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Before there was EVH
Guitar World has a story about the origins of two-hand tapping guitar technique, and Ritchie Blackmore is indirectly involved.
It sounds like something out of one of those corny classic rock-themed parodies of Renaissance paintings.
The setting is one of the most famed rock venues of all time, LA’s Whisky a Go Go, and the year is 1968.
Onstage is Harvey Mandel, the underrated guitarist who highlighted his performances with flourishes of two-hand tapping years before Eddie Van Halen put the technique on every guitar player’s radar. In the audience are, among others, Ritchie Blackmore, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison.
Now, these are rock stars after all, and so each of them is either hammered, or well on their way to being so. Morrison, as was often the case, is much further along that path than anyone else.
Already a blues-rock veteran, and soon to be a member of Canned Heat, Mandel was in fine form onstage, and confident enough to pull tapping out of his bag of six-string tricks, surprising his audience in the process.
Here’s Harvey Mandel demonstrates his technique at a 2012 gig:
Read more in Guitar World. The Blackmore’s 1991 interview that the article quotes, we coincidentally happen to have in our archives.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
“I originally heard him (Uwe: Tommy Bolin) on Billy Cobham’s Spectrum album, and thought, “Who is this guy?” Then I saw him on television and he looked incredible – like Elvis Presley.”
Just to annoy Karin a little: Ritchie is referring to those Midnight Special TV broadcasts from 1974 where – just like Elvis –
https://elvisbiography.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/elvis-fullgoldsuit-whitec1.jpg
Tommy is wearing a custom tailored silver lamé suit he had made to his specifications (in commemoration of how impressed he was as a boy when he first saw Elvis in a suit like that, but being a humble guy settling for a more modest silver rather than the King’s royal gold):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnoLYNGpFhw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbHkIpwWqWQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm0HvAEV0EM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av_7OgrEPT0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQj05Hgg_Gs
January 13th, 2025 at 05:25Classic Blackmore interview. I have that magazine from way back in 1991 – Ritchie was in fine form for it. He did a very matter of fact dissection of the “guitar gods” Hendrix, EVH and SRV, et al – nothing nasty nor biting – just cited reality. And he reaffirmed his utmost respect for the amazing talent of Jeff Beck.
Indeed…”Before There Was EVH” as the title of this post goes….Ritchie Blackmore is the unsung missing link between Jimi Hendrix and EVH. Ritchie took guitar technique to new heights in the 70’s – far beyond what Hendrix did, and long before EVH even came onto the scene.
January 13th, 2025 at 12:38I was two hand tapping my guitar back in the 70’s way before EVH also.
January 13th, 2025 at 13:06Harvey Mandel who became legend with Canned Heat’s Woodstock performance (he’s the guitarist to the far-left playing the Fender Stratocaster, not the guy who plays the slide intro on the Gibson Gold Top, Alan ‘Blind Owl’ Wilson).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRYKAMjKgto
In the mid 70s he was one of the names (along with Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher, Mick Ronson and Michael Schenker) contemplated as a replacement for Mick Taylor by The Rolling Stones, but in the end Ronnie Wood got the job, who as a solo guitarist wasn’t quite in the same league as the competition OR his predecessor Mick Taylor (rated highly by Ritchie though Ritchie was/is no Stones fan), but who was serviceable enough for the Stones and a flexible multi-instrumentalist plus a stage presence, a good, unproblematic and lasting (50 years!) fit.
January 13th, 2025 at 15:09@1
January 13th, 2025 at 16:49“ Just to annoy Karin a little: Ritchie is referring to those Midnight Special TV broadcasts from 1974 where – just like Elvis –”
Oh ok, if it’s only to annoy me then it’s all right because that means you deep down agree with me 😃
It is a good interview & yes DeeperPurps, Blackmore just says it like it is. No media hype fanfare for the common man as such. These days for the media it is Joe Bonamassa, tomorrow it will be someone else. Not to worry as long as the music talks true all is good. Out of the three guitarists that Ritchie mentioned, I do prefer Hendrix, a good improvisor although very rough at times in a live setting, but that is part of the exploring & searching, just like Ritchie back in the day. I remember having to play a couple of SRV tracks in a band back then (1992/3), they were a little jazzier from my memory, I cannot remember what songs though. I might have to do some listening online to spike my memory. I enjoyed them though at the time & they were not the proverbial typical blues based thing. Cheers.
