Deep Purple's Ritchie Blackmore: Guitar World Interview 1991

The Rock Legend: Richie Blackmore's Musical Journey and Influences

In this episode, PJ Pat delves deep into the iconic career of Richie Blackmore, the legendary guitarist from Deep Purple. From his early days and inspirations to his unique playing style and pivotal moments in rock history, it's a comprehensive look at the man behind hits like 'Smoke on the Water.' We also explore his transition to Renaissance-inspired music with Blackmore's Night, his interactions with other rock legends, and his candid thoughts on fellow guitarists like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Yngwie Malmsteen. A must-listen for any classic rock aficionado!

00:00 Introduction to Richie Blackmore
00:36 Early Days of Deep Purple
01:15 Influences and Inspirations
02:07 Transition to Hard Rock
02:58 Guitar Techniques and Innovations
04:56 Opinions on Fellow Guitarists
08:14 Reflections on Career and Music
14:58 Future Aspirations and Final Thoughts

Transcript

 When you say classic rock, you got to talk about this man right here, Richie Blackmore from Deep Purple. So let's get into it.

Okay. Richie Blackmore, a few years before forming the Renaissance inspired Blackmore's Night, the former Deep Purple guitarist recounted his career highlights, including writing of Smoke on the Water. Such a classic. Reprinted from Guitar World, February, 1991. Okay, blast from the past, here we go. Guitar World asks, Let's go back to the beginning of Deep Purple.

How did you end, in parenthesis, keyboardist John Lord meet? I met him in a transvestite bar in 1968 in Hamburg, Germany. He laughs. Back in the late 60s, there were few organists who could play like John. We shared the same taste in music. He loved vanilla fudge. They were our heroes. They used to play London's Speakeasy Club, and all the hippies used to go there to hang out.

Clapton, The Beatles, Oh man, can you imagine hanging out at just this small club with these guys there? Incredible. According to legend, the talk of the town during that period was Jimi Hendrix, but that's not true. It was Vanilla Fudge. They played 8 minute songs with dynamics. People said, What the hell's going on here?

How come it's not 3 minutes? Timmy Bogert, their bassist, was amazing. The whole group was ahead of its time. Man, you know what? I've heard so much about Vanilla Fudge over the years. Never really got into them or never really even bothered checking this out. But now, this is definitely making me click on Vanilla favourite streaming platform.

Okay, the whole group was ahead of its time as I just said. So initially we wanted to be a Vanilla Fudge clone, but our singer Ian Gillian, which is a phenomenal singer, wanted to be Edgar Winter. He'd say, I want to scream like that, like Edgar Winter. So that's what we were, Vanilla Fudge with Edgar Winter.

After your breakthrough live record, Concerto for Group and Orchestra in 1969 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, your playing took a more aggressive turn. Deep Purple in Rock. 1970 almost became the blueprint of all subsequent Purple Records. I became tired of playing with orchestras. And rock was my way of rebelling against a certain classical element in the band.

Ian Gillian, bassist, Roger Glover, and I wanted to be a hard rock band. We wanted to play So off we went in that direction. I felt that the whole orchestra thing was a bit tame. I mean, you're playing in the Royal Albert Hall and the audience sits there with folded arms and you're standing there playing next to a violinist who holds his ear every time you take a solo.

It doesn't make you feel particularly inspired. You started using the vibrato bar extensively on In Rock. Yes, that's right. I'd seen the James Cotton Blues Band and the Fillmore East, and the guitarist in the band played with the vibrato bar. He got the most amazing sounds. Right after seeing him, I started using the bar.

Hendrix inspired me too. Used to give the whammy bar a real workout. I went crazy with it, Richie says. I used to have quarter inch bars made for me because I'd keep snapping the normal kind. My repairman will look at me strangely and say, What are you doing with these tremolo bars? Finally, he gave me his gigantic tremolo arm made of half an inch of solid iron and said here if you break this thing I don't want to know about it about three weeks later.

I went back to the shop He looked at me and said no you haven't and I said, yes, I have a graphic detail I explained to him how I would twirl the guitar around the bar throw it onto the floor put my foot on it and pulled the bar off with two hands. He was a bit of a purist so he wasn't amused. There was a lot of unusual noise during the final solo of Heart, Love and Man from In Rock.

Is that you throwing your guitar around the studio? If I remember right, I was knocking my guitar up and down against a door in the control room. The engineer looked at me oddly. He was one of your typical old school engineers, like my repairman. He wasn't amused. Did you ever try a locking nut tremolo system?

No, I don't use a twang bar anymore. It's become too popular. Between In Rock and 1971's Fireball, you switched from Gibson's to Fender Strat's. How did that affect your playing style? Richie says it was difficult because it's much easier to flow across the strings on a Gibson. Fenders have more tension, so you have to fight them a little bit more.

