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Taking coal to Newcastle
Guitar Player magazine celebrated Ritchie Blackmore’s 80th birthday by reprinting online a 1996 feature, including an extensive interview with him.
This interview originally appeared in the December 1996 issue of Guitar Player under the title “Mistreated: Will Ritchie Blackmore Ever Get His Due?”
Deep inside a German castle, Ritchie Blackmore sits at a long table, dressed in medieval garb and clutching a goblet of mead. A group of minstrels skips into the dining chamber, playing a motley assortment of Renaissance instruments — crumhorns, sackbuts, rackets, regals, and hurdy-gurdies.
Transfixed by the otherworldly music and 16th-century setting, the Rainbow and former Deep Purple guitarist — a legend to thousands of aspiring virtuosos — experiences a sudden epiphany.
“This is what I want to do! I don’t want to be plugged into a Marshall anymore!” he laughs, recalling the event later over a cold Beck’s at a plush Manhattan hotel. “I actually said to them, ‘Do you want a guitar player?’ They said, ‘No, we already have a lute player.’ I was crushed.”
Continue reading in Guitar Player.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
QUOTE:
Interviewer: With all due respect to Page, I’ve always felt that Zeppelin was never as strong a live band as Purple, mainly because they didn’t swing.
Ritchie: I agree with that, because Bonzo wasn’t a swinging drummer. He was very good, but he was a lead-footed drummer. Ian Paice is a swing-type drummer, a jazzy, Buddy Rich-type drummer — skip-bop-bop-bop-bop. Also, Jon Lord was very inspired by Jimmy Smith and Graham Bond, who was the big thing in English jazz at the time.
UNQUOTE
Amen, so I’m not imagining things. 😑 I‘ve always said that Lordy and Paicey were the main groove providers of DP – like Keith and Charlie with the Stones.
Interesting then that with the exception of the elves Mickey Lee Soule and Gary Driscoll, Rainbow never had a swinging keyboarder nor a swinging drummer. Maybe that was a conscious move and Ritchie tried to get away from a Purple groove. Or maybe he felt that what Rainbow did warranted a more rigid approach – I found it even as a teenager a step back and missed the profound musicality of the Purple swing of yore. If I want to hear something rigid, no one does it better than Rammstein, I don’t need to listen to Brits and Yanks attempt that.
https://youtu.be/NQePSwNkvbA
April 16th, 2025 at 04:21Ok, imo, when a person lacks humility, no matter how great this person is, (in this: playing the guitar), I can enjoy listening to his dexterity, but man I would have enjoyed it so much more had he been a lot less self-exalted 🤔
April 16th, 2025 at 05:56Objection, Judge Karin!!!
Ritchie as a younger man was both: A show-off and humble at the same time. He was perceptive: He knew what he could do well (and others couldn‘t do as well) AND he was very cognizant of who was more talented or technically better than him. I think Blackmore knew how good he was without ever being delusional about it. And he was never shy to give credit to other guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Mick Taylor, Tommy Bolin, Big Jim Sullivan or Johnny Winter. At the same time he has a contrarian urge (I can relate!) and could be a judgmental little bastard which is why he has at different stages in his career made dismissive comments about otherwise popular and/or even adored guitarists like Eric Clapton (lame, predictable choice of notes), Jimmy Page (sloppy), Alvin Lee (no technique), Steve Howe (just running scales up and down) and Stevie Ray Vaughan (nothing new). Mind you, all those (at the core often correct) judgements could be nonchalantly reversed by Ritchie just a few interviews later, but that is just him. Always happy to feed the fire a little and then feign innocence: “What, me? I did no such thing.” 😎
Ritchie was cocky – as young men can be – but never full of himself. For once, I have to come to the defense of the old man, not that he needs it.
April 16th, 2025 at 11:42@3
I’m really happy you’re revealing this about RB, but I wasn’t mentioning him as a young man, I based my comment on how he treated Ian, Ian, Roger and Jon before he left Purple for good.
When ever I hear RB play the guitar, I am blown away, and I truly find him among the top 3 of guitarists 😍
April 16th, 2025 at 13:34But I would so much more enjoy his magnificent skills had he been more like Ian G!
(Yeah yeah – bring it on to my sinful head! I am getting used to all your charming innuendos regarding my inner love life and the current troubadour of Purple 😄)
I think like Karin,
April 19th, 2025 at 08:45Great RB, magical guitarist and nothing else.