence for the week. This has helped me expand musically to the point where I have no taste. I like everything."

Arrangements came from even earlier periods in Moore’s musical history: "We could be doing different songs. These just happen to be the ones we’re doing. All of them would come out just as well if we worked on them just as hard as the ones we’ve got. Perhaps not all – but certainly as many as we’d ever want. We really can’t have any use for 200 songs." Moore would grab a quick bite to eat around 6:30 PM. At 7 PM Peterson and Galles would pick him up and drive to the Euphorium for another rehearsal.

Skogie still holds the attendance record at One Groveland (the Minnesota equivilant of Liverpool's Cavern Club), they have jammed as many as 450 paying customers into that cramped hall. When their set was over they would usually wait offstage for a signal to go back and do their final song. When the band jumped back on stage the girls would start screaming. They knew what was coming. Moore was one of the best movers I have ever seen. He received a lot of crude fan mail from girls. At the end of the encore, Moore would fall face-first off the front of the stage. The crowd, in a total frenzy from three hours of Skogie music, would lift him triumphantly above their heads.

The whole atmosphere of a Skogie concert was different from most other concerts. As usual there was the reek of cigarettes, pot, and beer, but there was always a few groups of hard-core Skogie fans who were really into the deeper aspects of the music.

The first night I ever heard contemporary power-pop and the first night I ever saw Frederick "Rick" "Skogie" Moore were the same unerasable evening. It was at a University dance circa 1972, a time when it seemed like every other ambitious local band wore lots of purple satin and learned their key riffs off the Yes (band) album. During the Elvis classic "Teddy Bear, "Moore whipped out the real item and proceeded to fearlessly demonstrate some arcane maneuvers of stuffed bear-human being relations.

Years later Moore and his boys were forever banished from Miraleste, a Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in California for the same inventive play of passion.

Skogie released a single in June 1972 with the help of producer/manager David Zimmerman (Bob Dylan's brother), and released a follow up album in 1974.

Moore's band was later acknowledged by no less than Creem magazine as having been one of the first power-pop bands known to man, during their six-year residency (1970-1976) as Minneapolis' strangest, they were indeed an anachronism.

California laid claim to Skogie (three out of four Nu Kats belonged to that band) in 1976, after extensive national touring and recording experience at three Minneapolis studios hinted at unexplored musical and circumstantial possibilities. Los Angeles was not clutching its breast in anticipation. "The reception was as abysmal as you can imagine," Moore laughs now. For a good while the band did a Jekyll and Hyde. Skogie also played dates as the Kats, while Skogie became a dance band doing lots of cover material, lassoing lots of fans, and happily rediscovering unmitigated pop after trying other genres for size. There were moments of longing for home on the range. "One of the first things we found out is that Minneapolis audiences respond to a much more intellectual performance than Los Angeles audiences. And in L.A., attitude is crucial. They want to be told what's hip. The bands simply have to act like they know what they're doing, no two ways about it."

Hip in El Lay circa 1978 had its finger pointed to New Wave music. "We were in the right place at the right time - making bad business moves.

Frederick G. Moore soon became the San Fernando Valley's answer to England's Jeff Lynne, the guiding influence behind the Electric Light Orchestra. Although ELO's orchestrated pop style bears absolutely no resemblance to the rocky bebop sound of Moore's group, The Kats, the two bands have one thing in common -- strong leadership. Like Lynne, Moore functioned as his band's lead singer, rhythm guitarist, sole composer and conceptual designer. But Moore carried his role as star cat one step further. Onstage he was riveting, especially when he unstraped his guitar midway through each set. Unencumbered, Moore prowled the stage in search of his quarry. He often bypassed his fellow band members -- younger brother Bobbyzio (sax), Dennis Peters (bass and vocals), Al Galles (drums and vocals), and Pete McRae (lead guitar) in favor of forays into the audience.

Young girls responded by enticing Moore toward them with promises of cat food tidbits from Purina and Friskies boxes. The other Kats were pelted with handfuls of dry kibble while Moore bounded back on stage, scrambled on top of an amplifier, and made dramatic feline leaps, marking the end of one song and signaling the beginning of the next.

When it came to everyday life, however, Moore's nervous system slipped into a relaxing lower gear. Stripped of his flamboyant stage mannerisms, he came across as an affable fellow, who looks rather intellectual due to the thick black rimmed glasses he wears when not performing. And it soon became apparent that his appearance was not deceiving since Moore's conversational wit revealed a sharp mind.

