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.

In 1974, when Ritchie Blackmore finally became disillusioned with Deep Purple's growing love of funk, he jumped ship – taking most of Purple's opening act, Elf, with him and forming Rainbow.

With his new band, Blackmore claimed: “We're going to have much more emphasis on melody. In other words, everything isn't going to be hung on a riff.”

Elf was based out of Cortland, New York, and initially caught the attention of Purple's bassist Roger Glover and drummer Ian Paice, both of whom produced Elf's debut album, which featured Ronnie James Dio on bass and vocals.

Dio subsequently decided to ditch the bass guitar and exclusively front the band, so Elf recruited central New York native Craig Gruber to take over on 4-string.

Gruber's jazz and R&B style immediately complemented the boogie-woogie swagger of Elf, and he performed on Carolina County Ball in 1974 and Trying to Burn the Sun in 1975, both of which were produced by Glover.

Aside from extensively touring with Deep Purple, the members of Elf had a pseudo-audition for Blackmore when he enlisted them to record a cover of Black Sheep of the Family, a Quartermass song that Purple had rejected.

With the session deemed a success, Blackmore had the confidence to part ways with Deep Purple, the band he helped form in 1968. In August 1975, Blackmore and Elf solidified their partnership by releasing Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow.

A self-professed blues guy, Gruber learned to play bass with the help of a neighbour who was a jazz bassist. These early lessons served him well.

“Absolutely underrated and essential listening for any would-be rock bass player,” said bassist Freddy Villano of the new album. “Craig Gruber’s bass playing is simply outstanding and ranks among the titans of rock.”

“Just listen to how he is able to improvise on a motif and continually develop an idea as he does with the bassline during Blackmore’s guitar solo in Snake Charmer. It’s the kind of playing to aspire to. Simply brilliant.”

Classic songs included Man on the Silver Mountain, Sixteenth Century Greensleeves, and Catch the Rainbow, all of which illuminate Gruber's bass brilliance. But none epitomized his virtuosity as completely as Snake Charmer.

When Gruber passed away in 2015 at age 63, Bob Nouveau, was tasked with learning the bass parts when Blackmore decided to revisit the material.

“Gruber was a professional bassist,” said Nouveau in a 2017 interview with Bass Player. “He played a variety of rhythms and syncopations, and he's funky! I'm sure he listened to some disco or funk music. From the mid-'70s, disco was pushing rock off the radio, and he seemed to pick up on a lot of that.”

Snake Charmer is in the ambiguous land of rock harmony, not E minor nor E major, but more an E blues tonality.

“Gruber played very well within that genre. You don't have to know much harmony beyond the minor and major chords. Ritchie doesn't play 6/9 chords or altered chords, and by his own admission he likes to keep the 3rds out of it. But just listen to Dio singing a G on the E – there's your tip-off. What we're doing has a very simple harmonic structure.”

The track begins with a unison intro figure, after which Gruber sets up an interesting gallop part off the open E (with a cool little A-B-G turnaround first heard at 00:14); this continues into the first verse. His use of 16th-note pickups and subdivisions alludes to his aforementioned ear for funk.

“You've got these 16th grace-notes in front of the strong quarter-note downbeat. That's what you have to understand about copping the feel. He broke it up a little, but the gallop sets the tone for the verse.”

For the pre-chorus at 00:33, Gruber shows his knowledge of harmony in playing through the chord tones. “Craig knows how to make a song lift going from a verse to a chorus, here using the root, 3rd, and 5th, as well as approach notes. His instincts keep the song and the feel moving forward. You can also hear the lock between Craig and drummer Gary Driscoll, who worked together for years.”

Interestingly, the IV chord is not the expected A5 or A7 with no 3rd, but instead a full-on Am, which the successive C and D chords support.

The true creative high-point of Gruber's part occurs during Blackmore's guitar solo at 01:57. For each of the six four-bar phrases within the solo, he improvises a new idea in the first two measures, before climbing through the G and D chords and playing the fourth-bar turnaround.

“Craig played with both a pick and his fingers throughout his career, but I'd advise using fingers here. It sounds like that's what Craig did, given his round tone. I don't hear a higher-edge attack coming through at all; fingers tend to round it out. And learn how to gallop – that's what's driving this whole song.”

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’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.

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.”

A resident of Ritchie’s Blackmore’s UK hometown is campaigning to have a plaque installed in honor of the Deep Purple and Rainbow guitar legend.

Blackmore was born in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, in the picturesque county of Somerset (on the West Coast of the UK) in 1945, before his family moved to the London suburbs two years later.

Now a Weston local, John Cadwallader, has started a petition to persuade the Weston-super-Mare town council to erect a blue plaque in honor of Blackmore and “his services to music”.

First used by UK charity English Heritage in 1866, a blue plaque denotes the links between British buildings and other places of interest to notable names of the past and present. 

The idea has spread around the world and has been used to commemorate the links between places and people in all manner of backgrounds and accomplishments, from Lord Byron to Freddie Mercury.

“So far, we have plaques dedicated to, amongst others, Haile Selassie and Roald Dahl,” Cadwallader tells Guitar World. “People say that plaques are only dedicated to dead people! But thats not exactly true; I have word that the council are apprehensive to dedicate a plaque to anyone living in case they 'fall from grace' later in life. My job is to get one for Ritchie while still alive!”

As such, Cadwallader – who reports he has the endorsement of the guitarist and his family – has started a petition to raise awareness of the campaign and to get the attention of Weston-super-Mare’s town council. 

If you think it’s time Blackmore’s hometown celebrated its part in the life and musical accomplishments of one of the UK’s most influential guitarists, sign the petition to install a plaque in honor of Ritchie Blackmore…

Ritchie Blackmore’s stately residence has a view of the Long Island Sound and all the comforts of home—including a medieval dungeon.

“It’s a kind of studio-cum-bar,” he says. “Actually, it’s more of a bar, although I do all the records down there. It’s done up like a medieval dungeon. And when our producer, Pat Regan, flies in from California to do some production, we chain him to the equipment.”

This strange sanctuary was also the site of rehearsals for Blackmore’s newest project, the live retrospective set Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow: Memories in Rock II. Over the space of two CDs and a DVD, Blackmore and the most recent Rainbow lineup blaze through stadium-razing performances of classics from Blackmore’s years with both Deep Purple and Rainbow. On track after track, Blackmore’s legendary legato phrases and beefy tonal nuances reaffirm his status as one of the great architects of metal guitar. Which is pretty good for a 73-year-old who has certainly lived through his share of wild years.

The band Rainbow was named after the legendary rock and roll bar and grill on the Sunset Strip in L.A., where Blackmore was living in the Seventies when he formed the group. “I used to live right behind the ‘Riot House,’ ” he recalls, alluding to the infamous Continental Hyatt House hotel on Sunset—the setting for many epic scenes of rock star debauchery. “When the Rainbow would close at three in the morning, John Bonham would come over to my place to carry on drinking.”

Blackmore has outlived many of his hard-living classic rock contemporaries. Over the course of numerous Deep Purple and Rainbow lineups, he has worked—and frequently fought—with many of metal’s top singers and sidemen, including Ian Gillan, Ronnie James Dio and David Coverdale. Active in rock ever since the Swingin’ Sixties, Blackmore has acquired a reputation as an irascible, volatile and demanding bandleader. But he’s full of praise for the new Rainbow lineup, which centers around 36-year-old, Chilean-born vocalist Ronnie Romero, a stalwart metal belter in the Dio mode.

Romero was discovered on YouTube by Blackmore’s wife, the singer and multi-instrumentalist Candice Night, who fronts the couple’s Renaissance-inspired side band, Blackmore’s Night, also serving as a Rainbow backing vocalist. She suggested that Ritchie get in touch with the young singer.

“Ronnie came out to see us where we were staying, in a castle in Germany,” Blackmore narrates. “I had my acoustic guitar, we just ran thorough a couple of Rainbow songs and he passed with flying colors. He’s a very nice guy, and I thought, You know, it might be interesting to do a few shows, just for old time’s sake. Basically nostalgia. That’s how it all started.”

The rest of the lineup is comprised of musicians who have worked with Blackmore’s Night in the past—bassist Bob Nouveau, drummer Dave Keith, keyboard player Jens Johansson and backing vocalist Lady Lynn. The music on Memories in Rock II was culled from live performances by the group in the U.K. in 2017. The DVD included in the set contains interviews and backstage footage, offering a complete chronicle of this latest chapter in Blackmore and Rainbow’s history.

Revisiting musical highlights of his long and storied career seems to have put Blackmore in a mellow and reflective mood. When Guitar World spoke to him from his home on Long Island, he was affable, generous and eager to share stories from his many years in rock.

How do you rate this new incarnation of Rainbow, as compared with previous lineups?

I like it, because I think it’s more musical. With Ronnie James Dio, in the beginning of Rainbow, everything was fine. He was a great singer. But he didn’t have a lot of patience. So we kind of got on each other’s nerves after two or three years. Which means we weren’t really creating any longer at that point. And with [drummer] Cozy Powell, he was a pretty uptight guy too. And I’m quite domineering. I like to steer the bus. So after a few years, we were arguing too much and weren’t as creative. That’s when the first lineup folded. Following that, I wanted to be more accessible and on the radio. So that’s when we started recording stuff like the ballads I wrote with Joe Lynn Turner. He had more of a commercial voice.

I think this new incarnation also has the capability of being quite commercial, if we want to be, with Ronnie Romero’s voice. But at the same time, we can try all the good songs that Rainbow has done in the past. At the moment I’m not looking at this lineup as a recording vehicle—just going out and having fun playing all the old songs to the fans who would normally not hear it.

What traits or qualities to do you look for in musicians to work with?

Somebody who likes to drink is obviously important. [laughs] You can make a joke of it, but I’ve met people who say, “I don’t drink at all. I stopped drinking five years ago.” And those people I’ve always had problems with. They might not drink, but they do everything else that’s crazy. If someone says, “I don’t drink much; I just like to have a few,” that’s fine. But it’s when they make that big statement that I say, “Oh dear, then, what’s your real problem? I might be dealing with the wrong person here.”

Of course, there are other things I look for as well. In a bass player, rhythm is very important. Is he tight with the drums? I don’t like a flashy bass player that runs across the stage waving to the audience half the time. And I’m thinking of one particular person who does that. He’s quite famous actually.

Can we say who?

You know, I actually can’t remember. What was the name of that band? It was back in the Eighties, Nineties. It wasn’t Foreigner, but something like that.

The songs on Memories in Rock II seem to represent the whole broad sweep of your career. Not only Rainbow but Deep Purple as well. Is it a challenge to find new life in something like “Smoke on the Water,” a song that you must have played thousands of times?

That one’s easy, in a way, because you can improvise so easily on the chords. And the rhythm is just very kind of flowing. And I think everyone wants to hear “Smoke on the Water,” although when we did it onstage, we didn’t get the reaction from the crowd that I thought we would. There were a few comments that, “Deep Purple does that. Why bother?”

I thought it was cool and interesting that you started with the verse, rather than the big riff.

Well, we’ve played it so many times, you have to find different ways to do it. Just starting with the guitar riff, as it was originally written, can be a bit mundane. But, yeah, I do prefer playing it with the verse first and coming in with the impact of the riff later.

