This month on Bought & Sold, we speak to Hannah Wicklund about her life in guitars. A gigging player since childhood, it wasn't long before she acquired a taste for the finer things on the rack…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money?

My dad is a painting contractor, but his friend was one of those attorney gear collectors – he literally had a room full of amps and guitars. So we went in halfsies when I was nine years old. I paid $800, my dad paid $800, and I went from playing a Daisy Rock to my very first Anderson Drop Top Classic.

I think the price was down to the ‘cute’ factor of being a little nine-year-old who was paying for half of it myself. I think the poor attorney took pity on me. But my first full-on, by-myself guitar purchase was this amazing sparkle Cherry Red Custom Shop Tele. They only made 13 of them and it was my introduction to Abby [Ybarra]-wound pickups, learning the lore behind that amazing woman.

What was the last guitar you bought and why?

I bought this incredible Custom Shop Gibson 339 – it’s white with cream binding. I’m a sucker for binding. Y’know, the devil’s in the detail. I’d gone a long time of playing more Strat/Tele-dominant guitars, but I was going on tour solo with Yes and Deep Purple, and I wanted a hollowbody to ratchet things up with an instrument that really fit the stage.

What’s your best guitar-buying tip?

It’s really just to follow your intuition and your gut. Before I even pick up a guitar, there’s a special moment, there’s a spark. It’s like love at first sight. I’m not into forcing anything. I love the universe and divine intervention, so I just wait for the perfect guitar to fall into my lap – and it usually does.

What’s the most incredible find or bargain you’ve had when buying guitars?

I mean, I’m a lady with expensive taste. I went into Fanny’s [House Of Music] when I was still living in Nashville, and there was this stunning parlour with checkerboard binding. It also had these weird symbols carved into it, almost like little cats or something.

It was obviously very old, you could tell, and the name on the headstock was Herwin. Like, ‘Her Win’, I loved that. Turned out it was an 1800s parlour, so I was expecting to look at the tag and see a super-duper high price, but it was only two grand.

What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve ever had after buying gear?

Honestly, I haven’t. I’m a quality-over-quantity girl. I mean, $2,000 for a guitar is the minimum I would spend. I’ve been really fortunate: I started making good money playing music as a literal child, so I’ve taken my time with my purchases. I will say that I’ve been gifted a few things I didn’t end up enjoying… but I’m not going to tell you who gave me what!

Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go of?

Definitely. That would be my first two guitars, which were a Baby Taylor and my Daisy Rock. It’s so weird because I’m the most sentimental gal in the world. I have, like, an altar of all of these knickknacks and tokens from my life surrounding me, even on tour.

Are there any common design features on electric guitars that are an instant turn-off for you when you’re auditioning potential new guitars?

I prefer a natural shape. I’m not a huge pointy guitar fan. And I’m not a fan of gold hardware. I don’t know… there’s something about it that really turns me off, other than on a really high-end Black Beauty Les Paul. Now that is beautiful. But other than that, I just don’t trust gold on a guitar.

When was the last time you stopped to stare in a guitar shop window and what were you looking at?

It was literally the other night in Soho. I stopped and stared at this gorgeous natural-finish Gibson 335. It was very clearly quite old and had been worn in. But then I looked up and I was like, ‘What the fuck are they doing?’ Because they had it hanging on a string from the headstock, and I was like, “That can’t be good for this beautiful old guitar.”

If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp – or a cheap guitar and a top-notch amp?

Well, I really don’t like this question. It’s slightly torturous. But I will answer it: I would much rather have a shitty guitar through a fantastic amp. I do believe there’s a lot that lies in your hands, so I think for somebody who knows how to work with an instrument, there’s always a lot you can do to make a guitar sound better. But there’s not a lot you can do when there’s a solid-state amp just killing your tone.

If you could only use humbuckers or single coils for the rest of your life, which one would you choose and why?

Oh, that’s very easy – humbuckers all the way. I love digging in. I love being loud. I love having a ferocious guitar tone. I love sustain. And I play most of my set on humbuckers anyways. Y’know, if I need to, I’ll just roll the tone back and figure something else out. You can always go less, but it’s harder to go more.

What’s your favourite guitar shop and why?

Honestly, I love Gruhn Guitars [in Nashville]. There is something quite spectacular about being in a place that has so much history and love and attention put into it. It’s like an art gallery of guitars. Passion is very palpable, and George Gruhn is the heartbeat of that place.

I love being anywhere where the person in charge has as much love for it as I do for what I do in my life. But I also really do love Fanny’s. I usually have a lot of shit to talk about Nashville, I’m not gonna lie, but the guitar shops in that town are quite spectacular.

Hannah’s Go-To Rig

My Anderson guitars are an extension of me at this point. The Drop Top Classic is my go-to, but last year they sent me a Wolfhound, which has some fantastic humbucker energy.

I also have a Cobra with these custom-painted flames. It’s funny… flames can be kinda corny, but these are beautiful. I’ve had plenty of dudes make fun of me and that guitar, but I’m ready to embrace my fuck-you energy and break it out for this next run.

I’m playing through an Orange Rocker 30, but I’m gonna test the waters by adding a Supro Amulet. I love a tiny amp with a bit of break-up. On my ’board, there’s my Keeley-modified Blues Driver, my old T-Rex Room-Mate, the [MXR] Carbon Copy, the J Rockett Archer and my MXR Talk Box. I’m also playing the shit out of this incredible guitar called a Myooz guitar.

The builder, Tudor Maier, reached out and asked if he could send me a guitar, and I’m not a crazy person, so I said, “Sure.” It’s the most beautiful custom guitar. Anybody who sees it, their jaw drops, especially guitar nerds.

• War On Women; Calling All Good Men is out now via Strawberry Moon Records.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Yngwie Malmsteen’s journey to becoming a master neoclassical shredder began when his sister gave him a copy of Deep Purple’s Fireball for his eighth birthday.

“When I heard that, my path was clear,” Malmsteen said in a 2008 interview with Guitar World.

“What I loved about Blackmore’s playing were his syncopated pentatonic lines. I bought [Deep Purple’s] Made in Japan when it first came out, and a year later I knew all of those solos inside out. I would play them all day long.”

Malmsteen also primarily plays through Marshall stacks because of Blackmore (and, of course, Jimi Hendrix). Both guitarists wield white Stratocasters, too.

Fast-forward to 2018, and his guitar hero had plenty of praise for the Swedish virtuoso and his playing.

“I know him, and he’s a very nice guy,” Blackmore told Guitar World. “Excellent guitar player. A lot of people have kind of questioned his angle, but he obviously knows his stuff.

“He might be a bit too tall, but that’s my only criticism,” he quipped.

Blackmore even went as far as to say Malmsteen was “like a family member”, sharing his admiration for the Swedish maestro’s technical knowhow.

“I definitely think he’s probably the best at what he does and – for what it’s worth – the fastest. And he doesn’t play the typical blues, minor kind of interpretations. He knows his scales. It’s more interesting.”

Despite heavy fan speculation – and several Deep Purple covers featuring in Malmsteen’s live shows over the years – the two have never officially collaborated.

However, with Ritchie Blackmore returning to the stage for a surprise appearance with Deep Purple last week, and a new Malmsteen album in the pipeline, we still hold out hope for a Blackmore-Malmsteen collaboration one day.

On August 12, 2026, at Jones Beach Arena on Long Island, New York, Ritchie Blackmore reunited with Deep Purple for the first time in 33 years.

It was an astonishing feat, and not something anyone – including Purple’s current guitarist, Simon McBride – saw coming.

“It was all very last-minute,” McBride tells Guitar World. “Gillan got an email from Ritchie about a week before the gig, requesting to get up and play with us.”

Given the perceived layer of thick, unthawed ice between the camps, one would think there was a lot to hash out. It wasn’t the case. “The talks were very short,” McBride says. “Gillan asked us if we’d mind, and there were no objections from anyone.”

And really, how could they say no? “Ritchie was a big part of the band’s legacy,” McBride reminds. “I know they’ve had their differences, so it was nice to see them put that aside. From my point of view, it’s not every day you get to appear on stage beside one of the greatest icons in guitar history.”

Naturally, Blackmore’s legend status had McBride more than willing to step aside for his one-song cameo.

“I just said to Ritchie, ‘I’ll be your rhythm guitar player today. Just do your thing.’”

Blackmore did indeed do his thing, as only he can. “It was pretty cool,” McBride, who grew up digging Blackmore’s licks and, at 47, is the youngest member of Deep Purple.

“I got to stand on stage beside the guy who started this whole thing,” he says. “Ritchie is a legend, a great player, and a great innovator. I think all musicians grew up listening to his work.”

McBride joined Deep Purple in 2022 as a replacement for Steve Morse. Before that, he’d been around the blues-rock scene for decades, but he and Blackmore had never crossed paths before the Jones Beach jam.

“I was a little curious as to what he was gonna think of me,” McBride admits. “But he was a super-cool, nice guy.”

In fact, Blackmore liked what McBride was putting down. “He was really complimentary, which was a shock to me,” McBride says. “It’s very bizarre when these legends admire my playing. My head starts to explode! [laughs]”

But McBride is in no danger of getting a big head; he knows that evening was all about Blackmore. “It was a magical moment,” he says. “I think there were a lot of tears in the audience. And on stage, there were just smiles everywhere. I’m very lucky to have been part of such an iconic situation.”

That magic hasn’t stopped internet trolls from criticizing Blackmore’s playing. McBride isn’t having it. “People will always say stupid things,” he says with an eye roll. “I ignore that. Ritchie is in his 80s and plays great.

“He has health issues. If I can play that well when I’m that age, I’ll be happy. People should look at it for what it was: a magical night. There’s a lot of history in this band. That show was a part of it. A reunion between old mates who haven’t seen each other in years.”

In the days since the reunion, good vibes have flowed from Blackmore and Deep Purple’s camps. There have been photos showing old friends sharing laughs over cold beers. “That was great,” McBride says. “There were a lot of stories.”

“It’s a little bit of closure for the guys, he concludes. “There's a lot of history, and not all good. But they are older and wiser… it was great to see them close the door on all the negative history.

“As for me, I just wanted Ritchie to be happy and do his thing, which he did. Ritchie is and always will be a great player.”

It was a huge cause for celebration when Ritchie Blackmore stepped on stage with Deep Purple for the first time in over three decades last week.

Blackmore joined the band he co-founded in 1968 to play their timeless classic Smoke on the Water at the Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, on August 12. It was his first appearance with the group since 1993, when he left the band mid-tour.

Yet there have been some cynical murmurings in the guitar community about his playing that night in New York. For some, the guitar solo Blackmore delivered was a little underwhelming.

But the 81-year-old, who is recovering from a heart attack, took no prisoners when reflecting on his performance in an exclusive interview with Guitar Player.

“It was very moving because I went on very quickly and had to play immediately,” he said. “I couldn’t warm up, but I wasn’t there to be playing correct notes. I was there to see old friends.

“I hadn’t seen them in [nearly] 40 years, and we’re all getting older,” he added. “I think we realized it could be the last time we see each other, maybe.”

That might be tough to read for some Deep Purple fans, who would no doubt love a third Blackmore-Deep Purple reunion. But that’s the reality, and with health issues hugely limiting where he can play – the New York venue was a drivable distance from his Long Island home – that might have been his last hurrah with the band.

The reunion was the veteran guitarist’s move. He saw the band was in town and offered his services for a special appearance, then teased it online.

“I woke up one morning thinking, the day before their show, ‘You know it would be good for the fans if I just got up for one song, probably Smoke and just show that were not at each other’s throats and don’t hate each other,’” he told Guitar Player.

Ritchie Blackmore may be forever associated with stacks upon stacks of Marshalls. However, it turns out that, at least at the beginning of his Deep Purple years, his Marshalls were actually Voxes – a fact he says Marshall wanted to keep on the down-low.

“I really loved my Vox sound, but I wanted to change to Marshalls for the look,” he told Guitar World in a 2018 interview.

Being a regular at Jim Marshall’s shop in Ealing, London, gave Blackmore the unique opportunity to spend hours tweaking his tone.

“I’d go to the Marshall factory in Bletchley, where I met Ken Bran and Dudley Craven, who devised the circuit for me in a Marshall setup. They’d be there with their soldering irons, and I’d be batting away on the guitar trying to get the amp to sound like a Vox.

“I’d be playing so loud that all the women there, who were doing the construction of the amps, would storm out together, saying, ‘We can’t work with that loud nonsense going on.’ 60 people or so working there would leave the factory,” he admitted.

To accommodate Blackmore, Marshall went so far as to devise a soundproof room for the Deep Purple guitarist to use.

“I was there so often looking for this sound,” he recalled. “One of the secrets that they will deny to this day – ’cause they told me they would – was that they could not come up with the sound that I wanted.

“I wanted this Vox sound which was very distorted and very cutting, but seemed to have a bass resonance. And they just couldn’t get that. So in the end they said, ‘What we’re going to do is get one of our combo amps, and we’ll take out the innards and put in the Vox innards. So you’ll actually be playing a Vox, but it’ll say Marshall.’ That was the big secret of the day.”

Despite this workaround, the Marshall team were “determined” to get the right sound for Blackmore, so that he eventually became arguably the loudest guitarist of that era.

“What they did was put an extra output stage into one of their 200-watt amps [the Major], which gave it a fatter sound, a bit more distorted,” he explained. “This extra output stage basically made the 200-watt into a 280-watt.

“So for the first probably five years of Deep Purple – ’70 to ’75 – I did have the loudest amp in the world. Although I’m sure it’s dwarfed now by people who have a million watts. You know how it is. Everyone’s got to have one more, one more.

“Going up to – what? – 11 now, I guess,” he quipped.

Ritchie Blackmore reunited with Deep Purple for the first time in 33 years last night, as he stepped out to rip through Smoke on the Water.

The 81-year-old surprised the music world this week when he announced he’d hatched plans to play live with the band he departed back in 1993.

As promised, Blackmore took to the stage at the Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, on August 12, making his guest appearance on Smoke on the Water.

Blackmore could have made his one-song cameo on any number of Deep Purple songs he penned, but Smoke on the Water seemed particularly fitting.

That riff is, after all, one of the most iconic guitar hooks of all time – and one of his most famous.

Everyone in the room knew they were witnessing something special. Peep the amount of phones filming the occasion. Luckily for us, that means plenty of footage from the evening has been posted online.

Blackmore doesn’t just sit in riff territory, though. The rock veteran, who has had to abandon touring plans in the past due to health issues, lets loose for a few lead runs, too.

“It was an absolute pleasure to have back on stage the founder member, the great legend, the immortal... Ritchie Blackmore!” singer Ian Gillan said on the night. “It was a great pleasure. I'll see you in the bar.”

In an Instagram Live earlier this week, Blackmore revealed he’d reached out to Gillan to ask if he could join them at the Jones Beach Theater, which was close to his Long Island home.

“I'll be using a small amplifier, but it's very loud,” he revealed. “It's what I use when I record. I hope I can compete with the [current Deep Purple] guitar player [Simon McBride], ’cause I can see that he has very big amplifiers behind him. So, it'd probably just be the one number, as it's been a while.

“I changed my strings on my Strat, which I haven't done in over 25 years…”

Head over to Deep Purple’s website to see their upcoming tour dates.

Ritchie Blackmore has confirmed he will be joining Deep Purple for the first time since 1993.

The historic reunion is set to happen at the band’s headline show this evening (August 12) at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York.

“There is something we wanted to mention about tomorrow night,” he said on his Instagram Live (transcribed by Blabbermouth).

“Well, it is a secret, and I don't want anybody to know, but I'm probably [gonna] get up and do an encore with the band, Deep Purple. But you can't tell anybody, and I know that this is gonna be kept a secret. And will it? I suppose so.”

Blackmore went on to say that he initially brought up the idea with Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan.

“I said, ‘How would you feel about if I got up just for an encore? Just one of the songs. I don't want to intrude.’ And I said, ‘No pressure – just kind of [for] old times' sake.’ I'm 81 now. So he seemed to love the idea, put it to the band, got a thumbs-up, and it looks like we might be doing that.”

The guitarist went so far as to confirm that his roadie was even setting up his gear while he was live on Instagram.

“I'll be using a small amplifier, but it's very loud,” he revealed. “It's what I use when I record. I hope I can compete with the [current Deep Purple] guitar player [Simon McBride], ’cause I can see that he has very big amplifiers behind him. So, it'd probably just be the one number, as it's been a while.

“I changed my strings on my Strat, which I haven't done in over 25 years…”

His wife, Candice Night, who was also on the Instagram Live, disputed speculation that Blackmore would perform Highway Star, from 1972’s Machine Head, saying, “They’re opening [the show] with Highway Star.”

As for Blackmore, he’s looking forward to being on stage with Deep Purple again.

“It'll be good to see the old guys,” he said. “I think we'll all be on crutches and wheelchairs and things, although I think the rest of them are okay.

“It's kind of frightening… I've been playing acoustic guitar for 25 years, and at first I was very uncomfortable playing it, but I got used to it, and now I'm used to playing the acoustic more so than the electric.”

Anyone who wants to witness this historic moment live can grab last-minute tickets on Deep Purple’s official website.

Glenn Hughes has been forced to retire from touring due to ongoing health issues.

The former Deep Purple bassist and singer announced his retirement in a post on social media, and revealed he is set to undergo open heart surgery.

“This past year, I’ve had some health issues,” Hughes says. “The results from numerous MRIs, CT scans, and an echocardiogram have alerted my medical team, that I need another open-heart surgery.

“I really have no option and no choice as health is my number one priority. Grateful to have been chosen with a life full with the gift of music… Thank you for walking beside me.”

Joe Satriani, Richie Kotzen, Nuno Bettencourt and other music heroes offered their support in the comments.

Hughes’ retirement brings the curtain down on a decorated and prolific career that has seen him front Trapeze, Black Sabbath and the Dead Daisies. He played his most recent show over the weekend during a Kings of Chaos covers band gig in California.

The retirement comes off the back of Hughes’ latest health setback, after he was forced to cancel plans for a US tour back in January. His management at the time put this down to “a minor health issue that requires his attention over the upcoming months”.

He was able to return to the stage for a Dead Daisies show in St Charles, Illinois, back in May, but plans to perform later this year in Agoura Hills, California, have been cancelled.

Hughes also has a history of heart-related health problems, having been diagnosed with a heart murmur as a child and undergoing heart surgery in 2013.

