Last year, Ritchie Blackmore’s health concerns forced his tour with Blackmore’s Night to be canceled, and left many fearing the former Deep Purple guitarist would never play live again.

The 81-year-old said he couldn’t stop vomiting and that “the room wouldn't stop spinning” as he later addressed what caused the band to pull the plug on their tour.

He’s since been recovering at home – including hosting a surprise Q&A with fans via Instagram – and is coming to grips with the reality of the situation.

“I woke up one morning when we were on tour, and I had vertigo,” he tells Ultimate Classic Rock. “I've had heart problems, gout problems, and pain, but vertigo is the worst thing I've ever been involved with. You're very dizzy to the point where you have no control over any part of your body; you can't even think properly.

“It was like I was in a fishing boat at sea in the biggest gale you could imagine,” he adds. “I had to grab hold of anything I could find to stop from falling down. That scared the hell out of me.”

Two days later, Blackmore says his vertigo returned. That’s left a big question mark over his touring prospects.

“You think your whole world is ending right there,” he says. “It's a bit of a mystery. I've found that at my age it's time to pull back on touring. I do not like traveling anymore. I love playing on any stage, but sometimes the travel to get there makes me sick. I seem to have a phobia, almost about traveling too far, leaving the comfort zone of one's home.”

Recent Blackmore’s Night shows, as reported last year, have been within driving distance of the Long Island, NY, home the guitarist shares with his wife, and the band’s vocalist, Candice Night.

Playing shows “closer to home” isn’t entirely ruled out, but it’s clear that Blackmore’s health issues are imposing stricter parameters moving forward.

“It's a very strange ailment to have,” he accepts. “Consequently, I want to do our next shows. I want to be on stage. I want to play. I'm still playing all the time... but I don't want to go hundreds of miles. That seems to upset my equilibrium.

“I do like to be at home. So what I'm trying to do now is do dates that are closer to home.”

Elsewhere, Blackmore recently recalled the moment he knew he had to leave Deep Purple, and has addressed his relationship with Jimmy Page, insisting what you read about him online isn't always true.

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ritchie Blackmore has issued an update regarding his health issues that forced his tour with Blackmore’s Night to be cancelled last week.

A total of five shows were postponed. The news came in light of Blackmore’s recent health struggles, which have included recovering from a heart attack, gout, and back pain. In a new statement on Instagram, the guitar legend opened up on his most recent medical issues.

“I have a long history of lumbar and neck herniated discs,” Blackmore confirms. “Consequently, I would have back injections before a tour to help me over the pain. Recently, I have acquired debilitating migraines. They come and go very quickly. When I see the visual disturbance of these ocular migraines, I know they are coming.

“When we did the long drive from Pennsylvania to Newton, NJ [approx three hours], we were booked into a hotel that had a wedding party going all night in the corridors. There was no heat in the room, and the sheets were still damp. Which I assume culminated in me having a severe migraine attack,” he expands.

“I couldn't stop vomiting. The room wouldn't stop spinning, and I was extremely dizzy to the point of not being able to stand. An ambulance was called. I was taken to the hospital, and they gave me a CAT scan and other tests. They were very gracious. The doctors concluded that my official diagnosis was severe vertigo. The results continued for days on end.”

He adds that he’s undergoing further tests and consulting additional specialists as he works to get to the root of the issue.

“When one tours, you have a lot of people who have to be healthy,” he adds. “Unfortunately, I was the one who got hit this time. Hope to see you all one day again when I'm healthy.”

Guitar World wishes Ritchie Blackmore a speedy recovery.

Blackmore's Night – Ritchie Blackmore's neo-medieval folk rock band – have canceled all of their remaining 2025 tour dates, citing medical reasons.

The show in Newton, New Jersey, was the first to be announced as “postponed” on November 15. Wilmington, Delaware, followed just two days later, with a further announcement yesterday stating that the remainder of the tour has been postponed indefinitely.

Candice Night, Blackmore's wife and bandmate, also confirmed the cancellation on social media, writing, “All Blackmores Night shows postponed at this point due to medical reasons. We are sorry for any inconvenience.” The new dates of the freshly postponed shows haven’t been announced or confirmed yet.

Earlier this year, the former Deep Purple guitarist's health sparked concern after Night revealed that he “had a heart attack about a year and a half ago, and he's got six stents in his heart at this point.”

She further explained the guitarist is also “battling arthritis and some gout issues,” which are impacting traveling and touring plans.

Night also mentioned that “standing on stage, even standing with the guitars is tricky,” and that Blackmore was also warned by his medical team not the fly, potentially hindering touring plans beyond the States.

Back in 2016, Blackmore was honest about the physical toll of touring, and even gave his two cents on why he thinks Deep Purple are still touring relentlessly.

Ritchie Blackmore has lifted the lid on his relationship with the late Jeff Beck and discussed how the guitarist regularly downplayed his talents.

Beck, who had offers to join both the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd during his career, is considered as one of the world’s greatest – and distinctive – guitarists, but he often didn't see it like that.

Blackmore and Beck first crossed paths in the mid-’60s during their session player days. They both played on a track produced by Jimmy Page, who, after his brief stint in the Yardbirds, would find fame with Led Zeppelin.

“I couldn't believe how incredible he was,” Blackmore recalled of that session following Beck’s passing in January 2023. “He could reach up into the stars and make magic with his playing. His choice of notes was always absolutely perfect.”

Now, in a fresh interview with Rock Of Nations With Dave Kinchen And Shane McEachern, the Deep Purple legend has spoken more about the late guitar great and his struggles with imposter syndrome.

“ Jeff was a great guitar player. That was a big blow, him going,” he says. “He had a very special way of playing. It was so different from anybody. I always used to go and see him play, because I found him very refreshing.”

But despite Blackmore and the rest of the world drooling over his tradition-skewing chops, it seems he didn’t always feel the same about his craft.

“He would always put himself down,” Blackmore continues. “I'd say, ‘How is your latest record, Jeff?’ And he'd go, ‘Oh, it's a lot of rubbish.’ He would always say that about anything he put out. He was always reaching for something he couldn't find.”

The story harmonizes with Mick Rogers' claim that he owns the last recording that Beck ever made, but added that it's unlikely to see the light of day because Beck didn't like his guitar tone and had planned to re-record it.

Joe Satriani has also spoken about nearly getting Jeff Beck on a G3 tour, but he pulled out late on. Satch says he's one of the few bucket list players to have turned the gig down.

After the record-breaking sale of Beck's guitar collection, one of his most iconic guitars has gone on to pass through the hands of contemporary players to keep his legacy alive. His infamous Yardburst Les Paul, which was given a Custom Shop reissue last year, has been gigged with by Marcus King and Lenny Kravitz's foil, Crag Ross, since its $490,000 sale.

Meanwhile, Blackmore is back on the road again after his wife and musical partner issued some updates concerning his health back in April.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bassist Bob Daisley has a shameful secret: he actually started out as a guitarist. “I had guitar lessons for about a year,” he told Bass Player in 2014. “But when I saw my first-ever bass guitar in a band, I instantly went ‘that's what I want to play; that's for me.’ I just loved the warmth, sound and strength of it.”

Daisley's first break came in 1972 with Stan Webb's Chicken Shack. He later joined Mungo Jerry, and then went on to form Widowmaker. As fate would have it, on the eve of Widowmaker breaking up, Daisley came to the attention of Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore who asked him to join his group Rainbow.

“Rainbow had already auditioned, like, 40 bass players prior and couldn't find anybody they liked. So when I auditioned, Ritchie put me through the paces and got me to try different styles of bass playing. He also definitely wanted someone who used a pick – which I did – because of the precision and hardness. After the audition Ritchie said, 'You're the one we're looking for – you've got the gig.’

“Funnily enough, I said that I'd think about it. People had warned me about how Ritchie chewed up and spat out musicians almost every day. But later I accepted the position. I had a good time with him. I liked his sense of humor.”

A huge fan of vintage Fender basses played through Ampeg or Marshall valve heads, Daisley also toured and recorded with Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James Dio, Gary Moore, Uriah Heep, Yngwie Malmsteen, and many others.

Who were your early bass influences?

“I loved the feel and groove of The Rolling Stones’ rhythm section – Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman – I starting listening to Bill Wyman's bass playing a lot. Later on, The Beatles and Paul McCartney became one of my major bass influences, especially with The Beatles’ later material like Revolver and Sgt. Pepper.

“As to other influences, there was also James Jamerson and the stuff he did for Motown, and Jack Bruce. When I first heard Jack playing with Cream, I thought wow, he's playing how I feel – with aggression and balls!”

So what sort of gear did you have in those early years?

“The first bass I ever had was a Futurama that my mum bought for me in 1964. A couple of years later I got a Maton bass and a Vox T60 cabinet – the same one that McCartney used – along with a custom made 60 watt head.

“From that bass I progressed to a semi-acoustic Gibson EB-2, which were very popular in the ‘60s. Nearly every bass player in a band back then had one of those.”

So how did you find it working with Ritchie Blackmore?

“I knew he could be a bit strange at times and had a reputation... but he was a decent bloke. He used to hold séances sometimes, but he was also against anything dark.