Because then the chorus hits first, and that’s just as iconic as the riff.

That’s right. Although it’s funny, because sometimes people in the audience don’t know what we’re playing when we start out with the verse. But I never get tired of playing “Smoke on the Water.” Surprisingly enough, I don’t hate it. I was talking to Ian Anderson, and I said, “Are there any songs you hate playing?” He said, “ ‘Aqualung.’ Because we have to play it every show.” But I haven’t gotten to that stage yet. Maybe because I haven’t played “Smoke on the Water” probably in 20 years, because I’ve been focused on Blackmore’s Night. I mean I’ve played it off and on. But I haven’t been in a band that’s playing it every night on tour.

You’ve been playing Stratocasters for the better part of six decades now. But what prompted your initial decision to abandon the Gibson 335 you were playing in the early days of Deep Purple and take up the Strat?

I liked the way Hendrix’s Strat looked. A Strat has got that rock kind of look. So the visual thing attracted me first, even though it was an upside-down Strat in Hendrix’s case. I thought, I must try one of those some day.” I knew Eric Clapton’s roadie. He was a friend of ours. And I think Eric had given him one of his Strats as a present. Probably because Eric didn’t want it. I think it had a slightly bowed neck, which was making the action pretty high. [The roadie] said, “I’ll sell it to you for £60.” I bought it from him and I think I used it with a wah wah pedal on Deep Purple’s [1969 single] “Emmaretta.” So Eric Clapton’s throw-away Strat came in handy for me.

And when did you start scalloping the fingerboards on your Strats?

That was probably around 1969 or ’70. But I suppose it started back in ’66. I used to play an old classical guitar with a fretboard that was very pitted. And I loved the effect. It suited my fingers; it made sense. And the Strat seemed a little too glossy to me when I first got it. Probably it was because the Fender had thinner frets than Gibsons. So when I would slur a note, I found my finger kind of slipping off the string. So I thought, If I make the fingerboard more concave, I can grip it more. I didn’t know of anybody else who was doing it before I did. I didn’t think anybody else was that stupid—to spend three days sandpapering a guitar.

So with the scalloped fingerboard and some of your stylistic influences, can we make a case for your being the godfather of the Yngwie Malmsteen neoclassical thing? Do you feel a kinship, or a responsibility, there?

I know him and he’s a very nice guy. 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. I did meet his mother in Sweden, a very nice woman who reminded me of my mother back in England. So Yngwie and I get on fine. He’s like a family member. 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.

That’s a trail you blazed as well—getting away from blues-based playing in rock.

I suppose that’s so. When I was 15 I saw a band called Nero and the Gladiators. They would dress up as Roman centurions. This was when every band had to have a uniform of some sort, whether it was red satin jackets or what have you. But this band dressed up as gladiators. They’d come onstage and I was so impressed that they’d play all these classical pieces, like “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg. This band did everything that was classical, but rocked it up. I said, “Wow, this is not just your Chuck Berry rock and roll band.” That really started me going in that classical direction, along the lines of playing a solo with very fast triplets like on “Highway Star” from [Deep Purple’s] Machine Head. That kind of sound really came from Nero and the Gladiators. Joe Moretti was the guitar player kind of responsible for that in the studio. It was Colin Green within the band.

The thing I’ve always loved about your tone, all through the years, is you’re able to get a lot of sustain without a lot of very heavy, fuzzy distortion.

Right, I think that’s the trick, really. Guitarists tend to rely too much on distortion to give them sustain. I think it has a lot to do with insecurity. Every time I go in the studio, I tend to overdo the sustain part. I tend to turn it up too much. Then I listen back a couple of days later and go, “No, too fuzzy.” You count on that distortion to give you more sustain. It’s much more forgiving. Whereas someone like Hendrix didn’t have too much sustain. He just made it work with a cleaner sound. At the end of the day, if you can get the results with a cleaner sound, it’s actually much better. I have noticed that a lot of guitarists today have so much compression and distortion on their pickups that it makes it sound thin and small. I don’t like that sound. It’s got to be somewhat open and natural. It’s just got to have an edge of distortion. Whereas now, with all these distortion units, people whack it up. They have infinite sustain, but the tone sounds like Mickey Mouse.

You’ve used a few different amps over the years to get your sound—principally Vox, Marshall and Engl, right?

I really loved my Vox sound, but I wanted to change to Marshalls for the look. I knew Jim Marshall very well. I used to go to his shop in Ealing, which was close to where I lived, and buy my guitars. I bought my 335 there, and funnily enough, Mitch Mitchell was serving behind the counter at the time. And 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.” Sixty people or so working there would leave the factory.

Then Jim Marshall would come in and say, “I knew you were here. I could hear you from down the road.” The office was a couple of doors down. He was very nice about it. “Carry on. I’ll get the women back in and working.” And then they devised a soundproof room that I used to go and play in. Because I was there so often looking for this sound. 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.

This was during the Deep Purple years?

Yeah, right in the beginning—1970. And then we kept going from there. The guys at Marshall were determined to get the right sound for me and they were very helpful. So what they did was put an extra output stage into one of their 200-watt amps, which gave it a fatter sound, a bit more distorted. 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.

Oh, I think we’re on 12 now.

Exactly.

What about effects?

I don’t use effects. I’m from the old school of, “The more things you use on stage, the more things there are to go wrong.” But in the early days of ’69 through ’73, which would be “Smoke on the Water” time, I used a Hornby-Skewes treble booster. It not only gave me a bit more treble, it also gave me just a fraction of distortion. And that is the sound I always used, coupled with the Vox or the Marshall. For a while, Jon Lord used the Hornby-Skewes and Marshall for his organ as well. We were looking for a distorted organ sound and I said, “Why don’t we plug your organ through my Hornby-Skewes and into my amp and see how an organ sounds like that?” So we did it, and of course he loved the sound. And that’s the sound you hear, for instance, on “Smoke on the Water.” He played with that sound for about four years, then he went back to the Leslie sound.

But more recently, you’ve been using Engl amps.

Yes, the Rainbow tours would be Engls, which is a German amp. I was living in Connecticut when a friend of mine said, “Have you tried this little amp, called an Engl?” I said, “No, I just use my big Marshalls.” But I always preferred smaller amps. You could contain the sound more. I was used to that from they days when I used my Vox. So I tried this little Engl amp and I liked it. They started making these amps up for me and I’ve used them ever since.

At the other end of your musical universe, how did you first get interested in Renaissance music?

I think it started when I first heard “Greensleeves” when I was 10 years old. From there, it went in stages. I’ve always loved Renaissance music, more so than Medieval or Baroque. I’m talking about basically the 1400s to 1500s. Tielman Susato was a composer from that period who was basically from Antwerp. And I saw David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London playing all the woodwind and brass instruments like shwams, sackbuts and crumhorns, and that just stirred my soul. I love the organic sound of all the instruments from that period—hurdy gurdys, bagpipes… I thought, I’m playing the wrong instrument here. So I started learning to play the hurdy gurdy and mandola. I have a couple of mandolas. I love picking up the mandola, which is tuned in such a way that it sings, and you’re immediately transported back to those days.

A lot of people are totally obsessed with the blues. I’m not. If I hear more than a couple of blues songs, I’ve heard enough relative minors. But the Renaissance music is a whole other world. It’s hard to explain. I don’t follow the orthodox way of playing Renaissance music. One would think I’d have to be into the lute bigtime. But I’m not. I’m more in love with the woodwind sounds of the Renaissance, which is peculiar, because I try to emulate that with an acoustic guitar and mandola. A Renaissance music purist would say, “Well, that’s not Renaissance music.” But no one actually knows what Renaissance music is actually like, ’cause they weren’t there.

It’s all theoretical—reconstructed from manuscripts.

Yeah, and there wasn’t too much printed music back then. Unfortunately, many people who play Renaissance music can be a bit snobbish. A lot of purists get bogged down in what “should be.” They’re into the proper schooling at Oxford or Cambridge. But, as I say, no one really knows what it sounded like in those days.

The Renaissance music world can be a bit academic.

That’s why I think people go into rock and roll. It gives them an escape from all the schooling—what’s “proper” and how it should be. I remember Jimmy Page getting into trouble when he used to do a lot of sessions. He said something like “classical musicians hate music.” I think that’s when he decided to leave session work and join the Yardbirds, because all the classical musicians on the sessions he played disliked what he’d said about them.

But it’s totally true. Whenever I’ve done anything with an orchestra, I always found myself dealing with a lot of chips on shoulders. You’re always too loud for them, no matter how quiet you play. I think it has something to do with, “These rock and roll performers like the Rolling Stones make so much money and we’re classically trained purists and we don’t make a quarter of that money.” I think there’s a resentment there.

I remember doing the “Concerto for Group and Orchestra” [1969] with Jon Lord. I was playing with my small Vox, but it was set next to the violinists, and you could see that they hated every note I played. ’Cause it was just too damn loud. At one point in the piece, I was given something like 24 bars of freedom to improvise around a few chords. And the whole orchestra was supposed to come back in after the 24 bars. Of course, I wasn’t counting 24 bars. I was just improvising. And the conductor was trying to hold back the orchestra from coming in, ’cause I had not finished my spot. I didn’t realize this at the time, but apparently I did something like 54 bars. And of course the orchestra was in total shock because I wasn’t sticking to the music. That caused chaos with them.

They’re very much tied to the printed score.

That’s right. That was the Albert Hall too. No one noticed until the conductor reminded me later. I said, “Wow, did I really go on that long?” I didn’t do too many of those after that, because I just found it very awkward—to have to play so quietly. And I’m not a schooled reader. I can busk my way through chord changes. When I used to do session work, way back, I had chord charts and I would be allowed to do a freeform solo or whatever. I was never one for reading note-for-note.

I asked James Burton if he reads music, and he said, “Not to where it hurts my playing.”

Exactly. A great guitar player, by the way. Deep Purple had a song called “Black Night,” and the main riff came from James Burton and Ricky Nelson. If you listen to their recording of “Summertime” from 1962, the bass is basically doing the “Black Night” riff across the song “Summertime.” That came out in a subliminal way when we wrote “Black Night.” We needed a hit record and basically wrote this track. And it turned into a number one hit for us.

That riff is also very close to “We Ain’t Got Nothing Yet” by the Blues Magoos.

People tell me that, but I don’t even know the Blues Magoos. I got it from “Summertime” by Ricky Nelson. I’ve always said that. It’s funny because the lead guitar part on that same song is the Hendrix intro to “Hey Joe.” If you listen to what James Burton is doing on guitar in the first three or four bars, it’s that. When I heard Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” for the first time I said, “Oh, I know where he got that from.” Whether he actually did or not, I don’t know. It’s a small world. I wouldn’t like to paint it.

Are there any current guitarists you like?

I’m not really listening to too much rock and roll these days. I find it sometimes feels a bit generic. I feel, “Well, I heard that years ago.” Although I think the standard of guitar playing is so high now. I was watching a documentary the other day called Hired Gun, and it’s excellent. I didn’t realize the guy in Pink’s band was such an excellent player. And there was Brad Gillis from the old Ozzy Osbourne days, and Steve Lukather and all these country players like Brad Paisley who are phenomenal. And I’m wondering, Where are all these guys coming from? Too much competition. I’m going back to Renaissance music. [laughs]

Well, they’re standing on the shoulders of giants. They’ve got a lot of rock history to play off.