“Having the operation with my heart and the new aorta has really changed my psychology about life and people and love itself,” Hughes said of the operation in a 2016 Classic Rock interview. “It’s really quite simple. I surround myself with loving, nurturing people.”

Hughes has played with a pantheon of rock guitar greats over his career, from Ritchie Blackmore and Tommy Bolin to Pat Thrall and Mel Galley. Speaking to Classic Rock last year, he named the best guitarist he ever worked with.

Simon McBride has been with Deep Purple for almost four years now, but it was hard for him to believe initially.

“During the first year, whenever I’d see my name attached to Deep Purple, I just couldn’t make the connection in my brain,” he tells Guitarist. That feeling carried into McBride’s first record with the band, 2024’s =1, but listening to Deep Purple’s latest record, Splat! (which, for those keeping score, is the band’s 24th studio album), you can tell McBride has properly settled in.

“The big thing for me is that things sound powerful,” he continues. “It’s about everybody playing in unison: like, ‘This is a freight train coming at you.’ Ritchie [Blackmore] and Jon Lord had that, and Steve Morse and Don [Airey] had it to a certain extent. Steve is a great player, but he’s a different sort of player, so that was a big thing for me – to get that big, powerful sound.

“I have a lot of amps, but for most of the Purple stuff I use my live rig, which is the [Neural DSP] Quad Cortex. I can hear a lot of Ritchie Blackmore fans crying out, going, ‘No! He’s using digital stuff!’ But it’s brilliant.”

Fans and critics alike are calling this the band’s heaviest record in decades – with echoes of Purple’s early ‘70s output.

“Everyone is in good form and we’re looking forward to doing [more of] what we love. These guys have been doing this since the ‘60s non-stop, so it does mean a lot [to play alongside them]. I just get on with it, but my name is attached to Deep Purple’s legacy now, which is a great achievement. I’m proud of that.”

Splat! is touted as Purple’s heaviest record in ages. What sent you in that direction?

There wasn’t any sort of board meeting: you put the five of us in a room and that’s what came of it. A lot of people say it’s heavy like old Deep Purple, and my background is that ’80s hard-rock thing, so I guess that contributed to it. What you hear came from the first writing session.

There was no intention of making this like an early Deep Purple record, like Machine Head. If you go into it with that attitude, you’ll just come up with a load of shit [laughs]. We just went into a room and started jamming and having fun.

We’re at a stage now – especially with me being the ‘new guy’ in the band – where we’re very relaxed around each other and comfortable. There’s a clear difference between this record and my first record [with the band], = 1. With the first record, there was a lot of pressure that I put on myself to try and make it fucking brilliant [laughs]. But with this one, I didn’t really give a shit. I was like, “Just play and we’ll see what happens.”

What gear discoveries have you come across since joining Deep Purple?

I had to change my sound a bit because you’re dealing with Don Airey, who plays keys, the Hammond and Leslie, and a Marshall head and cabinet. He’s in a very similar frequency range to guitar, so I had to figure something out to make the guitar sound more powerful.

So I was talking to the guys at Engl, who made Steve Morse’s signature amp – it has too many buttons for me, but it’s a great head. Engl gave me an Artist Edition head and I asked them to tweak it and put a lot more power in the lower mids and low-end.

I knew the Leslie and Hammond didn’t have that, so that could be my little space and would cut through but also make me sound powerful when we play a riff together.

Are you still mainly relying on PRS guitars?

Yes. I played everything on this record with a prototype from PRS. The idea is that there’s no truss rod. It goes back to the early days when guitars had no truss rods because I’m a firm believer that if you put a truss rod in a guitar, it sucks the tone and sustain out of it.

This guitar is like an animal. It’s hard to control because there’s so much natural sustain, and I don’t do high-output pickups. Acoustically, there’s such a difference without the truss rod. [The neck] must be the strongest piece of wood they could find because it doesn’t bend at all.

When we were in the studio, [producer] Bob Ezrin was recording and I changed to a different guitar. Within five seconds, he stopped the tape and said, “There’s something wrong…” I said, “I changed the guitar…” Bob said, “I don’t like it. Give me the other one back.” It’s such a versatile-sounding guitar. It’s not for public release yet; Paul [Reed Smith]’s been working on it.

Aside from that, I could get started on pedals, but we’ll be here all day…

Oh, please do.

I use the same sound for rhythm and lead. The only difference is that I put a line booster on; I use a Jam Pedal called a Boomster, strictly for clean boost. I use a lot of Boss delays and reverbs, and I have an old [MXR] Phase 90.

But the most interesting thing – and this is something that not a lot of people would expect Purple to be using – is a DigiTech Ricochet. It’s like a Whammy pedal but an automatic one. I use that for crazy stuff, for little splashes of color here and there.

What’s the story behind the opening track, Arrogant Boy?

That song started when we played live, and I did my little guitar solo in the middle of the gig – I do this really fast alternate picking to get the crowd going. In the studio I started that, Don joined in and all of a sudden the main riff for Arrogant Boy appeared.

I remember Roger [Glover] telling me that Highway Star was kind of the same thing. But I love Arrogant Boy, it’s really self‑indulgent instrumental stuff from Don and me!

How about Diablo?

That started when Don and I were playing around. I think Don wrote the initial riff on keyboard and when it came to the verse section, that’s where I started playing this simple pattern. When I’m writing riffs, I always try to keep them simple. Once you overcomplicate stuff, you lose that drive and excitement.

How did Keith Urban end up on the track?

The studio we recorded in was owned by Keith [in Nashville], and we said to him, “Why don’t you play a guest solo on one of the tracks?” Keith was well up for doing it, so he worked out a solo section. I remember on one of Steve Lukather’s records, he, Steve Stevens, and Jan Hammer did this round-about of solos and I thought that was cool. I thought, ‘Let’s have that here with the two guitarists and the keyboards,’ and it worked out pretty well.

Keith has a different sound to me. He has more of an older, kind of vintage vibe. Once [Ian] Gillan put the vocal on it, it turned into a real song. Because with all these songs, they’re all instrumentals in my head until I hear the final mix.

What’s your personal favorite guitar moment on Splat!?

Probably Jessica’s Bra. Don’t ask me why it’s titled that [laugh.] I think it was supposed to be Jessica’s Bar, but it got switched around and Gillan loved that, so we kept it. I’d forgotten to do a solo while I was in Nashville with the band. I got home and Bob Ezrin had emailed me, saying, “You need to do a solo…”

I don’t know what possessed me, but I played all this different stuff that I never would have done, like tapping and sliding, and I think that’s because I listened to the whole song with words. That inspired me.

What’s next for you and Deep Purple?

With Purple, there’s talk of another record, so we won’t stop. This year, we’re on tour until December and we have another 86 shows. And next year, we have shows booked as well, so it’s pretty busy. It’s going to stop one day and that will be it. But at the moment, we’ll just keep going and doing what we love, which is writing and playing music.

As for my own thing, I’ve just finished an instrumental record that’s about to be mixed, so it’ll probably be out maybe later this year or early next year. I may do a few shows with that… if I can play it, because it’s pretty crazy [laughs].

• Splat! is out now via earMUSIC
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Deep Purple’s longevity is remarkable on a number of levels. Aside from a relatively brief split between 1976 and 1984, they've been a working band since 1968 – a striking achievement, attributable in part to their willingness to forge ahead creatively rather than coasting on past glories, and to adapt in the face of personnel changes.

Anyone familiar with their history will know that these two elements have not only worked in parallel on many occasions, but have often sparked fresh, innovative Purple patches.

Even before the arrival of Ian Gillan and Roger Glover in 1969, and the resultant shift to their genre-defining hard rock sound, founding members Ian Paice (drums), Jon Lord (keyboards) and Ritchie Blackmore (guitar) used their instrumental prowess to inject rock, pop, psychedelia, jazz, and blues influences into the Mark I lineup's three albums.

Citing the influence of Led Zeppelin, Blackmore then sought to pursue his muse in a heavier direction. With Gillan and Glover in place, the Man in Black rose to the occasion with riffs and solos that proved central to the Mark II lineup’s explosive chemistry, often characterised by creativity and volatility in equal measure.

Blackmore would twice depart the ranks, and although his instantly recognizable style set the bar at an intimidating height, his successors – the late Tommy Bolin, Dixie Dregs virtuoso Steve Morse, and recently recruited blues-rock hotshot Simon McBride – have succeeded in making the gig their own.

And while never a permanent member, anyone who caught Purple live between December 1993 and July 1994 would have witnessed the Yoda of Shred himself, Joe Satriani, working his magic on stage.

With the band's new album Splat! out now, we cast an eye over the proliferation of Purple pickers who have propelled them to this point.

Ritchie Blackmore (1968-1975, 1984-1993)

By the time he formed Deep Purple with Paice and Lord in 1968, Blackmore was already a relative veteran at the age of 23, having served an apprenticeship which ran in parallel with the development of British rock 'n' roll.

He’d taken in stints with the Dominators, the Satellites, Screaming Lord Sutch's Savages, and also the Outlaws, the in-house band of studio pioneer Joe Meek.

Though certainly capable of distinctive, nimble phrasing on Mark I highlights like Wring That Neck, it was during the Mark II era that Blackmore’s signature style as a riffmeister and soloist came dramatically into focus.

He composed a wealth of widely imitated signature motifs, ranging from bluesy single note earworms like Black Night and Lazy, to the pedal toned powerchords of Smoke on the Water, and the vicious Speed King.

His innovative lead guitar style blended raw blues licks with fluid, classically inspired runs, as his solos on Highway Star and Strange Kind of Woman demonstrate.

In a 1991 interview with Guitar World he explained, “I found the blues too limiting. Classical, on the other hand, was always too disciplined. I was always playing between the two. I’m not a rigid player. I like to improvise.”

After growing dissatisfied with Mark III’s increasingly funky direction, ushered in by new members David Coverdale (vocals) and Glenn Hughes (bass/vocals), Blackmore quit to form Rainbow in 1975 – but not before turning in ferocious performances on the title track of Burn, both in the studio and onstage at the California Jam festival the previous year.

The post-1984 reunion era would be marked by interpersonal turbulence that prompted Blackmore to quit for a second and final time in 1993. But it nonetheless yielded sublime results on a musical level, as demonstrated by Knocking At Your Back Door, on which Blackmore modernized the powerchord riffing style of Smoke on the Water, before letting rip with a serrated solo.

Tommy Bolin (1975-1976)

Prior to joining Deep Purple in 1975, Tommy Bolin had recorded albums with Zephyr, the James Gang, and most notably, appeared on former Mahavishnu Orchestra drummer Billy Cobham’s 1973 solo debut, Spectrum. His coruscating shredding on tracks like that album’s Quadrant 4 convinced his new bandmates there could be life after Ritchie Blackmore.

Tragically, Bolin was in the grip of a heroin dependence that marred his live performances, and contributed to his death in December 1976. Thankfully, his talent won out on 1975’s Come Taste the Band, his sole studio outing with Purple.

With Bolin co-writing seven of its nine tracks, and the funk and soul influences of Burn and Stormbringer front and center, the album bore little resemblance to the Purple of old, save for sprightly opener Comin’ Home.

Nevertheless, as Lord reflected on its 35th anniversary reissue, it remains “a surprisingly good rock album of that period. Tommy's guitar playing is par excellence.”

Gettin' Tighter, featuring singing slide licks and a chicken-picked solo from Bolin, wields a funk rock groove the way Bruce Lee wielded nunchucks. Similarly, Bolin’s scorching lead over the tightly syncopated instrumental Owed to “G”, and the dynamic flow of his layered solo on You Keep On Moving, show how potent the Mark IV formation’s chemistry could be.

Sadly, Bolin's erratic performances, coupled with the addictions of other members, hastened the group's demise, and in July 1976, the band's first run came to an ignominious close.

In a 1999 interview with Guitar World, Ritchie Blackmore paid tribute to his successor: “I don't envy Tommy Bolin for trying to take my place in Purple.

“He was a uniquely talented player and it's unfortunate that he never had the chance to develop with the band the way I did. His death was an incredible loss, not only for Deep Purple but for guitar fans as well.”

Joe Satriani (1993-1994)

When Joe Satriani stepped into the breach at short notice to help Purple fulfill tour dates after Blackmore's abrupt departure, he'd already achieved a seemingly impossible feat by proving that not only could virtuoso guitar instrumentals be enjoyable for non-players, but that albums full of them could be commercially successful.

With bona fide hit records that had bagged him gold and platinum sales awards, and a couple of Grammys in his trophy cabinet too, Satriani was a star in his own right when he hooked up with Purple in 1993 – although that wasn’t the reason he gave for declining the band's offer of permanent membership.

“I had the time of my life,” Satriani told author Martin Popoff. “But it was very mentally difficult to replace one of my idols, Ritchie Blackmore.

“And having a solo career makes you feel like the luckiest guitarist in the world. I just couldn't see having to turn my back on it.”

Satriani stuck close to Blackmore's original solo templates in the main, but took the opportunity to illustrate how well his own masterful style might have worked long-term in Purple on tracks that had always been more fluid in structure, like Child in Time.

Steve Morse (1994-2022)

Like Satriani, Steve Morse was already a revered guitar hero when he joined Purple in 1994. His 28-year tenure as the band's longest-serving lead guitarist would only enhance his reputation, to the point that Guitar World once hailed him as “the guitar virtuoso’s virtuoso.”

His ability to combine feel, melodious musicality and ninja-level chops had famously seen him voted Best Overall Guitar Player in Guitar Player’s readers’ poll every year between 1982 and 1986. With a style that fused classical, rock, blues, country, jazz, and bluegrass, Celtic influences from his grandfather – a Cajun fiddle player – and prior experience of blending genres with the Dixie Dregs and Kansas, Morse was a perfect fit.

Morse’s new compatriots were quick to praise him for the revitalizing effect he had on the band, which ignited a new chemistry that fueled Purple through eight studio albums and countless live shows for almost 30 years. When he departed in 2022 to care for his ailing wife, his bandmates stated that he was “a true master” who’d be “greatly missed.”

When asked to choose favorite Purple recordings over the years, Morse has flagged up Man Alive (from 2020’s Whoosh!), which he described as “an attempt to play something different from what I would normally do,” and selected his 1996 debut with the band, Purpendicular, in a list of his career-defining albums for MusicRadar.

For this writer’s money, the latter album is an inspired choice, shot through with a palpable sense of energy and enthusiasm. Check out Morse’s consummate lead work on Vavoom, Ted The Mechanic, and Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming, and you’ll hear exactly why he was the ideal man for the job.

Simon McBride (2022-present)

Though only 46, Purple’s newest six-stringer – brought up on the band’s music – had been turning heads with his blues-infused style since winning Guitarist’s Young Guitarist of the Year award in 1996.

In addition to recording as a solo artist, he’d proven his mettle in various branches of the Purple family tree, playing with Whitesnake offshoot Snakecharmer, and in current keyboardist Don Airey’s band, a role in which he backed Ian Gillan on 2019’s Contractual Obligation #2: Live In Warsaw.

Morse’s ability to think and play outside the box, while drawing on a wide range of influences, allowed Purple to broaden the scope of their signature sound and move forward. Today, McBride's more streamlined, riff-driven approach has helped the band revisit their roots as they head for the finish line.

On the well-received release of 2024 album =1, Gillan told Qobuz that McBride’s playing is “very compatible with the way we started; very straight ahead.”

That said, McBride's catchy riffing and eloquent, inventive lead lines – on highlights such as Portable Door – ensure that the Mark IX lineup delivers a classic-era vibe with the contemporary edge. Nearly 60 years in, they look set to bow out at the top of their game.

Deep Purple may be one of the last bastions of the golden age of rock still churning out top-quality albums, but Simon McBride isn’t afraid to drag the band into the future. That’s why he’s ditched tube amps for amp modelers on their latest album.

The Irishman succeeded long-serving fusion ace Steve Morse in the band in 2022, adding to a lineage that includes Ritchie Blackmore (twice), Tommy Bolin, and Joe Satriani, who was their touring guitarist for a short spell.

With his addition, the band have returned to their blues rock roots, with McBride comparing their latest album, SPLAT!, to a “freight train” – and it’s the first Deep Purple album to use modelers.

“Steve [Morse] is a great player, but he’s a different sort of player, so that was a big thing for me – to get that big, powerful sound,” he tells Guitarist of his tonal task as the band’s chief shredder. “I have a lot of amps, but for most of the Purple stuff I use my live rig, which is the [Neural DSP] Quad Cortex.

“I can hear a lot of Ritchie Blackmore fans crying out, going, ‘No! He’s using digital stuff!’ But it’s brilliant.”

On his debut album with the band, 2024’s =1, McBride was cranking Engl amps for the required locomotive heft. But a year later, he slimmed his live rig down to a Quad Cortex, with a DigiTech Ricochet and a Formula B Vintage Vibe among the picks on his minimalist pedalboard. The Engl cabs, however, survived the overhaul.

So, why the change of heart?

“I had to change my sound a bit because you’re dealing with Don Airey, who plays keys, the Hammond and Leslie, and a Marshall head and cabinet,” McBride explains. “He’s in a very similar frequency range to [my] guitar, so I had to figure something out to make the guitar sound more powerful.

“I was talking to the guys at Engl, who made Steve Morse’s signature amp, and Engl gave me an Artist Edition head,” he adds, having been turned off by Morse’s amps for having too many buttons.

“I asked them to tweak it and put a lot more power in the lower mids and low-end. I knew the Leslie and Hammond didn’t have that, so that could be my little space and would cut through but also make me sound powerful when we play a riff together.”

Although he doesn’t say as much explicitly, we assume that Engl has been captured, and it now lives on in his QC, which is a smart way to honor Deep Purple’s heritage while also bringing something new to help him better weave around Airey’s ivory tickling.

There will likely be Purple fans who sit firmly in the amp purist category, but with even Joe Bonamassa warming to digital tones, it’s clear that modelers have more than earned their place in the pantheon of tone.

McBride also has a particularly hot truss rod take (yes, you read that correctly). But listening to SPLAT!, he might be onto something.…

Grab a copy of Guitarist from Magazines Direct to read the full interview and much more.

Simon McBride might have just sparked another footnote in the never-ending tone debate by sharing a rather novel hot take that you might not have heard before.

As Deep Purple prepares to release their second studio album with McBride, the guitarist has been fielding gear questions and has issued a red-hot take on the downside of truss rods.

