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There’s this one lick…
Ultimate Guitar spoke to Simon McBride, and offers not quite a full interview, but his answer to one of the questions:
What is the most difficult Ritchie Blackmore part to play?
Most of it is actually not too bad. There’s one little lick which annoyed me for a long, long time, it’s in ‘Lazy’. I don’t play the same solo he plays in ‘Lazy,’ but ‘Lazy’ is one of those songs where I feel I can just improvise a bit more and just have a bit more fun with it.
But there’s this one lick he does in it, and I said, ‘I have to play that.’ And it’s a bitch of a lick. It’s not ultrafast. It’s just there’s a lot of chromatic stuff in it and slides in a very tight space, within three or four frets, and that’s it. So that, to me, is the hardest thing about playing Purple.
Everything else, Ritchie was never really a full technician. So, nothing was really difficult to play technique-wise. Ritchie was more of a creative player.
Even ‘Highway Star,’ the fast part in that, it’s fast, but it’s not John Petrucci from Dream Theater or something ridiculously fast. It’s fast, but it fits the song. But everything else that he played was more just melodies. Ritchie played for the song most of the time. But yeah, that lick in ‘Lazy’ ā that still haunts me every night when I come up to it. I’m like, ‘Oh shit, don’t screw it up!
Thanks to Ultimate Guitar for the quote, and we hope to see the rest of the interview one day.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Thatās cute of him to reveal. If youāre a player there is always that one devilish lick no one seems to have issues with – even people a lot less good than you -, but you do and it drives you nuts.
Simon doesnāt find most of Ritchieās stuff technically challenging and I believe him. And itās not arrogance from his side. What he probably misses though is that guitar techniques and the abilities of even an average player have quadrupled in the last 50 years. What Ritchie played in the early 70ies was well beyond the capabilities of most players THEN, but for an 80ies kid like Simon reared on Joe Satriani itās a piece of cake.
July 16th, 2024 at 20:27Yo,
qt.”Ritchie was never really a full technician. So, nothing was really difficult to play technique-wise”…
Well said ! But he does have his idiosyncrasies that make RB, RB…
Peace !
July 17th, 2024 at 00:23Looks like when Simon joint purple didn’t bring his own shoes with him. He sounds like he is happy to step in Richie’s shoes or Steve’s Morse shoes.
July 17th, 2024 at 06:45What people need to understand that it doesn’t matter about technique it’s all about what your ears process to your brain for the enjoyment of music and the fact is 99.99999 percent of the fans are not guitar players so getting too technical is like listening to politicians that don’t make sense and speak garbage.
Peace āļø
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEjbJTKcxY0
Tim Pierce is a studio master guitarist who has played on a ridiculous amount of recordings. Here he is talking about this very thing.
July 17th, 2024 at 14:39I listened to Knebworth 1985 a few days ago, it has been ages since I last heard it. My gosh was Ritchie sloppy that day. Good-natured + inspired, but sloppy, and hearing it on CD with his guitar mixed into the foreground is unforgiving. If you’ve spent the last 30 years like I did listening to the Morse or the McBride line-ups live, you’re not used to that amount of sloppiness anymore.
July 17th, 2024 at 15:01This track is a testament to the fact that you don’t need to be fast and technical to play tasty guitar: https://sonichits.com/video/Alexis_Kalofolias_%26_Thanos_Amorginos/Gia_ligo_-_Alexis_Kalofolias_%26?track=1
Weird music for this place, but try listening to it.
July 17th, 2024 at 20:44Rick G, thanks for the Tim Pierce vid, really educational. Blackmore basically amalgamated the F minor blues scale to a point it became chromatic, but unlike many modern guitarists (Steve could be a culprit too), IT NEVER SOUNDS CHROMATIC, just interesting and very melodic.
Lazy is a very good showcase for Blackmore’s uncanny fluidity. It’s not for nothing that Roger once replied when Little Ian or Jon asked him what a DP guitarist should be able to do: “Can he play Lazy?” Steve and Simon both can/could, Tommy couldn’t (or at least didn’t want to), he approximated it with Mk IV, which had its own charm, but of course any guitar teacher would have spanked him for it.
July 17th, 2024 at 21:31Uwe @ 1 and @ 5. Agreed….Ritchie was the most technically proficient guitar player of his generation. Way more so than Hendrix, Page and on certain days, even Beck. That was back in the 1970’s when guitar-virtuosity was in its infancy. Ritchie was the pioneer who blazed the trail and opened it up for the shredders (ie: EVH, Malmsteen, Rhoads, Vai, Satriani et al) who followed.
So if we are comparing Ritchie in the technical sense, to those whizkids who came later, sure it’s no contest. But guitar-playing back in the 70’s was a nascent art form…one used mainly for expression. Ritchie is the one who upped the game and introduced more technical aspects to it. Sure, many modern-day players can nowadays replicate most of what Ritchie did back then, but Ritchie was the one who created it. And, more importantly, a lot of what Ritchie wrote and played is far more memorable, impactful and long-lasting than what most of the later followers have done since. And I include even the venerable Steve Morse in that group of followers.