That’s right. I think back to when I was starting and I’d listen to a solo by Cliff Gallup from Gene Vincent’s band and try to figure out the notes. Whereas now, not only are you told the notes, you get the video of how to play it on YouTube. It takes all the secrets away. All the things that you had to work so hard for are much easier to obtain. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

Do you think that has had a detrimental effect on rock?

I think, in a way, it does. Because where does that end? If everything is made too easy, it’s not fun. When I was starting, with an acoustic guitar, I’d put a pickup on it by the time I was 11. By the time I was 13, I had two pickups on it. My own wiring and everything. Whereas today, I think you can get a really good guitar for $100 or $150. It’s so available to everybody. I think they’re missing out on the hardship.

So you’re planning to do more shows with this new Rainbow lineup, but not a studio record?

That’s right. We can have fun playing, and it’s refreshing and we get our sleep. Because we do six or seven dates and that’s it. Then we wait another year and do another six dates. I want to go play in places that I’d like to visit, have a look around, stay in a few castles and have a good time. I always read the guitar magazines when I travel. And I always get a bit nervous because I read about so many brilliant guitar players.

But there’s only one Ritchie Blackmore.

So I’ve heard. Actually, I’ve heard there’s three. There are people out there who go around saying they’re me. This one guy was in hospital and he was telling everyone that he’s me. They have surveillance pictures of him doing it. So the police called me and said, “Is this really you? Are you okay?” Very bizarre. I suppose it’s flattering in a way—the price of fame, I guess.

To produce the distinctive “biting” attack heard in his intro riff to “Man on the Silver Mountain,” guitarist Ritchie Blackmore performs the figure using upstroke strums for all the two-note chords, as indicated in bars 1–4 of the transcription.

Combined with his short, staccato rhythms, Blackmore’s approach creates a precise sound similar to what would result from playing fingerstyle, with a fingerpick on each finger. Notice that Blackmore does pick each low G note on the sixth string’s third fret with a downstroke. Regarding his fret-hand fingerings, Blackmore barres each double-stop with either his index or ring finger and frets the low G notes with his thumb, Delta-blues style.

To best perform Blackmore’s fluid keyboard-like arpeggios during the song’s pre-chorus (section C), use strict down-up-down-up alternate picking, as indicated by the picking prompts in bar 21. Fret each three-note triad shape, rather than adding and removing fingers for each note individually. To keep the arpeggio notes from ringing together too much, apply a light pick-hand palm mute on the G and B strings.

When learning to play through these swiftly moving arpeggios, practice them slowly at first and focus on perfecting the alternate picking involved while trying to minimize your pick-hand movement. It’s also helpful to practice with a metronome while tapping your foot on each downbeat, to make sure your timing is solid and consistent.

For Jeff Perrin's tab of this song, pick up the June 2018 issue of Guitar World.

He’s best known as the bass-playing rock of Deep Purple for nearly 50 years, and has produced albums for Judas Priest and others, but what Guitar World readers really want to know is…

The majority of bassists who came up during the seventies play with their fingers. why do you choose to play with a pick? —Jison Lee

When I pick up a bass and just mess around, I usually play with my fingers, but I’ve always played better with a pick. 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. I’d never properly be able to play “Highway Star” with my fingers.

Ritchie Blackmore is known as being difficult to work with. Is this true, and how was your relationship with him during your years together in Deep Purple and Rainbow? —Kevin Majeski

Yes, he can be difficult to work with, but he is even more difficult to live with. Blackmore is a very unique character, and in the early days we had fantastic times and wrote great songs. He’s always been very edgy, cynical and did what he wanted. That can lead to problems, especially in a band situation. No one in Purple was in control—we were a band of five leaders—whereas Rainbow was his band, so he had the final say. I don’t want to emphasize Ritchie’s difficulties, because I’m proud as punch to have played with him.

What are your fondest memories of playing with [the late keyboardist] Jon Lord in Deep Purple? —Tom Kailua

How many do you want? We must’ve played a couple of thousand gigs, I suppose, and each was special. His lovely, uplifting personality came through when he played, and he never played to show off. Jon was one of the few keyboardists who could take his fingers off the keyboard for a while. When he played a solo, he’d let the organ breathe in between phrases, like a sax player might.

Jon played the blues when he was young, and that gave him a solid foundation, because when he played hard in Deep Purple, he was able to match Blackmore’s massive guitar sound and transform the organ from a polite instrument and stand toe-to-toe with a guitarist as overpowering as Blackmore. Jon started abusing his instrument and sticking it through a Marshall instead of a Leslie to make it scream. Jon invented a keyboard style that was unique onto itself. We called it “rhythm organ.” Blackmore wasn’t keen on playing rhythm guitar, so Jon took that role, which in turn allowed Ritchie to play freely.

Do you think the manner in which your bass and Ian Paice’s drums steadily anchored the groove, while Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord traded off solos, working in tandem with Ian Gillan’s savage screams, helped lay down the groundwork for heavy metal in 1970 with Deep Purple in Rock? —John Lavara

I think so. In Rock was a groundbreaking album, and very heavy. It was my first studio album with the band. Before Gillan and I joined, Purple was more known for rearranging other people’s songs. The album prior to In Rock, Concerto for Band and Orchestra [1969], was Jon Lord’s baby. People were confused about what kind of band we were. Subsequently, Blackmore firmly stepped up and changed the band’s identity into a jamming, hard rocking force. According to the press, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple stand out as the holy triumvirate of heavy rock. It’s not quite as simple as that, but I’ve heard it so many times I tend to believe it.

Why did you leave Deep Purple following 1973’s Who Do We Think We Are? —Bob Smith

In 1972, during the album’s recording, the relationships between band members, in particular Blackmore and Ian Gillan, had broken down. Ritchie started flexing his muscles more than ever, which didn’t go down well with the rest of the group. It got to a point where Blackmore and Gillan didn’t even speak. Touring became an issue; they met only onstage. Before long, Gillan resigned from the band. At that point, it was rumored that Blackmore and Ian Paice were going to leave as well, and they were going to form a trio. Deep Purple was at the height of its success and veering on splitting up! It didn’t make sense. The next thing I know, nobody was talking to me, so I knew something was up. Our manager told me that Blackmore would stay in the band only on the condition that I leave—I don’t know why; you’d have to ask Ritchie that—so I left and Blackmore carried on with Purple for another two albums. Years later, we all reunited in 1984 for Perfect Strangers.

Deep Purple’s 1972 album, Made in Japan, is recognized worldwide as one of the greatest live albums ever. Why do you think that album is still so revered even to this day? —Jim Lowry

When it was recorded, the band was at its peak musically and commercially. We were basking in our success. The arrangements of those songs had evolved since they were originally recorded, so they sounded fresh. It’s a totally honest live album with no overdubs. It had a wild freedom of expression and was a special moment in time.

“Smoke on the Water” is one of the most popular songs from the Seventies. You’ve played that song many hundreds of times onstage. Are you sick of playing it? —Ray Ronson

I never tire of it. I don’t listen to the song, but rather experience the crowd’s enthusiastic reaction to it. It’s a very simple and fun song to play. It’s a skeletal structure, which enables me to play different bass parts every night. I stand in awe and watch the audience’s joy, whether it’s youngsters who have never seen us in concert, or our older fans who have seen us many times.

How is it different playing with Steve Morse in comparison to Ritchie Blackmore? —Steve Wagner

[Chuckling] Ritchie would never guide me along the way, whereas Steve is an excellent teacher. Steve has awesome technique and dexterity. When he first joined the band we recorded Purpendicular [1996], which was a new beginning for the band in much the same way In Rock was 26 years earlier. When Steve asks me to play a difficult part, he helps me find the proper fingering that would work, and before long I’m playing it with ease.

You’ve produced Deep Purple and Rainbow albums and many albums by other artists. How did you first get into producing? —Evan Lerner

I’ve had knowledge of the recording studio long before I joined Purple. The best thing about producing is getting a good performance from someone. The first album I produced was Rupert Hine’s Pick Up a Bone [1971]. While I was busy touring with Purple in the early Seventies, one of our opening acts was Nazareth, and they asked me to produce their album Raza-manaz [1973]. It became a hit, and I was blown away. And since I was no longer in Purple at the time, because of dysfunction and disruption, I decided to become a record producer.

Over the years you’ve played with great drummers such as Ian Paice, Cozy Powell and Bobby Rondinelli. What’s different about each of their styles? —Derick Lutz

Prior to working with Paice, I’ve never really thought much about drums other than if they kept good time and if they sounded good. Paice opened my eyes to drums; he plays with an unbelievably fluid finesse, which comes from his teenage years playing big-band music. His playing has a jazz swing to it, so when he plays rock, it has subtle undertones of swing. Very few drummers play like him; most play like a drum machine. One of the first sessions we had, in 1969, Paice told me, “I don’t follow—I lead.” That comment put me in my place. So over our many years together, I just learned to tuck in with him, and it works.

Cozy, on the other hand, was a hard hitter who was macho looking and macho playing. It’s not that he couldn’t play gently, because he could. He was a lot better drummer than people gave him credit for, and he was a showman. Rondinelli, meanwhile, grew up later, so he started listening to rock when it was already established. Like many drummers of his era, he plays well, but his style is not as distinctive as Paice’s or Cozy’s. I’ve also worked with Simon Phillips, who is phenomenal. He played on my second solo album, Elements [1978], and I worked with him in the studio on a few of the albums that I produced.

Your production work on Judas Priest’s Sin After Sin is superb—the guitars and drums leap through the mix. How did you come to produce that album? —Bud Ripley

That album was a salvage job. To make a long story short, their record company wanted a name producer; but when I went to the group’s rehearsals, I had an uneasy feeling and felt I wasn’t wanted. The band told me they wanted to produce it themselves, so I said, “Okay.” A few weeks go by, and [guitarist] Glenn Tipton invited me to come down to the studio. He told me they weren’t happy with the tracks they recorded, and that they sacked their drummer. Glenn told me they had a session drummer coming in, Simon Phillips, who happened to be a friend of mine. So I listened to the tracks and suggested they should start afresh, and we cranked out the album in six days.

Rumor has it that deep purple may be retiring soon. is that true? —Steve Devin

Soon does not specify a time. I already retired when I was 19, when I used to mow lawns. Making music for the past 50 years has been my retirement. It keeps you young when you are doing what you crave. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon, whenever soon will be.

Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow have unveiled "Waiting for a Sign," their first new single in 22 years. You can listen to it above.

A 90-second snippet of the song—which was written by Blackmore, with lyrics by his wife, Candice Night—was briefly made available by the Japanese iTunes store, earlier this week.

Meanwhile, the band is also busy preparing Memories in Rock II, a live album documenting the group's four-date 2017 U.K. tour that features a selection of Rainbow hits and fan favorites, in addition to a few classic Deep Purple cuts, and be sure to keep your eye out for it, and some more Blackmore coverage from Guitar World in the near future....

For more on Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, stop by ritchieblackmore.info.

Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow have announced a new live album, Memories in Rock II.