McBride is the successor to Steve Morse’s decades-long tenure in the band and has brought a traditional blues approach back to their core, akin to Ritchie Blackmore’s legacy. As ever, everything goes through his trusted PRS 408 electric guitar.

“I played everything on this record with a prototype from PRS,” McBride tells Guitar World ahead of SPLAT!’s release on July 3.

“The idea is that there’s no truss rod,” he continues. “It goes back to the early days when guitars had no truss rods because I’m a firm believer that if you put a truss rod in a guitar, it sucks the tone and sustain out of it.”

Truss rods, typically made of metal or carbon fiber, run down the length of the neck of a guitar beneath the fretboard and work to reinforce the neck and counter the tension generated by the strings.

They are a necessary feature to prevent and remedy any nasty neck warps. For most, they’re a vital ingredient in guitar building. McBride disagrees.

“This guitar is like an animal,” McBride says of his PRS. “It’s hard to control because there’s so much natural sustain, and I don’t do high-output pickups.

“Acoustically, there’s such a difference without the truss rod,” he adds, alluding to the apparent increased sustain and resonance that comes with removing a chunk of metal from the guitar. “[The neck] must be the strongest piece of wood they could find because it doesn’t bend at all.”

Now, we aren’t expecting McBride to kickstart a trend of players yanking their truss rods out of their guitars – that really wouldn’t be advisable – but the thought that the truss rod actually harms a guitar’s sustain is certainly an interesting take.

Read McBride's full interview in the new issue of Guitarist, which includes a feature on the recent discovery of Eric Clapton's long-lost Summerburst. Pick up a copy over at Magazines Direct.

Joe Bonamassa has one of the world’s greatest guitar collections, but tracking down his iconic 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard, the so-called Bolin ’Burst, led to what he described as “the strangest guitar deal I ever did”.

The Bolin ’Burst got its name from its long-running association with Deep Purple and Zephyr guitarist Tommy Bolin.

Guitarist got to see (and photograph) the instrument up close when they were invited to ‘Nerdville, USA’ – the guitar icon’s given name for his personal musuem – for a guided tour of his awe-inspiring 500+ guitar collection.

It’s full of stories of valuable vintage finds, but it seems even an instrument as famous as the Bolin ’Burst still has a few surprises to offer, as Bonamassa reveals...

“Tommy Bolin never owned this guitar,” explains Bonamassa. “That’s the misconception. It was owned by a guy named David Brown who bought it in 1966 for $125 in Denver. His daughter actually sent me the receipt.

“When Tommy’s Goldtop got nicked in the early ’70s when he was with Zephyr, David was Tommy’s right-hand man and he loaned him this ’Burst. And so Tommy played it all through Zephyr and Deep Purple.”

Bonamassa notes Bolin did not use it on his album with Billy Cobham, Spectrum (on which he favored a Fender Stratocaster).

“They put the [Bigsby] vibrato on the Bolin ’Burst because Tommy was a Strat guy,” says Bonamassa.

The blues rock ace learned the art of buying vintage guitars by accompanying his dad (a vintage dealer) on guitar safaris, throughout his childhood. However, even he says tracking down the Bolin ’Burst was not an easy process.

“I looked for this guitar for about a decade,” explains Bonamassa. “I finally located David in Moab, Utah. I made a deal with him, paid him in cash, and he died two months later in a car accident. His last text to his daughter was, ‘I buried the money in the desert.’ Weird, weird story. It was also the strangest guitar deal I ever did.”

We presume the guitar’s had a more secure homelife since it’s been under the blues rocker’s careful custodianship, but it does get live airings – such when Joe Bonamassa brought the Bolin ’Burst out to cover Deep Purple.

Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Deep Purple formed the holy trinity that would ultimately induce heavy metal. Yet while the band has always pinned the meters in terms of popularity, sales, and volume, critical acclaim has been less than royal – especially when viewed in the context of Zeppelin and Sabbath.

Consider Roger Glover's snarling bass guitar on Purple's 1972 classic, Machine Head – a record that would set the tone for decades of ensuing music – and it's clear his contribution to the canon of rock bass has been largely overlooked.

The Machine Head sessions were cut with what was effectively Deep Purple Mark II, the classic lineup of Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, Ian Gillan vocals, Roger Glover bass, Jon Lord keyboards and a thundering lan Paice on drums.

Glover's thunderously clanky Rickenbacker/P-Bass tones were formidable, though Glover himself admitted to being very unsettled by his sound at the time: “Too much clank and not enough thump”, he told Bass Player in 2013.

“By the time I got to Purple, I felt my tone was too distorted, with not enough bottom. I used a Rick on Machine Head and I wasn't happy with the sound.

“When we did the 25th Anniversary remix, my engineer (Peter Denenberg) isolated it and said, ‘People would kill for a sound like that’, but I always felt my tone was too distorted, especially with the Rickenbacker. Having had a P-Bass and a Fender Mustang previously, I guess I didn't realize what I had.”

Born November 30, 1945, in Brecon, Wales, and raised in London, Glover began his musical journey with piano lessons at age seven. Gravitating toward rock & roll, he picked up guitar at 13. Bass entered the picture soon after, when Glover saw his first live band, the Lightnings, rehearsing in a local gym.

“Upon seeing them, my two friends and I decided to start a band; they were both better guitarists than I was, so I said, I'll be the bass player, and I removed the top two strings on my Spanish guitar.”

Glover moved to North London in 1961 and formed the Madisons. A year later, the Madisons merged with the Lightnings to become Episode Six. Six released over a dozen singles, never quite breaking through, but that would all change for Glover when Deep Purple came calling in the summer of ’69.

How did you come to join Deep Purple?

Ian Gillan and I were in a band called Episode Six, where we were writing together. Purple was looking for a singer, and Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore came to see us and offered Ian the gig, which he took.

Soon after, Ian called me and said, ‘The band is looking for songs – come in and play them our songs.’ So I met Lord and he listened and passed on what we had, but he played me Hallelujah and asked me to record it with them that night.

After the session he offered me the gig and I turned him down. I said, ‘You already took our singer, if I leave Episode Six it kills everyone else's hopes and dreams, and I can't live with that.’ So he said, ‘Well, think about it.’

I went home and thought about it all night and called him the next morning to take the gig. It still amazes me how close I came to not following this path.

What about original bassist Nick Simper?

Well, the band politics were horrible. Nick didn't know he'd been replaced until someone told him, and on the Hallelujah session I used his bass and amp. I felt bad; both (original vocalist) Rod Evans and Nick were let go without notice, which must have hurt terribly.

I've never met Nick, but his bass playing definitely had an impact on me because I had to play his parts. I thought he had a great plucking sound; you can really hear it on Hush – I could never get that sound.

People have noted that the bass is louder on Machine Head than other early Purple albums. Was there a reason?

I really don't know why that was, but it surprises me, as well. I very rarely listen to our own stuff, and so you forget what the recordings actually sound like; but every time I hear the original on the radio I go, ‘Jesus, the bass is loud!’

How did you come up with those bass parts?

Do you know the theory of the zen archer? The zen archer draws his bow back and as soon as he eyes the target he lets his arrow go. The reason is, the longer he hesitates and tries to make sure he hits the target, the more off he's going to be because his hands will start to shake. In other words, your first instinct is always your best bet.

But at the basic level, the bass has to anchor and groove at all costs. I mean, you can get a little complicated on the bass, but it doesn't really help the song.

What’s your role as a songwriter?

There's no formula for it, other than we're aware we're a hard rock band, and that's what the music is going to be. So it's within those confines, except hard rock is unconfined in that it has elements of blues, folk, classical, and jazz.

Someone might come in with a riff or a chord sequence, something fairly basic that everyone can chew on for a while, and the song kind of evolves. It's always been the same with Purple. We don't write Purple songs; we just write songs that become Purple songs because we're playing them.

Who were your key bass influences?

The first bass player I heard who was totally different from everyone else was Jack Bruce. Then I got into John Entwistle – My Generation blew me away – and Tim Bogert with Vanilla Fudge. But they were all virtuoso players.

I think the bassist who had the most impact on me was Paul McCartney, because he was both a great songwriter and a great player. He had the lyrical sensibility to say something profound on bass that didn't get in the way of anything else.

Even though I don't want to emulate them, I admire technical players. Two of my heroes are Jaco Pastorius and Victor Wooten. They're just brilliant musicians. Occasionally I'll go on YouTube and check out Victor or Abraham Laboriel.

What advice would you offer to young bassists?

If you want to be a bass player, study and borrow from the best and learn how to really enjoy playing the instrument. You can have just as much fun gigging in a little band at your local pub every Saturday evening as you'll ever get from being a celebrity bass player.

A big reason Purple made it is that we didn't follow any trends; hard rock wasn't in vogue at the time, and we had no hope in hell of getting on the radio. We just did what we wanted to do, and it happened to become successful. That's really the truest kind of success you can achieve.

As a member of two major hard rock acts, Winger and Whitesnake, Reb Beach knows a thing or two about the intricate art of crafting an arena-worthy guitar solo.

Now, with both bands calling it quits and Beach looking back on his formidable career, the question is: which one allowed him to fully flex his guitar chops – and, more importantly, his individual playing style?

“Winger, for sure,” he replies matter-of-factly in a new interview with Guitar World. “I did a record with Doug Aldrich [one of Whitesnake’s guitarists] at his house, but we didn’t have an amp, so I went direct. He said he would do the thing where you mic up the amp later – re-amp it.”

Beach insists that not only did it not sound good, he was far from happy with that. However, it all stemmed from the boss’ orders.

“David Coverdale, for some reason, wanted my solos to be a certain way,” Beach explains.

“The record I wrote with him, he said to Joel Hoekstra [another one of Whitesnake’s guitarists] [in a regal voice], ‘You can play whatever you want, but Reb, I am going to take you under my wing.’ He had to kind of approve my solos.”

Beach pinpoints one album in particular on which he had to get all his guitar solos signed off by Coverdale.

“It wasn't as much on the one I wrote with him, Flesh and Blood, but The Purple Album, he was all over my…” he quips. “What’s that Deep Purple song? Mistreated! Yeah, he was all over me on that one. I had to make David happy on that.”

As for Winger, it was a whole different story. While Beach admits that he also had to make [frontman, lead singer, and bass player] Kip Winger “happy,” their long-term dynamic helped ease the pangs of criticism, notwithstanding that Beach considers him “a musical genius” who “had some great ideas for me as well.”

“I’ve worked with Kip since I was a kid. I don't know… I felt more freedom,” he admits. “I wrote the songs, too; we would always write the solo sections for me. Kip would say [in a dry voice], ‘Okay, and that's good to solo over.’”

Guitar World’s full interview with Reb Beach will be published in the coming weeks.

And if you need a refresher on all the guitarists Whitesnake had over the decades, check out Guitar World's ultimate guide to the shredders who graced the stage – from the project's inception to Coverdale's retirement.

Don’t believe everything you see or read on the internet. Ritchie Blackmore just found the other day that he didn’t like Jimmy Page, much to his surprise.

Because the Stratocaster-toting Deep Purple and Rainbow icon thinks quite the opposite, and has paid tribute to the Led Zeppelin guitarist, describing him as a “magical guy”.

Blackmore was speaking on April 14 during a livestreamed interview on his birthday (he was born at ten-past-midnight, UK time. Many happy returns, Ritchie), doing one of these ask-me-anything type deals.

And so one fan writes in to enquire if he likes Page. The answer is 100 per cent yes – though he understood where the question came from.

“I read the other day that I hated him,” says Blackmore. “I can’t believe they said that.”

Blackmore says he and Page go way back, and says he knew from the moment he met him that Page was going to be a star. This was the early ‘60s, and they were both sharpening their skills in backing bands.

“The first time I met him was 1963 or ‘62. He was in a band called Neil Christian and the Crusaders, and I was in Lord Sutch and the Savages,” Blackmore recalls. “I knew he was going places, because I could tell, not only did he have a style, he had the playing ability, and he just looked right, playing the guitar. He was a star in the making, Jimmy Page.”

Page spent much of the early ‘60s in and out of recording studios. He was one of the first-call players in the UK. He played on Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger theme song, tracked with the Who, before the Yardbirds came calling, then Led Zeppelin, and then the rest is history.

Peter Grant might have been the administrative spearhead for the Led Zeppelin machine but Blackmore says Page’s business smarts have served him well. “He was a good businessman, too. Not only a guitar player, he was a businessman,” he offers.

Sadly, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin never shared a bill, nor did Rainbow. So whenever Blackmore and Page’s paths would cross, it would be a social occasion, like the last time he bumped into him at the most-legendary of all Los Angeles’ rock-friendly watering holes

“Last time I spoke to him, he was probably in the Rainbow, in Hollywood,” recalls Blackmore. “He said to me, ‘Where did you learn all your runs from?’ And I thought, ‘That was a strange question.’ And I thought, ‘Runs? Well, they’re just improvisational, extemporizations, improvisational inversions.’ And that was quite a compliment coming from him.”

Remarkably, Blackmore and Page both grew up in the same small town of Heston, in Middlesex, England. There’s only a year between them. And yet they never knew each other till later.

“I never knew that he was even in the village, and that would have been when we were both 15 or 16,” notes Blackmore. “But magical guy, great guy. Always will be.”

In related Blackmore news, in the same livestreamed interview the Deep Purple guitar legend said that most guitarists aren’t nice people – but named one player who bucks the trend.

Ritchie Blackmore has claimed that “most guitarists aren’t nice people”, while naming just one player who bucks the trend.

The former Deep Purple guitarist, who was forced to cut short his tour last year with Blackmore’s Night due to a health scare, is currently recovering at home. Recently, his wife and bandmate Candice Night instigated a surprise Instagram livestream, during which the electric guitar hero fielded questions from his fans.

Blackmore touched on various aspects of his career during the Q&A, and paid particular praise to Tommy Bolin – one of his Deep Purple successors.

“He was such a nice guy that I couldn't believe he was a guitar player, because most guitar players aren't nice people,” Blackmore says.

“I would go around his house, and we'd often have fun just talking to each other. There was never ever any envy, no competition whatsoever.”

Now, Blackmore is well-known for his no-nonsense, matter-of-fact British sense of humor, so we imagine Bolin isn't really the only “nice” guitar player he's come across during his career.

Yet, despite his praise for Bolin, Blackmore did mention one other thing...

“I said to Tommy once, ‘When did you last change your strings?’ ‘cause they were so caked in dirt and grit,” he remembers. “And he looked at me, like, ‘I should change them?’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ And he said, ‘Well, probably about five years ago.’

“He was a brilliant player, a great player, but he never changed his guitar strings!”

In related news, Blackmore once revealed that he very nearly formed a supergroup with Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott, and recently recalled Jeff Beck's imposter syndrome in a revealing interview.

Steve Morse and Ernie Ball Music Man’s partnership is one of the guitar world’s most enduring, spanning back to a chance encounter between the pair at a NAMM show in the 1980s.

In fact, the Dixie Dregs and Deep Purple electric guitar legend was the first player to receive a signature guitar from the company.

Before that, though, Morse was being approached by other brands for potential signatures. One such rival was Fender – a solid choice, it would seem, given the fact Morse had been relying on a heavily modded Frankenstein’d Telecaster up until that point.

But, as Morse explained to Guitar World in an interview during NAMM earlier this year, it wasn’t to be, as logistical difficulties and creative differences meant the project ultimately failed.

Speaking of how his collaboration with Ernie Ball started, Morse said, “They [EBMM] were going to release the StingRay bass, and they said, ‘Well, we’d like to get the guitars where they should have been, and we want you to design a signature one.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been through this already with Fender. It didn't work out.’

Morse explained, “With Fender, it was like, ‘Alright, here's what we need. We need this bridge. We need this pickup.’ [Fender said], ‘Oh, sorry, those aren't Fender parts.’ I said, ‘I know, but we need this bridge.’ ‘No, you have to use Fender parts.’”

Ultimately, says Morse, the conversation started to run in circles. “I said, ‘Yeah, but you don’t make this bridge,’’ he recalls. “‘[It was like] ‘Right, but you have to use Fender parts...’ I said, ‘Alright, I'll see you guys later. Bye.’ That was the end of that.”

Morse says he found it was a different experience with Ernie Ball Music Man, though, which was more than happy to accommodate Morse’s ultra-specific spec requests.

He continues, “Dudley Gimpel was the luthier at Music Man and he really put in the time, and was very analytical about it. We started with the head stock, which is shorter [on the signature]. And the guitar, when you put it on your leg to practice, you can let go, and it balances perfectly.

“And it was lightweight, because I specified the lightest wood possible, so we got poplar. Then we started talking about the shape. I wanted more of a rounded edge, but not a cutaway, because I use it to support my arm, kind of like an acoustic or a classic guitar.”

Morse was also highly particular about the pickups, which were positioned and angled in a deliberate way to improve tone and prevent phasing issues.

Fender, meanwhile, has changed its tune somewhat since the ’80s administration, making some concessions on third-party components – for instance, the Floyd Rose-equipped builds in last year’s Player II Modified series.

Morse’s full interview with Guitar World will be published on YouTube in the coming weeks.

The Deep Purple guitarist has continued that experimental ethos towards guitar making throughout his entire career. Back in 2024, he showed off a DIY mute that he fashioned himself as a way to help him play through the pain of arthritis.

Ritchie Blackmore has recalled the moment he knew he had to leave Deep Purple.

For many, Blackmore was Deep Purple. He's been one of their most influential driving forces, helped the band cement their status as one of Britain’s premier rock bands with a pantheon of timeless guitar riffs.

He pushed the band’s unique blend of hard-hitting blues rock and classical motifs, carving out a reputation as one of the world’s greatest guitar players in the process. But all good things must come to an end, and he left after 1974’s Stormbringer. The writing, he says, was on the wall.

“The first time [I considered leaving] was when I thought about doing a song, and a band member said, ‘If we didn’t write it, there’s no point in doing it because we won’t get writing credits,’” he says in a new interview with Guitar Player. “I was really disappointed in that statement.”

He doesn’t specify what the song was. But it set a precedent.

“It was also a time when our management was starting to put together a tour, and everybody in the band was busy doing something else – a holiday, producing something, getting married,” he adds.

“In my mind, this showed that it wasn’t a band anymore. It was just a group of people with high-finance interests, business ventures, and personal bookings taking place instead of the band touring.”

Blackmore would go on to form a new band, Rainbow, and share the studio with vocalist Ronnie James Dio, who became Ozzy Osbourne’s successor in Black Sabbath several years later. Ironically, Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan also spent a short while in Sabbath, as the member merry-go-round gathered speed.

