A figure who wielded his Fender Strats like Excalibur? The forefather of neo-classical shred? A believer in the mystical, wearing tights and playing old madrigals? It can only be great Ritchie Blackmore.
Every player has likely heard of Ritchie Blackmore. But it is plausible that he’s actually overlooked somewhat in the pantheon, given the yards of coverage and acclaim given to, say, Jimmy Page? Yes, it is.
These two behemoths of classic British rock are broadly the same age, and have both influenced myriad players. If anything, Blackmore has trodden a more diverse path – crunching hard rock in Deep Purple, wizardly metal to pop-AOR in Rainbow and unique acoustic reveries in Blackmore’s Night. The latter will never have the cachet of
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to be famous. But for sheer skill, ambition and – let’s cut to the core – simply bamboozling mastery, Blackmore is very much Page’s peer.
Like Page, Blackmore cut his teeth in the strange world of 60s British pop sessions. He’d taken up the because he “wanted to be like Tommy Steele” (the music hall rock ’n’ roller) and even had lessons from session great ‘Big’ Jim Sullivan (mentor to ‘Little’ Jimmy Page) on the London session circuit. Blackmore worked as a lesser session player on Joe ‘
’ Meek productions, famously being in Meek’s house band The Outlaws (with Chas Hodges of Chas & Dave, trivia fans), backing German singer Heinz on hit single
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And, like Page, also working with rock prankster Screaming Lord Sutch. Curios of Blackmore’s early career include The Outlaws’ promo single for Raleigh Bikes,
, (“Grab a girl at random, make like a tandem”) that came with its own ‘dance’ on the sleeve. Did we mention it was the 1960s?
But Blackmore eventually started to find his own feet in the band Roundabout (from 1967) which quickly morphed into Deep Purple. The name? “It was a song my grandmother used to play on the piano.” Back then, Blackmore was
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the player: keyboardist Jon Lord was DP’s main writer. Treat the three Deep Purple ‘Mark I’ LPs (featuring singer Rod Evans) with caution: although not charmless, they were more frothily psychedelic pop or blues than later Purple and Page’s own bombastic New Yard Yardbirds/Led Zeppelin, and were best known for US and European hit
(a cover of a Billy Joe Royal song). The fleeting US fame that hit provided saw Blackmore give lessons himself: to
from 1997, and the version by Poundshop mystics Kula Shaker, which actually did much better in the charts (a No. 2!) than Purple’s.
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In these early excursions, Blackmore favoured a red Gibson ES-335 – it was in vogue with Eric Clapton, Ten Years After’s Alvin Lee and others Blackmore admired, such as US bluesman Shuggie Otis. But from a musical point, there was also the influence of Jeff Beck: the ex-Yardbirds player’s exploration of eastern scales and timbres in a blues-rock template dovetailed with Blackmore’s own interest in music beyond rock ’n’ roll. “When
[The Yardbirds, 1966] came out, everybody went, ‘Oh my God! Who is that… and why is he playing this Indian stuff? It shouldn’t be allowed.’ It was just too good.”
From 1970, Deep Purple’s ‘Mark II’ lineup changed everything. Ian Gillan joined on vocals, and Blackmore increasingly led the direction of the band. “Ritchie wasn’t just the player, he was a brilliant innovator, ” judged bassist Roger Glover. “Things he wrote defy description. Ritchie was phenomenal in what he was doing in the late 60s and early 70s. He was a magnetic, dynamic writer.” Such vision didn’t come without friction. The first LP with Gillan was
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“That’s true, ” Blackmore concurred. “We were a rock band. I couldn’t understand why we kept playing with orchestras. I was impressed with what Zeppelin did, and I wanted to do that kind of stuff, and if it doesn’t take off we’ll go and play with orchestras the rest of our lives. So we did it, and it was Deep Purple
(1972), Purple Mk II delivered an onslaught of huge riffing, vocal wailing and soloing that did much to define the metal of the 1970s. Blackmore was untouchable at this point:
and many more became riffs of fable. Blackmore’s soloing became something else. In contrast to Page, he was an incredibly precise player as well as being super-fast: the likes of
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paved the way for ‘shredding’ blues rock that was way beyond his contemporaries. When Gillan departed, to be replaced in Deep Purple Mk III by the young unknown David Coverdale (alongside bassist/co-vocalist Glenn Hughes), Blackmore upped the ante again, coining the neo-classical sound in
In Purple, Blackmore started with his ES-335 but soon moved onto Fender Stratocasters, with which he became synonymous (see s & Amps below). It allowed him much more flexibility with its vibrato, and also gave a surprisingly clean sound for a ‘heavy metal’ player.