“I remember walking into a bar with him one night and we sat down and the guy behind the bar had an upside-down cross around his neck. Ritchie turned to me and said, ‘Look at that fuckin' idiot; what does he think he's doing? Doesn't he realise what he's fuckin' with?’

“But Rainbow was a professionally run outfit; there was no rampant drug use. All Ritchie would ever do was have a good drink – we all would, really – and Cozy Powell would take a little bit of speed every now and again just to perk himself up. Or Cozy and Ritchie would sometimes take a Mandrax with a few drinks after a gig to go to bed. But that was about it.”

The Rainbow record you appeared on, 1978’s Long Live Rock & Roll, you played on only a few tracks?

“The reason I just played on some of the tracks was because some of them had already been done with Ritchie playing bass on them 'cos they didn't have a bass player while they were recording.

“I played my '61 Precision bass on Kill the King and Sensitive to Light, and on Gates of Babylon I used an early '50s Fender Precision. Amp-wise, I used Ritchie's 20 watt Marshalls and 4x12s.”

How much input did Ritchie and Ronnie James Dio allow you in the process?

“Ritchie and Ronnie were great songwriters and they didn't need any input. They wrote the stuff, put it together and we just played it. Though I had a fairly free hand; I wasn't told to do that much. But Ritchie did have strong set ideas on what he wanted.”

After Rainbow, you hooked up with Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads and later bringing in Lee Kerslake, to record Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman. What was the process like for those albums?

“When we recorded Blizzard, we were actually all playing together in the studio; like we didn't put down a drum track and build on it. We put the bass, drums and rhythm guitar down all together at the same time. Then Randy would overdub his solos and later we'd overdub any keyboard parts and vocals.

“I used a Gibson EB-3 bass on that record with one of Randy's 100-watt Marshall heads through a 4x12 cab. I went straight in without effects, though on Goodbye To Romance, I did use a bit of chorus and switched to the Fender Precision.

“For Diary of a Madman, I used an Ampeg SVT with an 8x10 cab and a '61 Fender Precision bass. That album was recorded a year after Blizzard, in April of 1981.”

What do you remember about those days with Ozzy?

“I remember one time while we were rehearsing and writing the first album and auditioning drummers – this was before Lee Kerslake came onboard – we had some song ideas together.

“But I came down one morning and Ozzy and Randy had a bit of paper and a pen and had been jotting down some lyrics. I took one look at it and just said, ‘Those are fuckin' awful!’

“Sometimes Ozzy wasn't productive, and he'd drink too much. Even when we were auditioning for drummers, I remember saying, ‘Ozzy, it's midday and you're half-pissed. If we find the right guy, what happens when he looks at you and just says, ‘Fuck this, I'm not working with him?’ It probably pissed him off, but I wanted to be professional and sometimes he wasn’t.”

It sounds like something out of one of those corny classic rock-themed parodies of Renaissance paintings.

The setting is one of the most famed rock venues of all time, LA's Whisky a Go Go, and the year is 1968.

Onstage is Harvey Mandel, the underrated guitarist who highlighted his performances with flourishes of two-hand tapping years before Eddie Van Halen put the technique on every guitar player's radar. In the audience are, among others, Ritchie Blackmore, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison.

Now, these are rock stars after all, and so each of them is either hammered, or well on their way to being so. Morrison, as was often the case, is much further along that path than anyone else.

Already a blues-rock veteran, and soon to be a member of Canned Heat, Mandel was in fine form onstage, and confident enough to pull tapping out of his bag of six-string tricks, surprising his audience in the process.

According to Blackmore, though, the reaction wasn't exactly one of slack-jawed euphoria.

Asked about his thoughts on tapping in a wide-ranging 1991 conversation with Guitar World, the always frank Blackmore first said, “Thank goodness it's come to an end.”

“The first person I saw doing that hammer-on stuff was Harvey Mandel, at the Whisky a Go Go in '68,” he went on to recall. “I thought, ‘What the hell is he doing?’

“It was so funny,” Blackmore added with a laugh. “Jim Morrison was carried out because he was shouting abuse at the band.

“Jimi Hendrix was there. We were all getting drunk. Then Harvey Mandel starts doing this stuff [mimes tapping]. ‘What's he doing?’ everybody was saying. Even the audience stopped dancing.”

While the lingering – and most fun, if we're being honest – image from this scene is a belligerent Morrison getting physically dragged out of the venue, it's fascinating to imagine Hendrix, who himself wrote and rewrote whole chapters of the electric guitar book, witnessing the technique that would help define an era that began years after his death.

That Eddie Van Halen didn't invent two-hand tapping with his generation-defining Eruption guitar solo is no state secret. Indeed, aside from Mandel, numerous pro guitarists – even amateurs – had been trying the technique out in some form or another for years before Van Halen's debut album dropped in 1978.

Where Van Halen got the technique from, though, is a point of disagreement.

Mandel, for his part, says that the late guitar hero was inspired by one of his performances at, coincidentally, the Whisky a Go Go.

“He [Van Halen] actually came to the Whisky a Go Go when I was playing there one night in L.A. and saw me do the finger-tapping thing,” Mandel told Guitar Player in 2023.

“Of course, he took off with it – went his own way and did it great. But he totally got the idea from me. He totally took my thing and went nuts with it and did his thing. And now, for the past 40 years, the whole world has been doing finger tapping.”

Others have claimed to have been the source of Van Halen's inspiration as well. Brian May – who got the technique from Texas guitarist Rocky Athas, who himself is said to have taken it from Billy Gibbons – says Van Halen once told him that Queen's 1977 tune, It's Late, was a reference point.

As for Van Halen himself? He told Guitar World in 2008 that he got it from Jimmy Page.

“I think I got the idea of tapping watching Jimmy Page do his Heartbreaker solo back in 1971,” he said. “He was doing a pull-off to an open string, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, open string… pull off. I can do that, but what if I use my finger as the nut and move it around?’ I just kind of took it and ran with it.”

Complicated as these lineages tend to be to draw, the scene of two guitar heroes of a certain era witnessing a spark that would help light the flame of a future era is a striking one to imagine.

Someone should make a painting of it.

Kerry King has revealed who he thinks is the most “overlooked” guitarist in metal. The Slayer guitarist was asked to name his top five guitarists of all time during an appearance on the Lipps Service With Scott Lipps podcast – and he took the opportunity to rave about a guitarist he believes deserves much more credit.

“Probably my favorite one [of] all time is [Judas Priest's] Glenn Tipton. And I think he's the most overlooked,” he states. “’Cause if you look at the leads he was doing and when he was doing ’em, he kind of innovated a lot of that stuff.”

As for the rest of his top five? “I would have a hard time numbering them, but I can come up with five. [Ritchie] Blackmore, Tony Iommi, Eddie Van Halen, without question. I'll go with a super-heavy hitter that's my bro and say Zakk Wylde.”

Over the years, King has spoken profusely about Judas Priest's impact on his playing. “As a young guitar player, I could tell there were two guitars on the recording, and the creativity and early uniqueness of two guitars totally inspired what Slayer became,” he told Rolling Stone in a 2022 interview.

“Judas Priest definitely inspired me and Jeff [Hanneman] and Slayer. If we were doing Priest covers in the beginning, he would always play the K.K. Downing guitar parts because he was the blond guy. I would always do the Glenn Tipton ones.”

In a recent Guitar World interview, King explained how he owes his choice of chords and rhythmic patterns to Judas Priest.

Bob Daisley believes he was always destined to play bass. “When I saw an actual bass guitar in the flesh in front of me, it was just… wow,” he says. “I thought, ‘This is the heartbeat. This is the backbone. This is the pulse of the song.’ That’s all I wanted to do.”

With a recording career including records Rainbow’s Long Live ‘n’ Roll (1978), Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Ozz (1980) and Diary of a Madman (1981), along with loads of others, Daisley has made his mark. Few bassists could handle the temperament of Ritchie Blackmore or the whirlwind classical chops of Randy Rhoads – but he did just fine.

But a falling out with Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne overhangs his career. Nasty legal battles have him fighting not only for his money but also his legacy. He wishes things were simpler: “It’s not about ‘this one doing that’ or ‘these two did that’ – it was a chemistry and a coming together of energies.”

He argues: “It was meant to happen; it affected a lot of lives in a positive way. I’d like people to know that the music and the band were four people, not one. A band called The Blizzard of Ozz came along and did a couple of albums. Then, there was no more.”

When you first joined Rainbow, what gear did you bring, and what approach did you use?

“I had a ’61 Fender Precision bass. That was my workhorse. It did most of the live stuff, most of the writing, most of the recording. It was just a great bass to play and had a great sound. I played with a pick and I was very precise with my playing.”

Was that what Ritchie was looking for?

“Yes – he wanted someone who played with a pick. When I went for the audition, he put me through my paces. He got me to play certain things, and I had to keep on playing them for quite some time to see if I could cut it using the pick, playing eights, sixteenths, and that sort of thing. He was happy with what I did at the audition.”

What amps were you using?

“I used the gear that was supplied – Crown amps, which I didn’t really like, but I had to use them. It was their stage gear. I’d been using an Acoustic with two cabs, which sounded great. It had that lovely, warm, thumpy sound. But the stuff with Rainbow was supplied, so I used it.”

Ritchie is a notoriously tough guy to work with. Were you worried about getting on with him?