With Rainbow, Blackmore would go on to release seven studio albums in a mad dash eight-year spell, before returning to Deep Purple for Perfect Strangers in 1984. The atmosphere within the Rainbow ranks was a night-and-day contrast to Purple.

“When I did a session with Ronnie Dio in the studio, I started seeing things in a different light,” Blackmore continues. “I started having fun again, and music started being important again.

“John Cleese once said of Monty Python that there were far too many committee meetings about nothing. We had the same in Purple.”

Blackmore is currently recovering from health issues that caused the cancellation of last year’s run of shows with Blackmore’s Night.

Elsewhere, he’s reflected on Jeff Beck’s struggles with imposter syndrome, and his hit-and-miss experiments with using banjo strings on his Strats.

Steve Morse enjoyed a 28 year stint with Deep Purple, making him their longest serving guitarist. Morse played on eight studio albums during his time with the band, including 2021's Turning to Crime, and cemented his name as an integral part of the group’s legacy.

Morse stepped down in July 2022 to care for his late wife, Janine, who was diagnosed with cancer. However, those hoping for Morse-Deep Purple reunion anytime soon shouldn't hold their breath.

“There's a couple guys in the band that were really glad for me to be gone,” he explains in an interview with Guitar Interactive Magazine. “They were sort of heading back to their roots and wanted just to be a rock band – ‘Don't give me any of that fancy crap.’

“And when you look at me as a writer, I definitely give you that fancy crap – I can't help it. So I think the band's happier the way they are. And it would be kind of a step back for them to want to do something like that.”

However, Morse does divulge that there were plans for him to “play on something and actually do another gig,” but that didn’t end up happening.

“That was when my wife was in remission. Everybody knew it was a wild card whether I was going to be able to be around or not, but we could schedule that boat [referring to Rock Legends Cruise] thing, and we were looking forward to it.

“We were on that tour – that boat – the year before when it got cancelled from COVID. The whole band got bumped off anyway. They're happier and better off… and I think, ‘Same here.’”

In related Morse news, the virtuoso recently opened up about his struggle to prolong his gigging days amid an ongoing battle with arthritis.

Back in the day, guitar players didn’t have the choice of electric guitar strings that we have today, and for those operating at the outer limits of performance – you might even call them proto-shredders – that presented a problem. Players had to think outside of the box.

In the early 1960s, Ritchie Blackmore did just that. With mixed results. He was out cutting his teeth in the Outlaws, working the rock ’n’ roll circuit. A trip to Germany with Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent would present him with an epiphany that changed how he strung his electric guitar.

“I went to Hamburg in ’63 with Jerry Lee [Lewis] and Gene Vincent, in the same year, played at the Star Club like everybody else did,” recalls Blackmore. “It was interesting because we were the Outlaws, and Jerry Lee was topping [the bill]. We were backing him, but the opening band was the Searchers, and in England, at that point, they had a number one record with Sweets for My Sweet.

“So it was so strange to see the band opening and being nobodies, and they were number one in England. Of course, The Searchers became very, very big later on.”

All of this was great experience. The Outlaws were playing five, six sets a night, the instrumental backing band for a rotating cast of players, including Merseybeat champs Ted ‘Kingsize’ Taylor and Tony Sheridan – the very same Tony Sheridan who played with the Beatles way back in the beginning.

“We backed Tony Sheridan a few times,” continues Blackmore. “He was a guitar player, too, but when we were backing him he would turn around to me and say, ‘Take the solo.’ And I’d go, ‘Oh, all right!’ I’d take the solo. Every night on tour, ‘Take the solo!’ ‘What about you? You’re the guitar player. Everybody is coming to see you, not me.’”

It was all good practice. But Blackmore was looking for an edge to his playing, and he had been passed along a tip from a high-profile source that seemed to do the trick.

Like many players of the time, Blackmore was getting frustrated with the heavier gauges – some players, particularly those with Gretsch guitars, used sets with wound Gs as standard. Flatwounds were commonplace. He wanted to bend the strings. James Burton, one of his rock ’n’ roll heroes on account of his work with Ricky Nelson, was improvising with his Telecaster’s setup to great effect.

“I’d just heard James Burton, and I had met Elvis Presley’s guitar player [was this Scott Moore? Blackmore does not say], who told me that James Burton used banjo strings,” says Blackmore. “And of course, I got the banjo strings, put them on... I’m going to bend the strings like James Burton.”

As the godfather of country guitar, Burton’s approach was radical. He got the idea in the 1950s that he would restring his top four strings, low-to-high DGBE, with the banjo strings, then use a regular D string from a set of electric guitar strings for his A, and a regular A for his E.

“It’s a pretty interesting thing because I’m hearing all these wonderful slide sounds and bends and on my guitar it was impossible with the strings too stiff,” said Burton, speaking to Clash in 2008.

“It was a different sound, a completely different sound… It was an incredible sound because I ended up with an unwound third, and it was a bit more twangy from the regular strings, but it was incredible, it was a great sound.”

Blackmore agreed. It was a step forward. Banjo strings on his Gibson ES-335 was opening up new avenues for expression on the instrument. “I bent the strings and it sounded great,” he says.

Sadly, this early ‘60s hack that had worked so well for Burton did not work for Blackmore.

“The trouble was my guitar went totally out of tune,” he says. “And the whole cast got together and complained and said, ‘You’ve got to put normal guitar strings on again because using those banjo strings, everything is out of tune’ – which it was.”

This was a problem that would soon get solved. There was a gap in the market. Enterprising string manufacturers were reacting to players’ needs. In 1962, Ernie Ball had debuted his Rock and Roll strings – “Guitar strings created especially for the teen age market!” the ad. The Slinkys were born.

Blackmore would later team up with Picato for his RB77 signature set, 10-48 – nickel-wound, hex core, easy to bend, no tuning issues – but after his stint in Germany, he would soon find out that he and players like him had options.

Ritchie Blackmore has previously heaped praise on Steve Morse, but the man who took his place in Deep Purple had a difficult job of impressing the group’s fans as he tried to put his spin on their material.

Morse joined in 1994 after Blackmore stepped away from the band for a second time. He spent 28 years with the band, producing eight studio albums, and even embarking on a tour shortly after breaking his wrist.

But, despite being a valued member of the group, the fusion-minded virtuoso had a harder time reimagining Blackmore’s blues-y licks in the eyes of the fans.

“Now, the fans, when I played the Purple songs and took it out, some of them – a certain percentage of them – just hated me,” he says to MusicRadar. “And pretty much stayed in that position till 28 years later!

“I tried to incorporate my stylistic mixture with respect for what Ritchie did but with some of my own personality, too,” he develops. “And [it was for] the people there that hadn’t heard us yet. They had the old albums, of course – that’s why they came and bought tickets – but they got used to me being me, and that was kind of new.”

Deep Purple were notorious for changing up their songs live, typically expanding sections out into long, virtuosic jams. Morse’s mindset was very much in keeping with that spirit, even if the band’s more conservative fans weren’t bowled over.

Speaking of his predecessors’ legacies, the band’s newest guitarist, Simon McBride, says he’s quickly learned just how different Morse and Blackmore are in terms of style.

“The Steve Morse stuff is very different from the early Ritchie Blackmore stuff,” he states. “Steve had a bit of an injury to his wrist, so he doesn’t play the way he did in Dixie Dregs. If I had to play what he did there, I would give up!

“And with Ritchie’s style, for example, there’s a solo like Highway Star that I can’t change – [tell that to Morse!]. When you’ve got 65,000 people all singing the solo back at you note-for-note, it’s like, ‘Okay, I am so glad I did not change this at all!’

“But there are other solos, like the one in Smoke on the Water, where I changed it around and put my own flavour on it. There’s no point trying to compete with Steve Morse or Ritchie Blackmore.”

Over the past few years, Morse has been battling arthritis in his wrist. He's invented a hack to help his playing, and has now revealed how his wrist's ever-changing condition dictates how he approaches every show.

Still, that hasn't stopped him from writing a new album with the Steve Morse Band, and Eric Johnson and John Petrucci are along for the ride, too.

Legendary British rock vocalist David Coverdale has announced his retirement, bringing to a close an iconic career that has seen him perform with the biggest names in rock music.

He joined Ritchie Blackmore's Deep Purple, replacing Ian Gillan in 1973. He fronted the band for three records, including the barnstorming Burn and Come Taste the Band, their only record with Tommy Bolin.

Before the decade was out, he formed Whitesnake in 1978, a band that has played host to a legion of six-string talents, from Bernie Marsden to Steve Vai and many more beyond.

In the 1990s, he linked up with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page for the cult classic LP, Coverdale–Page. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016 when Deep Purple were rightfully inducted alongside Cheap Trick and Chicago.

“After 50 plus years of an incredible journey with you with Deep Purple, Whitesnake, and Jimmy Page, the last few years have been very evident to me that it's time really for me to hang up my rock and roll platform shoes and my skintight jeans,” he says in a video statement.

“I thank everyone who's assisted and supported me on this incredible journey. All the musicians, the crew, the fans, the family. It's amazing. But it really is time for me to just enjoy my retirement, and I hope you can appreciate that. I love you with all my heart. Fare thee well.”

His announcement presumably brings Whitesnake to an end, but with no official confirmation, the door still seems slightly ajar for a possible replacement. The band launched a farewell tour in 2022, but Coverdale’s health issues forced the run to be cut short.

After Jake E. Lee split from Ozzy Osbourne’s band in 1987, Jimi Bell was one of the many guitarists who auditioned for the gig. But while he respected Lee and Randy Rhoads, they weren’t his primary influences.

“Both were absolute monsters on the guitar, no question,” he says. “But I go a bit further back to guys like Johnny Winter, Ritchie Blackmore and Al Di Meola. And of course, Eddie Van Halen changed the game for me.”

Eventually, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne narrowed their choice down to Bell or Zakk Wylde. And although Bell got on well with Sharon, the facts that Wylde was a Rhoads disciple and was already working with Ozzy sealed the deal.

But Sharon introduced Bell to Geezer Butler, leading to a spell beside the Black Sabbath bass player. He co-wrote Master of Insanity with Butler, which appeared on 1991 Sabbath album Dehumanizer. But he wasn’t paid or credited for it. “I wish some things had turned out differently, but I don’t carry bitterness,” he says. “I’m proud of what I did – even if the paperwork didn’t always reflect it.”

He went on to record with House of Lords and joined Autograph after Steve Lynch quit. “Sharon definitely vibed with me,” he says of his Ozzy audition. “But he made the final call. Zakk was the right fit for where Ozzy was going.”

What inspired you to pick up the guitar?

“I was a drummer first, from age 10 to 13. I used to jam with friends, and one day the guitarist left his guitar against his amp. I couldn’t resist. Even though it was right-handed and I’m a lefty, I plugged it in, hit the Big Muff fuzz box – and I was hooked instantly.

“I became obsessed with guitar, so I progressed quickly. By 15 I was already playing in public. At 16, I started gigging in clubs, and I had to get my parents to sign permission slips to get in the venues. The first time I played for a real crowd, I knew I’d found my path.”

How did you hook up with Joan Jett?

“Around 1984 I was in a band called Joined Forces, playing all original music. Someone from Joan’s label, Blackheart Records, saw us live and offered us a management deal. Next thing we knew, we were out on tour with Joan. We had a full tour bus, became close with her band and crew, and Joan herself was incredibly kind and down-to-earth.

“Joan was always particularly kind and friendly towards me. That led to us landing the role as The Hunzz in the Joan Jett/Michael J. Fox film Light of Day. The release party at the Hard Rock Café in New York could have been a chapter in a book all by itself!”

How did you get the call to audition for Ozzy?

“I was endorsed by Kramer Guitars and Dennis Berardi, the president, had kind of taken me under his wing. One morning he called to say Jake E. Lee was out and he’d sent a video of me to Sharon. Suddenly I had an audition – but the catch was I had to fly out that same day.

“I already knew four or five Ozzy songs, so when I got to the hotel I focused on brushing up on them: I Don’t Know, Crazy Train, Flying High Again and Suicide Solution.”

What gear did you use for your Ozzy audition?

“The backline was all set. I just had to bring myself and my Boss 7-band EQ to push the amp a bit harder. I’m pretty sure it was a Marshall JCM800. The energy in the room was intense but inspiring.”

What was the actual audition like?

“Part one was with Randy Castillo and Phil Soussan. Most of the players went through that first round. Sharon actually sat in on mine – probably to see if she’d wasted plane tickets! She liked what she saw, and I was told I did great. The next day, part two was at a different location, onstage with Ozzy. Surreal doesn’t even begin to cover it.

“It went exceptionally well – I was locked in with the band and stayed true to the song and the solo, but I added a little flair unique to me. Ozzy literally leaned down in front of my amp while I was playing.

“Then I played a solo on my own, and the vibe was strong. Ozzy and Sharon told me it was down to me and Zakk. I went to dinner with them at a fancy restaurant, where Ozzy ate off my salad plate with his fingers!

“Then I went back to their house and hung out for a while, and I even met Ozzy’s oldest daughter, Aimee. At that point Zakk had already started working with them, and I think his similarities to Randy played a big part in the final decision.”

Ozzy has said Zakk’s tape was the only one he really listened to. What do you think of that?

“I don’t know if he ever saw my tape; but I know Sharon did, and that’s what got me in the room. More importantly, Ozzy saw me live, just inches from my amp. I think that moment said more than any demo ever could.”

How did your connection with Geezer Butler come about?

“Even after the Ozzy gig didn’t happen, Sharon still believed in me. That belief led directly to Geezer and what became a whole new chapter in my career. Geezer wanted to explore a more melodic sound than Sabbath, but still heavy. We had an amazing lineup: Carl Sentance on vocals, now in Nazareth; Jezz Woodruff from Robert Plant’s band on keys; and Gary Ferguson on drums – his resume is unreal.”

What was your rig like with Geezer?

“We rehearsed in a killer studio in London, and I used Marshall 800 heads – they were essential to match Geezer’s massive low-end tone. Watching him play up close was wild. His thunderous attack on the bass is next level.”

You co-wrote Master of Insanity, which ended up on Sabbath’s Dehumanizer. But there were issues with credit and payment. What happened?

“In ’91 I got a call from Geezer’s wife, Gloria. She told me Sabbath was reuniting with Ronnie James Dio and wanted to use Master of Insanity on the new album. I was thrilled – until I found out I wouldn’t get songwriting credit. Tony Iommi apparently didn’t want a song by another guitarist on a Sabbath record.

“Geezer did thank me in the liner notes, and he promised me payment after the tour. I never saw the money. But hearing Dio perform a song I wrote was unforgettable. Ronnie even mentioned our collaboration in his book, and Geezer wrote about it in his autobiography, so I’ve made peace with it.”

There’s been talk that Computer God, also from Dehumanizer, came from your era with Geezer.

“We did have a song called Computer God, but it was totally different – more of a melodic hard rock track. There’s a rehearsal video of it on YouTube. Only the title made it to the Sabbath version; musically they’re worlds apart.”

You’ve had major runs with House of Lords and Autograph. What were those experiences like?

“House of Lords has been a huge part of my career. We’ve made 13 albums with Frontiers Srl, and I’ve written over 100 songs with the band. James Christian still sings like a beast. We’re heading to Europe for a tour in late 2025.

“As for Autograph, I joined after Steve Lynch left to form 222. Randy Rand brought me in and told me to make the guitar my own, which I did. We had a great three-year run before Randy passed. I’ll always treasure that time. – he was more than a bandmate; he was a close friend.”

Steve Lynch wasn’t thrilled about your version of Autograph. Was that uncomfortable?

“The situation was tough, especially after Randy passed. But I’ve moved on. I prefer to focus on the good times we had and all the friendships I made. We were very close on and off stage. Randy will always hold a special place in my heart.”

What’s next for you?

“I’ve got a bunch of things going on. I get called to lay down solos for other artists, which I love. I’ve also done music for WWE wrestler entrance themes and ESPN; projects like that are always exciting.

“One of my main focuses is my tribute band Beyond Purple. We honor the Deep Purple family tree – songs by Rainbow, Dio, Whitesnake and all three DP vocalists. We’ve started writing original music, and we’ve already got more than a full album's worth ready to go.”

• Beyond Purple tour the US throughout 2025.

Tommy Denander’s musical experience includes work on over 3,500 albums, of which over 100 are gold or platinum, and credits on eight Number 1 Billboard LPs.

“The list of who I’ve worked with looks like a guy who couldn’t hold down a gig to save his life!” he happily admits. “Michael Jackson, Anastacia, Steve Perry, Yngwie Malmsteen, Stephen Pearcy, Bernie Marsden, Eric Singer, Bruce Kulick, blah-blah-blah!”

His A-list collaborations span from the late ’80s to the present day, and also includes Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley. “Those guys were on posters on my wall when I was a kid in Sweden,” Denander laughs. “So we really are talking about a dream coming true!”

He’s most proud of a quote from producer Mutt Lange – who rarely speaks in public. “Tommy has always been the consummate live player,” the rock icon said. “I recently found out that he’s the consummate studio guitarist as well. Excellent and so egoless to work with – great feel and a perfectionist, too.”

Denander, who signed his first record deal at the age of 15 and always knew he wanted to be “a studio musician, songwriter and producer instead of a rock star,” is also proud of his VGS signature guitar, which he states never goes out of tune thanks to the use of Evertune bridge and True Temperament frets.

“I’d been endorsed by Hamer, Steinberger, Yamaha, PRS and more, so when VGS asked, I said only if we could create my actual dream guitar. I’m close friends with Evertune, who asked me at NAMM one year if I’d like to be the first to have it on a real model.

“On the flight home to Sweden it just struck me that we should use the True Temperament invention, with the bent frets. It’s the first guitar to stay in tune and maintain 100 percent intonation.”

Denander’s guitar made it to a second model about 14 years ago, but then business issues got in the way. “The main company had the money – they just didn’t see a future in the products. What a miss!”

What’s the session industry like these days?

“Real music is coming back. Kids love great music played by top-level musicians again, so bigger studios are coming back as well. You need a collection of rare skills, gigantic determination and a strong sense of brand building – you need to find the balance of how and where to promote yourself, and when not to.

“Always answer people fast, deliver fast ,and leave your ego out of it, because no matter how sure you are of something, it’s always the client’s wish that matters. I like to suggest things and maybe give them too much, so they can pick the parts they like best.