The Kats uniqueness was largely the result of one of Moore's most engaging concepts -- an individual appropriately named Freddy, an underdog or in this case an underKat. Buoyed by the band's good-natured rock 'n' roll vibes, this song pattern eventually evolved into a rock opera of sorts. The theme was so subtly presented that Moore's songs did not seem contrived, unlike many rock concepts. "We don't serve up a plot per se but each number ties into the next," explained Moore. "Freddy's problems continually crop up throughout the group of songs we perform during each set."

Moore said he has enlarged upon his own personality to create the character he portrays on stage. "Freddy's just an inexperienced little guy who's not really cool but constantly tries to convince his friends, as well as himself, that he truly is a cool individual. I used to be and probably still am, a nervy, punky kid living in suburbia always fantasizing about being where the action is."

He threw up his hands in amused exasperation and laughed. "Here I am, living in Arleta, California and it’s all happening on the Sunset Strip. That's the message behind "Street Life" in which Freddy sings of his longing to escape from the dull routine of middle-class suburban life."

"He dreams about hanging out in an area like the West Hollywood rock scene but his dad won't let him have the car, his friends won't cart him out there and he's too chicken to hitchhike. So Freddy has to stay home and live vicariously by reading rock magazines. Our theme song, 'The Kats' relates directly to this situation of being stuck inside like a house cat whose only desire is to jump through the screen door and join all the free roaming alley cats outside."

Of course Moore was no longer stranded in suburbia. He may have lived in the northern outskirts of the Valley but his status as lead singer in a popular local attraction was anything but dull. In the song "My Life's In The Bag," Moore posed the question: Where do we go from here?

The answer to Moore's question appeared obvious. The Kats', who were on the verge of signing a recording contract, were more than ready to graduate from the local L.A. rock scene.

Infinity Records won the bidding war and rushed The Kats into Shelter Studios on Sunset with Tom Petty's production team. Just as final mixes were being completed Infinity Records was dissolved by its Dutch parent company. There was no one left to pay the Shelter Studio bill so "The Kats - Get Modern" became known as "The Great Lost Kats Album". It remains locked in the Shelter Studios vault.

Demi Gene Guynes entered the picture in August 1979, and began using Demi Moore as her stage name. Freddy and Demi were married in February 1980 (divorced in August 1985).

Shortly after the Infinity Records fiasco lead guitarist Pete McRae departed. The four remaining Kats renamed themselves 'the Nu Kats, fired their management, signed with Rhino Records, recorded "Plastic Facts" and filmed the video "It's Not A Rumour" featuring soon-to-be-famous actress Demi Moore, which went into rotation on MTV.

The Nu Kats dissolved in 1981. Moore moved to the Upper West Side of Manhattan and joined local NYC band "The Dates". "I answered an ad in the Village Voice that read 'Wanted: Lead Singer/Lead Guitarist influenced by Squeeze and The Beatles'". Moore became a Singer/Guitarist/Composer of The Dates. "I loved NYC and had a lot of fun being a member of The Dates, Bob Fruhlinger handled the band leader duties, I was able to focus on what I enjoyed." While living in New York there was a family illness so Moore hopped on a plane for UCLA Medical Center. "I rang up Bob Fruhlinger of The Dates and asked them to liquidate my NYC possessions".

Moore remained in LA and formed a new band called BOY. BOY was more pop than any previous Moore band. BOY released a record on Radioactive and Freddy received a Screen Actors Guild/AFTRA card while portraying 'Arn' in the 3-D film 'Parasite' (BOY) can be heard on the soundtrack.

In 1983 BOY disbanded. The Moore Brothers continued writing, arranging and recording new material for another year-or-so. They even put a band together and played a few industry showcases as: BFM (Bobbyzio and Freddy Moore).

Freddy and Demi Moore divorced on August 7th, 1985. In 1985 Moore officially retired from the music business. "Looking back, I find it interesting that I withdrew from music at age 35 and returned to music at 40. (Those ages parallel John Lennon's withdrawal from and return to the music business.)"

When I was forced out of retirement 1in 1990, I wrote a bunch of new songs for The Kat Club! -note: "we still haven't finished recording them all and it's 2006!"