“What helped a little bit was that when I went for the audition, they’d already auditioned about 40 different bass players. They couldn’t find anyone they liked because you had to look the part and you also had to be the sort of person who got on with them all.

“We’re talking about Cozy Powell, Ronnie Jame Dio and Ritchie Blackmore here. At the end of my audition – I’d played for an hour and a half or so – they went off into an office somewhere and had a little chat. They came back out and said, ‘You’ve got the gig if you want it.’

“I didn’t do it to be cheeky, but I just said, ‘I’ll think about it.’ I was serious; I had my own band, Windowmaker, and people had warned me, ‘If you work with Ritchie, you could last five minutes. He could chew you up, spit you out. You could end up with nothing.’ So I did have to think about it.”

What led you to accept?

“I was doing a show at the Whisky with Widowmaker, and Ritchie and Cozy came along. I saw them before I went on, and he said, ‘Look, I’ll be at the Rainbow just up the road. Come see me after you’ve finished.’ I hadn’t joined the band at that point; I was still thinking about it. But Ritchie had sort of got it in his head that I’d accepted the offer.

“He stayed for the show and. At the end I went upstairs and a squabble broke out with Widowmaker. I thought, ‘Fuck this!’ I packed up my stuff and said, ‘I’m going to meet with Ritchie, and I’m joining Rainbow.’

“I stormed off. As I walked into the Rainbow, Ritchie was sitting at one of the tables. He started clapping, and I thought, ‘Wow… Ritchie doesn’t give praise easily.’ I thought, ‘I must have done something right.’ I told him, ‘Count me in.’ We started rehearsals the next day.”

What was the process of recording Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll like?

“I just put my head down and got on with it. I tried to be as reliable and professional as I could be. I got on well with Ritchie; he could be – well, he knew what he wanted. He didn’t suffer fools gladly. He was also a very aware sort of person. Working with somebody like that, I actually enjoyed it. It was a good learning curve for me.”

Why did Ritchie replace you with Roger Glover?

“It kind of fizzled out. There was never any sort of definite phone call from Ritchie or management. We’d done a long US tour and a world tour that went through Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, and Canada. At the end we came home, and I was waiting to hear back, and nothing happened.”

You were talking to Ronnie about branching off with him, right?

“There was a point where I was waiting with Ronnie in a hotel lobby and he said, ‘If this band finishes, or if I’m not in the band, would you consider being in a band with me?’ I thought, ‘Does he know something that I don’t?’

“I said, ‘Well, yeah, of course. If this band’s not going, or I’m not in it, yeah, of course, I’d work with you, Ron.’ He must have had an inkling then of what was coming. I didn’t.”

Ronnie joined Sabbath not that long after. What happened there?

“I was in London and I got a call from Ronnie. He said, ‘It looks like the band’s not going to continue as it is. Would you be interested in putting a band together with me?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ He said, ‘Okay, don’t do anything. Hang in there. I’m going to start looking for a guitarist and line up record companies.’

“A few weeks would pass, and he’d phone again and say, ‘I’m still working on it. Hang in there.’ After a while, I went for a stroll and bought a music paper. On the front page, it said, ‘Ronnie James Dio joins Black Sabbath.’ I thought, ‘Oh, thanks for telling me, Ron.’ But it was meant to happen as it did; everyone ended up in the best possible situation.”

Ironically, you joined Ozzy Osbourne’s solo group after Ronnie replaced him in Sabbath.

“Ozzy had just come back from LA been fired. People warned me against working with him because he didn’t have the best reputation. He’d been getting out of it, been unprofessional, unreliable and all the rest of it. But I had a feeling of: ‘I’ve got to do this.’

“He asked me to go up to his house and play, saying, ‘I’ve you got a first-class rail ticket.’ I jumped on a train in London, went up to Stratford, and Ozzy met me at the station. I went to his place and he had a guitarist and a drummer there.”

What did you think of them?

“They were okay guys and nice enough. But when Ozzy and I had a tea break, he said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ I really did like Ozzy, and we got on together, so I said, ‘I’d like to work with you, but I’m not sure about these other two guys.’

“I said, ‘They’re okay; but I don’t think they’re world-class.’ He said, ‘Oh, hang on a minute…’ He went into the rehearsal room and I heard him say, ‘Okay, fellas, you can pack up. It’s not working out. You can go home.’ That was them gone, dismissed.”

How did Randy Rhoads enter the picture?

“It was just me and Ozzy to start with. He told me about this young guitar player in LA who was a teacher at a music school. Ozzy said, ‘His name is Randy Rhoads.’ I sort of envisioned an older bloke with slippers, a cardigan and glasses! ‘I said, ‘Well, let’s get him over.’ Randy wouldn’t have been brought over if I hadn’t said ‘no’ to the other two guys.”

Ozzy was signed to Jet Records, and the story goes that Jet's founder said Randy was too young. Is that true?

“David Arden [son of Jet founder Don Arden] said, ‘No, he’s too young. He’s unknown. He’s got no reputation. He’s not a name.’ But eventually – and I remember his words – he said, ‘Against my better judgment, I will bring him over.’”

“Ozzy, Randy and I met up at Jet Records. It would have been towards the end of ’79. We all took the train up to Ozzy’s place in Stratford and played; after maybe 20 minutes or half an hour, Randy and I looked at each other at the same time and said the same thing: ‘I like the way you play.’ I knew right away that this would work; that this was good.”

Once the sessions for the Blizzard of Ozz got rolling, was your gear different from your Rainbow days?

“I had my ’61 Precision and the Acoustic stack, which, for some reason, worked very well. We made lots of recordings of our rehearsals and writing sessions, which people now refer to as the ‘Holy Grail,’ because they were the reference tapes to those songs so we wouldn’t forget our parts.

“When we got to the studio, I wasn’t really happy with the sound I had, so I began using a Gibson EB-3 bass. It did the job, and the best match amp-wise was a Marshall. I said to Randy, ‘Can I use one of yours?’ So I used a Gibson EB-3 through one of Randy’s Marshall stacks, which was a 100-watt head driven hard by a 4x12 cab.”

For a long time, most people have assumed those recordings were strictly the brainchild of Ozzy and Randy. But your involvement was deep, right?

“They were trying to get rid of Lee Kerslake while we were on tour. I just couldn’t agree with something I thought was wrong – I said, ‘Look, it’s not broken. Stop trying to fix it.’ Eventually they got rid of both of us; but after six weeks, I got a call saying, ‘Will you come back?’

“I said, ‘I’ll record, I’ll co-write, but I’m not going on the road with you, and I’m not coming back into the band.’ I remember during one of the writing sessions for Bark at the Moon, Ozzy said, ‘I’d forgotten how much you had to do with writing the songs.’

“They’ve promoted the Ozzy/Randy-only thing and it’s inaccurate. People thought that because we used to come out at shows to Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, a classic piece, it was Randy’s idea because he was into classical. No, it was mine. I came up with that idea.

“I was pissed off with the whole thing, and I remember that someone at Jet Records phoned me up and said, ‘Sharon and Ozzy want to know what that piece of music that you used to come on stage to is called.’ I said, ‘Oh, well, tell them it’s called ‘Go Fuck Yourself,’ and I hung up.”

You composed and wrote the lyrics for songs like Crazy Train and Mr. Crowley.

“I wouldn’t want to take away from anyone, but I wouldn’t give anybody more praise than they earn. It took the three of us to do that – Ozzy’s vocal melodies were very important, and Randy’s guitar riffs and play were phenomenal.

“It was brilliant and I loved it. But Randy wasn’t a lyricist, and neither was Ozzy; Geezer Butler used to write lyrics in Sabbath. So, between the three of us it was a joint effort. The pieces of the puzzle were as important as each other.”

What was it like working out parts with Randy?

“A lot of the songs were based on riffs that Randy had. We’d sit on chairs opposite each other; I’d make suggestions, we’d put things together, arrange things and try new bits. We’d take one piece out, put another in, and that would go on for weeks.

“Once we had the basic structure, Ozzy would sing his melody on it. It would start with words that came into his head that often didn’t make sense. I’d take the tape of us playing with Ozzy’s melody and phrasing and write lyrics to it.

“By the end of it all, you had proper songs. It was certainly not the Ozzy/Randy show, which is how it’s been promoted. That’s not accurate at all.”

It must have been painful when Randy passed in the plane crash.

“I was in Uriah Heep and we were flying to America. We landed in Houston, Texas, checked into our hotel and had a night off. As we were walking into a club we were supposed to play to check it out, a girl walked up to me and Lee, and said, ‘Aren’t you the guys from Ozzy’s band?’

“We said, ‘Yeah,’ and she said, ‘I think some of them got killed in a plane crash this morning.’ At first, I had thoughts of a commercial airliner going down, but then I was told it was just the pilot and Randy that had been killed in a small plane.

“That blew me away. I was speechless. Lee and I went back to the hotel and just drank toasts to Randy with all his favorite drinks. He used to drink these exotic drinks. We drank those to Randy and cried. It was awful.”

You’ve played with Ritchie Blackmore, Randy Rhoads, Jake E. Lee and Gary Moore. Who’s the greatest guitarist you’ve played with?

“They’re all different. I’ve been fortunate in working with so many wonderful players. Gary Moore, I’d say, is probably one of the best ever. Randy Rhoads was a phenomenal player. Ritchie Blackmore was just mind-blowing. He was superb. And Jake is a great, wonderful player.