“There are opportunities to become a solid touring musician too. It’s rare that the people you see on tour also play on the albums. It takes equal skill and time to do both, but in the studio no one can see you, so looks don’t matter. Live, they do!”

What’s the worst aspect of session work?

“Something that’s more important these days than in the ‘good old days’ – it’s when credits are missing. It happens more often now and it pisses me off big time. It happened with Paul Stanley, and he was pissed because I’d been in the album press release, that he put together himself. He said an idiot messed it up for the product.

“Then Ace Frehley ‘forgot’ that I wrote the music to a song on his latest album. I missed credit on, like, 25 variations of vinyl and all the CD and digital versions. It’s corrected now, but I lost a lot of media and PR was lost.

“Once, Ricky Martin decided he wanted big photos of himself all over the CD booklet of an album we did with Desmond Child, and put all credits on his website. I don’t even know what to say!

“I often work for much less money than than I should, because of the names involved. Getting those credits adds to my value which leads to income. When people are sloppy and miss it, we get screwed twice. So sloppiness bugs me!”

Regardless of the downsides, how was it to work on Paul Stanley’s 2006 solo album Live to Win?

“I saw a Kiss poster in a record store when I was 7 years old. That poster was why I started to play guitar, and to this day I’m a huge fan. Ace Frehley was my first guitar idol – I co-wrote Up In The Sky on his latest album 10,000 Volts.

“When I was asked to play on Paul’s Live To Win it was a surreal and beautiful moment. I ended up playing on the title track and Wake Up Screaming. First time I heard Paul’s voice through the big monitors in the studio, I just sat there smiling – I couldn’t even play!”

Working with Alice Cooper was another dream come true, wasn’t it?

“Yeah! In the mid ’80s I started writing songs with Alice in mind. I told my friends that I’d be perfect to write for him. My dear friend Desmond Child introduced me to Bob Ezrin around 2010, and that’s how I ended up playing on I Am Made of You on Alice’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare album.

“Then Bob and Alice asking me to work on Paranormal. I ended up co-producing it with Bob and I co-wrote half the songs. I play guitar on all the songs – including the ones with the whole original Alice Cooper Band.

“The song Fallen In Love started when Bob asked if I could write a take on Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water. I thought I’d done it quite well until Alice said, ‘Well, it has a ZZ Top feel to it.’ Then he asked Billy Gibbons to play on it. Cool!”

What about your rather minimal appearance on Deep Purple’s Infinite (2017)?

“When Bob Ezrin invited me to help with Infinite it meant I’d completed a triple of posters from my wall in the ’70s! They were almost done with the album, but Ian Gillan wanted to re-record his vocals and Don Airey wanted to add a keyboard part.

“They were in Stockholm and I worked at the biggest studio in Sweden, so it was perfect. Roger Glover and I recorded Ian’s vocals; it was stunning how professional these guys were. Don came over and nailed his part in one take, too.

“Then Roger said, ‘We’re missing one chord on the guitar.’ I said, ‘Can we get Steve Morse over from the hotel?’ Roger said, ‘No – Bob says you’re a great guitarist, so you can do it.’ I was like, ‘Did Roger Glover just ask me to play on a Deep Purple album?’

“I grabbed my Kemper and my VGS guitar. I knew that Steve used ENGL amps, so I found a profile that matched the recording perfectly. Roger was impressed! He showed me the missing chord – a missing D on a breakdown – and I recorded three takes: two mono for left-right panning and a stereo one with a small chorus.

“It hit me that I’d just had my Spinal Tap moment. I’d been playing guitar full-time for 25 years at that point, and when I got to play on a Deep Purple album it was just one chord!”

Your connection with Alice Cooper led to your work with the Hollywood Vampires, right?

“Right. I’ve done five or six albums with Alice. When we were doing Paranomal he invited me to play with the Vampires at a charity concert in Phoenix. Hanging for 12 hours with Johnny Depp, Joe Perry, Sammy Hagar, Korn and others, jamming and having way too many laughs, was a super-fun day.

“For their second album Rise (2019) the Vampires decided to recorded a song I wrote for Paranormal that hadn’t been used. Johnny wrote a cool lyric about a true event – it’s called Welcome to Bushwackers.

“Alice and Jeff Beck had talked for years about doing something together. To my big luck it ended up being my song! So it’s me, Johnny Depp and Joe Perry on rhythm guitars, and the stunning Jeff Beck on solos.”

You’ve also done solo work, usually under the banner of Radioactive. The first album, 2001’s Ceremony of Innocence, featured members of Toto. How did you swing that?

“I was living in Los Angeles and I’d become friends with all the Toto guys. I asked them if I got a solo deal would they play on it? I got an instant ‘Yes!’

“Luckily a friend at Sony Records was there too, and I got signed in a few days. Recording my first album, aged 23, with Jeff, Mike and Steve Porcaro and David Paich as my backing band was amazing.

“I was very close friends with Jeff and Mike Porcaro during those years. I miss them a lot. I’ve released six albums as Radioactive, and the list of legends on them all is pretty astonishing.”

Do you have any missing dream collaborations left?

“It sometimes feels like I have worked with them all! But Peter Gabriel has always been a major wish. I absolutely love his music, but also I feel deeply connected to it, and his way of writing. I think I’d be able to contribute something worthy. Then Sting, John Mayer, Stevie Wonder… the list is still long!”

And is there one who got away?

“The song Grace, from my first Radioactive album, was totally written with Richard Page from Mr Mister in mind. I managed to send him the song and he really loved it. But he said: ‘I’m aware of the value of my voice. I’d love to do but my price is …… dollars.

“He was and is worth every cent, but it was way out of my reach at the time, despite serious discussions about making it happen.”

• Keep up with Denander’s projects via Facebook.

If Fleetwood Mac can offer the ultimate in progressive rock ’n’ roll soap operas thanks to a turbulent history of personnel changes, casualties and group crises, the saga of Thin Lizzy would have run them a close second.

In their early ’70s heyday, no band had more potential to make the world their own than Lizzy. They were old-fashioned grafters who toured constantly, worked hard and played hard, learning fast in the process, but somehow never managing to get all the pieces of the jigsaw to fit quite at the same time.

Bestriding the stage like a leather-clad rock god, bassist Phil Lynott was the heart of Thin Lizzy and its songs, but in late 1972 he was poised to take a step back from his role as the band's frontman – with Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore and drummer Ian Paice offering him a chance to form a truly supreme supergroup.

“Ritchie was getting fed up with Deep Purple, and he and lan were getting set to leave,” said Lynott in an interview from the Bass Player archives.

“He came down to see us, and then asked me to come round and have a go. We just went into the studio and played a couple of things as a trio, but he was thinking of adding Paul Rodgers on vocals as well.”

Settling on the name Baby Face, the mental image of Blackmore and Lynott on stage together is awe-inspiring, although it was never to be, unfortunately.

“Phil’s voice was staggering, wonderful,” Ian Paice told Classic Rock. “But he couldn’t play, at least not to the standard that we needed.”

“He was quite often out of tune and out of time. And although he became really, really good at everything he did, at that point he wasn’t. The bass playing had to be on a par with someone like Jack Bruce. And Phil wasn’t there yet.”

Phil Lynott was a poet, and he wore his heart on his sleeve as a lyricist. As a bassist, he wasn’t a technician, but with Thin Lizzy he didn’t need to be; his basslines always sat perfectly between the drums and the duelling guitars.

“Phil was a big entertainer onstage, but you can’t be Jaco Pastorius while you’re trying to talk to the audience and pull them into the music,” said guitarist Scott Gorham. “You’ve got to keep things level in order to bring an arena-sized crowd into a ‘club’ kind of feel, which is a real art in itself. And he was able to do that.”

Lynott used several basses throughout his career, but for fans, his black Fender Precision with a mirrored scratchplate was the favoured instrument. He used the scratchplate to highlight crowd members from his vantage point on the stage.

Thin Lizzy would end up using Baby Face as a song title on the band’s next album, Shades of a Blue Orphanage. Several members of the band would also record a Deep Purple tribute album in 1972 under the name Funky Junction.

Across an ever-busy career, Glenn Hughes has played with some of the best rock guitarists in the game. Two, he says, stand out above the rest. And one just about beats the other.

The bass player and powerhouse vocalist was a key part of Deep Purple’s Mark III and Mark IV line-ups alongside Ritchie Blackmore after rising through the ranks at the front of hard rock act Trapeze. Since then, he’s played on Gary Moore's 1985 album, Run For Cover, fronted Black Sabbath, and worked with Tony Iommi on the collaborative, underrated Fused LP in 2005.

Not to mention that he's shared studios and stages with Blackmore's Deep Purple replacement Tommy Bolin, produced five records with Joe Bonamassa in Black Country Communion, and drafted in the talents of Dave Navarro, John Frusciante, and Jerry Cantrell for his solo albums. His authority on who is the best of the best, then, is pretty formidable. So who takes the honor?

“That’s really difficult [to answer],” he says in the new issue of Classic Rock. “I don’t want people to be upset with me because I don’t mention Ritchie or Tommy [Bolin] or Mel [Galley, Trapeze] or Pat [Thrall, who he worked with in the ‘80s]. But I have to say it’s a tie between Gary Moore and Joe Bonamassa.”

Thankfully, he’s been happy to share his calculations.

“I’m talking about the fever it has given me working with them,” he explains. “Gary coming to my house at three in the morning and just blowing my mind – it’s incredible what a guitar player he was.”

However, it’s Bonamassa, who he says is “blowing my mind every night,” while on tour together, who is “the greatest right now.”

It seems he’s had a change of heart with his rankings. In October 2023, Hughes produced a very different answer to the same question.

“I played with Joe Satriani [on Satriani's 2018 album, What Happens Next], Bonamassa, Iommi and Blackmore, but Gary Moore was the best,” he had said. Seeing Bonamassa strut his stuff on stage every night seems to have tipped the scales.

When Blackmore left Deep Purple, he quickly struck up a fruitful partnership with Bolin. The guitarist moved into his house, and they wrote the bulk of 1975’s Come Taste the Band together during that period.

Last year, Hughes said that Bolin is “in my top three friends and guitar players,” placing him directly behind blues rock royalty in Blackmore and Bonamassa.

Fittingly, Bonamassa now wields Bolin’s famous 1960 Les Paul Standard, having had to go through a supernatural process to add it to his collection. The guitar has a checkered past, but it feels right that Bonamassa is the one to keep its flame burning.

Bonamassa, meanwhile, has looked back on the surreal experience of being asked to collaborate with Ozzy Osbourne, waxed lyrical about Eric Johnson's impact on his playing, and paid tribute to Rory Gallagher by playing his 1932 National resonator at a gig in the Irishman's hometown.

Terry Reid, the guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist whose emotive singing style led gave him the moniker “Superlungs,” has died at 75, following a battle with cancer.

Earlier in July, Reid was forced to postpone a European tour “due to medical issues arising from recent treatment for cancer” – while his family and friends had organized a fundraising appeal to support the cost of his ongoing treatment.

News of his death led to an outpouring of tributes from the music community, with Joe Bonamassa calling him “one of the greatest to ever do it and a beautiful person and soul.”

Determined to forge his own path, Reid famously turned down an offer by Jimmy Page to become the lead vocalist of the band that would evolve into Led Zeppelin, as well as an offer from Ritchie Blackmore to become Deep Purple's frontman. However, he was much more than that – in 1968, Aretha Franklin stated that the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Terry Reid were the best talents England had to offer.

His career included extensive tours with the Stones, Cream, Jethro Tull, and Fleetwood Mac – the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969 and Glastonbury in 1970, as well as numerous collaborations with Graham Nash, a catalog of seven studio albums, session work with the likes of Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, and songs he penned that featured in movies such as Up in the Air and The Devil’s Rejects.

In a 2023 interview with Uncut, Reid clarified that he’d rather be known as the man who put together Led Zeppelin.

“Jimmy [Page] asked me what he should do with the band,” he explained. “He needed a singer who could sing around those guitar licks, and not everybody could do that. I’d seen Robert with John Bonham, so I said to him, ‘Not only is Robert perfect, you’ve got to get the drummer – he’s an animal!’”

And while he may not have joined a big band, he clarified that he had no regrets and was proud of plowing his own furrow.

“When you’re in a band, you’re committed to that style,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’re not gonna be able to play any of that Brazilian music you like, cos they don’t do that. And all those folk things you like, well, forget that.”

In the ’70s and early ’80s, Eric Johnson cut his teeth in the session world, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Cat Stevens, Carole King, and Steve Morse, before eventually taking the plunge to release his debut solo album, Tones, in 1986.

However, before embarking on his solo journey, there was also a group called Mariani, through which he ended up supporting Deep Purple – and ended up developing a fruitful relationship with the Grammy Award–winning Christopher Cross.

“I was in a group called Mariani. We were opening for Deep Purple, and Ritchie Blackmore got food poisoning and was in the hospital overnight,” Johnson recounts in an interview with Guitar World.

“Deep Purple had to do this gig, and Christopher Cross was a real hot-shot guitar player, and he knew all the Deep Purple songs. So, they hired him to do this gig.

“I met him on that gig, and at the time, Chris was more of a rocker. He played a Gibson Flying V and had long hair,” he adds with a laugh. “He was really rocked-out; totally different from what he did later. We got to be friends, and we stayed friends after that gig.”

Years later, for what would become Cross' hugely successful eponymous debut album, he invited Johnson to guest on the track Minstrel Gigolo.

“He had, I think, three or four different guitarists, like Larry Carlton and Jay Graydon,” Johnson explains. “He had a number of guitarists play on that first record, and he just asked me if I’d play on that one song with him.

The album, released in 1979, would end up spawning Cross' career-making hit, Sailing – while it would be another couple of years (and tons of session work later, and the disbandment of the Electromagnets) before Johnson pivoted to his solo career.

Earlier this year, Johnson sat down with Guitarist to discuss his G3 reunion with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, and observed that the limits of guitar have yet to be reached.

When Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple in 1974, there were internal discussions about whether the group could continue without their talisman guitarist. The story goes that David Coverdale, who had joined the band one year earlier, had been listening to Billy Cobham's Spectrum at the time, which featured Tommy Bolin’s talents. But he wasn't the only name in contention.

Clem Clempson, who had journeyed from jazz-rock wizards Colosseum to Humble Pie, where he replaced the outgoing Peter Frampton, was the other clear frontrunner. He even jammed with the band before Bolin got his chance, and though he quickly established a fruitful rapport with Glenn Hughes, he was ultimately overlooked.

“We had fun jamming for a couple of days and just hanging out,” he tells Guitar World of his audition experience.

“Although I think everyone enjoyed the playing we did together, it was clear that they didn’t just need a guitar player to replace Ritchie; they needed someone who could also fill Ritchie’s role as the main songwriter in the group,” he continues. “I definitely didn’t see myself as being the right man for the job in that respect.”

Bolin, conversely, had the songwriting skills the band needed, even if some may argue Clempson had more fiery chops. When Bolin joined, he’d co-write seven of Come Taste the Band’s nine tracks.

Before that, he’d proven an innovator. His wild, Echoplex-powered solo on Spectrum cut Quadrant 4 became a core influence for Steve Stevens’ now-iconic, toy ray gun-utilizing Rebel Yell solo. Looking back, Clemson understands the band’s decision.

“I believe Tommy had lots of songs which were exactly what the band needed,” he says. “And his style was more akin to Ritchie’s than mine. I was never into heavy rock as such. For me, there’s a subtle difference between Humble Pie and bands like Zeppelin, Purple, and Black Sabbath.”

Though his audition wasn’t successful, the guitarist didn’t feel his time was wasted. In fact, he has fond memories of the experience, which nearly spawned another project entirely – the thought of which will have ’70s rock fans salivating.

“One of the highlights was spending a very late night with Glenn Hughes and David Bowie,” he reminisces. “We wrote a song based on a riff I had, and made plans for a new band, the idea was to be Mahavishnu Orchestra with vocals.”

Bowie would stick around for Bolin's audition shortly after, as Glenn Hughes recalled last year, playing the role of chauffeur. The bassist felt immediately drawn to the band’s soon-to-be new guitarist.

“On his [Tommy’s] audition, [David] Bowie drove me down to the audition to meet Tommy, and I walked up to Tommy, I saw this guy with green and purple hair,” he says. “I whispered in his ear, ‘If you don't get the gig, you're coming back to my house tonight.’

“And he got the gig and he stayed at my house for three months. He moved in with me, and we became best friends. We wrote Gettin’ Tighter the first week together at my studio and look, I can talk about guitar-playing friends all day, but Tommy's in my top three friends and guitar players.”

Bolin's only album with the band received a mixed response from the fan base and at live shows, with many disgruntled that his solos were a stylistic far cry from Blackmore's – not to mention the excessive drug use throughout the group.

The line-up disbanded in 1976. Bolin would go on to record and release a second solo album, Private Eyes, later that year but, while on tour with Jeff Beck and Peter Frampton, tragically died of an overdose. The last photo taken of him sees him sitting alongside Jeff Beck.

The story goes that Beck told him to take care of himself when they parted ways, with Bolin responding, “I've been taking care of myself my whole life. Don't worry about me. I'm going to be around for a long time.”

His beloved Les Paul is now in the hands of Joe Bonamassa, who had to conduct a séance with the late virtuoso to get his permission. To this day, Bonamassa says it is one of the strangest guy purchases he's ever made.

Guitar World's full interview with Clem Clempson will be published in the coming weeks.

Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore is reportedly experiencing “quite a few medical issues,” according to his wife, musician and bandmate Candice Night.

“Believe it or not, this man, it's April, and his birthday is coming, so he's going to be 80 in on April 14th, which is mind boggling, because he doesn't look and he certainly doesn't act it still,” Night tells Eonmusic.

“He actually had a heart attack about a year and a half ago, and he's got six stents in his heart at this point. And we're battling arthritis and some gout issues, and he's still got his back problem that he's had, so travel is difficult for him because of all that sitting.”

Night also mentions how, for Blackmore, “standing on stage, even standing with the guitars is tricky,” and that he was warned by his medical team not to fly – which hinders potential touring plans beyond the U.S.

Blackmore's Night, the husband-and-wife folk-rock project the two have together, still managed to tour over the past couple of weeks, with dates in Rhode Island and New Jersey, and upcoming dates in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York State.

Night clarifies that they're still playing shows “anywhere we can drive to”, concluding that she's putting “positive energy, out there in the universe, and hope that maybe we can get him back on there.”

