Ritchie Blackmore

Bio

Ritchie Blacmore was born the 14th April 1945, in the London suburbs near the Heatrow airport. When he was 12, his father bought him his first guitar, a black Framus, and had him take classical lessons for one year, before following around and nagging on Big Jim Sullivan (the king of session guitarists in the 60's). At the age of 13, he started his first band, the 21's Coffee Bar Group" but he was playing tea-chest bass, and not guitar! They were playing covers of 50's bands, most noteably Duane Eddy.

At 15, Ritchie dropped out of school and worked at the Heathrow airport for two years, as well as continuing his musical career (he hated the job, but thanks to it, he could afford his first electric guitar, a Hofner Club 50). In 1961, when Ritchie was 16, he started playing with Mickey Dee and The Jaywalkers, who, while not being able to release any material, had no problems finding gigs (usually, they would gig 4 nights every week). Gradually, Ritchie and his current guitar, the red Gibson ES335 (seen in the early Deep Purple years) became famous in the London musician community for his incredible guitar skills, despite his young age. In 1962, Ritchie joined "Screaming Lord Sutch and ths Savages", and became a full time musician. This is where Ritchie learned most of his stage antics. Later the same year, he would join Joe Meek in "The Outlaws", and would work as a session band for the likes of Tom Jones, Glenda Collins and Gene Vincent. In 1965, Ritchie left, and rejoined Screaming Lord Sutch for a short time before starting "Three Mousketeers", with base in Hamburg. A year of touring in Germany and Italy followed, before Ritchie came back to England, where Jimi Hendrix had broke big. This changed him forever. At the same time, Eric Clapton gave him his first Strat. The neck on it was so bowed that Eric couldn't play on it. Soon, Sutch recruited him again, for the shortlived project "Screaming Lord Sutch and the Roman Empire". When that project was over, Ritchie returned penniless to Hamburg, where he was living on his girlfriends wage, while playing guitar up to 6 hours every day. In this time, he met Jon Lord and Ian Paice, who would later be the trio that made Deep Purple big.

In 1968, Deep Purple was formed, and their first album "Shades of Deep Purple" wa well recieved by the public (especially the Joe South cover "Hush"). While this gave the band financial security for a while, they did not manage to follow up the success with their next album "Book of Taliesyn". The next clue for what direction the band should go in came to Ritchie when Led Zeppelin released their first album. Singer Rod Evans and bassist Nick Simper were fired, and Ian Gillan and Roger Glover was hired; creating the classic Deep Purple lineup. In 1969, the rock-classical crossover "Concerto for Group and Orchestra" (a concept it is still widely believed was created by Metallica... over 30 years later) happened. This gave the "new" Deep Purple some publicity, but not in rock circles. Ritchie was never satisfied with the Concerto, and demanded that their next album would be a heavy one. The result was "In Rock". Touring ensured the bands popularity, and their next album "Fireball" (Ritchie hated, and still hates this album) would be an even bigger success. However, it was their 1972 release, "Machine Head", and the single "Smoke on the Water", that would be the final breaktrough that made Deep Purple a household name. At the time, however, ego problems between Ritchie and Ian Gillan was tearing the band apart. After their late-1972 release "Who do we Think we Are?". In 1973, Gillan and Glover left Deep Purple, and David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes (both would virtuoso singers and guitarist abusers). However, musical differences and ego would tear the band apart, and Ritchie left in 1974.

In 1975, Ritchie appeared with a new band, "Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow". The lineup was Blackmore, and the band Elf, who had recently fired their guitarist. Ritche had gotten to know Elf back in the Deep Purple days, when they had been warm-up band for Deep Purple on numerous tours. Of this lineup, vocalist Ronnie James Dio is the only one worth mentioning. The Blackmore/Dio songwriting duo would create songs about dragons, withces and crossbows in the firelight, opposed to Gillan's more straight ahead car and women style. In 1975, their first album, named after the band, was released. Although the single "Man on the Silver Mountain" did fairly well, the album lacked production-wise. Rainbow would have more luck with their 1977 album "Rainbow Rising", in my opinion maybe the most underrated album in Ritchie's entire catalog. Numerous changes had been made to the band. Ritchie had fired all members and brought in bassist Jimmy Bain, drummer Cozy Powell and keyboardist Tony Carrey (today, all of this lineup is regarded as legends on their own). This is today regarded as the bands finest effort, and were the time when Ritchie really brought out his neo-classical side. He had experimented with it in Deep Purple, but Rising was the first time the neo-classical style was dominant over Ritchie's bluesy side. And it is an eternal sign of Ritchies viruosity (an example is Stargazer. Not only is it a mindblowing guitar effort... it is also played with a slide). In 1978, the live album "On Stage" was released, before the first commercially successful Rainbow album, "Long Live Rock & Roll" was released the same year, containing "Gates of Babylon", who maybe are even more impressive guitarwise than Stargazer (remember, this was the seventies, there were no shred around yet).

The taste of renewed commercial success must have changed Ritchie, because Dio was soon fired, and vocalist Graham Bonnet was brought in. In 1979, the album "Down to Earth" was released, and the singles "Since You've Been Gone" and "All Night Long" are today the two most remembered Rainbow songs. In 1981, Graham was fired, and singer Joe Lynn Turner was brought in. Between 1981 and 1984, Rainbow would release 3 albums, "Difficult to Cure", "Straight Between the Eyes" and "Bent out of Shape", who would all do well on the charts.

Now, the classic Deep Purple line-up was once again reformed, and the relese "Perfect Strangers", containing a single with the same name, did well on the charts. Two more albums, "House of Blue Lights" and "Slaves and Masters" (containing Joe Lynn Turner as vocalist) would be released before Ritchie once again called it a day and reformed Rainbow, with 4 more or less unknown musicians. In 1995, they released the very underrated "Stranger in us All", who was released in a time when heavy metal was as "out" as it would ever be, so it is a largely overlooked album.

However, on this album, Ritchie's (20 years younger) fiance, Candice Night, did a lot of songwriting. Impresed with her talent, Ritchie decided to stop the Rainbow project, and start a new band called "Blackmore's Night" instead. This band focus largely on acoustic music with a strong renaissance influence, with occational elements from rock (according to Ritchie, the genres have a lot in common). In 1998, the album "Shadow of the Moon" was released, and the albums "Under a Violet Moon" and "Fires at Midnight" followed. In the writing moment, the band is on a tour for their latest album "Ghost of a Rose". If the forming of Blackmore's Night was a positive thing is a controversial issue, but I think that those among us who would rather see Ritchie in a rock setting must be satisfied with his response in interviews for now: "It's a type of music you can grow old gracefully with, as opposed to jumping aroung playing "Smoke on the Water" all your life".

Links

Ritchie Blackmore's Official Web Site

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