Ritchie Blackmore on his favourite guitarist: “I think, How the hell is he doing that?”
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“There are people around that give rock 'n'roll a bad name. I listen to the radio and sometimes hear things that are just awful.”
In March 1975, Deep Purple's Ritchie Blackmore was chosen as the first artist to be featured on the cover of the first issue of a brand new music magazine: International Musician and Recording World. “This is a magazine for professionals” ran the opening line of the magazine's first editorial, and the choice of Blackmore as its first cover star was presumably intended to illustrate to prospective readers that this was a serious publication distinct from the likes of NME, Sounds, Melody Maker, etc,. The quote above doubtless had the editorial team rubbing their hands with glee.
The cover story interview was conducted by American writer/producer/guitarist Jon Tiven, who hailed Blackmore as “perhaps the world's finest electric guitar player”. The Man In Black told Tiven that he was “a musician, not a politician”, and duly offered up his typically honest and forthright opinions on the mid '70s music scene, and some of his most influential peers.
“When you travel and you've been in the business so long, you have an awareness of certain people's aura, and how they are as people, and what they mean,” he remarked at one point. I tend to analyse a person in a couple of seconds, and say to myself, 'I don't want to talk to him because I think he's a very boring person.' So I gave them the cold shoulder, and they look at me and see I'm very serious and cold, and they leave me alone. It makes me very happy, really, because I don't want to talk to these people. 80 per cent of the people I meet are very boring people.”
Assessing some of his peers, Blackmore confessed that he “wasn't struck” on Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, and admitted “I never saw what was in Clapton at all.” In a comment presumably intended as a compliment, but which came across as a sideways swipe at the 'Clapton Is God' brigade, he added, “He's a good singer.” The Who's Pete Townshend was labelled 'The Establishment', though Blackmore added, “Townshend is not so much of a guitarist as an all-round guy - writer, all that.”
The Deep Purple man nominated Jeff Beck as his favourite guitarist, “a very natural guitar player”.
He noted: “Being a guitarist, I obviously know a lot of tricks of the trade, but whenever I watch Beck I think, How the hell is he doing that? Echoes suddenly come from nowhere; he can play a very quiet passage with no sustain, and in the next second suddenly race up the fingerboard with all this sustain coming out. He seems to have sustain completely at his fingertips, yet he doesn't have it all the time, only when he wants it.”
“After you've been playing a certain amount of time, it's nice to be able to think about the guitar, and I know he does, by the choice of notes he plays. Some guitarists only play what the hands want to play, they don't play what the head wants to play... your head should tell your hands where to go.”