The new live LP—which documents the group's four-date 2017 U.K. tour—is the follow-up to the group's most recent live album, Memories in Rock, which documented the band's 2016 comeback. The 2016 performances were Blackmore's first rock concerts in almost two decades.

The album—which is set for an April 6 release—features a selection of Rainbow hits and fan favorites, in addition to a few classic Deep Purple cuts. It was recorded by a band that featured Blackmore, singer Ronnie Romero, drummer David Keith, bassist Bob Nouveau, keyboardist Jens Johanssen and background singers Candice Night and Lady Lynn.

You can check out the album's full tracklist below.

For more on Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, stop by ritchieblackmore.info.

Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow—Memories in Rock II

• "Over the Rainbow"
• "Spotlight Kid"
• "I Surrender"
• "Mistreated"
• "Since You've Been Gone"
• "Man on the Silver Mountain/Woman from Tokyo"
• "16th Century Greensleeves"
• "Soldier of Fortune"
• "Perfect Strangers"
• "Difficult to Cure"
• "All Night Long"
• "Child in Time"
• "Stargazer"
• "Long Live Rock'n'Roll/Lazy"
• "Catch the Rainbow"
• "Black Night"
• "Carry On Jon"
• "Temple of the King"
• "Smoke on the Water"
• "Waiting for a Sign"

Rainbow have premiered some new music. Sort of.

The updated version of Ritchie Blackmore's longtime off-and-on-again band has released two new recordings: "Land of Hope and Glory," a reworking of "Pomp And Circumstance March No. 1," a well-known patriotic British tune from 1902, and a new studio version of "I Surrender," a Russ Ballard song Rainbow originally released in 1981.

They represent the first new studio tracks from the band since 1995's Stranger in Us All. Both songs are available now via iTunes.

Besides Blackmore, Rainbow's current lineup includes singer Ronnie Romero, keyboardist Jens Johansson, drummer David Keith, bassist Bob Nouveau and backing singers Candice Night and Lady Lynn.

Check out the songs and tell us what you think!

Ritchie Blackmore has announced he will tour with Rainbow in 2017, with four dates planned for the U.K.

The tour follows on the guitarist’s sold-out shows in Germany and Birmingham, England, earlier this year. Those were Blackmore’s first rock performances since 1997, when he launched his folk-rock ensemble Blackmore’s Night.

The group’s first gig of 2017 will see them headlining the second annual Stone Free Festival at The O2, London. It will be Blackmore’s first London show since 1995. The following three shows will take place in Manchester and Birmingham and in Glasgow, Scotland.

Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow features Lords of Black singer Ronnie Romero, Stratovarius keyboardist Jens Johansson, and drummer David Keith and bassist Bob Nouveau, both of whom perform in Blackmore’s Night.

Though the band’s previous shows featured a selection of songs by Rainbow and Deep Purple, Blackmore said recently that the Rainbow songs were better received.

“I noticed when they clapped, they weren’t clapping so hard for Deep Purple,” Blackmore told Radio Veronica last July. “They said, ‘We hear that every year’—’cause Purple goes around [on tour].

“So the next time, if we go out, I would probably do 95 percent Rainbow songs. That’s what they seem to want to hear.”

In the same interview, Blackmore complained that his vision was deteriorating and hinted at other age-related issues that were slowing him down.

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

“What I do is I limit how many times a week we play. For instance, this week, we’re playing, I think, twice. And normally, our agent would tell us, ‘To make money, you have to be playing five days a week.’ And I refuse to do that.

“I used to, with Deep Purple and people like that—I would be playing and traveling all the time, and it gets very tiring. But this way we’re very fresh to do our shows. So we’ll be working tomorrow, having four days off, and hopefully we’ll probably play for, like, four hours, ’cause we can do it, and then there’ll be another few days off.”

“And then we can do another long show, whereas in the old days, it was an hour and 20 minutes and we’re exhausted because we’ve gotta move on to the next town.”

The dates and locations for the four 2017 shows are below. We’ve include a video of Rainbow performing “Man on the Silver Mountain.” The clip comes from Memories in Rock—Live in Germany, a release that captures Blackmore’s long-awaited return to rock.

Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow Live in the U.K.
June 17 – London, U.K. - The O2 (Stone Free Festival)
June 22 – Manchester, U.K. - Manchester Arena
June 25 – Glasgow, Scotland - The SSE Hydro
June 28 – Birmingham, U.K. - Genting Arena

Below, you can see Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow perform “Man on the Silver Mountain” from their new concert film, Memories in Rock—Live in Germany.

In June 2016, the legendary guitarist made many long-held dreams come true for his fans when Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow played three concerts in Europe, two in Germany and one in England.

The two German shows at Loreley and Bietigheim were caught on camera to produce Memories in Rock—Live in Germany, which will be released via Eagle Rock Entertainment in DVD+2CD, Blu-ray+2CD, and digital formats on November 18. A Deluxe version (DVD, Blu-ray & 2CD in a 48-page hardback photobook), along with a three-LP version (180gm vinyl) will be available as an import on December 2. (MSRP $34.98 Blu-ray+2CD, $29.98 DVD+2CD.)

This film captures the long-awaited return to rock music for Blackmore. The setlist, combining classic tracks from Deep Purple and Rainbow, was exactly what the fans had wished for. Filmed in high-definition, this set includes “Catch the Rainbow,” “Mistreated,” “Since You Been Gone,” “Black Night,” “Spotlight Kid,” “Smoke on the Water,” “Stargazer,” “Perfect Strangers” and more. As a bonus, all formats except the three-LP version boast four tracks recorded on an alternative night: “Spotlight Kid,” “Man on the Silver Mountain,” “Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll,” and “Stargazer.”For more information on Blackmore, visit Facebook and BlackmoresNight.com.

See below the video for the complete track listing.

Memories in Rock—Live in Germany Track Listing
(CD Disc 1)
1. Highway Star
2. Spotlight Kid
3. Mistreated
4. 16th Century Greensleeves
5. Since You Been Gone
6. Man on the Silver Mountain
7. Catch the Rainbow
8. Difficult to Cure (Beethoven’s Ninth)
9. Perfect Strangers
10. Stargazer (CD Disc 2)
11. Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll
12. Child in Time/Woman from Tokyo
13. Black Night
14. Smoke on the Water

Ritchie Blackmore has released a video of “Perfect Strangers” from his June 2016 shows with Rainbow in Germany.

The clip comes from Memories in Rock—Live in Germany, a release that captures Blackmore’s long-awaited return to rock after nearly 19 years.

Performing with a new lineup of Rainbow, Blackmore revisited tracks from the classic years of Rainbow and Deep Purple, including “Catch the Rainbow,” “Mistreated,” “Since You Been Gone,” “Black Night,” “Spotlight Kid,” “Smoke on the Water,” “Stargazer,” “Perfect Strangers” and many others.

Memories in Rock—Live in Germany will be released by Eagle Rock Entertainment on DVD+2CD, Blu-ray+2CD and digital formats November 18 and can be preordered.

A Deluxe version (DVD, Blu-ray & 2CD in a 48-page hardback photo book) and three-LP version on 180gm vinyl) will be available as an import December 2.

This past June, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow played three shows in Europe—two in Germany and one in England.

The two German shows (Loreley and Bietigheim) were caught on camera and will be released as Memories in Rock: Live in Germany November 18 via Eagle Rock Entertainment.

This high-definition film, which captures Blackmore's long awaited return to heavy rock, features classic tracks from Blackmore's Deep Purple and Rainbow years, including “Catch the Rainbow," “Mistreated," “Since You Been Gone," “Black Night,” “Smoke on the Water," “Perfect Strangers” and more. You can check out the complete track list below.

The band lineup for these shows was Blackmore (guitar), Ronnie Romero (vocals), David Keith (drums), Bob Nouveau (bass), Jens Johanssen (keyboards), Candice Night (backing vocals) and Lady Lynn (backing vocals).

Memories in Rock: Live in Germany will be available digitally and as DVD+2CD and Blu-ray+2CD. A deluxe version (DVD, Blu-ray and 2CD in a 48-page hardback photobook), along with a 3LP version (180gm vinyl), will be available as an import December 2.

Memories in Rock: Live in Germany Track List:

• (CD Disc 1)
• 1. Highway Star
• 2. Spotlight Kid
• 3. Mistreated
• 4. 16th Century Greensleeves
• 5. Since You Been Gone
• 6. Man on the Silver Mountain
• 7. Catch the Rainbow
• 8. Difficult to Cure (Beethoven’s Ninth)
• 9. Perfect Strangers
• 10. Stargazer

(CD Disc 2)
11. Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll
12. Child in Time / Woman from Tokyo
13. Black Night
14. Smoke on the Water

Ritchie Blackmore says he’s suffering from the effects of age and believes his former Deep Purple bandmates are working themselves too hard given the advanced years of its collective members.

In a July 2016 interview with Radio Veronica, recently posted on YouTube, Blackmore reveals his own health issues and how he prefers to put several days space between shows with his group Blackmore’s Night to minimize the strain of performing. The guitar legend says he believes hard touring is taking a toll on Deep Purple and that the group is doing it just for the sake of money.

Blackmore also reflected on his preference for playing acoustic guitar and talked about his concerts from this past June with the newly revived Rainbow lineup. Those shows—presented at the Monsters of Rock in Loreley, Germany, and on June 25 show at Genting Arena in Birmingham, England—marked Blackmore’s first rock shows in 20 years.

The entire interview is streaming below. Here we present four things we learned from it.

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

“What I do is I limit how many times a week we play. For instance, this week, we’re playing, I think, twice. And normally, our agent would tell us, ‘To make money, you have to be playing five days a week.’ And I refuse to do that.

“I used to, with Deep Purple and people like that—I would be playing and traveling all the time, and it gets very tiring. But this way we’re very fresh to do our shows. So we’ll be working tomorrow, having four days off, and hopefully we’ll probably play for, like, four hours, ’cause we can do it, and then there’ll be another few days off.”

“And then we can do another long show, whereas in the old days, it was an hour and 20 minutes and we’re exhausted because we’ve gotta move on to the next town.”2. He believes hard touring is taking a toll on Deep Purple and that the group is doing it just for the sake of money. (14:25)

“I don’t really have much say in it, I left them 20 years ago,” he says. “But I think, personally, they’re milking it a bit too much. And I hear that from a lot of people, that they just keep going.

“If I was them, I would give it a five-year rest or something. Some of them are not very happy at home, so they like to be on the road.”

Blackmore says he blames the group’s agent, whom he calls “a bit of a whip. They’ll work in North India, then be in Australia, then South America, and of course now it’s showing, you know. A couple of them are starting to become very sick.

“Ian [Gillan], the singer, he gets sick very often, so I really think they should take a rest. But that’s up to them.”

Blackmore also says he recalls Jon Lord, the group’s late keyboardist, once remarking on the group’s nonstop performing.

“I remember Jon Lord saying when he was in the band, ‘I don’t know if this band will ever know when to stop,’” Blackmore says. “I thought that was quite funny.”3. Fans at his Rainbow shows last June were disappointed that he included Deep Purple songs in the set. (11:45)

“We incorporated a few Deep Purple songs—‘Black Night,’ ‘Smoke [on the Water],’ ‘Highway Star’—of which some of the fans said, ‘Why did you do those Deep Purple songs?’” Blackmore recalls. “And I would say, ‘Why not?’