Back in 2016, Blackmore had a frank conversation about the strain of touring and the steps he was taking to minimize its impact on his health.

“Optically, I’m deteriorating very fast, as we all are,” the guitarist had said. “All my friends are passing away. Some of my enemies are passing away, too. But we try and keep up with it.”

He had also commented on Deep Purple's relentless touring schedule back then, asserting that “personally, they’re milking it a bit too much.”

Ritchie Blackmore’s wife, Candice Night, has confirmed the legendary Deep Purple electric guitar legend suffered a heart attack last year, and is unlikely to perform in Europe in the near future.

During an interview with TotalRock, Night was asked about the possibility of her and Blackmore taking Blackmore’s Night – the pair’s folk-rock project – to Europe.

Night went on to reveal they currently have six US dates lined up, but are currently unable to commit to any European shows owing to the fact Blackmore has been told he can’t fly by his cardiologist.

Explaining the medical order, Night continues, “He had a heart attack about a year and a half ago. He’s got six stents. I can’t believe he’s going to be 80 on April 14th, which is crazy – he doesn’t look it, still doesn’t act it – but eventually medical things wind up catching up with you.

“So we’ve gotta make sure we keep him happy and healthy. And he’s dealing with gout and some arthritic things. And, of course, his back has always been an issue for years. So it’s getting harder for him. It’s tricky.

“But, hey, I’ve seen people younger than him in wheelchairs on stage doing what they do,” she adds. “So I think he probably doesn’t want people to see him that way.

“I see the other perspective. From a fan’s perspective, I would think people would just be happy to be under the same roof with him and listen to him play whatever he comes up with. So, we kind of have this discussion, or argument – I'll say discussion – all the time.

“But he was just recently at his cardiologist and they said, ‘Let's put traveling by plane on hold.’ So, hopefully we’ll get that all straightened out and that’ll change. But I’ll let you guys know if it does.”

Blackmore’s Night will perform six shows across April and May. Dates and tickets can be found on the band’s official website.

Recently, Blackmore began sharing stories from across his career on his YouTube channel. Tales include the time he bought his first Gibson from amp pioneer Jim Marshall, jamming Little Richard with George Harrison at a Deep Purple concert, and disturbing Eric Clapton by cranking amps in a hotel at 3am.

Yet another eyebrow-raising best guitar riffs of all time list has been published, and – as is usually the case with such round-ups – it has drafted up some rather interesting results.

The 40-strong list comes from uDiscoverMusic, which is part of Universal Music Group’s stable. With that in mind, it's noting that, in the list, the top five riffs all come from Universal artists or bands signed to one of its numerous subsidiaries.

Other notable caveats are that some big hitters and popular Guitar World poll-toppers are questionably relegated to more humble positions (or omitted entirely, in some cases) and the most ‘modern’ offering of the compiled list dates back 22 years to 2006.

That means that none of the riffs of our best riffs of the 2010s poll feature, as the likes of Tool (7empest), Arctic Monkeys (Do I Wanna Know?), and Gary Clark Jr. (Bright Lights) all miss out.

However, there is never an exact science behind compiling such lists, and while the resulting run-down leaves plenty of room for commenters to swing an argument, it’s still an interesting list nevertheless – even if there are some totally bizarre absences.

Kirsten Hersh’s acoustic-led Your Dirty Answer creeps in at the 40th spot on the list, hailed for its “pulsating main guitar riff” and deemed more worthy of a spot than White Stripe’s Seven Nation Army, which is left out entirely.

Eddie Van Halen and Van Halen make one sole appearance with Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love peaking at a fairly lowly 25, one place behind Johnny Marr's spangly This Charming Man riff, and two behind Mark Knoplfer's dancefloor-filling antics on Money for Nothing.

Led Zeppelin’s hip-shaking Whole Lotta Love, which topped Guitar World’s poll of the 50 best guitar riffs of all time in 2023, has to settle for 7th place, not even making it into the top 10. AC/DC’s Back In Black, triumphant in NME’s 2012 poll, falls to 16th.

They weren't the only world-conquering riffs to be humbled here, either. Crazy Train (15), and Enter Sandman (14), both nestle outside the top 10, while The Kinks' You Really Got Me (10) just makes the top bracket.

ZZ Top's ever-cool La Grange (9), Hendrix's Purple Haze (8), and Link Wray's hugely influential 1958 cut Rumble all follow, before Guns N' Roses Sweet Child O' Mine – which Slash says did not come from a warm-up routine, despite popular belief – kicks off the top five.

But it's Nirvana's '90s-shaping Smells Like Teen Spirit that reigns supreme, edging out Smoke on the Water (4), The Rolling Stones' (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (3), and Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode, despite the poll describing the four-chord smash as “unoriginal”.

UDiscoverMusic notes: “The four-chord pattern of the riff is unoriginal but the quiet-loud dynamic contrasts of the song, and Cobain’s visceral delivery, add to the potency of one of the best guitar riffs of the ‘90s”.

As reported by Guitar World, “while the Studio preamp, Boss DS-1, and Small Clone provide the essence of Cobain’s guitar tones on the song, several other production flourishes influence the finished recorded sound.”

Luckily, replicating the song's iconic tones can be done on the cheap. Check out Guitar World's guide to nailing Smells Like Teen Spirit's tone.

Check out uDiscoverMusic to see the riff list in full.

This month in Bought & Sold, the venerable rock guitar legend Steve Morse checks in to discuss his greatest gear hits and misses over the years.

The former Deep Purple guitarist (it still takes a bit of getting used to saying that) might not be a collector, but he knows exactly what he wants from the instrument – which is why his Ernie Ball Music Man signature guitar has four pickups. It’s a radical design, but as he explains here, everything – yes, including that neck pickup – is in its right place.

But we start as we always do, with his first good guitar. Like many of us, that’s when things got serious…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money?

“The first serious guitar I bought with my own money was a new sunburst Strat in 1967. I later took the neck off that one, put it on a Tele, and ended up with humbuckers and single-coil pickups – my ‘FrankenTele’. The pickup layout became the starting point of my [Steve Morse signature] Music Man guitars.”

What was the last guitar you bought and why?

“The last guitar I bought was a Godin classical. The reason was that my custom-made Buscarino classical guitar, with the Roland synth module built in, was stolen while we were on tour.”

“I needed something quick to do the duets and nylon-string stuff – the quiet moments of the [Dixie] Dregs set. The Godin was a nice guitar, but I sold it to a fan as soon as I got my Buscarino back.

“And yes, I got it back, thanks to some people who worked with Joe Bonamassa. They somehow had contact with the guy and talked him into returning it anonymously.”

What’s the most incredible find or bargain you’ve ever had when buying guitars?

“The most incredible find I’ve ever had was buying a handmade classical guitar in Miami in 1971. The builder needed money. I was a broke student, and with the warning that the finishing was not complete, I bought it.

“I also never finished it because I was too busy playing it every single day to learn my studies at the University of Miami. It has a cloudy hand-rubbed finish and one crack, I think, but it’s a big part of my early history.”

What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve ever had after buying gear?

“The strongest case of buyer’s remorse I ever had was when I traded an ES-335 for a ‘Black Beauty’ Les Paul. I couldn’t grab the strings to bend since the frets were so low, as it was probably meant for jazz players.

“It sounded decent, but since I couldn’t play it I traded it away in 1972. I didn’t know I could’ve just had it refretted – I was a teenager. But ergonomically, the Les Paul setup didn’t fit me anyway.”

Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go?

“The one guitar I’ve intensely regretted selling was a Ramírez, which I didn’t like at the time due to tuning issues.

“Much later, I learned that there are ways of cutting the nut and bridge to lessen those issues, as well as trying different gauges of strings at the crossover point between plain and wound strings.”

What’s your best guitar-buying tip?

“My best guitar-buying tip is to make a deal that’s good and fair to both parties. Basically, then you’re starting your ownership on a good karma footing. Guitars are super important, but ultimately they are the least expensive thing you need to pay for if you count how many years they last.

“I’m not a collector, so I don’t have any tips, except I love it when real collectors make a find that an elderly person has in their closet and offer them more than the owner wanted because they know how valuable the instrument is nowadays.”

When was the last time you stopped and looked in a guitar shop window or browsed online, and what were you looking at?

“The last time I was window shopping was really at the NAMM Show. Every year, somebody has a new type of accessory, guitar electronic, folding guitar or different body material. In particular, I’m always curious about folding guitars for minimalist travel practice.

“In reality, I designed my Music Man to fit in the overhead bin of small aircraft and be carried into a three-quarter-size gigbag, so it’s very easy to carry aboard a plane, so I don’t really need the folding guitar, but I love the ingenuity people have shown.

“Also, the adjusted frets to give better tuning temperament, the various tuning improving bridges, and so on. In the end, in order to know I’ve got the best compromise on my Music Man, I need to keep up with what’s around to see the advantages and disadvantages of various mods.”

If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good electric guitar and a cheap amp, or a cheap guitar and a top-notch high-end guitar amp?

“Man, that’s a tough one, but the guitar wins. I need to have various tones coming straight from the instrument. The amp is a big part of things, but the guitar is the biggest. That is partly because some cheap amps sound like 80 per cent as good as a great amp. But most guitars that are cheap can’t do anything like the range of sounds on my guitar.”

If you could only use humbuckers or single coils for the rest of your career, which would it be and why?

“Humbuckers. They are versatile in that you can play with the series wiring and pick off a coil to give you that single-coil type of sound, too. The actual hum rejection part of the design helps me stay sane when I’m in buildings with real RF problems; I simply always park my setting on a humbucker during a quiet part, even if I use the single coils during the song. I prefer the basic single coil to the stacked single coils in my applications.”

“It all starts with the guitar: my Music Man signature with four pickups – plus, usually, a Roland synth pickup GK-2. This guitar gives me control over volume and tone and allows me to bring down the gain and boost the high-end back up as I do so by selecting one of my single-coil pickups mounted further from the strings.

“The neck pickup is designed to be in the exact spot it’s mounted, which keeps the guitar down to a 22-fret fingerboard – but there is that all‑important fatness in the neck pickup as a result.

“I plug straight into a TC Electronic PolyTune Mini, and from that into my trusty Keeley Compressor. From there, it’s straight back to my Engl 100-watt signature amp. Channel 1 is a beautiful clean channel that can be driven hard to warm up smoothly or, with normal gain, is clean enough to run my Buscarino electric classical guitar into it without distortion.

“Channel 2 is the bread-and-butter rock sound. Channel 3 has the most midrange control knobs and can be used to make a solo ‘pop’ out in the mix without having any more noticeable level on the VU meters on the mixing board.”

Before Marshall Amplification, there was Jim Marshall, his business acumen, and his small music shop at 76 Uxbridge Road, Hanwell, just a few miles away from The Ealing Club – the birthplace of The Rolling Stones and British rhythm and blues, and a hot spot for musicians.

“Jim was a very affable kind of guy,” recalls Blackmore in an interview at his tavern in the States. “He knew nothing about amplifiers, yet it's funny to see today, every band has got a Marshall amplifier, and that was built in the beginning by someone who knew nothing about amplifiers.”

“He was a drum teacher. I always find that slightly amusing!” he quips.

Ritchie Blackmore was one of Marshall’s early customers who later made a name for themselves. Recently, he recalled how the amp pioneer persuaded him to buy a Gibson ES-335 when he was around 16. This guitar accompanied him throughout the '60s, from The Outlaws to Deep Purple’s 1970 breakthrough album, In Rock.

“I went there with the intention of buying a Gretsch Jet Firebird. After half an hour of a sales pitch, he said, ‘Forget the Gretsch. That’s a toy compared to the 335.’ I went, ‘But I want the Gretsch. I love the Jet Firebird.’ He said, ‘You'll appreciate the 335 Gibson much more later in life.’ [So] I walked out with a Gibson!”

Blackmore goes on to say he paid 30 shillings – which was significant money at the time – for the guitar, plus another 30 shillings for an amp, on hire purchase, putting a dent in his wallet. “So I was left with next for nothing to live on for the week!”

In a classic 1991 Guitar World interview, the former Deep Purple guitarist explained why it was so difficult to eventually switch from Gibsons to Fenders between the band’s In Rock and Fireball eras.

“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. I had a hell of a time. But I stuck with the Fenders because I was so taken with their sound, especially when they were paired with a wah-wah.”

In recent Deep Purple news, Simon McBride pinpointed the Ritchie Blackmore lick he found most difficult to learn.

Last month, Ritchie Blackmore started his new ‘Tales from the Tavern’ YouTube series, which finds the Deep Purple electric guitar legend look back over his storied career by sharing anecdotes of his most notable career milestones.

In the most recent episode, Blackmore has recalled the time he played alongside George Harrison in the mid 1980s, after the Beatle had spontaneously joined Deep Purple onstage in Australia to jam Little Richard’s Lucille.

In true Blackmore fashion, the guitar star couldn’t help retell the tale with a bit of his famous British humor, joking Harrison had once asked him to join the Beatles.

“I’d never heard of them, and I knew they were going nowhere, so I said, ‘No, absolutely not,’” he quips.

As for the time he actually met Harrison, Blackmore recalls, “The truth is, he was friends with Jon Lord and Ian Paice – he lived just down the road.

“He was over in Australia when we were there as Deep Purple, and he said to me very politely, ‘Can I get up on stage with you and use your guitar?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ I was flattered.

“Sure enough, we all got up on stage and we did the old rock 'n' roll number Lucille by Little Richard. We had a good time.”

To add to the recollection, Blackmore also shares footage from the gig, which took place in Sydney, Australia, in December 1984. In the grainy clip, Blackmore and Harrison can (just about) be seen riffing through Lucille, with the rest of Deep Purple in tow.

Fortunately, footage from that evening (albeit equally grainy) survives of the entire eight-minute jam.

“He was a very nice man, very serious, and very complimentary,” Blackmore adds. “It was very overwhelming to play with a Beatle. There will never be another band like the Beatles.”

The tale of the two guitar heroes joining forces to jam Little Richard has been told before, with Harrison once recalling how he was only vaguely aware of Deep Purple during their 1970s heyday.

“I never knew their music, but I’d heard this one thing, about Smoke On The Water or something like that,” the guitarist said in an old interview (via Louder). “But I’d never actually seen them… I’d heard they were in the Guinness Book Of Records for being the loudest group in the world.”

In an earlier episode of Tales from the Tavern, Blackmore recalled the time he disturbed Eric Clapton by cranking Marshalls in a hotel at 3am.

Though he’s insisted he won't write a book about all his rock ‘n’ roll war stories, Ritchie Blackmore has done the next best thing: he’s started a new YouTube series, during which he’ll recall the tales he’s been telling his closest friends over the years.

The first episode finds the Deep Purple electric guitar legend look back on the time he first met Eric Clapton when his band supported Cream back in 1968 – as well as a far more awkward encounter he had with Slowhand and his security team some time later.

Though Blackmore had given Clapton a good first impression, a subsequent impression wasn’t quite so favorable, after Blackmore and his friend decided to protest some noisy hotel maintenance by cranking their Marshalls at 3am.

Unfortunately, Clapton happened to be staying in the room next door to them, and wasn’t especially impressed with the high-gain antics.

“We were in a hotel, I think it was Melbourne, Australia,” Blackmore explains. “What happened was, I knew that Eric was with his band in that hotel. We'd had three days there where we'd been woken up very early with hammering – the usual nonsense that goes on in hotels.

“We were so sick of it we actually threatened the front desk, 'If you wake us up again tomorrow we will bring all our amplification into a room and play at 3 o'clock in the morning, and see how your patrons like hearing this noise.

"Which we did. The next day the hammering started as per usual, they took no notice of what we said, so we went ahead and brought in some Marshalls, stacked them, and my friend actually started playing the guitar – he started playing some bad blues, actually.

“As soon as he started playing we were so loud we got a bang on the door and it was Eric's security.”

Unfortunately, Clapton wasn’t staying on a different floor of the hotel, as Blackmore had believed. He was, unfortunately, right next door – and Blackmore was left feeling embarrassed by both the loud noise and the unimpressive playing.

"Believe it or not, Eric was in the next room to where we were," Blackmore continues. “I thought Eric was on another floor way away from where we were. And that was embarrassing, so we stopped playing."

"The next day we had some words with his security and I said, 'I'm really sorry, I didn't realize we were next door.' That was embarrassing, especially to think that Eric might have thought it was me making this racket on the guitar.

“I was in there having a drink, but I wasn't playing. That doesn't get me off the hook – it was really my idea to make all this noise.”

Head over to Ritchie Blackmore’s YouTube channel to follow the ongoing series.

Simon McBride is living the dream. “When I was growing up,” he says, “there were three giants – Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. If you’d said to a 13-year-old version of me that one day I’d be in Deep Purple, I’d have laughed.” But 30 years later, that’s exactly where the Irish guitarist has ended up.

“I’m honoured and privileged,” he smiles, “because every guitarist under the sun has a dream goal to be in a legendary rock band, and here I am doing it. I’m loving every minute of it. And to have my name attached to such a legacy is amazing.”

For sure, Simon had big shoes to fill when he joined Purple in 2022. He was replacing Steve Morse, an iconic shredder and Purple’s longest-tenured guitarist. And when it came to playing live with the band, he faced an even more daunting task – performing those classic Purple songs from the ’70s, including Highway Star, Black Night and, of course, Smoke On The Water – all of which bore the indelible stamp of one of the most revered guitarists of all time, Ritchie Blackmore.

But Simon had years of experience behind him, including stints working with two of the guys in Purple, singer Ian Gillan and keyboard player Don Airey. With his trusty PRS in hand, he was up for the challenge. And now, two years on, comes the release of his first album with the band.

Titled =1, it’s the 23rd studio album of Purple’s long career, and its creation was a remarkably stress-free experience for the new guy in the band.

“I didn’t really need to prepare myself for it,” he says. “I always knew there was a record to be done, and it was very exciting – the prospect of doing a record with Deep Purple! But there was no pressure as far as what the other guys felt it should be. We just got in a room together. From my perspective, it was very easy. I just jumped in there and went for it.”

When you’re in a role previously held by Messrs Blackmore and Morse, how much does that play on your mind?

“You just have to be yourself, you know? If you try to think about what was before – and this applies to any situation – you’ll get a bit strangled musically. There’s no point trying to compete with Steve Morse or Ritchie Blackmore. I mean, nobody can do it better than them. Certainly not me! So my attitude is not to try to be like them.