“They were all perfect for what they were doing at the time. There is no best. I would never say, ‘I prefer this one over that one’ or, ‘One is better than the other.’”

In recent years, you’ve fought hard to highlight your legacy within Ozzy’s early solo era.

“It’s been an uphill battle – and, I’ve always thought, an unnecessary one. It didn’t have to be like that. I had no personal vendetta with them. I don’t like any of it. I don’t like conflict. There was plenty of money to go around.

“I’ve always been one to accept that it is what it is, you know? It would be nice to think that if Randy hadn’t been killed, the original band would have made that third album. The word ‘if’ is such a little word with a big meaning. But all the conflict and lawsuits were unnecessary. It didn’t have to be like that.”

When was the last time you spoke with Ozzy?

“I haven’t had contact with Ozzy for many years. During the lawsuit, when I went to New York and we were doing depositions, I didn’t see Ozzy, but I saw Sharon. She said to me, ‘He misses you.’ I thought, ‘Well, that’s nice. I miss him, too.’

“We’d been mates. We could have created more good stuff together. But, you know, I just wish it hadn’t been like it was. We’re both getting old now. We’re both going to go out sooner than later. It would have been nice to go out on a brighter note. Such is life, I suppose.”

How do you hope to be remembered?

“I just hope I made a difference while I was here. That would mean I’d achieved the object of the exercise – satisfaction within itself. If I inspired people to play or write, if I can get them to emote, I’ve done the job. Whether it’s sadness or happiness, that’s the idea of music.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It's much easier to flow across the strings on a Gibson. Fenders have more tension, so you have to fight them a little bit. I had a hell of a time. But I stuck with the Fenders because I was so taken with their sound, especially when they were paired with a wah-wah.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where and when did you buy this guitar?

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

So there wasn’t really anything special about it?

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

Do you know what year it was?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What got you started with Stratocasters?

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

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

Did you use that Strat on any notable recordings?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does the Fender Strat mean to you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ritchie Blackmore is up there as one of the most iconic Fender Stratocaster players – and it turns out his affinity for the Strat first began way back when he purchased a particularly notable example from a fellow electric guitar hero.

As Blackmore explains in the new issue of Guitar World, he once bought an unwanted Strat from Eric Clapton – for a rather tidy price, we should add – and it just so happened to be the first Stratocaster he’d ever owned.

“I was in Deep Purple in 1969 and I was living in Acton, London,” recalls the Deep Purple icon. “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.”

In hindsight, that’s a pretty darn good deal, considering one of Clapton’s other Strats – the revered ‘Blackie’ model – sold for $959,000 at auction in 2004.

As Blackmore goes on to confirm in his Guitar World interview, that exchange was his “initiation into playing a Strat”. Before then, he had been playing a Gibson ES-335. 

Might Blackmore’s current collection of guitars look different had Slowhand’s roadie not swung by that day, or would the Deep Purple maestro have found his way to the Strat some other way? It’s impossible to say, but the exchange clearly had a profound effect on Blackmore’s approach to gear.

Clapton’s old guitar was used on the track Emmaretta, which featured on 1969’s Deep Purple, but because of its bowed neck, Blackmore would soon upgrade his Strat stock by purchasing two new models from a store in London. 

Strats would continue to play a key role in ensuing Deep Purple records and, of course, Blackmore’s own style. Indeed, Strats were used on some of the band’s most iconic cuts, including Smoke on the Water, and Blackmore would later work with Fender to produce a signature model.

Pick up the latest issue of Guitar World at Magazines Direct to read the full feature on the Stratocaster’s 70th Anniversary, which includes interviews with Yngwie Malmsteen, Buddy Guy, Alex Lifeson, Rebecca Lovell and more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I would love to go back to the 1520s, the time of my favorite music,” he stated. “A few of my friends in Germany have a very authentic four-piece, and they play medieval music. I've always wanted to play with them, but it hasn't panned out yet.”

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

Whenever the conversation of the greatest guitar riffs of all time crops up, it isn’t long before the phrase Smoke on the Water is uttered. Such is the history of this Deep Purple classic, there’s no point wasting time mulling over just how iconic the humble four-note motif has become.

Despite its popularity, though, the world may have been without the hit riff had things panned out slightly differently when the English rock outfit were busy recording their sixth studio effort, Machine Head, back in the early ‘70s.

As the band recalled in the latest issue of Classic Rock – which gathered transcripts from various interviews surrounding the making of Machine Head – Smoke on the Water was almost lost due to one absurd reason: armed police attempting to gain entry into the studio.

The circumstances surrounding Machine Head and Smoke on the Water are well documented: though the band were set to record in Montreux Casino with the help of Rolling Stones’ mobile studio, they were forced to adopt a plan B when someone set the venue on fire with a flare gun during a Frank Zappa concert.

As a result, Deep Purple gathered in The Pavilion theater and ballroom to set about recording Machine Head. However, despite having a self-imposed 10pm noise curfew due to the proximity of the sound-carrying mountains, they didn’t finish until “four in the morning”.

Recalling the evening, drummer Ian Paice said, “The first track we laid down – and the last to be finished – was Smoke on the Water, before we knew what it was going to be called. There was no sound-proofing and we were recording at night. A hell of a racket!”

It turned out that racket – which had been “carrying across the mountain” – didn’t go down too well with the locals, or the police force, because it wasn’t long before the band received some unhappy visitors.

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

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

Picking up from that point, Birch then added, “It was about two in the morning, the neighbours were complaining. We locked all the doors. I mean, literally, it was ‘da-da-da! Bang, bang’, “polizei, polizei” “Piss off!” ‘Da-da-da’. So we had to get the track down before the police broke in and chucked us out.”

Fortunately, everything worked out in the end, and Smoke on the Water eventually made it onto the album, despite only being included as a “filler”.

“It wasn’t being considered as a track for the album,” Ian Gillan revealed. “It was a jam at the first sound-check. We didn’t work on the arrangement – it was a jam. Smoke on the Water only made it onto the album as a filler track because we were short of time. 

“On vinyl, thirty-eight minutes – nineteen minutes per side – was the optimum time if you wanted good quality,” he explained, “and we were about seven minutes short with one day to go. So we dug out the jam and put vocals to it.”

Unsurprisingly, this nonchalance towards the track meant its eventual success took the whole band by surprise.

As bassist Roger Glover reflected, “With Machine Head none of us predicted [the success of] Smoke on the Water. That was the last thing on our minds that that would become an iconic song. You never can tell, it’s down to the people.”

Despite the riff's popularity, its origin is still something of an enigma. Back in 2007, Blackmore claimed he conceived the Smoke on the Water riff after listening to the ominous chimes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and attempting to reverse the classical track's hook.

However, Blackmore's tongue-in-cheek humor is well documented, meaning the riff may have just been a classic example of “talented guitarist plays guitar and stumbles on something that sounds good”. Judging by the comments used in the latest Classic Rock, though, this looks far more likely.

Head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest copy of Classic Rock, which contains the full deep-dive into the making of Machine Head.

It’s a fact of life that few four-note riffs are as legendary as Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water. Heck, hardly any riff full-stop has had anywhere near the same cultural and musical impact the iconic 1972 track has had over the past five decades.

Give a guitar to somebody who has never even held the instrument before, and – such is the power of Smoke on the Water – their fingers will probably start haphazardly see-sawing between the third, fifth and sixth frets without prompt.

Of course, we’re exaggerating slightly, but there’s no denying the riff’s ingenious simplicity. Usually the first riff a budding guitarist gets taught in their first lesson and a firm fan-favorite for informal noodles, Smoke on the Water is seemingly sewn into the fabric of the music universe itself.

How, then, did Ritchie Blackmore manage to craft such a monumental melody? Well, contrary to what you might think, it wasn’t from divine intervention – if anything, the real story might be even harder to believe.

According to Blackmore, he wrote the riff based on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Specifically, he supposedly reversed the classical track’s main hook and landed on something vaguely reminiscent of what would later become Smoke on the Water.

Speaking to CNN in 2007, Blackmore said he conceived Smoke on the Water after listening to the foreboding chimes of Beethoven’s track: “I thought [I’d] play [Beethoven’s fifth symphony] backwards, put something to it… that’s how I came up with it.”

When asked to clarify if Smoke on the Water really was just Beethoven’s fifth backwards, Blackmore explained, “It’s an interpretation of inversion. You turn it back, and play it back and forth, it’s actually Beethoven’s fifth.”

For those of you currently opening a new tab to look up “Beethoven’s fifth reversed”, don’t bother – it sounds nothing like Smoke on the Water. So, was Blackmore being serious, or is this just a classic example of his well-documented tongue-in-cheek humor? 

Well, we can’t say for sure. In Stephen Tow’s 2020 book London: Reign Over Me - How England’s Capital Built Classic Rock – an excerpt from which can be found on Classic Rock –  Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover admitted the whole anecdote “may have been a joke given Blackmore’s sense of humor”.

That – coupled with the fact Blackmore somewhat sarcastically said later in the same interview, “It’s a great riff. It’s a riff we should all have in our heads. I got to sleep with it at night, thinking, ‘I am so glad I wrote bah bah baahh…’” – suggests Blackmore might have just been playing games with the interviewer.