“They said, ’Well, we thought it was just gonna be Rainbow. We would prefer to hear Rainbow songs.’ Which I thought was kind of ironic, again. I’m thinking, ‘Wow. We just threw three songs in by Deep Purple, and they wanted more [Rainbow]...

“And I noticed when they clapped, they weren’t clapping so hard for Deep Purple. They said, ‘We hear that every year’—’cause Purple goes around [on tour].

“So the next time, if we go out, I would probably do 95 percent Rainbow songs. That’s what they seem to want to hear.”

4. He prefers playing acoustic guitar because it’s more challenging than playing electric. (12:50)

“People are like, ‘Why do you play the acoustic guitar when you could play the electric?’ It’s because I want to, and it’s more difficult. I find it a lot easier just going onstage playing the rock and roll guitar, turning the amplifier up and blasting away. That to me is not a challenge. It’s fun; it’s not a challenge.”

• “I have adopted a different fingerstyle technique, and I play with all my fingers on the acoustic. When I play the electric, I play with a plectrum. So it’s totally different, the approach. Nothing is easy, but this music that we do in Blackmore’s Night is a lot more challenging. It’s like going onstage and you can’t hit them with volume and just jump around the stage. You’ve actually got to actually deliver something.”
• Check out the entire 18-minuted clip below.

In a wide-ranging interview with Dutch radio station Radio Veronica, Ritchie Blackmore hinted that more gigs might be in the cards for his recently reuinted band, Rainbow.

He also revealed in the interview that he was, at one point, considering a reunion with former Deep Purple bandmates David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes.

Asked in the interview if there had been offers for more Rainbow comeback shows, Blackmore said, "Yes. Many. But I wanted to see how the three went. If they were disastrous and we had accepted more, it was gonna be awkward. We might do a few more shows again.

"I enjoyed especially the last one in England. The first two were a little bit intense, because we hadn't played together ... we hadn't done a lot of rehearsing, so the first two shows were a bit hectic and chaotic. But the last one in Birmingham was... obviously, we'd played two shows at that point, and that seemed to work, to me. And it was great to see all the old people... I mean, it was so weird how... I think it was twenty thousand people... It sold out in fifteen minutes. And I kind of wondered who they thought was playing, 'cause when I got to the auditorium, it was so vast that I thought, 'Maybe somebody else is playing this show tonight.'"

Ritchie Blackmore and his newly revived Rainbow lineup played the last of three scheduled gigs on June 25, with a show at Genting Arena in Birmingham, England.

For the show, the group added a pair of two Deep Purple classics: “Burn,” from Deep Purple’s 1974 album of the same name, and “Soldier of Fortune,” from 1974’s Stormbringer. The two albums were Blackmore’s last with Deep Purple before he left the group. He reunited with the band in 1984.

Rainbow’s June 25 set also included Deep Purple cuts like “Mistreated,” “Highway Star” and “Smoke on the Water,” plus the Rainbow songs “Spotlight Kid” and “Since You Been Gone.”

Blackmore has said he’s open to the possibility of touring again with Rainbow in 2017.

Ritchie Blackmore and his newly assembled version of Rainbow performed at Monsters of Rock in Loreley, Germany, this past Friday and Saturday, marking the pioneering heavy metal guitarist’s first rock shows in nearly 20 years.

The group’s 13-song set was divided between classic cuts by Deep Purple, including “Highway Star” and “Smoke on the Water,” and Rainbow, such as “Stargazer,” “Man on the Silver Mountain” and “Since You Been Gone.”

• Blackmore’s new Rainbow lineup features keyboardist Jens Johansson, singer Ronnie Romero and drummer David Keith and bassist Bob Nouveau, both of whom perform in Blackmore’s Night, the guitarist’s Renaissance folk outfit.
• Blackmore quit performing rock shows in 1997 when he launched his Renaissance folk outfit, Blackmore’s Night. He announced last September that he wanted to make a brief return to performing rock, a decision spurred on by his own health and by the deaths of former Rainbow bandmate Ronnie James Dio, who died in 2010, and Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord, who passed away in 2012.

Rainbow will perform again on June 25 at Genting Arena in Birmingham, England. Blackmore previously said he has not ruled out scheduling more Rainbow appearances if the audiences are receptive.

“If we enjoy ourselves and the audience gives us a positive vibe back, then I won’t rule out the possibility of continuing,” Blackmore said. “However, the second round of dates will probably take place in 2017. But the crucial factor will be the chemistry between the musicians and the audience reaction.”

Here are fan clips from the Monsters of Rock shows.

"Stargazer"

"Mistreated"

"Sixteenth Century Greensleeves"

"Highway Star"

"Smoke on the Water"

"Since You've Been Gone"/"Man on the Silver Mountain"

"Long Live Rock and Roll"

Here's a bit of good news for fans of Ritchie Blackmore and his old bands, Deep Purple and Rainbow.

The guitarist has announced he will play four rock-focused shows in Europe in 2016.

As any good Blackmore fan knows, he moved away from rock about 20 years ago and now fronts—with his wife, Candice Night—Blackmore’s Night, a traditional folk band.

“I am doing four dates in June, which will be all rock,” Blackmore told Noisey. “I have the band basically together and it will be [the best of] Rainbow and Deep Purple.” Blackmore didn’t confirm which of his former bandmates will participate, although Joe Lynn Turner has already suggested he could be involved. As we recently reported, David Coverdale also has approached Blackmore about working together again.

“It’s just having fun, but it’s only four dates in Europe,” Blackmore added. “I don’t want to do anymore because I take what I’m doing now much more seriously.”

Blackmore’s Night will release a new album, All Our Yesterdays, September 18.

Coverdale played with Blackmore in Deep Purple from 1973 to '75. Turner joined Blackmore in Rainbow from 1980 to '84 and was then in Deep Purple from 1989 to '92. Blackmore led Deep Purple from 1968 to '75 and then again from 1984 to '93; stints in Rainbow followed both times, in 1975 to '84, and then in 1993 to '97.

When Frontiers Records wanted to put together a supergroup to record an album of classic hard rock music, they looked to Joe Lynn Turner.

Turner, the former lead vocalist for Rainbow and Deep Purple, also a successful solo artist, quickly agreed. Before long, bassist Tony Franklin and drummer Carmine Appice were on board.

Following several unsuccessful attempts at filling the guitarist slot, the band found Karl Cochran, who stepped in to provide some tastefully inspired shredding. With infectious songs like “This Is Who I Am” and “Fire And Ice," Rated X’s self-titled debut sounds like a band that’s worked together for years as a unit.

Unfortunately, Cochran suffered a stroke during the completion of the album and is still on the road to recovery. I recently spoke with Turner and got an update on Cochran’s condition as well as the Rated X album and the possibility of a Rainbow reunion with Ritchie Blackmore.

GUITAR WORLD: How’s Karl doing?

Thanks for asking. He’s improving drastically. His speech is still a bit impaired and he’s paralyzed on his right side, but he’s able to move his arm up to his shoulder and has some feeling in his hand. He’s not walking with a cane, which is incredible for this type of situation. He’s progressing but we know it’s a long, hard road.

If you don’t know much about Karl, he’s a guitar aficionado. His house is filled with vintage guitars, amps and a workshop. His is a complete guitar world. We’re doing benefits to help pay for his medical expenses. We had a very successful one at the Iridium in New York and are doing a few more. We’re doing what we can because the cost of health care is off the hook these days.

How did the you come up with the name Rated X?

It actually started out as just a project we called Project X. We thought that since we were all ex-members of bands, had ex-wives and all had lived “rated X” lives [laughs], that’s what we should name the band.

The band started out with a revolving door of guitarists. How did you settle on Karl Cochran?

When we first started talking about the project, the record company suggested we have a “name” for a guitarist. We actually started out working with Bruce Kulick [Grand Funk Railroad, Kiss], but he unfortunately had other commitments and couldn’t do it. Then Carmine and I thought about Jeff Watson [Night Ranger]. We both did Mother’s Army with him, and what he played on that album was just incredible. From the elegance to the shredding, he’s a real virtuoso.

But again, we needed a commitment and Jeff has a studio at his ranch that keeps him busy. Fresh out of “name” guitarists, I told the others that I had a guy who was perfect and knew exactly what this band had to be—and that’s Karl Cochran. Karl’s been with me for a long time and played on a lot of projects that I did. He jumped at the chance. So he came in and finished a few tracks and then we flew out to LA to finish the videos.

What was the songwriting process like?

It was a collaborative effort by friends and band members. We would usually start with the skeleton of the song and then everyone would kick the ball around. We all put our heart and soul as well as sweat and tears into it. It was a very free experience.

Who will be performing guitar duties on a Rated X tour?

We were about seven tracks in when Karl suffered his stroke. At that point, there was only one guy I knew who could come in and get up to speed, and that’s Nikolo Kotsev from the band Brazen Abbot. He’s another brilliant player who fit right in. He listened to what Karl was doing and finished the last four tracks for us. He’ll be playing with us live in Europe next year.

Is the band working on any U.S. dates?

We’re looking forward to doing some live show here in the States. We have a brand of music that people will love, plus we also can do some of our own hits. For instance, Carmine has a real heavy metal version of the song “Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?” Not many people know that he co-wrote that with Rod Stewart. It’s a metal version that just blows me away. Being in this band also allows us the opportunity to do some Rainbow, Purple and the Firm.

Speaking of Rainbow, there have been rumors going around about a possible Rainbow reunion with Ritchie Blackmore. Any truth to that?

I really believe we need a Rainbow reunion and the reason why I popped that rumor is because it’s the 40th anniversary of Rainbow in 2015, and we’d really like to do something with Ritchie to go out in style. I think the fans are owed another record and tour. There are a lot of possibilities about what form a reunion could take, including the possibility that nothing happens at all. So even though I think it’s time, let me just go on record by saying that right now there’s nothing definitive. We’ll see what happens.

What’s the origin of the Rainbow song, “Street of Dreams”?

At the time I wrote it, I was having this recurring dream. I would always see the face of this angelic woman in my dream and I kept getting these strange messages. One night, I woke up from one and just went over to the desk, lit a candle and started to write. I woke up the next morning and saw that what I had written was called “Street of Dreams." I read Ritchie the lyrics and he just loved it. He came up with three separate sections of that song and laid down that beautiful solo in one take.

Can you tell me the story of how you got into Rainbow?

I have to say getting into Rainbow was probably the most memorable moment of my career. Because at that moment, my whole life changed. I was down on my luck and living in a one room apartment in New York City going to auditions. I realized I needed a band and as destiny might have it, I got a call. It was from a guy from Long Island who had somehow gotten my number.

He started out by asking me about Rainbow and Purple and I said, “Yeah, they’re two of my favorite bands, but who are you and what do you want?” That’s when he said, “Well, I’m sitting next to Ritchie Blackmore and he wants to talk to you.” I said, “OK, which one of my friends is pulling my leg?” Then he puts Ritchie on the phone and it was a struggle at first because I still wouldn’t believe him! [laughs].