I had a hell of a time, but I stuck with the Fenners because I was so taken with their sound, especially when they were paired with a wah. Around Fireball and 1972's Machine Head, your playing took on a blues and funk edge. Did Hendrix's have anything to do with that? I was impressed by Hendrix. Not so much by his playing as his attitude.

He wasn't a great player, but everything else about him was brilliant. Even the way he walked was amazing. His guitar playing, though, was always a little bit weird. Hendrix inspired me, but I was still more into Wes Montgomery. I was also into the Allman Brothers around the time of those albums. What did you think of Steve Ray Vaughan?

Oof, Steve Ray Vaughan, my favorite guitar player of all time, for sure. I knew that question was coming. His death was very tragic, Richie says. But I'm surprised that everybody thinks he was such a brilliant guitar player. When there are people like Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor.

Johnny Winter, who is one of the best blues players in the world, is also very underrated. Oh, come on, Richie. Don't do Stevie Ray Vaughan like that. He's amazing. Absolutely nobody sounds like Stevie Ray Vaughan. Mark my words. Nobody. His vibrato is incredible. Stevie Ray Vaughan was very intense. Maybe that's what caught everyone's attention.

As a player, he didn't do anything amazing. What?! What are you talking about? You take that back, Richie. You take that back. Name me one person that plays and sounds like Steve Ray Vaughan. Man. Blasphemy. Not sure if I should just continue reading this thing. I don't know, man. I'm starting to lose respect for this guy, all of a sudden.

Alright. Okay. For you, I'll keep on going. How did you develop your own unique fingerstyle vibrato style? Or vibrato style, I should say. In my early days, I never used finger vibrato at all. I originally carved my reputation as one of the fast guitar players. Then I heard Eric Clapton. I remember saying to him, You have a strange style.

Do you play with that vibrato stuff? Really an idiotic question, but he was a nice guy about it. Right after that, I started working on my vibrato. It took about two or three years for me to develop any technique. Around 68 or 69, you suddenly hear it in my playing. I noticed that your rhythm parts aren't always played with a pick.

Yeah, Richie says that's from being lazy. It's like Jeff Beck, when he can't find a pick, he just plays with his fingers. You know how it is. You're watching television, you can't find a pick, so you just play with your fingers. Even on something as simple as the riff to Smoke on the Water, you'd be surprised how many people play that with downstrokes, which makes a world of difference.

Otherwise, you're just hitting the tonic before the 5th. Why do you think that, of all your work, smoke on the water is so enduring? The riff is the rock equivalent to the opening of Beethoven's 5th symphony. Simplicity is the key, he says. Damn right, and it is simple. You can still hear people playing it at music stores.

I never had the courage to write until I heard The Who's I Can't Explain and My Generation. Those riffs were so straightforward that I thought, alright, if Pete Townsend can get away with that, then I can too. It's crazy right? Even these great, amazing guitar legends always get inspired by legends and guitar players that's come before them and they honour them.

It's not about ripping someone off, it's about being inspired by them. What do you think of Tommy Bolin when he took your place in Deep Purple following your 1974 departure? I originally heard him on Billy Cobham's Spectrum 1973 album and thought, Who is this guy? Then I saw him on television and he looked incredible.

Like Elvis Presley. I knew he was gonna be big. When I heard that Purple hired him, I thought it was great. He was always so humble. I remember he would always invite me out to his house in Hollywood to see his guitar. One day, I went to his place. I walked in and tried to find him, but no one was around.

There were no furnishings. Nothing. I stayed there for ten minutes before he finally appeared. He showed me his guitar, and the strings must have had a quarter inch of grime on them, and thought he hadn't changed them in four years. I asked him, when was the last time he changed his strings, and he said very seriously, Gee, I don't know.

Do you think I should change them? Man, you know what, some people just Are clueless, they just focus on their art, focus on what they do, and just don't give an F about anything else. You know who that reminds me of? Is the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist, John Frusciante. He just lives and dies by his art, by his music.

I don't think to this day he actually knows how to drive. I know a couple years ago he didn't. And his reason was, all he cared was music, that's it, nothing else. Everything else is a distraction. Now it seems like Tommy Bolland had the same idea going. Did you ever toy with the idea of playing strictly classical music?

He says, yes, I would love to go back to the 1520s, the time of my favorite music. A few of my friends in Germany have a very authentic four piece, and they play medieval music. I've always wanted to play with them. But it hasn't panned out yet. But in general, I'm not good enough technically to be a classical musician.

Wow. This is Ritchie Blackmore saying that one of the most kind of technical, classical electric guitarists out there, him and Malstine, Yngwie Malstine, of course, put those two in the same category. With, of course, Malstein being more of a lightning player. Okay, so he says, Yeah, I'm not good enough technically to be a classical musician.