As for Ritchie’s performance at Knebworth, I agree, some of it is cringe-worthy. I think at times he was striving for speed like the new kids were doing in those days, but it just wasn’t working for him. When he settled back down in the late 80’s / early 90’s toward a more melodic approach, he was far more effective.
July 17th, 2024 at 21:50#5 Uwe:
I absolutely agree with you!….Knebworth 1985 truly obscene!!
July 17th, 2024 at 22:15I never understood why on the HOBL tour no one told Purple “Hey guys, but on the PS tour between bad sounds and cacophonous passages, do you want to get a grip?”.. .. otherwise nobody’s Perfect will suck (and in fact it did)
Yo,
@5 stated…
qt.”I listened to Knebworth 1985 a few days ago, it has been ages since I last heard it. My gosh was Ritchie sloppy that day”…
I suggest RB’s sloppy all-the-time, but that Knebworth gig is a pretty-good sounding raw & loud bootleg ( if we have the same version )…I listened to it maybe a month-ago, & forgot how good it is…Better to have this one than “Nobody’s Perfect” in many ways…
It does contain a great rendition of SotW imo. I must admit that this tune has become something I tune-out to when played, but this version grabs your attention for sure, much like the Rainbow version from San Antonio ’82…
Peace !
July 17th, 2024 at 23:20Georgivs, I have absolutley no problem with slow guitar. In fact I mostly prefer it to “fast guitar”, I love Hot Chocolate’s Emma for those five double-bend notes at 03:13,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFYOHrwi-W8
that is all you need (to know).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfqaKRi-3co&t=9s
There is a Purple connection btw. No, not to Robert Redford, to Harvey Hinsley, lead guitarist of Hot Chocolate. He replaced Ritchie in The Outlaws.
July 18th, 2024 at 01:15I will be hung, drawn and quartered for this, but one of the nicest SOTW versions Purple ever did was this one here …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYWqY5sUOuQ
Blacker’s solo was something too, he generally played very well on that tour because – once again – he had things his way. š
I’ll crawl under my rock now and wait for the ricochet …
July 18th, 2024 at 01:29@ 11 – I will let that DeepRainbow one pass Uwe, not that I listened to it as I couldn’t because of JLT, but I will take your word for it. The Hot Chocolate I cannot leave though & that Emma song. What a wonderful song that is & that was definitely a blast from the past. They were a very good band & thanks also for the guitarist info as I was about to look him up, thinking who is that guitarist? Harvey Hinsley & I will read more about him soon & he is a very melodic player. Another play for the ‘song’ guitarist from those days. Something in the water back then, so many wonderful melodic guitarists. When I first heard Living Colour in 1991 I was thinking who does this lead vocalist sound like. It took me a while but then Errol from HC came to me. Corey Glover’s voice & style is so much like Errol’s. A great singer Errol was as Corey is also. Nice easy going funk soul songs they were with HC, happy music indeed. Thanks for that & also a few other hits as well that I did enjoy from the glorious 1970’s. ‘Everyone’s a winner baby that’s no lie’. Classic. RIP Errol.
https://thefutureispast.co.uk/2018/06/03/unsung-heros-harvey-hinsley/
July 18th, 2024 at 11:42āDeeper purpsā message here nails what I had been thinking. It was somewhat normal to hear well respected guitarists playing very sloppy in the 1970ās. Just listen to a lot of live Hendrix and especially Ritchie. Iām an avid Mk2&3 boot collector, so I have my share examples. In many cases, Ritchie just makes a bunch of noise instead of some inspirational passage during the extended portion of ST or MR. When he was inspired, the difference could make hair stand up on your neck. Certainly that level of sloppiness would never be tolerated today. Ritchie certainly made up for it though, with great songwriting, which is why the classic period is so revered to this day. Since the reunion, (arguably) there hasnāt been another In Rock or MH level of greatness album.
July 18th, 2024 at 13:34@11
Cool stuff, Herr Uwe. Both the song and the guitar part. I bet you are no stranger to Willie DeVille records, either.
July 18th, 2024 at 18:31@11 Uwe, thereās also a Hot Chocolate-Deep Purple connection via Tony Wilson, produced by Derek Lawrence, on some of whose recordings members of Purple served as session musicians, as evidenced in the DL Sessions CDs.
July 18th, 2024 at 19:11Yeah, I knew about the Derek Lawrence connection too, they were his pet project for a while.
Wow, Iām surprised that Hot Chocolate have elicited such a positive response here! Georgivs, you must be teenager with a good taste in music (they do exist!) if you only heard āEmmaā now, there was no escaping it in the 70ies. I like black cats with that Nat King Cole honey dew in their voice, Errol Brown, James JT Taylor (Kool & The Gang) or Sam Cooke. They can sound schmaltzy without sounding really schmaltzy – if that makes sense. That said, there is nothing with a raw black voice either!
https://youtu.be/zfaOf70M4xs
And yup, Georgivs, I have Mink/Willie de Ville in my collection too.
July 20th, 2024 at 13:48