Still, Blackmore insists that Smoke on the Water is “an interpretation of inversion” of Beethoven’s symphony, so the fact it sounds nothing like the fifth reversed might not actually account for anything. One YouTuber took Blackmore’s comment to heart, and even attempted to break down whether the infamous riff really could have come from Beethoven’s song. We'll leave you to decide whether Blackmore's words are at all convincing.

Despite the debate, the interview clip does clear one thing up: how to actually play the riff properly. After demonstrating how not to play it, Blackmore confirms the real Smoke on the Water was written in fourths – a sound that pays homage to medieval songwriting.

No matter how mysterious the origin of the riff really is, though, the rest of the song’s story is set in stone. On December 4, 1971, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were in the midst performing at the Montreux casino, when the wooden roof caught fire after a spectator fired a flare gun.

At the same time, Deep Purple were getting ready to record their seminal album Machine Head in the building, but were forced to vacate and abandon their plans because of the fire. To adapt, the band set up shop in Rolling Stones’ mobile studio and an old theater, and swiftly began work on eternalizing the Montreux incident in song form.

It’s a fascinating question to consider who influenced Eddie Van Halen. How did he develop his unique playing approach? Did he stumble across everything by accident? 

In this lesson we attempt to look at who some of those influences were, how they informed Eddie’s journey and how he then pushed those ideas forward to a whole new school of players. 

It is well documented that Eddie was a huge fan of the blues-rock icons of the ’60s and ’70s, and much of Van Halen’s songwriting approach is clearly grounded in this style. 

Eddie’s most commonly cited early guitar hero is Eric Clapton; in interviews he always cited EC as his great early inspiration, but he was also a great fan of Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore and indeed Allan Holdsworth.

As any fan of Eddie will know, the backbone of his vocabulary lies in a fiery blues-rock vocabulary. Before Van Halen were Van Halen, Eddie was known for being able to play almost every Cream solo note for note, and there are multiple recordings of interviews where he plays the entire Crossroads solo. In fact, he is quoted as dedicating his bluesy solo on the song When It’s Love to Clapton himself, as a tribute to his legacy and influence.

Eddie was also a huge fan of Led Zeppelin, and there’s no doubt that they had a big influence on his riff writing and songs. It’s also possible to speculate that Jimmy is where Eddie’s inspiration for expressive techniques came from.

The Heartbreaker solo in particular features many sounds that are staples in Eddie’s own arsenal; tapped notes with large bends, pick slides and wide vibrato. If you’ve not heard it for a while, it’s worth digging it out and reminding yourself.

However, it wasn’t just the blues-rock players of his youth that inspired Eddie. He was also captivated by jazz-fusion heavyweight, Allan Holdsworth. Allan was an incredibly accomplished legato player and experimented with all sorts of unconventional tonalities. 

It was his use of wide stretches and symmetrical shapes that created very angular and interesting sounds that caught Eddie’s ear, and was something that he tried to emulate in his own way. 

Many of the scale fingerings he liked to draw on are unconventional and won’t be be found in any typical text book, but they make it easier to execute faster lines while also creating unexpected angular sounds that keep things sounding fresh and less exercise based.

Of course we cannot discuss the great Eddie without mentioning his pioneering approach to two-handed tapping. Of course it had been dabbled with by other players as previously mentioned, plus Les Paul and others before him. 

But Eddie brought into the spotlight an otherwise unheard-of technique that allowed him to play large arpeggio sequences reminiscent of the classical music he first learned in his formative years in Holland.

It was also possibly his way of replicating some of the arpeggio approaches he would have heard listening to tracks like Deep Purple’s Highway Star – an approach previously only heard on keyboards and not on electric guitar.

Our six studies focus specifically on these particular stylistic and technical influences, with the final piece combing elements from all five approaches. 

Get the tone

Amp settings: Gain 6, Bass 5, Middle 6, Treble 5, Reverb 4

To get close to Eddie’s sound, you don’t necessarily need a Marshall Plexi or a Peavey 5150. Any good Marshall-esque tone will suffice. The key to Eddie’s sound relies heavily on the fire of your delivery.

Use less preamp gain than you think, then you’ll have to put more power into your pick attack and vibrato to get the notes to scream. If using a cleaner amp, go for a strong drive pedal like a Boss SD-1 or Fulltone OCD.

Example 1. Pop-rock influences

This study tips its hat towards Eddie’s ’60s songwriting influences ranging from bands like the Kinks (Dave Davies) and The Beatles through to The Who (Pete Townshend). This study is mostly stock blues-rock vocabulary, but with wide vibrato to make it more aggressive and punchy.

In bars 4-6, there is a big stretch for the descending hammer-on line. Make sure the thumb on the back of the neck is lined up with your second finger to enable maximum stretch.

Example 2. Eric Clapton influence

Eddie always spoke about how it was Eric Clapton and not perhaps the more expected Jimi Hendrix that was his number one lead guitar influence. So this study is essentially a blues solo, but with a bit of Eddie’s extra edge to the tone and delivery of the more rocky vibrato than that of Clapton. 

The licks are definitely there though! Look out for the deliberate staccato versus legato notes, as well as the slides in particular to get the solo sounding ‘Creamily’ authentic.

Example 3. Jimmy Page influence

Here we are purposefully exploring the ‘tapped bends’ approach that Eddie used a lot. This study is great for developing muscle memory and accuracy when combining bending and tapping techniques. 

To achieve vibrato with a tapped note, it is the fretting hand that still provides the power and movement. The picking hand follows what the fretting hand is doing. If it’s the other way around then vibrato would be more difficult to achieve and control.

Example 4. Allan Holdsworth influence

Here we focus on symmetrical shapes and wide stretches. To make the larger stretches, make sure your thumb is in the middle of your fretting hand on the back of the neck, so your fingers can spread out like a fan. 

The picking directions are based on my own approach, but a similar effect can be created with only picking two notes per string and using hammer-ons for the rest. Palm muting creates the staccato attack.

Example 5. Classical influence

Here’s an example of Eddie’s approach to emulating a classical guitar performance combined with his signature two-handed tapping approach. The fretting-hand tapping requires a decent amount of attack to get the notes to ring out on an acoustic instrument. 

The arpeggio section in the middle can just as easily be translated onto electric guitar. If you don’t have access to an acoustic why not try those ideas in a higher gain context? They sound immense!

Example 6. Influences combined

[Bars 1-4] We open with a ’60s/’70s style rhythm part that moves into some stock blues-rock expression in bars 5-8. 

[Bars 9-11] Here we see some Clapton-esque pentatonic licks resolving in bars 13-14 with some Jimmy Page inspired tapped bends and slides. The first half of the study finishes with a Holdsworth-style symmetrical run in bars 15-16. 

[Bars 17-23] The playing in these bars will perhaps be the most challenging to execute. Here we have a long two-handed tapping arpeggio sequence
following the chord changes that lead into a final pentatonic tapping extravaganza. 

This final tapping sequence combines various elements of all the previous influences, to create a slice of playing that’s intended to sound like pure Eddie Van Halen.

[Bars 23 - 33] The final section of bars 23-33 give us some more traditional blues rock inspired vocabulary including the use of some triads in bars 27-28, a trademark of Eddie’s style. 

The study rounds off with another combination of bending and tapping technique to bring us to a final flourish in position 1 of minor pentatonic with tone wide vibrato to end.

A plaque dedicated to Ritchie Blackmore has been installed on the building where the UK guitar great was born, in the British seaside town of Weston Super Mare.

The plaque was erected at Allendale Nursing Home on Beach Road on February 25, following a campaign by Blackmore fan John Cadwallader. 

As Guitar World reported back in August, the Weston resident initially hoped to persuade the local council to install a blue plaque in Blackmore’s honor and started a petition to garner support. 

The petition went on to gain over 2,300 signatures and was submitted to the council in September, 2021 – only for the request to be denied due to the fact that the guitarist is still alive. 

It seems a little churlish for the council to choose not to celebrate someone while they’re around to see it, but the story has a happy ending nonetheless, as Cadwallader explains:

“The good news is the nursing home (where he was born) has sponsored and installed a plaque on their front wall for all to see. And let me design it,” the Blackmore fan tells Guitar World. “We hope to have a full unveiling ceremony on Ritchie's birthday in April.”

The full words chosen by Cadwallader on the plaque read: “Born here April 1945, rock superstar and guitar legend Ritchie Blackmore. ‘Smoke on the water / a fire in the sky’”.

Which pretty much says it all. Blackmore’s birthday is April 14, so if you happen to be near Weston Super Mare, pop in and help them celebrate. In the meantime, keep an eye on the Ritchie Blackmore plaque petition page for further updates.

British photographer Ross Halfin has teamed up with music journalist Pete Makowski for a new book on Ritchie Blackmore, which collects together hundreds of pictures from the guitarist’s early 80s period with Rainbow, and beyond.

The book – simply titled Ritchie Blackmore – features also features a foreword from Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen alongside contributions from Billy Corgan and fellow photographer Colin Hart.

Halfin first met and started shooting images of Blackmore in 1980. At that point, the guitarist had left Deep Purple and established his new band Rainbow who were enjoying a new commercial breakthrough following their 1979 cover of Russ Ballard’s Since You’ve Been Gone.