I like discipline. When you're dealing with classical music, you have to be rigid. I'm not a rigid player. I like to improvise. The song Stargazer from his second Rainbow album, 1976's Rainbow Rising, has a strong classical feel. How did you come up with that one? That was a good tune, he says. I wrote that on the cello.

The cello I had given up on the guitar between 1975 and 78, I completely lost interest. Wow. Can you imagine? I was sick of hearing other guitar players and I was tired of my tunes. What I really wanted to be was British cellist Jacqueline Re on cello, so I started playing cello. Did you ever record with a cello?

Yes. Just on a small backing track. I can't remember on what. But you have to give your whole life to a cello. When I realized that, I went back to the guitar and just turned the volume up a bit louder. Was there anything you learned from the cello that you applied to the guitar? Not really, the cello is such a melancholy instrument.

Such an isolated, miserable instrument. But it was an appropriate choice for me at the time, because my girlfriend had left me and I was going through this miserable phase. Wow, he just went all in on the darkness, eh? What do you think of Yngwie Malmsteen? He's often credited you as an influence. Well, there you go, speak of the devil.

He's always been very nice to me, and I always get on very well with him. I don't understand him though, his playing. What he wears, his movements are also a bit creepy. Normally you think, well, the guy's just an idiot. But when you hear him play, you think That guy's no idiot. He knows exactly what he's doing.

He's got to calm down. He's not Paganini, though he thinks he is. When Yngwie can break all of his strings, but one, and play the same piece on one string, then I'll be impressed. What do you think of tapping? Thank goodness it's come to an end. Okay, now, keep in mind, this article was printed in, uh, 1991, obviously.

It's back now with all those virtual guitarists on Instagram. Tapping is alive and well. But back in 1991, Richie says, Thank goodness it's come to an end. The first person I saw doing that hammer on stuff was an American guitarist. Harvey Mandel at the Whiskey A Go Go in 1968. I thought, what the hell is he doing?

It was so funny, he laughs. Jim Morrison was carried out because he was shouting abuse at the band. Jimi Hendrix was there. We were all getting drunk. Then Harvey Mandel starts doing his stuff. What's he doing? Everybody was singing. Even the audience stopped dancing. Obviously, Eddie Van Halen must have picked up a few of those things.

What do you think of Eddie? Guitar World asks. It depends on my mood. He is probably the most influential player in the last 15 years because everybody's gone out and bought one of those. What does he play? Charvel, Carvel. And they say Kramer with the locking nut. Yes! With the locking nut. And everyone's gone hammer on crazy.

So he's obviously done something. He's a great guitar player, but songwriting and keyboard work. I think he's gonna be remembered. He could be the next Cole Porter. No shit, Richie! Of course he's gonna be remembered forever! Just, I mean Rest in peace rest in peace Eddie. How do you feel about your own guitar hero status?

It's funny to find myself in that position because when I first came to America I thought why go to America when they have these fantastic players I was brought up on pedal steel great Speedy West and country guitarist Jimmy Bryant people like that when I was 13 years old I couldn't believe how good they were.

I thought when I go to America I'm going to get killed saying, Oh, you play guitar very well. I'd say, how can you say that when you've got all these guys in Nashville who just tear me apart, I still say it. If you tune into American television variety show, he ha you'll see these guys who are absolutely amazing.

Jeff Beck once told me that he went to Nashville to do a record. While he was in the studio, this guy, who was sweeping up, asked him, Can I borrow your guitar for a second? Jeff said, Oh, of course. The guy started playing and completely blew Jeff away. He left soon after that. Thank goodness all those amazing players stay in Nashville.

That is so true. That's kind of well known in the industry that, if you want to be anybody, you go to Nashville. That is the mecca of music. It's been like that for a while. It's the mecca of songwriting, even to this day. So Nashville is where it's at, and it's been where it's at, apparently, since 1991. What does the future hold for you?

I'm very moved by renaissance music, but I still love to play hard rock, though only if it's sophisticated and has some thought behind it. I don't want to throw myself on stage and act silly, because I see so many bands doing that today. There's a lot going on today that disturbs me. So much derivative I'm not sure what he means by that.

Where are the progressive bands like Cream, Procol Harem, Jethro Tull, or The Experience? I could go on, but we have to live with it. I guess he wasn't a grunge fan. This is 91. This is, I think, pretty much at the peak of grunge. I know Pearl Jam came out. With Tan back in 91, I believe Nirvana as well, uh, either 91 or 92 with Nevermind.

So yeah, I guess he wasn't a big fan of that whole, uh, solo killing era, or shredder killing era. But man, Richie Blackmore, nothing to sneeze at. That was a fun little interview. Alright, hope you enjoyed that. Rock on one louder, and I'll see you in the next one.