But eventually Ritchie told me he was looking for a new singer for Rainbow and wanted me to come in and audition. So I went in and we spent the day working on “Midnight Tunnel Vision” and stacking vocals on “I Surrender." It was only then that Ritchie came in with a Heineken, looked at me and said “You’ve got the job!” [laughs].

Check out Rated X on Facebook.

James Wood is a writer, musician and self-proclaimed metalhead who maintains his own website, GoJimmyGo.net. His articles and interviews are written on a variety of topics with passion and humor. You can follow him on Twitter @JimEWood.

Earlier today, Metallica premiered their new "Ronnie Rising Medley," which features the Rainbow tracks "A Light in the Black," "Tarot Woman," "Stargazer" and "Kill the King," on RollingStone.com.

You also can stream it below.

The "Ronnie Rising Medley" appears on the upcoming Ronnie James Dio tribute album, This Is Your Life, which will be available April 1 via Rhino in physical and digital versions.

This Is Your Life can be preordered via iTunes and Amazon.

As a bonus with the iTunes pre-order, fans will get a free instant download of Motörhead and Biff Byford of Saxon’s cover of Rainbow’s "Starstruck." All digital versions of This Is Your Life, will include a newly recorded cover of Black Sabbath’s "Buried Alive" re-imagined by Jasta, the side project of Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta. This track will be exclusively available on the digital versions.

Why should guitarists have all the fun?

GuitarWorld.com recently launched a new readers poll in partnership with Samson: the Greatest Rock Singers of All Time Readers Poll.

We're certain that, even though our core readership is mainly made up of guitarists from different genres, locations and age groups, you — like us — have strong opinions about the skills (or lack thereof) of some of rock's most legendary singers.

And although we had hundreds of rock singers to choose from, we decided to narrow things down to a mere 16 names, all of which were carefully chosen by Guitar World's editorial staff. We took great care in choosing what's essentially a Sweet 16 starting point. Rock singers from every decade, starting with the 1960s, are represented, as are several rock sub-genres.

Here are our 16 rock singers in alphabetical order:

Phil Anselmo, Randy Blythe, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Bruce Dickinson, Ronnie James Dio, Rob Halford, James Hetfield, Mick Jagger, Maynard James Keenan, Freddie Mercury, Jim Morrison, Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Plant, Axl Rose and Bon Scott.

From there, we drew singers' names out of a hat (It was, in fact, a Black Sabbath baseball cap) to help us create our opening 16-singer bracket, which is available for your viewing pleasure below. Obviously, none of these of singers are ranked or coming from a previously compiled list, so we chose purely random matchups to have as little impact as possible on the final outcome. We're actually pretty pleased with the way the bracket turned out.

Round 1 has come and gone, and the Elite Eight round kicks off today! As always, you can vote only once per matchup (once per device, that is), and we'll post two or three matchups per week, continuing with today's Elite Eight shootout, Freddie Mercury of Queen against Ronnie James Dio of Black Sabbath, Dio and Rainbow.

Remember that, as with any poll, sub-genre might occasionally clash against sub-genre, so you'll just need to decide which singer has or had the most to offer within his genre and time period, which one has or had more natural talent or technical skill, which one had the biggest influence on other singers or rock in general — maybe which one was simply the stronger frontman.

Latest Results

Winner: Bruce Dickinson (66.56 percent)
Loser: Mick Jagger (33.44 percent)

Today's Samson Greatest Rock Singers Elight Eight Matchup (3 of 4)
Freddie Mercury Vs. Ronnie James Dio

FREDDIE MERCURY

Born: September 5, 1946, Stone Town, Zanzibar City, Tanzania
Died: November 24, 1991, Kensington, England
Associated Acts: Queen
Website:freddiemercury.com

Quote: "We're a very expensive group; we break a lot of rules. It's unheard of to combine opera with a rock theme, my dear."

RONNIE JAMES DIO

Born: July 10, 1942, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Died: May 16, 2010, Houston, Texas
Associated Acts: Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Dio, Heaven & Hell, Elf, Hear 'n Aid
Website:ronniejamesdio.com

Quote: "Music, rock and roll music especially, is such a generational thing. Each generation must have their own music, I had my own in my generation, you have yours, everyone I know has their own generation."

Vote Now!

Winner: Freddie Mercury (60.76 percent)
Loser: Ronnie James Dio (39.24 percent)

Thanks for voting! Check out our current matchup (and every matchup that has taken place so far) right HERE.

The BracketCheck out the latest version of the 16-singer bracket below. We'll update it after each Samson Greatest Rock Singer of All Time matchup.October 18, 2013, Samson Greatest Rock Singers of All Time Readers Poll

Why should guitarists have all the fun?

GuitarWorld.com recently launched a new readers poll in partnership with Samson: the Greatest Rock Singers of All Time Readers Poll.

We're certain that, even though our core readership is mainly made up of guitarists from different genres, locations and age groups, you — like us — have strong opinions about the skills (or lack thereof) of some of rock's most legendary singers.

And although we had hundreds of rock singers to choose from, we decided to narrow things down to a mere 16 names, all of which were carefully chosen by Guitar World's editorial staff. We took great care in choosing what's essentially a Sweet 16 starting point. Rock singers from every decade, starting with the 1960s, are represented, as are several rock sub-genres.

Here are our 16 rock singers in alphabetical order:

Phil Anselmo, Randy Blythe, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Bruce Dickinson, Ronnie James Dio, Rob Halford, James Hetfield, Mick Jagger, Maynard James Keenan, Freddie Mercury, Jim Morrison, Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Plant, Axl Rose and Bon Scott.

From there, we drew singers' names out of a hat (It was, in fact, a Black Sabbath baseball cap) to help us create our opening 16-singer bracket, which is available for your viewing pleasure below. Obviously, none of these of singers are ranked or coming from a previously compiled list, so we chose purely random matchups to have as little impact as possible on the final outcome. We're actually pretty pleased with the way the bracket turned out.

Remember that, as with any poll, sub-genre might occasionally clash against sub-genre, so you'll just need to decide which singer has or had the most to offer within his genre and time period, which one has or had more natural talent or technical skill, which one had the biggest influence on other singers or rock in general — maybe which one was simply the stronger frontman.

Let's get started! As always, you can vote only once per matchup (once per device, that is), and we'll post two matchups per week, continuing with today's shootout, Ronnie James Dio of Elf, Dio, Rainbow, Black Sabbath and beyond against Jim Morrison of the Doors.

Latest Results

Winner: Robert Plant (71.84 percent)
Loser: Bon Scott (28.16 percent)

Today's Samson Greatest Rock Singers Round 1 Matchup (3 of 8)
Ronnie James Dio Vs. Jim Morrison

RONNIE JAMES DIO

Born: July 10, 1942, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Died: May 16, 2010, Houston, Texas
Associated Acts: Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Dio, Heaven & Hell, Elf, Hear 'n Aid
Website:ronniejamesdio.com

Quote: "Music, rock and roll music especially, is such a generational thing. Each generation must have their own music, I had my own in my generation, you have yours, everyone I know has their own generation."

JIM MORRISON

Born: December 8, 1943, Melbourne, Florida
Died: July 3, 1971, Paris, France
Associated Acts: The Doors
Website:thedoors.com

Quote: "I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments."

Voting Closed!

Winner: Ronnie James Dio (68.46 percent)
Loser: Jim Morrison (31.54 percent)

Thanks for voting! Check out our current matchup (and every matchup that has taken place so far) right HERE.

The BracketCheck out the latest version of the 16-singer bracket below. We'll update it after each Samson Greatest Rock Singer of All Time matchup.Guitar World/Samson Greatest Rock Singers

Blackmore‘s Night, the band former Deep Purple and Rainbow guitarist Ritchie Blackmore formed 15 years ago with his wife, Candice Night, have announced four East Coast US dates.

Check out the dates below.

The band also has announced a new live DVD, A Knight In York, which will be released October 9 via UDR/EMI. It will be available as a DVD, Blu-ray, CD and on double vinyl. The concert in the DVD was recorded live on September 30, 2011.

Blackmore's Night features Blackmore (guitar, mandolin, mandola, hurdy-gurdy), Night (vocals, Renaissance woodwinds, pennywhistles, tambourine), Earl Grey of Chimay (bass, rhythm guitar), Bard David of Larchmont (keyboards, vocals), Squire Malcolm of Lumley (drums, percussion), Gypsy Rose (violin, harmony vocals) and Minstrel Albert (various medieval woodwinds).

CONFIRMED TOUR DATES

• 25-Oct-12 NY, Tarrytown Music Hall
• 26-Oct-12 PA, StroudsburgSherman Theater
• 28-Oct-12 DE, WilmingtonWorld Café Live
• 2-Nov-12 NY, New YorkConcert Hall

TRACK LISTING

01 Locked Within The Crystal Ball
02 Gilded Cage
03 The Circle
04 Journeyman
05 World Of Stone
06 The Peasant‘s Promise
07 Toast To Tomorrow
08 Fires At Midnight
09 Barbara Allen
10 Darkness
11 Dance Of The Darkness
12 Dandelion Wine
13 All The Fun Of The Fayre
14 First Of May

Joe Lynn Turner didn’t set out to become one of the most recognizable voices in rock.

His goal was to be a guitar player, in addition to singing and songwriting, but it didn’t take long for his dynamic range to push him to frontman status — fronting bands led by guitar heroes.

So much for playing lead, but the gigs served him well. Turner has recorded more than 60 albums as a band member and solo artist, and the years have been kind.

He’s still recording — his new album, Emotional Fire, is his third Sunstorm project with producer Dennis Ward — and his voice is as strong as ever.

Never satisfied with time off, Turner stays busy on the road and in the studio. His experience as a session vocalist prior to entering the rock music realm, and his childhood years listening to a variety of genres from country to R&B, helped expand his musical boundaries. As a result, he is now exploring a number of creative avenues, which he discusses in this interview.

GUITAR WORLD: The perception of you is primarily as a vocalist, although you have been a prolific songwriter all along. Are the Sunstorm projects helping to turn that around a bit?

I don’t know. I think so. I didn’t put any of my songs on this new album. I think the first two really spoke volumes about it because they had all these songs from the ’80s, and I still have some that deserve to be recorded and heard. I hope so. Even with Rainbow, Fandango and Deep Purple, I was involved with the writing, I co-wrote, so I hope it has been established prior to this.

You’re also a guitar player, although ironically, a great portion of your career revolved around legendary guitarists. What did you learn from them? How often do you play now?

It’s kind of difficult to play when you’ve got Ritchie Blackmore or Yngwie Malmsteen. All I ever wanted to do was play guitar, and it’s very ironic that I ended up becoming one of these premier vocalists, so life is strange at best. At the same time, I really want to get back to it in any way I can, possibly in this new project coming up where I can be second guitarist. Little by little.

Sometimes life turns you a little and gives you what I call a perfect twist. I didn’t even know I could sing. I was a guitar player and a background singer and now I’m a lead singer and background guitarist.

It’s rumored that you’re quite the collector.

I have a lot of Gibsons and Fenders and custom-made guitars, PRS, Dean, but mostly vintage, which are now very much sought after. I’ve been collecting all my life. I stopped actively collecting maybe 15 years ago. You have to always have a go-to.