By 1975, Blackmore wasn’t overly enthralled by some of newcomer Hughes’ funkier influences, and a planned side-project with Ronnie James Dio of US rockers Elf (regular support act to Purple from 1972 onwards) soon got shaped into a full-blown new band. The Rainbow name? “It came from the Hollywood Bar & Grill (aka the Rainbow on LA’s Sunset Strip), ” Blackmore explained. “I was in there with Ronnie, getting drunk as usual, and said: ‘What shall we call the band?’ and just pointed to the sign.”
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Over their three studio albums together, the Dio/Blackmore partnership in Rainbow delivered some of the most grandiose rock of the decade. It’s possible to laugh now at the Spinal Tap-isms – much of the early Rainbow catalogue is probably best listened to while brandishing a sword and dressed in bearskins – but at the time it was astonishing. Blackmore’s riff-writing got even more intense with
featured the Munich Philharmonic. Blackmore’s solo was in the Phrygian dominant scale (used in Indian ragas, Egyptian music and Flamenco) and another flag in the sand of neo-classical metal. He was by now a long way from heavy bluesy jams of early Purple. “It’s amazing how many ists use the same old lines, ” said Blackmore of
True to form, the classic lineup of Rainbow slowly declined. Dio left in 1979, bassist Jimmy Bain was sacked; drummer Cozy Powell lasted until 1980. Blackmore continued to fly the Rainbow flag until 1984, albeit in increasingly chart-friendly forms, lesser members and with less ground-breaking . “He was perturbed that he wasn’t being played on the radio, ” reckoned Bain. Singers Graham Bonnet and Joe Lynn Turner certainly aided the AOR hits (
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magazine voted it the ‘Greatest Heavy Metal Album Ever’, and its influence on Iron Maiden, power metal, neo-classical shred and more is palpable.
: “Everybody who’s heard it thinks it’s my best playing in a long time, which I suppose is a compliment. Then again, what do
Deep Purple and Rainbow have reformed at various times, but since 1997 Blackmore’s main focus has been ‘renaissance folk rock’ band Blackmore’s Night. At 24 years and 11 albums, it’s by far his longest-lasting musical portfolio… even Steve Morse has been Deep Purple’s ist longer than Ritchie Blackmore himself! Solving any lead-singer conflicts, Blackmore
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his: Candice Night. He still breaks out his Strats on occasion, but you’re more likely to see him fretting other stringed ephemera: acoustics, a mandola, hurdy-gurdy and nyckelharpa. When he started Blackmore’s Night, he mused: “I’m finding it harder and harder to be inspired by just playing loud. I’d rather just sit down with a and play. This whole ‘You’ve got to hit with a big riff’ thing is beginning to wear off.”
Blackmore’s Night certainly isn’t for everyone, but it’s no joke. He once deadpanned; “I just don’t fit into the ‘fun’ area. A lot of musicians go: ‘Oh, that was fun.’ Well, I like to think that music… is hard work and it’s really gratifying to do, but fun? Fun is something where someone tells a joke and they laugh for 10 seconds. Music’s much deeper than that.”
“If you try to play too technically, you lose something in the music—like you’re playing for another player, ” he says. “I like to play for people. I often think of the last when I’m recording. The most important thing to me are the vocals, then comes the arrangement, then the song. And then, way down: ‘Oh yes, there has to be a solo.’ But for a lot of players, everything revolves around the solo.”
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When Blackmore first got a aged 11, it was just the same as many others of his generation: a second-hand Framus Spanish . By the early 1960s he’d become more than just a proficient youth, and he got the he played for much of that decade: a 1961 Gibson ES-335, with dot markers instead of the post-1962 block inlays. It’s been suggested the serial number was 26547. It had a Bigsby B5 vibrato fitted, a replacement for the stock tailpiece, but the Tune-o-Matic bridge remained. Originally, this era ES-335 had a short pickguard and black metal-topped knobs, and Blackmore eventually replaced these with golden ones. He generally paired it
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