January 13th, 2025 at 20:52The old faithful Canned Heat. A band that would have inspired ZZ Top no doubt, that boogie shuffle etc. Regarding Ron Wood getting the Stones gig Uwe, no doubt Mick Ronson would have fitted the job also to my way of thinking. No way Rory would have, as he was his own man & good on him for that. Not sure about Schenker at that time. Cheers.
January 13th, 2025 at 21:04Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top did tapping too already in the early 70s (he might have picked it up from Harvey Mandel given their mutual Blues background), but what the diminutive Dutch immigrant kid in Pasadena added to the recipe was applying the tapping technique to neoclassical lines thereby creating a whole new tapping universe with it. And regarding those neoclassical lines, Ritchie’s influence on EvH was indeed substantial, something Eddie has never denied. He was always more influenced by and drawn to European guitarists such as Ritchie, Brian May, Uli Jon Roth and Michael Schenker than American ones, perhaps due to his Dutch heritage.
January 13th, 2025 at 21:37I never heard of this guy then again, I never cared for Canned Heat. Is this guy the brother of Howie Mandel? The host of Deal or No Deal.
January 13th, 2025 at 22:26I actually don’t think that Blackmore is an ‘unsung’ guitar hero, maybe these days a little forgotten, but that is what he chose..
In the 70s, Ritchie led or at least was prominent in all guitar and musician polls, at least the ones I saw. Nobody dared to say – even the competition or critics who generally didn’t like either DP or Rainbow – that Blackers couldn’t play (rhymes!). The most frequent criticism was that his music was formatted – and there was some truth to that, Ritchie has never been the reinventing type, he does what he does at any given time to the exclusion of pretty much anything else and then one day discards it to do something else with equal committed and selective focus. But he’s not really the variable, inquisitive type.
Come the 80s, Ritchie was no longer the fastest gun in town (and also not the disciplined practice type who wanted to keep up with the new guard), that happens as any sports athlete will tell you, there comes the day when someone else comes along who runs faster or jumps higher than you. Still, in my ears he left more of an imprint on guitarists like EvH, George Lynch, Jake E. Lee, Randy Rhoads, Glenn Tipton, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Craig Goldie, John Petrucci etc than, say, Jimmy Page or Tony Iommi did. Not a bad legacy I’d say, these guys were/are no slouches.
And then, pretty much 30 years ago, Ritchie stopped playing and releasing new rock material. Just like that. The man with the great vibrato and the idiosyncratic bending pretty much stopped doing both, put the Strat in the attic (small occasional electric excursions excepted) and devoted his craft to Renaissance folk pop melodies and playing trills as a form of embellishment on acoustic and semi-acoustic instruments. How long can you then expect him to continue to lead rock guitar polls? It’s a bit as if Eddie Van Halen had decided to stop playing guitar in the late 80s/early 90s, resorting to solely keyboards or banjo to play Bluegrass forevermore.
But Ritchie is Ritchie and he does what he sets his mind to – ill-advised or not. If that cost him poll placings in the long run, then he accepted that as part of the bargain, I believe that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass on whether he is featured in guitar polls or not. Had peer adulation of his guitar skills ever played a role for him, then he would have long started playing music that features his talents more prominently.
January 14th, 2025 at 01:08“It sounds like something out of one of those corny classic rock-themed parodies of Renaissance paintings.”
If you guys wondered (like me) what “corny classic rock-themed parodies of Renaissance paintings” means, voilà:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Fl4AAOSwQHVfmOWM/s-l1200.jpg
(Message to Karin, don’t open this, they have not picked Ian Gillan as the The Last Supper Jesus, but someone from – horror of horrors – Memphis, Tennessee!)