“Around this time I met writer Peter Makowski who Geoff Barton (the features editor at Sounds) introduced us with the prophetic words, ‘You two will be bad for each other,’” recalls Halfin.

“Never has a truer word been spoken. Now the one thing I knew about Pete was he knew Blackmore - and I don’t mean ‘knew’ him in a music industry sense - he really did know Ritchie and was a friend of his and as Pete said one day, ‘Let’s go and do Blackmore’. 

“I actually can’t remember where I finally met him but I was pleasantly surprised. Ritchie, who I expected to be off and aloof, was completely the opposite. Once I’d met him he was funny, liked a drink and was fantastic company. Pete and I for the period around this book – I suppose you could say were in his inner circle. We travelled with him, we hung out with him. 

“As you can see from some of the pictures in this book, Ritchie once you knew him was very accessible and as a photographer I could shoot with him more or less anything I wanted.”

The 304-page “deluxe hardback” book will be strictly limited to 400 copies. 350 copies will be available for £199 (approximately $272), while 50 large format A3 (equivalent to ledger size) editions will be available for £599 (approximately $821). 

However, if you can’t stretch to that right now, perhaps you can help to persuade Blackmore's hometown that the guitar legend is worthy of a blue plaque.

The book Ritchie Blackmore will go on pre-sale at 3PM GMT on September 29 from Rufus Publications and will ship in mid-December.

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 has long been associated with the neoclassical/baroque lines that inspired the young Yngwie Malmsteen and Randy Rhoads. 

Indeed, he has continued on this path somewhat with the Renaissance-inspired Blackmore’s Night, though this generally involves the use of acoustic instruments rather than his trademark Strat. However, Ritchie’s early influences were very much in the blues vein, particularly Eric Clapton, and this remained a prominent feature in his riffs, melodies and solos throughout the Deep Purple and Rainbow years. 

Watching Ritchie’s technique closely reveals a surprisingly delicate touch and refined technique (when not smashing Strats against a wall of burning Marshall stacks!), which undoubtedly served him well in his career as a studio/session man in the '60s.

This solo takes its inspiration from the Deep Purple ‘Mark II’ era circa 1972, with a particular nod to Lazy, a lengthy ‘showcase vehicle’ with extended solos and blues-based riffs.

Though the solo is improvised and not intended to be the last word in how to sound exactly like Blackmore, I’ve consciously included a few ideas from various solos, including contrasting long and staccato notes, repeated bends, arpeggio fragments and wide vibrato with the bar.

One feature I was particularly keen to incorporate was the way Ritchie would phrase things surrounding the b5 (in this case Db), moving out of the usual blues scale positions to use something more akin to the natural minor scale. 

I believe this alone contributes an important insight into how Ritchie thinks about things in a different way to a more ‘pentatonic-based’ player – not that there is anything inherently inferior or superior about either approach! I plugged into the studio Vox AC15 with a bit of extra push from an Ibanez TS9.

Apparently, Ritchie liked to use a Vox for recording, but favoured Marshalls for getting things across live. Hope you enjoy and see you next time!

Example 1

The first example demonstrates how Ritchie would construct his solos, setting the scene and building rather than bursting in with indecent haste! After the long sustained root in bar 1, you can clearly see and hear the G blues scale at work throughout. 

Bar 2 sees the beginning of a series of repeated bends, before taking a more Clapton-inspired direction in the last two bars – particularly highlighted with the use of quarter-tone bends.

Example 2

Starting with a reiteration of the repeated bends idea, this example then moves on to some rapid hammer-on/pull-offs on the third string, making use of the open G as a root note. If you’re quick, you’ll catch a hint of this in Ritchie’s solo at the end of Since You’ve Been Gone.

We’re moving between positions here, switching between a G minor pentatonic (or blues scale) and G natural minor approach; watch out for this throughout the solo.

Example 3

Rejoining the action later in the solo, we have a shape 3 blues scale run, incorporating the b5 by playing chromatically through three frets on the top E before descending down through the pattern, referencing an F from what might be considered G Dorian then incorporating a G minor arpeggio right at the end. 

These considerations don’t need to be at the forefront of your mind while playing, but it’s really beneficial to piece together and understand for future ideas.

Example 4

Another fusion of approaches her, starting with a Child In Time-style repeated arpeggio, we move on to a descending G Dorian (within the ‘framework’ of a shape 4 G minor pentatonic) in groups of six, a couple of four, then a group of five.

This wasn’t deliberate – it was more about where I wanted the run to land at the next bar – but this does demonstrate the way Ritchie incorporates ‘tricky’ phrases into his solos and lines.

Hear it here

Deep Purple – Machine Head

Recorded in 1971, this album still stands tall as a pioneering fusion of blues and rock, with some strong hints at what was to come later in terms of neoclassical touches, particularly evident on Highway Star. Maybe I’m A Leo combines a bouncing funk/blues riff with Ritchie’s unique take on a bluesy solo.

We all know about Smoke On The Water… so we’ll skip ahead to Lazy for the last word in the fusion of classical, blues and rock with some exemplary playing in Ritchie’s extended solos.

Deep Purple – Made in Japan

Spawning the priceless line “everything louder than everything else”, this album also showcases Ritchie at the top of his game and gives us an insight into how he translated some of his complex lines live using the more forceful sound of his Marshall stacks. 

Comparing Highway Star, Child In Time and Lazy is really informative, particularly the extended improvs on Lazy, which also show what an important ingredient the chemistry of the whole band was.

Rainbow – Down to Earth

An album that starts with a riff like All Night Long should catch the attention of any blues or rock guitarist immediately!

Rainbow took a more mainstream – some might even say ‘pop’ rock – approach, but in no way did this compromise Ritchie’s memorable solos in that first track, or the classic Since You’ve Been Gone. Danger Zone features a solo with some definite Highway Star-style harmony lines along with some classical influenced arpeggios.

Catalinbread has unveiled a double-pedal boxset featuring a pair of eye-catching Ritchie Blackmore-inspired offerings, which aim to emulate the sounds of two of his most famed pedalboard fixtures.

Both the Dreamcoat and Skewer come decked out with some magnificently trippy artwork, and arrive in an equally Blackmore-esque display box.

First up is the Dreamcoat, described by the Oregon-based brand as a “multidimensional gain machine” that, thanks to a near like-for-like recreation of Blackmore’s favored Aiwa TP-1011’s preamp circuit, is said to be up to the task of achieving unruly fuzz, classic rock chimes and everything in between.

Catalinbread’s attention to detail is certainly something to be praised, with the Dreamcoat also seeking to recreate the passive inductor-based frequency booster found in Blackmore’s Strat. An additional frequency booster aims to do the trick, mirroring the effect of a richer tone with "extra oomph".

A final clean blend circuit also features, posted after the first two circuits as a more refined tone-sculpting tool. Running at 20V, the pedal promises plenty of headroom, implying that the Dreamcoat is ready to be pushed as hard as you like.

All of these tonal possibilities are dialed in via Freq, Sat, Blend and Mic Vol knobs, with a master volume control having the final say on overall output.

Next up is the Skewer, which takes heavy inspiration from Blackmore’s Hornby-Skewes Treble Booster. Again, Catalinbread's offering stays as true as it can to its design brief, boasting a faithful silicon transistor-equipped circuit that lets you dial in your desired frequency range.

A neat added control is the Extra knob, which adjusts the level of gain extracted from the transistor. This works alongside Skew and Boost controls, tasked with adjusting the frequency response and the amount of overall boost.

In a bid to truly make the Skewer sound as good as it looks, Catalinbread has also equipped it with the same mod that Blackmore had given his Treble Booster. Adjusted via an internal trimpot, the original mod aimed to get the pedal playing nicer with the rest of his rig, with Catalinbread aiming for a similar result.

Additional enhancements appear in the form of a noise reduction filter and anti-pop switch circuitry. The brand draws close comparisons to its own Naga Viper pedal, though promises a harder bite.

Both pedals are initially being offered in a bumper-pack boxset, which is currently available now for a discounted $299.

Fancy one over the other? Fear not, for they will both be available as separate units after the first month of sales. Take note, though, as these standalone pedals will no longer be available at the discounted price.

The cost for each individual unit is yet to be revealed, so keep your eyes peeled at Catalinbread for more information.

Blackmore's Night, the renaissance folk outfit led by husband and wife duo Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night, just released their brand-new album, Nature's Light.

While the rest of the album retains the traditional acoustic stylings for which the band has come to be known, one track – Der letzte Musketier (The Last Musketeer) – sees Night switch off her mic, making way for Blackmore to let rip with some plugged-in, blues-driven guitar wizardry reminiscent of his early work with Deep Purple.

You can listen to the track in full below.

Of the song's meaning, Blackmore explains: “I was in a band in 1964 – before anybody was born – and it was called The Musketeers (Die Drei Musketiere) – we lived in Germany... and we dressed up as the Musketeers.

“We played [as a] three-piece band – and long story short, [this track] was my way of thanking the other two, [who] have since passed on. So I'm now the last Musketeer.

He continues: “We only did about six shows but it was my favorite band of all time, because we didn't become famous so there was no pressure. We were all just great friends.”

Nature's Light is available now on all digital streaming platforms. To pick up a copy in either CD or vinyl format, head to Blackmore's Night.

