Sometimes difficult to cure
In this video, dated December 1979, Ritchie Blackmore makes some noises for a few minutes, eventually settling upon Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Supported by Messrs. Glover, Airey, and Powell.
![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/morse8.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/morse3.jpg)
In this video, dated December 1979, Ritchie Blackmore makes some noises for a few minutes, eventually settling upon Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Supported by Messrs. Glover, Airey, and Powell.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
This footage was from the Capitol Theatre, Passiac, New Jersey December 1st 1979. I know because I was there. The entire show can be seen on you tube. Not the best quality in the world but better than nothing. I can’t believe it was almost 46 years ago. I’m not trying to quote Bryan Adams but those were the best days of my life.
March 3rd, 2025 at 01:45Well, if Ritchie does it, it must be art and we must all listen in awe.
“Noise only to a lesser man, it’s music to a Blackmore fan!”
(☝️😎 English is only my second language, some appreciation for my cunning linguistic rhyming skills please!)
This is the prototype of what became Difficult to Cure, but they hadn’t introduced the shuffle backing yet and Ritchie doesn’t play the melody with a slide but rather via volume fade-ins (like in the middle part of Fools).
But we really have much more important matters to deliberate:
I know, I know, the questions burns inside all of you, what kind of bass is Roger playing there? It’s not the Gibson Thunderbird IV with which he started the DTE Tour, that had by then gone into the eternal hunting grounds as Roger had bumped its fragile head stock against a mic stand (the mic stand won, the headstock snapped off). So what is it then?
An Ovation Magnum I, body and neck made of mahogany (like the Thunderbird), but the neck reinforced by carbon rods (same material as helicopter blades which the Ovation Group also produced), we’re gonna show that dastardly mic stand next time! 😂 An en vogue bass at the time, Kelly Groucutt, here obviously discovering/exploring the temptations of disco octave bass with ELO, played one too:
https://youtu.be/Up4WjdabA2c
(Hopefully, this vid will also have some therapeutic healing effect on Madame Karin, but no disco dancing yet, doctor’s orders!)
Roger also played it on the I Surrender vid in 1981:
https://youtu.be/z5lPjVHitCs
March 3rd, 2025 at 02:09This has been around on youtube for years. It’s quite good!. Here’s some colorised videos from the same concert.
First it’s: Ritchie’s Blues & Long Live Rock & Roll:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsMgWniveW0
Next is: Man On The Silver Mountain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY2FfR4uHSM
Then the whole concert from the DVD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-5Uko7_CTU
March 3rd, 2025 at 05:20Good to see and thanks for posting. A new lineup and then some. See what new blood brings to an ensemble, better not go there though. Ode to Joy by you know who and later arranged for rock music by Blackmore, Glover and Airey. Wonderful. Cheers.
March 3rd, 2025 at 05:21This is/was Mr. Ritchie Blackmore … Genius, Legend, unforgetable unique … God on Guitar (like Marc Zyk)
LLRnR
March 3rd, 2025 at 09:48kraatzy
My first gig was on this tour: 4 January 1980 at Bingley Hall in Stafford (a cattle shed actually). However, it was posponed until Feb 23/24 because I think Blackmore broke his finger shortly after this video.
March 3rd, 2025 at 11:35Isn’t this the Capitol Theatre show long available on YT? More than 1hr footage in low quality can be easily found.
March 3rd, 2025 at 12:19Yes, Capitol Theatre 12.01.79.
March 3rd, 2025 at 12:44https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyTuQOJIjFw&t=176s
This is from the 12/1/1979 – Capitol Theatre , New Jersey show first revealed 10 years ago. Nice video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyTuQOJIjFw
March 3rd, 2025 at 13:41What I liked about the performances of the DTE line-up was that Bonnet was such an exuberant loose cannon anything could go wrong any minute (and it is true, Bonnet was prone to sing more bum notes than RJD, but he also tested boundaries more). For all the long hair and heavy metal look, Dio was the safer and more controlled performer, Bonnet was just wild in comparison.
March 3rd, 2025 at 18:24Beethoven’s Ninth under Ritchie was fantastic. Ritchie had an incredible sense of tone and melody.”Ninth “always on the D P setlist (1984-1993).
March 3rd, 2025 at 18:43Beethoven’s 5th performed by Apocalyptica is also good.
Ritchie was influential.. he was a role model for others to start with the classics.
Bosnian hard rock guitarist Sead Lipovaća Zele caught up with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK97EyuNA8I
@2
“but no disco dancing yet, doctor’s orders!)
Alright!
Is it ok to giggle a bit?
March 3rd, 2025 at 18:51https://youtu.be/HrcbCW4y9Dw?si=IKvoFq2iAEZqDRXC
As a longtime fan, I’d be fine with having never seen or heard that!
March 3rd, 2025 at 22:28No, it’s definitely not ok to giggle, not even a little bit. “Laughter is a devilish wind which deforms the lineaments of the face and makes men look like monkeys.” @01:17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUUB96c6EpY
March 4th, 2025 at 02:13@14
Well I have one comment for that nonsense:
https://youtu.be/ZHE0Y8FAujM?si=npJsovtNnA55qmSS
March 4th, 2025 at 09:50Saw Rainbow in 82 & 83 @ Philadelphia Spectrum, Straight Between The Eyes and Bent Outa Shape tours, best of times for sure.
March 4th, 2025 at 13:01Dave, it reminds me of a scathing review in a German rock magazine called Sounds in the late 70s about the last Rainbow with Dio line-up touring with REO Speedwagon in the US. It went something like this:
“It must be extremely frustrating for the former DP lead guitarist to be an opening act on a long tour with the up and coming Midwest rockers. So the man in black channels his anger into making noise, plain noise as a bewildered audience looks on, waiting for the main act. After 45 minutes it is thankfully over.
It is then up to homecoming heroes REO Speedwagon to play an entertaining and fresh set …”
At the time, those words really stung (and I hadn’t even heard of REO yet, they were only just beginning to make some waves in Germany with their album ‘Live: You Get What You Play For’).
By the late 70s that type of neo-Hendrix noise making on guitar had grown really long in the tooth. It was one thing to play like that in the mid to late 60s, quite another to still do it ten years later (similar to the guitar smashing). Now there is nothing wrong with playing guitar in a raunchy way like Bernie Tormé or KK Downing did, but Blackers too often overdid it after it had overstayed its welcome. Just like stopping to wear platform soles, Ritchie was a little late in catching on, he has a deeply conservative strain in him.
March 4th, 2025 at 14:20Just a temporary brain lapse caused by the new hair plugs bumping against his cerebellum, no doubt.
March 4th, 2025 at 19:42@ 2 “Noise only to a lesser man, it’s music to a Blackmore fan!”
Wahrere Worte wurden kaum je gesprochen. I will use that one to cut a long story short from now on.
March 5th, 2025 at 10:38🤣 Jim’s comment … But those new hair plugs were by then nicely grown in, he already had them in the autumn of 1977 at that legendary Munich gig where – surprise, surprise – fresh new bangs had replaced the former widow’s peak (BRAVO teen magazone titled: ‘Ritchie has new hair from the USA!’). I missed the widow’s peak, it made Blackmore look nastier (in line with his true character! 😉). Ritchie was never a handsome man, more the Lee van Cleef type (an actor he adored), not pretty, but impressive.
March 5th, 2025 at 14:03“And this, children, is how tapping without fretting was invented, history needs to be rewritten ….”
March 5th, 2025 at 14:05