January 14th, 2025 at 09:11@11
January 14th, 2025 at 11:23“ Message to Karin, don’t open this”
Thanks for the warning, then of course I won’t! ☺️
(Btw is it supposed to be Frank Zappa at the far right?)
Uwe @10…..yes in musician circles, perhaps Blackmore is known as having been a top drawer guitarist, but if one reads the American music press, he is rarely mentioned these days. Magazines such as RollingStone, various guitar mags, etc rarely feature anything about Blackmore, nor Purple, nor Rainbow for that matter; but you can bet a pay cheque that there will be at least one major article in every mag about Page / Zeppelin; or Hendrix; or Clapton; or Beck; or EVH.
Same thing goes for various guitar books…Ritchie might get a cursory nod, but more often that not, he is not even included among the greats. Guitar polls in Rolling Stone magazine (not that those are legitimate or indicative of any true musical talent mind you) relegate Ritchie to middle of the pack usually in the neighbourhood of about number 55 in a field of 100. But you can bet your bottom dollar that Keith Richard, Kurt Cobain, Jack White, SRV, EVH, Townshend, Page, Beck, Clapton and Hendrix will be at the pinnacle.
I know this because I attended the local magazine shops religiously in the mid to late 70’s, trying to find articles about Ritchie and Purple and Rainbow….I used to get quite miffed at the lack of coverage about him/those bands, as compared to many other more outrageous and/or hyped up acts. The worst offenders were RS and Creem magazines. I even wrote to a couple of those magazines back then (readers opinion section), asking why it was so – those never got printed. Circus was mildly better, and Hit Parader from time to time would do a small or mid-sized Blackmore / Rainbow article.
When I lived in the UK in the late 70’s, yes the coverage was definitely much better at the time….Melody Maker and Trouser Press in particular would have articles on Ritchie & Rainbow. And later on Kerrang and Sounds were also very good about covering him. But in the USA, apart from a brief period of excitement around the 1984 Purple reunion and the ’75 tour, that was the extent of the coverage Ritchie was getting. It dissipated soon thereafter.
Even radio (terrestrial, cable, satellite) playlists, polls and “top” lists mostly ignore Ritchie and/or Purple. If they get a mention, it’s usually for SOTW, and sometimes, maybe Highway Star. Not for nothing that it took them 2.5 decades after initial eligibility to get inducted into that “hallowed” institution.
Now Ritchie being Ritchie, and not the easiest person to talk to, as has been mentioned in various interviews through the years, might have been his own worst enemy in this regard. That might be part of the problem, but not all of it. I believe the other part of the problem, and it’s not just restricted to Ritchie, but to Deep Purple even to this day….they, and/or their management are not as marketing-savvy or they don’t get the same music label / corporate push that bands such as Zep, Sabbath, and several others do. When I speak to young people and even older ones in their 30’s….every one of them knows Zep, knows Ozzy…but….as regards Purple….blank stares. Take for example, those reaction videos with Miss Elizabeth and others….they are only just now discovering Deep Purple….how could that be? Well, I think it all comes down to exposure. Purple just never had the cachet that the more sexy or outrageous bands did….as such were not as “newsworthy” and were therefore not given the same attention. That persists to this day.
January 14th, 2025 at 11:53The inimitable Karin @5: So not even Tommy Bolin finds grace(land) with you? What a hardhearted woman you are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qako94KrCV0
I could die for that sax arrangement at 02:24.
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Herr MacGregor are you sure about the jazz thing with SRV? I think he’s extremely Blues-based …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guSZJPBiJ-o
Re the Stones replacing Mick Taylor and the names on their list:
Jeff Beck: He actually played with them for three days and then told them that their music was too Blues-based and undemanding for him.
Rory Gallagher: He actually stayed with them for three days in Amsterdam waiting for His Majesty Keith Richards to get out of bed and jam (Jagger wanted Keith to have the final say on who his guitar buddy should be going forward, relations between Keith and Mick Taylor had sometimes been strained). When Keith finally had the grace to wake up, Rory was on his way to catch a flight for a Japan tour of his. His brother Dónal who already managed him at the time thought he was mad letting that opportunity slip, but Rory wasn’t flustered by the Stones and in two minds about the whole idea anyway.