Last year, Blackmore lent his blues soloing talents to a cover of B.B. King's The Thrill Is Gone, accompanied by the dulcet tones of William Shater.

First appearing in 1954, the Stratocaster has certainly stood the test of time. The double-cutaway body shape has endured, the original three-single-coil layout is the accepted standard configuration, and the five-way selector that evolved in the '70s, well, players had been jamming the early three-way switches into the ‘in between’ positions for years. 

Though the core Strat ideals remain to this day, specs are continually tweaked and literally hundreds of variants on the original template have been made available over the years.  

Here, we’re looking at the playing styles and tones of the greatest Strat players of all time. No Strat? No bother – there’s still loads to learn. Let’s get started…

1. Jimi Hendrix: Blues-Rock Innovator

Jimi will forever be associated with right-handed Strats, flipped over and restrung to be played left-handed, giving Jimi his trademark tone by reversing the relative pickup/string positions and string tension. Our example combines Jimi’s trademark 7#9 chord (aka the Hendrix chord) and soulful unison bends.

2. Ritchie Blackmore: Influence on Shred

Switching from Gibsons to Strats in the early 70s, the Deep Purple legend was as early adopter of ‘scalloped’ fretboards, subsequently influencing an army of neoclassical shredders. Our tab example showcases the deep vibrato of a scalloped ’board and Ritchie’s vigorous use of the tremolo arm.

3. Eric Clapton: Dominos and Early Solo Era

Few players are as synonymous with the Strat as Eric Clapton – Fender even marked the fact with the company’s first signature guitar in 1988. Our tab example, however, harks back to Eric’s early Strat playing on his famed ‘Brownie’, combining string bends and vibrato in an expressive, bluesy lick. Pure Slowhand!

4. Nile Rodgers: The Sound of Disco

Since the heady days of 70s disco the present day, Nile’s tone has barely changed, with the ‘Hitmaker’ (a 1960 Strat with a ’59 maple neck/fretboard) delivering those position 4/5 single-coil tones. Simply dial in a clean, compressed tone and get strumming those funky 16ths. Thin picks and light strings round off the equipment list.

5. David Gilmour: Melodic Master

Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Comfortably Numb are iconic examples of David Gilmour’s ‘Black Strat’ tone, the latter paired with an Electro- Harmonix Big Muff via a Hiwatt DR103 amp and Yamaha RA-200 rotary speaker. For our epic Comfortably Numb-style lick we’ve dialed in reverb and delay for a stadium-sized tone.

6. Stevie Ray Vaughan: Uptempo Blues 

SRV’s ‘Number One’ Strat tones are iconic but sadly near impossible to match as the Texan blues great would generally run a handful of amps together. A Tube Screamer into a Fender Super Reverb will get you a ballpark tone to tackle our uptempo blues lick with.

7. Jeff Beck: Tremolo Arm Licks

Jeff Beck’s new tonal direction in the 80s came from a switch to playing Strats almost exclusively and employing volume fades, harmonics and whammy bar-inflected fingerstyle technique. We’re demonstrating downward pitch movement with the trem here, but a floating bridge is best for Beck-style playing.

Deep Purple veteran Steve Morse has revealed that he sought to combine the playing styles of original guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and touring member Joe Satriani during his first gig with the band.

In a recent interview with FOX 17 Rock & Review, Morse was asked if he found replacing Blackmore "intimidating", to which he replied: "Actually, technically, I replaced Joe Satriani, because he finished the tour – they had some Japanese dates, and he finished the tour with them.

"They gave me tapes of [both] Joe and Ritchie playing the set, so I kind of made this character of combining the two of them and their approach to the first gig. That's what I brought – to make the other guys feel comfortable. I met them 24 hours before we did the first show. And my job was to be ready and go up and play."

Morse's strategy clearly worked, as the band's early jams proved successful.

"The first thing we did – thank god – we were at the coliseum and we had the roadies set up the stuff in the dressing room – small amps, drums and everything," he continues. "Ian Gillan was playing conga drums, and we just jammed. 

"I'd play something and Jon Lord would play it back. I was, like, 'Wow! He heard that, like a jazz keyboard player.' And I'd play it back differently, and he'd play it back differently, then add do it. And I went, 'Wow! This is cool. We're really jamming.' 

"So I was surprised by how good the band was, and they don't like me to say that. But actually, I was surprised. Because a lot of people can live off their name and so forth and get soft, but they were going for it, and it felt so comfortable."

Blackmore co-founded Deep Purple in 1968, and was the band's guitarist until his departure in 1993. He's credited as writing many of their most iconic riffs, including Smoke on the Water. Satriani took Blackmore's place at the tail end of 1993, until Morse stepped in as a full-time member in 1994.

Deep Purple released their 21st studio album, Whoosh!, on August 7 2020.

Of all the collaborations to be announced in 2020, this is perhaps the most unlikely: Deep Purple and Rainbow guitar legend Ritchie Blackmore has joined forces with William Shatner – yes, that William Shatner – for a cover of B.B. King’s The Thrill is Gone.

On the new rendition, Shatner delivers his trademark vocal phrasing, interspersed with some high-octane Marshall-driven Blackmore leads and Candice Night’s backing vocals.

The song is taken from Shatner’s forthcoming solo album, The Blues, which – we can’t believe we’re typing this – might just be one of the guitar releases of the year, thanks to its astonishing line-up of six-string talent.

Guests include Brad Paisley, Sonny Landreth, Steve Cropper, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, James Burton and Albert Lee, among some of today’s hottest contemporary blues players such as Tyler Bryant and Kirk Fletcher.

Of course, Shatner has worked with some big-name players in the past – 2018's Shatner Claus featured collaborations with Billy Gibbons, Iggy Pop and Todd Rundgren.

The Blues is out on October 2 via Cleopatra Records. The full tracklisting is below:

1. Sweet Home Chicago (feat. Brad Paisley)
2. I Can't Quit You Baby (feat. Kirk Fletcher)
3. Sunshine Of Your Love (feat. Sonny Landreth)
4. The Thrill Is Gone (feat. Ritchie Blackmore)
5. Mannish Boy (feat. Ronnie Earl)
6. Born Under A Bad Sign (feat. Tyler Bryant)
7. I Put A Spell On You (feat. Pat Travers)
8. Crossroads (feat. James Burton)
9. Smokestack Lightnin' (feat. Jeff "Skunk" Baxter)
10. As The Years Go Passing By (feat. Arthur Adams)
11. Let's Work Together (feat. Harvey Mandel & CANNED HEAT)
12. Route 66 (feat. Steve Cropper)
13. In Hell I'll Be In Good Company (feat. Albert Lee)
14. Secrets Or Sins

We thought we'd glance back at the classic Mark II lineup of Deep Purple - Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Roger Glover (bass), Ian Gillan (vocals), Ian Paice (drums) and Jon Lord (keyboards) - tearing it up, live in New York in 1973.

The performance, which once existed in one 23-minute-long YouTube clip, is now broken out over three videos, one of which has sadly been lost to the unforgiving gods of the internet (and copyright.) Still, they show Deep Purple at the top of their game.

They plow through Strange Kind of Woman (in the top video) before turning things over to Lord, who is eventually joined by Blackmore, who throws down and steps on his Strat, tosses it in the air, replaces it with another (out-of-tune) Strat and slips into smoke-machine nirvana.

While we don't know much about the show's exact date or venue, we know it was filmed before July 1973, when David Coverdale officially stepped in for Gillan.

The current version of Deep Purple features the same rhythm section seen in the videos below - Glover and Paice - plus Gillan on vocals. Dixie Dregs axeman Steve Morse and keyboardist Don Airey round out the band's current lineup. Lord, who died in 2012, retired from the band in 2002. Blackmore called it quits in 1993.

Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith recently sat down with Chris Jericho for an appearance on the Fozzy front man’s Talk is Jericho podcast.

Among the many topics they hit on was the electric guitar player's return to Iron Maiden in 1999 after ten years away, a move that transformed the band into a three-guitar lineup, with Smith joining up alongside Dave Murray and the man who had initially replaced him, Janick Gers.

As for why the three-guitar approach worked at the time, and continues to work to this day, Smith said:

“Well, put it this way – if you had three Yngwie Malmsteens in the band or three Ritchie Blackmores, it would have been a fight after about five minutes. But because Dave’s one of my oldest friends – we've worked together for years – we know the score.

As for Gers, he continued, “Janick’s a lovely guy. But I have to say you know Jan wasn't going to change what he was going to play. He's very set in his ways. I sensed that immediately, so I started looking at different ways of doing things.

According to Smith, “different ways of doing things” involved finding new tunings and new parts to bring into older Maiden classics.

“I'd been playing with a drop-D tuning in Bruce's [singer Bruce Dickinson, who rejoined Maiden at the same time as Smith] band, I was somewhat used to that,” he said. “So when I first joined up [with Maiden in 1999], we played Wrathchild, I played it in drop-D tuning. Run to the Hills was in D, so again, I tuned it down. It gave it a slightly different sound. I was bringing that in, playing lower octaves on the harmonies and stuff like that.

“So I played a lot of stuff totally different to what I did when I was in the band before, which is quite interesting."

