GUITARIST RITCHIE BLACKMORE ON WHY HE HAS DECIDED TO MAKE A BRIEF RETURN TO PLAYING ROCK MUSIC, “YOU START TO SEE YOUR FRIENDS PASS AND JUST FEEL IT’S TIME TO PLAY SOME OF THE OLD SONGS”
Nancy Dunham of Noisey spoke with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. Highlights from the interview appear below.
On playing rock music again:
“I am doing four dates in June, which will be all rock,” Blackmore says, speaking to us alongside Night. “I have the band basically together and it will be [the best of] Rainbow and Deep Purple. It’s just having fun but it’s only four dates in Europe. I don’t want to do anymore because I take what I’m doing now much more seriously.”
Noisey: When I first heard All Our Yesterdays [from Blackmore’s Night] I thought of some of the people you have lost recently including Ronnie James Dio.
Ritchie: Yes, Ronnie Dio. I had not seen him in 30 years, so it was kind of like an old friend that I knew a long time ago. So it didn’t [impact me] as much as Jon Lord’s passing; he and I put Purple together… Ronnie was a good friend of mine in the beginning. Although I ended with Ronnie not as friends, we did some great music together. And he was very serious, great singer and musician. Sometimes I would ask him, “What are you hearing in this riff?” I would sing it to him very quietly, and he would grasp it immediately and know exactly what I was talking about… He was very easy to work with as far as knowing how to sing and where to go.
Noisey: I know you’ve said many things about Jon including ‘Without Jon there would be no Deep Purple.’ What should people know about him on a personal level?
Ritchie: Jon was always a gentleman, sort of like Rex Harrison. Anyone who met him found him full of old-style charm.
Noisey: Thinking of Jon, I must ask why you decided to do the Deep Purple and Rainbow dates now?
Ritchie: I turned 70. And arthritis is starting to set in. Jon’s not around. So many others aren’t around. You start to see your friends pass and just feel it’s time to play some of the old songs. Nostalgia is a big reason to do it, but not the only reason.
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source: noisey.vice.com
Depending on your point of view, my one Blackmore experience was seeing the world debut of JLT Deep Purple in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. Most will say I should hang my head in shame, but at least I got to hear Roger Glover play “Burn”.
But seriously, I don’t think Blackmore has ever done a bad album. Say what you will about the work with Turner and with his wife, there’s always something good musically on every single one, and he’s put out something at least every other year since … 1968. No other hard rock musician even comes close to matching that level of consistency in melodic structure.
Whatever you do, don’t blame Turner or Candace Night for Blackmore’s deviations from hard rock. In the late 70s, he became infatuated with Abba, which is why he ended up with a pop singer in Rainbow. And his interest in classical music grew *after* Lord and the others had insisted on doing the Concerto and then moving on, finally ending up with the funk sounds of Stormbringer. Blackmore really does do what he wants, when he wants, to the endless bewilderment of fans.
I also think when Richie saw Purple on the “Today” show live, and saw the band was touring the states again, a part of him said, hey I had something to do with those songs, and I don’t need their permission to perform them my way. I’m a big fan of Rainbow as well, and would really like to see those songs nailed by a seriously smokin band if possible.