Nowadays they’re making technologically fine instruments, the technical aspects have been refined. But if you can get it set up where you’ve got a ’52 vintage Telecaster or Strat, those are going to be the finer guitars.

Some guitarists, people like Joe Bonamassa, they use mostly the vintage stuff all set up so that they stay in tune, because that’s the problem with the old guitars. They don’t stay in tune as well, and when you’re onstage you have to have two guitar roadies or something. It’s difficult and it adds to the costs.

What other projects are you involved with?

There are quite a few things. I’m doing a couple of tribute records because they’re fun and quick, just songs. I did a Who song, I’m doing a Supertramp song, I’m working on a country album because I grew up with country music and I’m getting back to the roots. I think this is going to turn out great.

The business is very tough all over, as you know, but I think if you’ve got the goods, doors will open. A rock opera that was written about ten years ago that deserves to see the light of day — I’m working on that with the writers. So a lot of things in the works — a soundtrack company, a television show, there’s a couple of things with rappers. That would completely bring me into a different market.

You grew up on country music?

My grandmother loved all the original country artists, like Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Merle Haggard, she played American country music and of course Italian folk music in the house all the time. I grew up singing these songs, and then Elvis and the Beatles came out and that changed everything.

The new release follows an interesting concept of looking at your history as a session singer. How did you come up with the song list for this album?

Actually, I couldn’t, because I was in Turkey at the time and I couldn’t bring in my music, so Serafino [Perugino, president, Frontiers Records] brought in the tunes. He brought in two Michael Bolton songs and a Cher song that I originally sang background on. I think he was smart in doing that. That’s the center of the album.

How key was session work to developing your vocal style and strength?

There was a point, speaking of Michael Bolton, for example, we knew each other in the clubs in New York and he was singing jingles for Budweiser and Gillette. There was a big market back then for actual singing on jingles. When he wasn’t able to do it much anymore, he turned me on to that and I became a huge jingle singer for TV. You can disguise your voice and sing in different timbres and tones and it really teaches you a lot.

Also singing group, background singing, you have to fit inside of something, and a lot of people don’t know how to do that. They don’t understand it. It sharpened all my skills, my ears and my techniques. You have to match your tone to the people you’re singing with. You look at each other, help each other, you know the terminology and it becomes real camaraderie. It sharpens all of your creative powers because you get such a different angle on things.

That was a very big help in everything. Now they use stock music or the younger alternative or pop-sounding voices, but there’s not much of it. There’s no more “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” It used to be huge. I’m thankful that I had that opportunity during those times, because that’s pretty much gone too.

Your work crosses so many genres. Is that what has enabled you to survive and thrive for several decades, versus singers and musicians who lock into one style and stay there?

I think so. I think it has a lot to do with it. I think you have to be a chameleon in a way, you have to be good at everything you do, and you can build longevity. I can see myself singing Sinatra songs in 20 years. When you’re myopic and have only one voice, one ability, you can’t stretch out into other areas artistically. You have a lot more chances if you can do many things.

— Alison Richter

Alison Richter interviews artists, producers, engineers and other music industry professionals for print and online publications. Read more of her interviews right here.

Eagle Rock Entertainment has announced that they will release a double-disc reissue of Rainbow's Live In Germany 1976 this month.

This snapshot of the band in their prime features the lineup of Ronnie James Dio, Ritchie Blackmore, Cozy Powell, Jimmy Bain and Tony Carey. This particular lineup only recorded one studio album together, 1976's Rising.

Live In Germany 1976 will feature lengthy versions of "Kill The King," "Man On The Silver Mountain" and "Stargazer," among others.

For an exact release time, keep an eye on Eagle Rock's official website.

Originally published in Guitar World, July 2010

Coheed and Cambria bring the Armory Wars epic to a conclusion with their latest album—and the prequel to the series—Year of the Black Rainbow.

Progressive rock. Progressive metal. Progressive nu-metal. Over the years, singer and guitarist Claudio Sanchez has heard many such labels attributed to the music made by his band, Coheed and Cambria. “Usually, I try to just laugh them off,” he says. “The only one that really bothered me was when some writer called us ‘progressive emo.’ I mean, that’s just plain dumb.”

His bandmate guitarist Travis Stever concurs. “I don’t care too much what you call us,” he says, “but emo we are definitely not. I never even liked the sound of the word. It sounds…I don’t know—weak.”

“People are under this assumption that we’re purposely trying to be confusing,” Sanchez says, “when really we’re just doing what comes naturally. It’s not like we sit around going, ‘Okay, how can we be supremely arty? What will have everybody scratching their heads?’ The fact is, we want as many people as possible to get into our music.”

Even so, with album titles that would confound even Robert Fripp, such as 2003’s In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (which was their second album) and 2005’s Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness, the two guitarists have to admit they aren’t exactly making things easy on themselves.

And then there’s the sci-fi comic books and Byzantine storylines that have been attached to all of the band’s releases, dating back to 2000’s EP Delirium Trigger, when the Nyack, New York–based band went by the name Shabütie. Entitled The Armory Wars, the comic books loosely tell the story of the band through characters named Coheed and Cambria. “And that in and of itself is a mind bender,” says Sanchez, “because a lot of people think Travis and I are named Coheed and Cambria.”

“It happens all the time,” Stever says. “At gigs and these meet-and-greet things we do, somebody will always come up to me and go, ‘Now, which one are you, Coheed or Cambria?’ Then I’ll say, ‘Actually, my name is Travis.’ And they think I’m joking! We get into some weird things with this band.”

Although Sanchez killed off the characters Coheed and Cambria on the band’s debut album, 2002’s The Second Stage Turbine Blade, he revisits them on the group’s latest release, Year of the Black Rainbow. Yes, there’s another installment of The Armory Wars comic (only this one is the beginning of the tale), and there’s even a 352-page Year of the Black Rainbow novel, co-written by Sanchez and Peter David, which will be included with the pricier, super-deluxe edition of the CD. “I know a lot of people might roll their eyes when they hear I’ve written a novel to go with the album,” Sanchez says. “But I felt it was important to explain a lot of unanswered questions people had about the characters of Coheed and Cambria. A lot of our fans really seem to care about them.”

Highfalutin’ concepts, comic books and novels are all very well and good, but none of it matters if the music isn’t there. And on Year of the Black Rainbow, co-produced by Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails, Jane’s Addiction) and Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Tool), Coheed and Cambria—the band, not the characters—have, for the most part, refined their dark, epic approach to songwriting and come up with some concise and catchy rockers, like the first single, “Here We Are Juggernaut.” Brutal rhythms and gnashing guitars still rule the day, but they’re augmented by sequencers and synth atmospherics. The relatively sunny, wave-your-BlackBerry-in-the-air ballad called “Far” might throw longtime fans for a loop. “That one’s probably about as close to American Idol as you’re going to get from us,” Sanchez says. “And if you don’t like it, cool. There’s plenty of other stuff to check out. Nothing repeats itself on this album.”

It’s 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning as Sanchez and Stever gear up for a noon rehearsal with the band, which also includes bassist Michael Todd and drummer Chris Pennie. Before heading off to the studio, the two guitarists sat down with Guitar World to discuss the new album and why, to quote Sanchez, “progressing musically doesn’t mean you’re ‘progressive rock.’ ”

GUITAR WORLD Claudio, you’ve written the first story of The Armory Wars last. At what stage in the game did you decide to work backward?

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ Actually, it was always my plan to do the first story last. Everything in this story, what’s in the comic books and on the records and stuff, it’s exactly as I planned it.

But you know, while it’s cool to come up with these stories and explore other areas of art, they really aren’t important when it comes down to sitting back and listening to our music. The themes that I’m singing about in the songs are very personal, but the novels and all that other stuff are very different and they’re more like extensions of the music. You know, we have fans who don’t even know about all those other elements. They like our records because they like our records, period.

TRAVIS STEVER See, that’s where I’m at. I’m proud that we have these other aspects that go beyond the songs, but I’m also very committed to the idea that the music has to stand on its own. We’re not a video game; we don’t just serve as the accompaniment to these comic books and stories. If everything else went away, Coheed and Cambria the band would still stand.

GW The group has been pretty stable for the past few years. You’ve had the same lineup since 2007.

STEVER The four of us have been together since 2007, yes. I left a long time ago for a brief period, too, but that was before we were Coheed. I think this is the most secure lineup we’ve ever had. The four people in the band right now are the four people who are supposed to be in Coheed and Cambria. I feel pretty good in saying that.

SANCHEZ Everybody’s on the same page now. The song that we’re releasing as the first single, “Here We Are Juggernaut,” is a huge statement for us as a band. It’s us saying, “Here we are. We’re still here and we’re pushing, and you can’t knock us down.” When I wrote that song, it was about me and my wife and the power of our relationship, but when the band got into the studio and recorded it, suddenly it became about Coheed and Cambria—how we’re still here in 2010 and nothing can stop us.

GW For this record, you worked with producers Atticus Ross and Joe Barresi. Why did you want to work with them, and what did they bring to the project?

SANCHEZ I’ve wanted to self-produce our records for a while, but I don’t know if I’ve found the right relationship with an engineer to be able to do that. Atticus works with electronics and loops, and that’s something that I’ve always wanted to dabble in. He brought up working with Joe and it sounded good.

We all got together in Los Angeles and did a song with them called “When Skeletons Live” as a sort of test. Everything sounded great, so we said, “Cool. Let’s make an album.” It was a terrific match right off the bat. They were very cool with trying different sounds and bringing in a cinematic element to the mix, which, of course, works well with the kind of music we make.

STEVER What I really liked about working with Atticus and Joe was that they were very much in the here and now. Their attitude was, “Go in the control room and play!” It didn’t matter if I had demoed something previously—they were interested in what I was going to come up with at that moment. A lot of off-the-cuff stuff I played ended up on the record.

GW Did the band track songs live, or were things done in sections?

STEVER For the most part, we did all the rhythm tracks live, as a band. The layers of guitars, the leads and all the little ornamental parts were done after the fact.

GW How do you go about writing and demoing?

SANCHEZ We do our homework. We don’t like to go into the studio unprepared. I have a small Pro Tools rig in my house, and I do all the demos on that. Usually, I’ll work out the skeletons of the songs and pass them around to the rest of the band and get their input. I do some collaborating with Travis. But for most of this album I worked on the songs myself, because I wanted to explore ways to make songwriting fun. So I got some modular synthesizers, and I would patch in some oscillators and create these very [Pink] Floyd–y, trance-like bass line pulses, and I would play to them. “Juggernaut” is a song that came about in that way.

GW Are there other songs that came about from this process?

SANCHEZ “Broken” was created in the same way: I had a pulsing kind of synth sound that I wrote to. For a lot of songs, I would just plug my guitar into a series of effects and make noise, very chaotic and random, nothing melodic at all—I was just coming up with atmospherics. After I had the sounds, however, I would find the rhythmic qualities in them and I made loops to work with. It’s madness, in a way, but it works.

GW “Broken” has a lot of disparate guitar parts. There’s a slow, melodic passage—it’s almost bluesy, really—and then there’s an intense bit of shred. Who do you guys listen to for inspiration? You don’t seem to stick to any one kind of style in your playing.