Earlier in the interview, Smith joked about the idea of making Maiden into a three-guitar band, saying, “Steve [Harris, bass] does come out with some wacky ideas that at first you think are not going to work. So he suggested to the guys, 'Why don't we have three guitars?' You can imagine what the room was like when he said that. Probably Dave and Janick looked at each other like ‘What? Lynyrd Maiden?’

"But I joined up, and we went up to Portugal to write some songs, and I had the song Wicker Man. I had the riff for that and someone said, ‘Does anyone have any new ideas?’ And so I started playing that, and away we went. And we never looked back, really."

For more Maiden goodness, check out our rundown of the Irons' 50 greatest songs.

In the summer of 1989, one of the greatest guitar hero gatherings of all time got under way. The occasion was a remake of the 1972 Deep Purple hit “Smoke on the Water” that featured some of the biggest players in rock, including Ritchie Blackmore—who wrote the song’s classic riff—David Gilmour, Tony Iommi, Alex Lifeson and Brian May.

The guitarists and numerous other musicians recut the song as a benefit recording for Rock Aid Armenia, a humanitarian effort by the British music industry to raise money for victims of the 1988 Armenian earthquake, a devastating event that killed up to 50,000 people.

The recording, which began on July 8, 1989, included a who’s who of the era’s best-known hard rock performers and went on to become a hit.

In addition to its cast of stellar guitarists, the track featured a different singer on each verse, including Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan (who sang the original), Paul Rodgers, Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson and Bryan Adams. The session also featured Yes bassist Chris Squire, Queen drummer Roger Taylor, and keyboardists Keith Emerson and Geoff Downes (of Asia, who also co-produced the session with Gary Langan).

The session took place at the historic Metropolis Studios in Chiswick, London. Recording began on July 8, 1989 and was completed over five different sessions. The first session featured guitarist Geoff Beachamp filling in for Brian May, who’d broken his arm a few days before. May was healed up in time for the August 5 session, which he performed with David Gilmour.

Following a vocal and keyboard session on August 27, the recording saw the tracking of more guitars on September 10, when May showed up with his friend Tony Iommi and Ritchie Blackmore. Rush’s Alex Lifeson made it for the final session, on September 24. 

The single, which featured Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” on the B-side, was released as “Smoke on the Water ’90” and made it to the U.K. Top 40 Singles Chart. It was also the lead track on The Earthquake Album, a full-length compilation of donated tracks from Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and many of the other bands represented in the “Smoke on the Water” session.

The “making of” video below compiles scenes from the five tracking sessions. It’s actually the official promo video for the 2010 Wermut & Dee remix of the track and was to raise funds to rebuild a children’s music school in Gyumri in the Armenian earthquake zone.

Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow have premiered a new song, “The Storm.” You can listen to the track above.

“The Storm” was originally recorded by Blackmore’s Night, Ritchie Blackmore’s celtic folk-oriented project with Candace Night. The song appeared on their 2001 album, Fires at Midnight.

The reconstituted Rainbow recently released a new version of "Black Sheep of the Family," a 1970 track by Quartermass that also recorded by the original incarnation of Rainbow for their self-titled 1975 debut album. 

Last year, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow returned with "Waiting for a Sign," their first single in 22 years, in addition to releasing Memories in Rock II, a live album documenting the group's four-date 2017 U.K. tour that featured a selection of Rainbow hits and fan favorites, in addition to a few classic Deep Purple cuts.

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

Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow have premiered a new version of their song, "Black Sheep of the Family." You can check it out above.

"Black Sheep of the Family"—itself a cover of a 1970 track by Quartermass—was recorded by the original incarnation of the band for their self-titled 1975 debut album. 

Last year, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow returned with "Waiting for a Sign," their first single in 22 years, in addition to releasing Memories in Rock II, a live album documenting the group's four-date 2017 U.K. tour that featured a selection of Rainbow hits and fan favorites, in addition to a few classic Deep Purple cuts.

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

YouTube's Ritchie Blackmore Channel has always posted a good deal of interesting content. One of the best clips to turn up contains some rarely seen footage of Eddie Van Halen—clearly backstage—playing a few Blackmore/Deep Purple riffs on his guitar.

In the video, which you can watch below, he starts off with Deep Purple's "Hard Lovin' Man" (up to about 11 seconds in—although the bassist is playing "Space Truckin'" at first), followed by a bit of "Speed King," then "Space Truckin'." It's important to note that the original "Space Truckin'" riff was played on keyboards by the late Jon Lord.

In the February 1991 issue of Guitar World, journalists Mordechai Kleidermacher and Brad Tolinski asked Blackmore what he thought of Eddie. Here's his reply:

"It depends on my mood. He is probably the most influential player in the last 15 years 'cause everybody's gone out and bought one of those, what does he play, Charvel, Carvel ... Kramer, with the locking nut. Yes, with the locking nut! And everyone's gone hammer-on crazy! So he's obviously done something. He's a great guitar player, but I'm more impressed by his recent songwriting and keyboard work. I think he's going to be remembered—he could be the next Cole Porter."

In the video below, former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore—who now plies his trade with Rainbow and Blackmore’s Night—shows off and discusses several of his guitars.

The video also features his wife, Candice Night, another key figure in Blackmore’s Night.

The clip includes instruments Blackmore used during his Deep Purple and Rainbow days, including his main Fender Strat, which he says he’s played for the past 30-plus years.

He also discusses scalloping his fretboards, a process that takes him three days to achieve, and shares a story about a luthier who undid his scalloping handiwork by replaning the fretboard to make it flat again. Enjoy!

Last week, audio of an interview with former Deep Purple and current Rainbow guitarist Ritchie Blackmore surfaced on YouTube.

Notably, the clip featured Blackmore opining on his successors in Deep Purple, Joe Satriani and Steve Morse. Though he said that Morse and Satriani were both "brilliant players," he also critiqued their respective playing styles, saying—among other comments—"If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong—you're not searching, you're not reaching for anything."

To put it rather lightly, the interview caused an uproar, provoking thousands (yes, thousands) of comments from GW readers on our Facebook page and, evidently, reaching the ears of Satriani himself.

During an interview on Rock Talk with Mitch Lafon, Satriani was asked about Blackmore's comments.

"Well, it's unfortunate when somebody that you look up to has something negative to say about you," Satriani said in the interview. "So that part will always hurt. I wouldn't hide my feelings about that."

"I get criticized on both sides of the fence for the opposite offenses," Satriani continued. "And I don't quite understand it other than most of the time, when someone has criticism, it's because they're challenged and they feel that they have to strike out. So I get it—I understand why he would have to say something negative. I can kind of laugh at it, because I'm not like that myself. I tend to just look at the positive of another musician and focus on that."

You can listen to the full interview below. Satriani's portion of the interview starts at 1:09:00, and the comments above start at 1:29:30. Blackmore's full comments can be read here.

In a recent interview that surfaced on the Ritchie Blackmore Channel on YouTube, Ritchie Blackmore discussed Joe Satriani, and his successor in Deep Purple, Steve Morse. You can read excerpts of what Blackmore had to say about the guitarists, and their styles, below.

"Joe Satriani is a brilliant player, but I never see him really searching for notes; I never hear him playing a wrong note. Jimi Hendrix used to play lots of wrong notes because he was searching all the time—'Where the hell is that correct note?!' And when he did find that right note—wow, that was incredible.

"If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong—you're not searching, you're not reaching for anything. But that's not to say that he isn't a very brilliant player. Same thing with Steve Morse—fantastic player.

"I'm just glad they [Deep Purple] found a guitar player to carry on because I thought I was going to be shackled to this band for the rest of my life. It was like a ball-and-chain thing, and luckily they said, 'Well, we found someone.' 'Thank God, I can get out!'

"I haven't listened much, I just know that Joe Satriani and Steve Morse are brilliant players. I remember Steve Morse with the Dixie Dregs, they're fantastic.

"I think what you mean is that certain people play from the heart and other people play from the head. I prefer a heart player, I prefer someone like a blues player, like Jeff Healey. Jeff Healey I think is tremendous.

"If I hear someone really technical running up and down a fingerboard, I can hear that for a couple of minutes and then I start to kind of get bored and think of other things like playing football or something. But I do like to hear someone reaching for something, not quite making it and then sometimes they do make it.

"And Joe Satriani is a very polished player—almost too polished, that's what worries me sometimes. But it's different strokes for different folks, as an enemy of mine used to say—which is such a corny thing. Some people are into that head music, that head technique; some people are into the heart technique, some people are into blues technique.

"I personally am into the minstrel technique—if I hear someone playing a lute or playing a crumhorn, it just moves me, I don't know why. Guitar players I find kind of boring—and that's not meant as a dig. I find myself boring.

"I think the main objective is to move people, make people think in their heart. I personally am not interested in appealing to other musicians. To me, it's more inspiring to move someone who doesn't know anything about music, but has a feel. They can say, 'I don't know what you're doing, but I just feel that's something there.' That to me is an incredible compliment, as opposed to, 'Well, you've just run up and down the fingerboard. That's wonderful, very fast.' All that means is I've just practiced the hell out of the guitar and I'm not really saying anything. I'm going from A to B, but not seeing anything on the way."

You can hear Blackmore's full comments in the video below, and be sure to check out our feature on Blackmore from the June 2018 issue of Guitar World while you're at it!

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.