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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