“One of the things that the guys in the band like about me as a player is I do my own thing. I’m very respectful of the old songs because some of those parts that Ritchie and Steve played are huge parts of the songs, and there’s no way to change them. But for the writing sessions, it’s a combination of different influences from every member of the band. That’s what I’ve always loved about Deep Purple. There’s no rules when it comes to the songs.”

Did the album come together easily?

“Writing a song is just as hard as learning to play the guitar, but the more things you can learn from other people, the better. Listening to the early Ritchie stuff had me thinking, ‘Wow, I never would have thought of that or did that’, but now I would.

“Some of the stuff Steve did, he was a bit more progressive, which is really not my bag, but I learned from it. I said, ‘Okay, I get what he’s doing here.’ He’s going from this skill or this mode, and I learned from that, and I use it. I’m like a sponge. I soak it all up, take a dip from everyone, and use it in my own way.”

What sorts of tones were rattling around in your brain?

“I use the same rig as my live rig, so it’s Engl amps and stuff. I grew up with classic and hard rock, so that sound is always going to be in my brain no matter what rig I plug into. If I plug into a Fender, I still try to get a Marshall sound, and it’s the same with a Vox.”

Is your ’board the same in the studio?

“I sometimes use a DigiTech Whammy for various things, but in the studio, it’s mostly just my Engl amps, a Vox AC30 for some overdubs, and PRS guitars, which I use all the time. I have two signature ones [the 408] that PRS made for me – single-cuts, and they’re very versatile. I also use a Quad Cortex, which is great when you’re recording digitally because it gets things done quickly.”

What was your approach for solos?

“Solos can go one of two ways, right? I’d say about 50 per cent of the record had the solos done in the first take. I’d just go in and play, and then it’s done. The producer, Bob Ezrin, likes to do two or three different versions of the solo, so he can pick and choose.

“But I remember saying, ‘No, I ain’t gonna do any better than that!’ So there are solos that are very natural and improvised, but also other ones, like on the song Pictures Of You, where there’s a little bit more going on. It’s like a harmony guitar thing, and there’s more melody.”

And riffs?

“With riffs, it’s a weird thing. I find it hard to sit down and say, ‘I’m going to write a guitar riff, and it’s going to sound like this.’ It never happens. I’ll sit there for hours, just noodling, and nothing comes but pure crap! It’s always when I just plug in, don’t think and start playing that I’ll play the coolest riffs.”

Through the process of recording this album, did you ever get stuck?

“Oh, yeah. I’ve been stuck in a rut many times. How I get out of it is trying something different. I also started learning different skills, like modes. I know a lot of theory, but there’s an endless amount of it, so trying different things always helps.

“Even if it’s different positions on the fretboard or looking at an octave up or down, you know? You have to start trying to think outside of the box and find other ways to do it. It may sound terrible until you come up with something else, but that’s all part of the process.”

Have you adapted your style since joining Deep Purple?

“Technique-wise, no. There’s not really much to it when it comes to technique, so that wasn’t really a challenge. But the Steve Morse stuff is very different to the early Ritchie Blackmore stuff. Steve had a bit of an injury to his wrist, so he doesn’t play the way he did in Dixie Dregs. If I had to play what he did there, I would give up!

“And with Ritchie’s style, for example, there’s a solo like Highway Star that I can’t change. When you’ve got 65,000 people all singing the solo back at you note-for-note, it’s like, ‘Okay, I am so glad I did not change this at all!’ But there are other solos, like the one in Smoke On The Water, where I changed it around and put my own flavour on it.”

Have you had any exciting pedal discoveries recently?

“On stage, I’m tap dancing a lot because I’ve got so many different pedals. Probably the most obscure one is a Boss pedal called the Slicer [SL-2], which is absolute mayhem and chaos. Some people find it unusable, but I use it for some real freakout stuff in Black Night, and it’s just pure noise and a battle with my modulation.”

Steve Morse often ran a wet/dry system on tour. Is that something you’re doing, too?

“Yeah; so the main difference now is I am running a wet/dry system. I always used to run a stereo system, but the wet/dry gives more options. I also use some JAM pedals, like their chorus, the Analog WaterFall, and I’ve got an old [MXR] Phase 90 and an [MXR] Octavia. My pedalboard is huge, and people say, ‘Do you use all those?’ My answer is: ‘Yes!’”

You’ve got a lot of tones to cover!

“I use every single pedal on the ’board. It may only be for one or two bars, but it adds a bit of colour. It keeps it fresh and more interesting for people. Plus, I’m a guitar nerd, and we all love pedals!”

• =1 is out now via earMUSIC.

Just over two years ago, Simon McBride was set on a path that would lead him to permanently joining Deep Purple as the classic rock outfit’s lead electric guitar player.

After initially filling in for Steve Morse, who announced a temporary leave due to personal reasons, back in March 2022, McBride was then appointed on a full-time basis in September of that year.

Since then, he’s performed live with Deep Purple, and has also helped them craft =1 – the group’s 23rd studio album, their first to feature McBride as their guitarist, and a record that cements the blues-rock ace in the annals of Deep Purple history.

It was well-documented that McBride was stepping in to fill some fairly sizable shoes, joining a list of Deep Purple guitarists that features the likes of Morse and Ritchie Blackmore.

Speaking in the new issue of Total Guitar, McBride discusses just how he managed to adapt to his new role, and how he's been able to follow in the footsteps of Blackmore and Morse.

And the key, he says, has been to remain true to himself as a guitarist, recognizing that, while he can homage to the players that have come before him, he can never truly be them – and that’s not a problem.

“You just have to be yourself, you know? If you try to think about what was before – and this applies to any situation – you’ll get a bit strangled musically,” McBride reflects. “There’s no point trying to compete with Steve Morse or Ritchie Blackmore.

“I mean, nobody can do it better than them. Certainly not me! So my attitude is not to try to be like them. One of the things that the guys in the band like about me as a player is I do my own thing.

“I’m very respectful of the old songs because some of those parts that Ritchie and Steve played are huge parts of the songs, and there’s no way to change them.”

As he mentions, McBride has to draw from a catalog of tracks that has been assembled by two very different guitarists, who each have different qualities to their playing. When it comes to tackling their more iconic parts, each song requires a different approach.

“The Steve Morse stuff is very different to the early Ritchie Blackmore stuff,” McBride observes. “Steve had a bit of an injury to his wrist, so he doesn’t play the way he did in Dixie Dregs. If I had to play what he did there, I would give up!

“And with Ritchie’s style, for example, there’s a solo like Highway Star that I can’t change. When you’ve got 65,000 people all singing the solo back at you note-for-note, it’s like, ‘Okay, I am so glad I did not change this at all!’ But there are other solos, like the one in Smoke On the Water, where I changed it around and put my own flavour on it.”

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Total Guitar, which features the full interview with Simon McBride.

There are few players who have wielded the Fender Stratocaster with more authority than the legendary Ritchie Blackmore. The firebrand guitarist who brought the world some of its most iconic riffs (and solos) with Deep Purple and Rainbow has made it his number one electric guitar for decades, and at 79 he is in no mind to change now.

It wasn’t always this way. Longtime Blackmore fans will tell you it was the Gibson ES-335 that he made his name on. So what was it that got him swap the semi-hollow for the solidbodied doublecut?

Well, as he explains here, in an interview that takes us from his 1991 GW cover shoot to the present day, there was a knock at the door. Enter, Eric Clapton’s roadie… But first, what about that Strat from the GW cover?

Where and when did you buy this guitar?

“I have no idea. I have probably 12 Strats, but I noticed when looking at the picture that it’s not one of my more favored Strats. I think I picked it up because sometimes when I do a photo session, I take a guitar that I very rarely use. I still do it today with the acoustic guitars that I play some of the Renaissance music with.”

So there wasn’t really anything special about it?

“Just because it’s in the photograph, it usually means I don’t use it. And looking at that guitar, it definitely looks like one of my substandard Strats. Whereas if it was my favorite Strat, it may get lost, I may forget it or leave it somewhere or it might get damaged in transit. So the reason I’m playing that guitar in the photo is because it isn’t one of my favorite guitars – in case I lost it. My good ones are usually under lock and key.”

Do you know what year it was?

“No. But the Strat I play now is an ’82. It’s a separate body put together with a different neck.”

Did you use the Strat on the cover for any notable recordings?

“No. I only use one, my favorite Strat, which is locked away for recordings or playing onstage. For photo sessions, as I said before, I use anything I can find.”

How did this guitar feel compared to your favorite Strat, which you’ve just mentioned?

“I think we should start speaking about my favorite Strat. And that is obviously white, and has a concave neck between the frets, which I usually do myself. It’s a very arduous process that takes about four days to shave down the wood. I cover the frets with tape, but I usually wind up having the guitar re-fretted with Gibson fat frets. I like really thick frets. I find the Fender frets are a bit too thin, personally.”

You gave me an idea of why you chose this Strat for your GW cover shoot, but are there any anecdotes from the day to share?

“Not really. As I said before, it was just a guitar lying around, so if I forgot it in the photo studio, it would be of no consequence in comparison to my good guitars.”

What got you started with Stratocasters?

“I do have a short story about my history with Strats. I was in Deep Purple in 1969 and I was living in Acton, London. We were all in the same house, the whole band, and Eric Clapton’s roadie came by the house because he knew one of my roadies, and he brought a Strat with him. I think it was black. So I said to him, ‘Do you want to sell that guitar? It looks interesting, and I wanted to try out a Strat.’

“He said, ‘I’ll sell it to you for £60.’ I said, ‘Okay, you’re on.’ So, for £60, I bought one of Eric Clapton’s old Strats that he obviously didn’t want because he gave it to the roadie. That was my initiation into playing a Strat. Up until then, I always played a Gibson ES-335.”

Did you use that Strat on any notable recordings?

“I think we made a record named Emmaretta, and I used a wah-wah pedal with that Strat. However, the neck was a little bit too bowed, so I moved on from that Strat to buying another Strat from my friend’s shop in London. It was a sunburst Strat and a black Strat.

“I often used to change necks on my Strats, sometimes with the three or four screws on the back of the neck. If I remember correctly, I changed the neck from the black Strat to the sunburst Strat because I preferred that neck.”

Was that, by chance, the guitar you used on Smoke on the Water?

“At this point, I had three or four Strats. The Smoke on the Water guitar, I believe, was the sunburst guitar with the black Strat’s neck. A lot of people ask me which guitar I used. I like the sunburst Strat color because of Buddy Holly, but I was always fascinated by the white Strat.

“I remember Colin [Manley] from the Remo Four playing a white Strat back in ’66. He was the first player I saw play with a white Strat, and it was very majestic and to me. It kind of said, ‘I don’t have to be any color because white stands out.’

“I wore a lot of black on stage and liked the contrast. Then I saw Jeff Beck had a white Strat, then Jimi Hendrix had a white Strat. But like I said, the first one I saw was Colin from the Remo Four playing it in Hamburg, Germany.

“My subliminal thinking was, ‘I would really like to get a white Strat one day.’ Now it would seem every guitar player that gets a Strat is playing a white Strat, so I may have to rethink my thinking on that one.”

The white Strat is kind of synonymous with you, though.

“Maybe I should get a green or yellow one. There was a time after seeing Albert Lee playing a black Les Paul Gibson in ’63, and I wanted a black Les Paul; however, by the time I got around to buying a black Les Paul, they had become so popular, everyone had one. I always liked to be different, so that put me off getting a black Les Paul. I stayed with my red Gibson [ES-335]. Les Paul was an incredible influence on me in the early ’60s.”

OK, just one more question about the Strat you’re holding on the February 1991 GW cover! Do you still own it?

“I have about three or four Strats, as I am a firm believer in not having loads of them. I can only play one at a time, so... And I do have a very special Strat. I also went through a period in the ’80s of playing with a tremolo arm, but I kept breaking them, so I had them made twice as thick so I wouldn’t break them.

“Funnily enough, I still broke them. So I had them made three times as thick [with] a ½” round tremolo arm. I have two Strats I count as my favorites. One has a ½” tremolo arm, and one has a really nice neck that I tend to play when I’m playing rock.

“It’s also very heavy, and I find that with my back problem, it’s very hard to stand on stage with this guitar because it’s so heavy, so I usually sit on a stool, which I know is not very rock ’n’ roll, but that’s what happens when you’re 78.”

Do you know what happened to the less-favored Strat you posed with on the cover?

“I’m not exactly sure what happened to the guitar on the cover. But whenever I would store the guitars or amps that I wasn’t using, and we would go on tour, they were stored in London. I would come back, and they were usually stolen.”

What does the Fender Strat mean to you?

“A way of paying the bills. It also happens to be an incredible guitar. It’s very adaptable for all sorts of music [like] country, rock [and] jazz.”

When Simon McBride joined Deep Purple in 2022, he was tasked with learning all the band's repertoire, including founding Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore's guitar work. McBride has now revealed which Ritchie Blackmore guitar lick he finds most challenging to play.

“Most of it is actually not too bad. There's one little lick which annoyed me for a long, long time, it's in Lazy,” he says in a new interview with Ultimate Guitar. I don't play the same solo he plays in Lazy, but Lazy is one of those songs where I feel I can just improvise a bit more and just have a bit more fun with it.

“But there's this one lick he does in it, and I said, ‘I have to play that.’ And it's a bitch of a lick. It's not ultrafast. It's just there's a lot of chromatic stuff in it and slides in a very tight space, within three or four frets, and that's it. So that, to me, is the hardest thing about playing Purple.”

McBride also notes that while Blackmore was never the most technical of guitar players, melody-driven compositions are his forte. “Even Highway Star, the fast part in that, it's fast, but it's not John Petrucci from Dream Theater or something ridiculously fast. It's fast, but it fits the song.

"But everything else that he played was more just melodies. Ritchie played for the song most of the time. But yeah, that lick in Lazy – that still haunts me every night when I come up to it. I'm like, ‘Oh shit, don't screw it up!’”

In a 2022 Guitar World interview, McBride talked about his unique way of learning and tackling ex-guitarist Steve Morse's guitar parts, particularly the unison lines between Morse and Purple keyboardist Don Airey.

“To learn things, I don’t necessarily pick up the guitar for the first two weeks; I’ll just sit and listen to the songs over and over until I’m sick of listening to them. When I actually sit down with the guitar, I like to be able to nearly play it already just from familiarity, knowing the chords and what positions they’re being played in.”

He continued, “I don’t think there’s too much that will be challenging for me. It’s mainly just remembering all the parts as a whole. It’s not like just learning a normal set with standard issue songs, which are verse/chorus/verse/chorus/solo and done. They have all these alternate endings and, as you said, those mad sections with unison lines.”

Deep Purple recently paid homage to one of their best-known songs, Smoke on the Water, by performing on a stage set up on the lake in Montreux, Switzerland that inspired its lyrics.

If heavy metal is the bastard son of rock ’n' roll, Deep Purple is due a paternity test. Like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, their peers in the trifecta of hard rock, Purple reacted against the bubblegum pop and hippy-dippy fare of the 1960s with a high-octane sound that was powered by the blues and borrowed as freely from classical music as it did from psychedelia and folk.

From the band's 1968 debut, Shades of Purple, through its self-titled 1969 album, bassist Nick Simper anchored the burgeoning outfit with sinewy lines that darted deftly between guitarist Richie Blackmore's leads and Hammond organ player Jon Lord's progressive keyboard stabs.

Replacing Simper on 1970's Deep Purple In Rock, Roger Glover's entry into the Purple fold coincided with the arrival of vocalist Ian Gillan, forming a legendary lineup that would create the band's most celebrated recordings.

With 1972's Machine Head, Deep Purple secured its rank in rock royalty. While Smoke on the Water – the autobiographical song kicking off Side Two that details the album's recording in the south of France – is the band's best-known track, the album's opener, Highway Star, presents the best route to the heart of Deep Purple's riff-driven righteousness.

Kicking off the track with a chugging rhythm and a gritty tone, Glover sets the pace for seven bars before ripping through an upper-register fill. By the time Gillan enters with vocals, Glover is going full-steam ahead with eighth notes.

“I believe in playing simply, because of the virtuosity that surrounds me in the rest of the band,” Glover told Bass Player. “I have to be the bedrock for them to lie on and do what they do – I never think too much about what I play – I just like to go for what feels and sounds right at the time.”

You can listen to the isolated bass and drums below.

As you power through the driving eighth notes, you might try experimenting with different picking styles – downstrokes tend to give each note a stronger attack, but alternate picking makes the bluesy pentatonic runs sound smoother.

“In terms of the high-speed accuracy, feel and attack needed to play Deep Purple’s music, I get more volume and power when I play with a pick. When I pick up a bass guitar and just mess around, I usually play with my fingers, but I’ve always played better with a pick. I’d never properly be able to play Highway Star with my fingers.”

For the thickest tone and most convenient fingering, fret those eighth-note Gs with your ring finger on the fifth fret of the D string, and get comfortable – you'll be playing a few hundred of 'em before the tune is through.

Not one to rest on his laurels, Glover also played with Rainbow, David Coverdale, Alice Cooper and many more stellar musicians. As a producer, he has helmed albums by Status Quo, Judas Priest, Rainbow, Nazareth, Dream Theater, and has released solo projects such as The Butterfly Ball, a 1974 concept LP.

“There’s always something new when you’re a creative person. You can’t stop writing and expressing what you think. I find it hard to take in, sometimes: I think to myself, ‘How the hell did I get here?’”

Deep Purple have paid homage to Smoke on The Water's origins by returning to where it all started. On July 8, the band performed their iconic track at the 58th edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival, on a brand-new stage built over Lake Geneva.

As the classic rock legends – who now count guitarist Simon McBride among their ranks – played the instantly recognizable riff to an audience of 5,000, the curtain at the back of the stage dropped to reveal the lake and a setup of actual fire – and smoke – on the water.

Frontman Ian Gillan then instructed the crowd to take over singing duties for a crowd sing-along moment. This performance marked the 10th time Deep Purple have performed at the festival.

The band shared anecdotes about the fateful fire that inspired Smoke on the Water in a question-and-answer panel held before their performance.

In 1971, the band was in a casino in Montreux, recording what would be 1972's Machine Head, using The Rolling Stones' mobile studio.

On the eve of the recording session, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were playing in the casino's theater. However, at the beginning of King Kong's synth solo, someone fired a flared gun towards the ceiling, and the casino caught fire – alongside the Mothers' equipment.