Michael Schenker got a call from the Stones management inviting him to an audition. Having comparatively recently only joined UFO from the Scorpions and only 20 years old, the fair-haired axeman almost shat his pants and mumbled that the call was inconvenient now and that he would call back. He never did, reasoning today: “The Stones would have been too much for me, I was still busy trying to come to grips with the UFO situation at the time. I didn’t really speak English. Had I joined the Stones, I would have been dead within six months because of alcohol and drugs.”
Whether Mick Ronson actually ever met the Stones at the time and and auditioned, I don’t know. I agree, he would have been a good fit. Also blond, something Jagger would have preferred for image reasons as both Brian Jones and Mick Taylor had been blond. At the time, he must have been with Mott the Hoople setting sail to leave them (the others didn’t want him in the band as successor to Ariel Bender/Luther Grosvenor) together with Ian Hunter, a relationship that would last almost two decades, off and on. Those two were made for each other – of course, playing with the Stones would have been commercially in another league. I often think about it, what would have happened had (the other) Ronno joined the Stones? Sadly, his tenure with them would have certainly been shorter than Ron Wood’s as the Spider from Mars left this planet in 1993 (liver cancer), another Mormon btw just like Randy Bachman.
January 14th, 2025 at 11:59@ 11 uwie i was a session musician for Renaissance on their album, a song for all season’s. I later toured with them in 1978 in the states, and remain great friends with Annie and the band.
January 14th, 2025 at 14:12@14
“What a hardhearted woman you are.”
I don’t mind that but come on! The link you present here: He sounds like a choirboy reject!
And come on again! That “sax-arrangement” sounds like a very weak Darth Vader claiming Luke not to be his son!
Oh no! Then I prefer the great man himself, at any time!
January 14th, 2025 at 16:30Like this:
https://youtu.be/zi3lxg9SX28?si=HCHYqfCHUvFOP4rN
Karin, come on, you’re the first female I run across that is not somehow attracted to Tommy Bolin’s solo music and the intimacy of his voice! That sax playing is by Norma Jean Bell
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/a3/57/01/a357011c0e7a340c2681ae08999fd156.jpg
who played with Frank Zappa before Tommy!
https://wiki.killuglyradio.com/images/thumb/5/53/BandF.jpeg/350px-BandF.jpeg
Frank has a reputation of not playing with people who aren’t good at what they do.
And yes, that is supposed to be him in that Da Vinci pastiche, it is from that legendary poster where Frank took a dump, my older brother had it pinned against his wall too.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71r55oZuj1L._AC_UF350,350_QL50_.jpg
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Wow, Smitty, I’m impressed, I’m a fan of Renaissance’s and Annie Haslam’s work and of course I have the album) and all their others). Renaissance is what I always wish Blackmore’s Night could be if they cut out all the cheesiness from their act. Unlike BN, Renaissance are cringe-free.
https://youtu.be/0rarW1JycOE
Always fascinated me that a band as proverbial English as them would carve out their niche market in the Northeastern US.
Jon Camp was a hell of a bass player.
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Auntie Purplette – as far as the US is concerned, I agree with you. Purple’s image is overshadowed by LZ and Ozzy/the Sabs. Purple lacks mystique (LZ) and entertainment value (Ozzy) in the private lives of its members. Bolin’s rock star death came too early in his career to rank with Jimi Hendrix’, Jim Morrison’s, Janis Joplin’s, Randy Rhoads’ or Kurt Cobain’s deaths and he wan’t that much identified with DP in any case. It’s that “only a working band”-image of DP.
In Europe, among musicians, rock fans and even the press, Ritchie’s deity status still lingers. He’s viewed as a reclusive there too, yes, but one with musical merit and a notable legacy of past work. Whenever Ritchie is prepared to give an interview, German magazines still queue up – if slightly bewildered so!
Ritchie is likely the most interesting sex-Pirple as regards his secluded life and idiosyncrasies, but he doesn’t like to mingle, be seen at industry events, give interviews to musician mags or generally see his name printed in the
January 14th, 2025 at 20:21