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Never completely uncontroversial

Ritchie Blackmore, House of Blues Chicago, Oct 17 2009; photo: Nick Soveiko CC-BY-NC-SA

Back in 2021, around the time Nature’s Light was released, Ritchie Blackmore gave an interview to the German magazine Gitarre & Bass. And for a change, he seemed to be completely serious throughout.

Which phase of your rock career is your songwriting today closest to? And which one is it most different from?

To be honest, even in the past I almost always had Renaissance music in mind when I was composing, the only difference being that I always incorporated a little blues into my chord progressions. During my time with Deep Purple I often composed riffs plus the chord progressions to go with them and then let Ian Gillan find the melodies to go with them. So in that sense I had no idea how the melody would go when I was writing songs. But that changed later in my career. When I founded Rainbow in 1975 I automatically knew what the melody would be while I was composing. There were some significantly different compositional approaches between Deep Purple and Rainbow.

The interview was published in German, and you can read more of it in Gitarre & Bass, or take your chances with Google’s automatic translation.

Thanks to Uwe Hornung for the info.



3 Comments to “Never completely uncontroversial”:

  1. 1
    Uwe Hornung says:

    Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen – polish that rusty German of yours, jawoll!

    https://youtu.be/McFj_vq3cwk

  2. 2
    DeeperPurps says:

    Good Blackmore interview. The man has mellowed over the years, but can still play a mean guitar. The Nature’s Light album is quite good, if one is inclined towards listening to Blackmore’s NIght. There are a couple of tunes on it wherein Ritchie pulls out the Strat and lays down some really nice, tasty solos.

  3. 3
    Uwe Hornung says:

    German interrogations generally yield substantial rezültz.

    https://youtu.be/ui7DPpL7cq8

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