“It burned all afternoon, all evening, all through the night. We went and looked at it the next morning, and there it was, gone. It was a frightening thing,” recalled bassist Roger Glover, as transcribed by The Standard.

“The following morning, I was in my room alone and I woke up with those words on my lips, and I said them out to an empty room. And then I kind of really woke up and I said, ‘What did I just say? Smoke on the water?’ No idea what it meant. I mentioned it to Ian [Gillan] and he said, ‘Yeah, sounds like a drug song. Better not do that.’”

In an interview with Classic Rock, drummer Ian Paice recalled the chaotic recording session. “The first track we laid down – and the last to be finished – was Smoke on the Water, before we knew what it was going to be called. There was no soundproofing and we were recording at night. A hell of a racket!”

Founding guitarist Ritchie Blackmore added: “We did Smoke on the Water there, and the riff I made up in the spur of the moment. I just threw it together with Ian Paice. Roger Glover joined in. We went outside to the mobile unit and were listening back to one of the takes, and there was some hammering on the door.

“It was the local police, and they were trying to stop the whole thing because it was so loud. We knew that they were coming to close everything down. We said to Martin Birch, our engineer: ‘Let’s see if we have a take.’ So they were outside hammering and taking out their guns.”

Fortunately, the band managed to get the track down before the police broke in and chucked them all out. What was meant to be an album filler eventually became the band's greatest hit and, arguably, one of the most recognizable guitar riffs of all time.

Glenn Hughes may have ongoing disputes with the current members of Deep Purple. However, he recently gave more insight into his special friendship with the late Tommy Bolin, who was Deep Purple's guitarist between 1975 and 1976.

“Well, when I joined Purple, I was left with, you know, in a band that weren't really a family band,” admits Hughes in an interview with Guitar Interactive Magazine.

“As you know, it really wasn't a fun place to be. On his [Tommy’s] audition, [David] Bowie drove me down to the audition to meet Tommy, and I walked up to Tommy, I saw this guy with green and purple hair. I whispered in his ear, ‘If you don't get the gig, you're coming back to my house tonight.’

"And he got the gig and he stayed at my house for three months. He moved in with me, and we became best friends. We wrote Gettin’ Tighter the first week together at my studio and look, I can talk about guitar-playing friends all day, but Tommy's in my top three friends and guitar players."

In the same interview, Hughes reveals where he currently stands with Deep Purple's three longest-serving members, Roger Glover, Ian Paice, and Ian Gillan, after a tense exchange at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony back in 2016.

“I will never speak to any of them again,” he asserts. “Simply because they were rude. Both Roger, Ian, and Gillan were rude to David [Coverdale]. Very, very hurtful. I didn't give a fuck actually, because I knew they were rude to begin with.

“I was the only sober man there. I don't care about those guys. Gillan was rude to me on stage, accepting the award. He looked at me in the eyes, like I didn't exist." 

In April, Deep Purple ushered in a new era with Portable Door – the lead single from the upcoming album =1 and the first release to feature new guitarist Simon McBride.

Ritchie Blackmore long ago traded rock for Renaissance and medieval music, and the guitar for the mandola. However, despite the shift in music genres, there's still one guitar-related thing he likes doing, albeit occasionally. 

“Occasionally I like to have a blast plugging into my Engl amp and blast out. Not very often – even if it's just to wake up the neighbors,” he says in an interview with the New Jersey Stage. 

Blackmore also lifted the veil on his disenchantment with rock, a feeling that led him to forge a new path. 

“The stress was from the traveling to do with rock and roll, the continual trying to come up with different augmentations of heavy riffs, which can be boring,” he admits. 

“I was getting stale playing the same type of music: heavy rock for the sake of playing heavy rock. I have always been interested in melodic rock – melodies in general. 

“Toward the end of Purple, it was just being loud for the sake of being loud, so when I heard Renaissance music, there were so many incredible melodies that struck a chord with me. That was such a relief in many ways, so I jumped off the monster train just to play some melodies more organically.”

In 1975, after leaving Deep Purple the first time 'round, Blackmore founded Rainbow, which fused baroque music with hard rock. He took his passion for Renaissance and medieval music a step further in 1997, when he formed Blackmore's Night together with his wife Candice Blackmore, where he's since favored a multi-instrumental approach. 

“I have attempted to play the mandola, the hurdy-gurdy, and the nyckelharpa on occasion. I find it very difficult playing the wind instruments which are my favorite Renaissance instruments.”

In a 1991 interview with Guitar World, Blackmore had already revealed his ambitions for a folk-leaning music project. 

“I would love to go back to the 1520s, the time of my favorite music,” he stated. “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.”

Ritchie Blackmore is about to embark on a tour with Blackmore's Night. The short run kicks off on June 22 in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and fans are invited to dress in Renaissance-style garbs. 

Deep Purple have shared Portable Door – the lead single from upcoming album =1, and the band’s first single to feature their new electric guitar player, Simon McBride.

McBride was first appointed as a stand-in guitar player back in March 2022, after Steve Morse announced a temporary hiatus due to personal reasons. In September that year, the blues rock ace was appointed on a full-time basis.

More than a year after the recruitment, Deep Purple have shared their first studio cut to feature McBride, who is eased into the song by way of a galloping riff that pins up the near four-minute effort.

That riff is expanded through a series of tight box-breaking turnarounds, before McBride throws his first official original Deep Purple guitar solo into the mix.

Though McBride has already played to Deep Purple crowds totalling more than a half-a-million people, Portable Door represents another milestone for the PRS player, whose contributions to the classic rock institution’s storied repertoire have now been eternalized in record form.

McBride spoke to Guitar World back in 2022 following his initial call-up, and discussed the challenges he faced going into the role – one of which was the “creative” nature of the solos he’d be covering.

“There are some solos that aren’t just standard solos; they’re more like creative pieces, so I’ll have to learn them exactly and remember,” he reflected. “I’ve spent the last few weeks working on all of the stuff, taking it all into my brain. 

“Whatever gig I’m doing, I always try to include a bit of myself where it works and also stick to the original solos as a mark of respect.

“I guess you could just say it’s all challenging, from timing to feel, there are all sorts of things coming together to make Deep Purple sound like Deep Purple. I have to try and get onboard with that and bring the same sort of energy that Steve would.”

McBride has clearly brought some of that famed energy to his own solo writing, marking his Deep Purple debut with a part that blends the best of his blues rock chops with an unmistakable Deep Purple sound.

Portable Door previews Deep Purple’s upcoming studio album, = 1. The album follows 2020’s Whoosh!, and will be released July 19. For the record, McBride will be joined by his new bandmates: Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Don Airey and Ian Paice. Bob Ezrin was enlisted to produce.

• = 1 is available to preorder now.

Not content with turning Orange Amps purple with his signature Crush Bass 50 combo amp back in 2021, Glenn Hughes has given its O Bass the same treatment. It’s the British brand’s first signature instrument, and it too is given a vibrantly purple treatment ahead of NAMM 2024.    

Its lightweight African Okoumé body is partnered with a Seymour Duncan SPB-1 pickup in contrast to Orange’s custom-wound split coil pickup in the standard model. It has a strong maple neck with a purple fretboard which vie to give a clear and transparent tone.

Dimensions-wise, it features an 864mm scale length with a 43mm top nut and comes in at 3.9kg, just a smidge heavier than the standard’s 3.77kg weight. It also features a nickel four-saddle bridge and open gear tuners.

Another key differentiator from the standard model is the chequerboard binding found around the body and headstock for a subtle but lovely touch. As king of fashion Hughes would never be seen dead in the same outfit twice, it also comes with two changeable ivory and jet-black three-ply scratchplates for those all-important mid-gig costume changes.   

Longtime Orange Amps ambassador Glenn Hughes, known by many as the ‘Voice of Rock’ was a key player in the British hard rock scene as it transitioned into early heavy metal. With a storied career – and he has many to tell – he’s played with Deep Purple, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath, Gary Moore and Dead Daisies.

Having played more gigs than most of us have had hot dinners, he makes the perfect candidate for a signature bass. He’ll take it out on the road in 2024 as he celebrates the 50th anniversary of Deep Purple’s iconic record, Burn.

Says Orange Amps: “Orange Amplification takes great pleasure in launching the Glenn Hughes Signature Purple O Bass guitar. The luxurious colour evokes the 1960’s and ‘70s as well as the beginnings of heavy metal. Whatever the music played, this eye-catching deep purple bass guitar will certainly make a statement on any stage or studio.”

The O Bass was first introduced by Orange in 2015, with an initial small run succeeded by a large-scale rollout in 2022 which saw it go through some minor changes. It was designed in England's capital by Orange Technical Director and lead designer Adrian Emsley who had dreamt of creating a unique-looking, lightweight and classic, P-Bass-esque sounding bass guitar.

Influenced by his time working with bassists in LA throughout the '90s, the bass features custom pickup positioning that emulates the modification many of those players were making to their basses. Hughes’ endorsement of the instrument is a shift for the rock legend, whose career has thus far been defined by the sound of Precision and Jazz Bass guitars.

To keep up to date with the latest instrument, amp and pedal releases as NAMM 2024 draws ever closer, head over to our guide to the latest NAMM 2024 news.

For more information on the new O Bass, head to OrangeAmps.Com

Glenn Hughes was playing Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, CA, on Friday September 8, and to get that stage suitably warm for tour mate Yngwie Malmsteen, the Voice of Rock sent out a WhatsApp to draft his Black Country Communion bandmate Joe Bonamassa on electric guitar for trio of Deep Purple classics.

This being Los Angeles, and a Friday night, Hughes went all in and what-the-heck just went and got Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to play with them, too. Why not, right?

The more the merrier, and Smith looked like he really enjoyed the big hits on Highway Star and Burn, even going so far as to – gently – knock Ash Sheehan’s kit over as the occasion got the better of him.

The signs were there that Hughes might have some guest company onstage. Bonamassa hinted at some action for one of the most famous Gibson Les Pauls in his collection at Nerdville, posing on Instagram with his Bolin ‘Burst – so-called because the single-cut with the starred-and-barred pickguard was once owned by Tommy Bolin.

Some might wonder if a Fender Stratocaster would have been a deeper shade of purple, in keeping with Ritchie Blackmore’s weapon of choice – and surely JoBo has one or two of them lying around at home – but the Bolin ‘Burst was the perfect choice for such an occasion, having served time in Deep Purple when Bolin played in the British rock institution after replacing the outgoing Blackmore in ’75 and ushering in the MkIV lineup.

The Bolin ‘Burst is also the ideal instrument for stretching the epic blues of Mistreated into a 15-minute jam, with a little call and response between Bonamassa on the ‘Burst and Hughes on bass guitar, and for dialing in the firepower for Burn and Highway Star. Besides, Søren Andersen, Hughes' regular guitarist, was on-hand with the Strat.

Hughes’ co-headlining run with Malmsteen is billed the Classic Deep Purple Live Tour and is packed with MkIII and IV cuts, which seems to indicate a change of heart from rock icon. Speaking to Bass Player in 2021, he expressed some amount of regret at his decision to leave Trapeze and join Deep Purple. 

“In retrospect, I really should never have left Trapeze. With no disrespect at all meant towards Deep Purple, there’s not much swagger going on in that band,” he said. “It wasn’t a great role for me as far as the bass player that I am goes. Songs like Burn are very straight and strict, you know. That’s the way I feel these days – truly. Leaving Trapeze has been the torment of my life, but I had to let it go.”

It didn’t look that way on Friday night. Burn with JoBo on lead, Smith smashing the drums? That looked like enormous fun. You can check out Mistreated, Burn and Highway Star above thanks to Brian James on YouTube.

It's no secret that Black Sabbath went through a litany of lineup changes during their near-50-year run as heavy metal's pioneers. 

Though the band's music often shifted to accommodate the different strengths of those members who came and went – the vastly different, but equally powerful vocal styles of Ozzy Osbourne and Ronnie James Dio, for instance – rarely did it get as much of a jolt as when Dio left the group in 1982 and was replaced by then-former Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan.

Gillan's bluesy singing and wry lyrics were, to put it mildly, a stark departure from Osbourne and Dio's respective styles as frontmen. Though the Gillan/Sabbath partnership ended after just one album (1983's Born Again), it did give us the unique spectacle of the godfathers of heavy metal covering one of hard rock's other giants.

During the Gillan-fronted tour in support of Born Again, Sabbath took to playing the song for which Gillan is most known, Deep Purple's none-more-classic Smoke on the Water, as an encore. Black Sabbath played the song over 60 times during the tour, which stretched from 1983 through the following year. You can hear a typically hard-edged version of it from the Born Again trek above.

“I suggested we play Smoke on The Water, because Ian was known for it and it seemed like a bum deal for him not to do any of his stuff while he was doing all of ours,” Sabbath electric guitar hero Tony Iommi recalls in his 2011 memoir, Iron Man: My Journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath. “I don't know whether we played it properly, but the audience loved it.”

Iommi would later cover the track again in 1989 with an all-star cast including Ritchie Blackmore, David Gilmour, Alex Lifeson and Brian May.

The Born Again tour was also notable in the band's history not only for this cover, but for the infamous 'Stonehenge' set the group ordered for the stage. 

Due to a misunderstanding between band and set designers, 'Stonehenge' ended up significantly different (larger, in this case) than the band envisioned.

Sound kind of familiar?

“When we were thinking about the stage set for our Born Again tour, Geezer [Butler, Sabbath's bass guitar player] said: 'Why don't we have something that looks like Stonehenge, you know, with stones and all that stuff?',” Iommi says in Iron Man.

“Geezer jotted down what it should look like and gave it to the designers. Two or three months later we saw it. We rehearsed for the tour at the Birmingham NEC and we said: 'Oh great, the stage set is going to come today!'”

You can probably guess the sight that greeted the band.

“It came in and we couldn't believe it. It was as big as the real Stonehenge,” Iommi remembers. “They had taken Geezer's measurements the wrong way and thought it was meant to be life-size. I said, 'How the bloody hell did that happen?'”

This is Spinal Tap simply took the legendary mishap and reversed it. 

Though it's rather grainy, you can get a sense of the true enormity of the set – at least the pieces of it that Sabbath's crew could squeeze onto the stage – in the fan-filmed footage of the band's October 21, 1983 performance at the Forum de Montréal in Canada below.

Aside from set design mishaps, Gillan – in a different way than Sabbath's previous two frontmen – was also quite the showman onstage, and struggled to acclimate to other aspects of the band's onstage setup when engaging with the crowd.

Gillan, Iommi says, “once fell over my pedalboard. He was waving at the people, stepped back and, bang! He went arse over head big time.“

All things considered, the Born Again trek was a strange period for the heavy metal godfathers. Gillan departed soon after to join the reunited Deep Purple, while Sabbath (with a number of personnel shifts in between) would struggle both critically and commercially for a number of years, before reuniting first with Dio in 1992 and – a few years later – with Ozzy Osbourne, in their original permutation. 

As for the fate of the Stonehenge props? 

“At the end or the tour we tried to give it all away to the people who had bought London Bridge and reassembled it in Arizona, but they didn't want it,” Iommi reveals in Iron Man. “We couldn't take it back to England, so the crew dumped it off at the docks somewhere and left it. Just ridiculous.”

For those not in the know, singer, songwriter and bassist Glenn Hughes honed his chops in the underrated funk-rock band Trapeze as a teenager and then sprang into the limelight in 1973 when he was recruited into Deep Purple, then one of the biggest bands ever formed. 

“They’d recently lost their singer Ian Gillan and their bassist Roger Glover, and were looking for replacements,” said Hughes in his 2021 BP cover feature. “I knew that if I was going to join Deep Purple that I would make my mark on the international stage immediately. I realised that I had to leave Trapeze, to go and find the world.”

Hughes then made an unexpected admission. “In retrospect, I really should never have left Trapeze. With no disrespect at all meant towards Deep Purple, there’s not much swagger going on in that band. It wasn’t a great role for me as far as the bass player that I am goes. Songs like Burn are very straight and strict, you know. That’s the way I feel these days – truly. Leaving Trapeze has been the torment of my life, but I had to let it go.”

“I’d seen Deep Purple when they played at the Wolverhampton Civic,” said Hughes. “I thought they were pretty good and that the guitar player, Ritchie Blackmore, was a bit eccentric. They were all good musicians, but it wasn’t soulful. To be honest with you, if it wasn’t soulful and funky, it didn’t interest me. My experience of funk was Sly & The Family Stone, so when I heard Highway Star or whatever, I thought it was okay, but it didn’t really do it for me.”

To his surprise, Hughes kept seeing members of Deep Purple showing up at Trapeze’s gigs. “I didn’t know they were actually courting me, but I felt better about the offer to join when I heard that they’d asked a hero of mine, Paul Rodgers of Free, to join too. It was also attractive to me to join the world’s top band, who were bigger than Led Zeppelin at the time. That on its own was pretty persuasive, but it wasn’t so much the money or the fame as the chance to have a bigger stage to play on and more people to sing for. And make no mistake: in 1973, Deep Purple were the biggest band on the planet.”

Does Hughes ever listen back to his early recordings and assess his youthful bass playing? “When we formed Trapeze, that’s when bass started to get funky for me. I’ve heard some Trapeze bonus tracks that I hadn’t heard before, and the bass was really something – and I was only 17 or 18. I was shaking my head as I heard it, thinking ‘Was I playing like that at that age?’ You can clearly hear that I was really into it.”

After all these years, has bass guitar changed its role for Hughes? “You know, people talk about my vocals, but I realise how lucky I was to have found myself as a bass player in 1967, when the bass player left the band I was in. I had 24 hours’ notice to switch from playing guitar to playing bass guitar on cover songs like Fire Brigade by the Move. People ask why I play with a pick – well, it’s because I had to switch from guitar so quickly. Andy Fraser told me that I sound like a fingerstyle player, even though I play with a pick.”

As for bass guitars, he explains “I’ve got a lot of classic Sixties basses, and I always fear losing one on the road – like I did with my Deep Purple P-Bass in 1977 – so they stay at home because I don’t want that to happen again. I was in a music store in Australia about 10 years ago, and I was playing basses that I thought were vintage models – and they were new Bill Nash instruments. So I called Bill up. I have four or five of his P-Basses and the same number of Jazz basses. Every one is brilliant: Bill doesn’t make bad basses. I’m playing a Nash J-Bass at the moment and it’s incredible.” 

Glenn Hughes: The Autobiography is available to buy on Amazon.