SANCHEZ There’s no one player or band we listen to. I mean, we listen to a lot of stuff, but as far as inspiration goes, we’re kind of in our own world.

STEVER It’s tough to describe. I do a lot of the, as you call it, “bluesy” parts, but I don’t sit down and listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan or anybody before I record. Not that I don’t like Stevie Ray, because I do. But I play what fits, what comes out.

GW In the song “Guns of Summer,” there’s a very cool top-string guitar pattern and then it breaks in a passage of effect-laden shred. Who’s playing that?

SANCHEZ That was me. I had a lot of fun with that. The thing I like most about that song is where I’m emulating a synth sequence by playing a very fast arpeggio. I’m doing that manually—a lot of people think it’s a loop, but I’m doing it all by myself on guitar. [He does a spot-on a capella version of the guitar part.]

GW Well, that’s impressive! Guitar-wise, not vocally, how long did it take you to practice that to get it just right?

SANCHEZ Uh, not long. [laughs] It’s a scale I’ve used before. I played it on In Keeping Secrets. It’s kind of a diminished arpeggio, I think, and it’s pretty bizarre, which is why I like it so much. It’s a riff that poses a question—the best kind of riff, in my opinion.

GW How do you two divvy up your guitar parts? Is there any kind of formula to how you decide who plays what?

SANCHEZ It depends on where the vocal is sitting. If Travis is playing a lot of melodic lines, I try to make sure my vocals aren’t on top of those. You want the guitar parts to stand out, but on the other hand, the vocals are key.

GW But in a lot of two-guitar bands in which the players are each performing leads, oftentimes there are designated roles: one guy does the slow, melodic parts while the other guy does the intense stuff.

SANCHEZ I know what you mean. Travis and I have our own styles, for sure, but it’s not like I can do things that he can’t, and vice versa. We don’t see ourselves that way. It’s more like, “I’ve got your back here, and you’ve got my back there.” You know what I mean?

STEVER I think, throughout the years, I’ve developed more of a style of writing vocal parts on the guitar. If I really wanted to, I could probably write instrumentals, but that’s just not where my head is at. I like my role in this band. But yeah, what you said about backing up Claudio and serving the song—that’s what I like to do. I’m not out to dazzle the world with my virtuoso chops.

GW That said, how do you push each other as guitarists?

SANCHEZ [pauses] Wow, that’s a good question. [laughs] Geez, I don’t know! You know, we’ve been playing together for so long—

STEVER It’s hard to say where one guy ends and the other begins. We complement each other well. I usually know what Claudio is going to do, and I’m sure he has an idea what I’m going to do. Not that we don’t try to flip each other out and blow the other guy’s mind, because we do. But we have a relationship with each other musically that’s very deep. We don’t have to talk about it. It’s just there.

GW “Here We Are Juggernaut” and “Far” are probably the most radio-friendly tracks on the album. Do you guys care at all about getting airplay, or are you content to sustain your career through all the other avenues bands have these days, like the internet?

STEVER Getting on the radio is a nice thing, but we don’t sit around worrying about it. Sure, it would be cool to get a lot of radio action and then maybe people wouldn’t just toss us off. Wait a second—did I just say that? “Toss us off”? [laughs] You know what I mean—so people don’t think of us as this comic-book band for geeks. Radio play and more mainstream acceptance would help, but who can control that? You write a song and hope people dig it. If not, you write another one.

SANCHEZ Whatever comes is what comes. I try to write music that’s melodic, and if people can appreciate that, that’s great. A song like “Far” was originally intended for another project of mine, but it made sense for this story, this album. I like to try to be diverse, you know, with the prog side of things and the long songs. But I also like trying to get my point across quickly.

GW The last song on the record, “The Black Rainbow,” is quite an opus. How long did it take to write that?

SANCHEZ Not long, really. It’s interesting you bring that one up, because that’s the one track where we all kind of contributed as a band and wrote the song together. We created it in the studio, and it was something of a play off the solo section in “Pearl of the Stars.” We wanted to revisit a theme on the album, and everybody added all kinds of chaos and noise. We haven’t done something like that for a while, and it was a lot of fun. We’re not like those bands that jam together and write songs in an “anything goes” kind of way. On occasion, though, we do get together and play just to see what happens.

GW Even though you bristle at the term “progressive,” your songs are, for the most part, pretty long and complex. They’re not verse-chorus-verse-chorus.

SANCHEZ I guess they’re not. I mean, to us they sound simple, but we’re the ones writing them. We like to challenge ourselves, but we don’t try to write songs that are overly hard to play. We want songs that we can remember and our fans can get into. If they’re not “verse-chorus-verse-chorus,” that’s not a bad thing. It just means we’re…different. [laughs] The term “progressive”…I mean, we do progress; we don’t stay the same. So, in that way, I guess you could call us “progressive.” But you could apply that term to a lot of great bands.

STEVER You could call the Beatles a progressive band. I’m not putting us on their level, I’m just saying every album the Beatles made was different from the one that came before it. Talk about a progressive band!

SANCHEZ Do we have long songs? Yes. But I don’t think they’re the type of vehicles to show off our technical skills. We don’t see ourselves as the sons of Dream Theater or Rush, even though we do like those bands. It’s a weird thing.

GW What kind of practice routine do you guys have on the guitar? Are there aspects of your playing you’re dissatisfied with?

SANCHEZ Yeah, like all of them! [laughs]

STEVER We don’t really sit down and “practice” practice. You know, we don’t have the DVDs and the tablature out and all that; we sort of just play what comes into our heads. Sure, I might zone out on the couch when I’m watching TV and run through, like, scale patterns, but I’m not thinking of what I’m doing. It’s more of a physical release thing.

SANCHEZ I’m not very good at guitar playing. Seriously. I might get by, and I do what I do, but I don’t have a grasp on theory or any of that stuff. I mean, I try to pick up the guitar and practice in the traditional sense, but I have so much going on in my life. Chops is something I don’t have. I wish I could be one of those guys who can sit in with any band and dazzle ’em, but that’s just not me. Maybe one day. We’ll have to see.

Originally published in Guitar World, May 2010

Coheed and Cambria bring their sci-fi saga to an ambitious conclusion with Year of the Black Rainbow.

In February 2002, Coheed and Cambria released The Second Stage Turbine Blade, the first in an epic, five-album modern prog-rock series about warring planets, biological viruses and doomed romances. Almost eight years later, the band tracked the final notes of Year of the Black Rainbow, the prequel that completes the tangled saga.

“This is rewarding for me, and very exciting,” says frontman and story architect Claudio Sanchez. “Who would have thought when Second Stage was released that we’d come this far and finish it?

Year of the Black Rainbow is thematically the beginning of the Coheed story, but it’s more musically adventurous than the group’s previous records, incorporating a new range of textures and tones that accompany the angular arrangements and captivating melodies of songs like “The Broken” and “In the Flame of Error.”

Sanchez started working on the album at his home studio in Middletown, New York, in November 2008. Instead of writing on acoustic guitar as he had in the past, he programmed sequences on analog modulators, then played complementary passages on electric guitar. “I wanted to break out of the patterns I had developed over the years and find different ways to make writing fun again,” he says.

Coheed and Cambria recorded Year of the Black Rainbow over two sessions with Atticus Ross and Joe Barresi at Barresi’s House of Compression studio in Pasadena, California. The producers encouraged Coheed to make their soundscapes even more atmospheric.

“I got into fuzz and bought tons of interesting, odd pedals to create a ‘broken’ sound,” Sanchez says. “There are parts where [guitarist] Travis [Stever] and I play different solos at the same time, and it makes the music really dense and lush. It’s an awesome listen.”

Coheed and Cambria will embark on its first North American headline tour since fall 2007 beginning April 22, nine days following the April 13 release of its fifth studio album, Year of the Black Rainbow (Columbia). The five-week track marks Coheed and Cambria's return to headlining its own shows following a two-year-plus period that has seen them invited to play along with the likes of John Paul Jones, Johnny Winter and others at Warren Haynes' 2008 Christmas Jam, embarking on a pair of arena tours in support of Slipknot and Heaven & Hell, respectively, and appearing at festivals ranging from Austin City Limits to Lollapalooza to an upcoming Coachella set.

Support for the upcoming tour will be Circa Survive and Torche. Tickets go on sale Saturday, February 20th.

The band recently made available a first taste of Year of the Black Rainbow by streaming the new song "The Broken" at coheedandcambria.com. The song is also available for purchase on iTunes, where it climbed to #5 on the Alternative Chart within hours of its release.

Produced by Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction) and Joe Baressi (Queens of the Stone Age, Tool), Year of the Black Rainbow is the eagerly awaited prequel to -- and likely the final installment of -- the Amory Wars tetralogy chronicled on Coheed and Cambria's four previous inter-related concept albums -- The Second Stage Turbine Blade (2002); In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (2003); Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness (2005) and Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow (2007). The deluxe edition of the record, currently available for pre-order at coheedandcambria.com will include a 352-page Year of the Black Rainbow novel, penned by the band's Claudio Sanchez and New York Times Bestselling author Peter David, as well as a "Making of" DVD featuring studio and interview footage and a Coheed and Cambria "Black Card,"providing fans early entrance to shows, discounts on band merchandise and exclusive downloads and offers.

Year Of The Black Rainbow's release will be preceded by a series of eight intimate club gigs on the northeastern U.S., six of which are now sold out.

Tour dates:

• Mar
• W/Earl Greyhound
• 23 Rochester, NY - Harro East Theatre & Ballroom
• 24 Syracuse, NY - The Westcott Theater (SOLD OUT)
• 25 Clifton Park , NY - Northern Lights
• 26 South Burlington, VT - Higher Ground Ballroom (SOLD OUT)
• 28 Portland, ME - Port City Music Hall (SOLD OUT)
• 29 Hartford, CT - Webster Theater (SOLD OUT)
• 30 Scranton, PA - Hardware Bar (formerly Tinks) (SOLD OUT)
• 31 Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg (SOLD OUT)

Apr
17 Indio, CA - Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival

With Circa Survive, Torche
22 Charlotte, NC - The Fillmore
23 Atlanta, GA - Tabernacle
24 Lake Buena Vista, FL - House of Blues
25 Fort Lauderdale, FL - Revolution
27 Houston, TX - Warehouse Live
28 Austin, TX - Stubb's Waller Creek Outdoor
29 Dallas, TX - Palladium Ballroom
30 Tulsa, OK - Cain's Ballroom

May
01 Oklahoma City, OK - Diamond Ballroom
03 Tempe, AZ - Marquee Theatre
04 Pomona, CA - Fox Theatre
05 San Francisco, CA - The Warfield Theatre
07 Portland, OR - Roseland Theater
08 Seattle, WA - Showbox SoDo
10 Salt Lake City, UT - Murray Theater
11 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre
13 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
14 Chicago, IL - Congress Theater
15 Royal Oak, MI - Royal Oak Music Theatre
17 Boston, MA - House Of Blues
18 Montreal, QC - Metropolis
19 Toronto, ON - Sound Academy
22 Philadelphia, PA - Electric Factory
23 Columbus, OH - Rock on the Range Festival*
26 New York, NY - Rumsey Playfield, Central Park
27 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
27 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club

*no Circa Survive, Torche