Ritchie Blackmore Livestream Birthday Interview [Part 4] with questions asked by fans Can you can tell the story behind Son of Alerik? That's a very interesting connection because Alerik was spelled in its day with a K. And Roger Glover told me, you know, Alerik is spelled with a C. And I said, not when he was around. I was doing a seance once way back and the person we were talking to was the son of Alerik. That's what he said to us that who he was. So we took him at his word and that's why it was very interesting talking to this man who was very intelligent, very intellectual and to cut a long story short when I wrote the instrumental I was looking for a title and I thought 'Son of Alerik' and of course I was told by certain people that his name was spelled differently, but that was not the way he spelled his name. He spelled it with a K. And back in those days, we're going back to the fifth or sixth century, they would spell things differently to how we spell them today. I think the English that we speak today is so different to how we were speaking in the 1200s when we were speaking French, German, and a bit of English. What is your favorite Blackmore's Night song? Oh, there's so many. I think the first one because it was so dangerous, we didn't quite know what we were doing, but it came out, I thought, quite well. Came out very innocent and honest. And the second one, 'Under a Violet Moon'. The reason we called it 'Under a Violet Moon', was because my family way back before it was called Blackmore, was called Moon. And my mother whose name was Violet. So she would have been called Violet Moon and that's astounding news. Hello from Australia. I would like to go to Alice Springs one day. I've never seen a place in the middle of nowhere like Alice Springs. I wonder how Alice Springs is. And I see that Darwin... on the way to Darwin, there's some magical storms. They have some big thunderstorms in Darwin. But it's so far away. I hate traveling. So, I've kind of decided more or less not to travel anymore. So, what I'm up to at the moment is trying to put together something where people come to Long Island where I live and to play shows here on Long Island. So, I won't have to travel. After my dose of vertigo, which was absolutely horrific. Will you ever return to Rainbow music style? Maybe... I thought about doing the old songs, re-recording them and doing it in a studio with maybe a famous singer, maybe a Brian Adams or someone who can sing with a great voice. What is the story behind 'Tarot Woman'? I did not write the lyrics, so I had no clue what Ronnie was talking about. Obviously, tarot would be the tarot cards. And somebody who was reading cards, I think his wife used to read tarot cards. What is your favorite Abba song? There's too many. You know, in a way it was probably 'Dancing Queen' because that was the first one where I suddenly realized I love this band and I tried not to for a couple of years, but I gave in. They're just tremendous. We need to know more about Lord Sutch. He was not a Lord. We used to call him Screaming Lord. Have you ever been to the Cologne Cathedral? Yes, I have. I heard rumors that you and Cozy Powell used to pull pranks on your old Rainbow tour manager. Well, we used to pull pranks on each other all the time and anybody within the vicinity of where we were. I made a point of not we had a truce Cozy and I would not play tricks on him and vice versa because whenever I play a trick on him he would double up the trick and I would get really done by him. He knew how to reciprocate and cause trouble. Why did you not give me your guitar pick in New Jersey? My real guitar picks are very strange. They're shaped very differently. And I only have probably five or six left, so I try to hang on to them. Do you regret slamming a lot of the good Fenders back in the days? I never did. They were all second rate Fenders which were ready to be beaten up. Only once did I smash my really good Fender. And as I was breaking it up, my roadie was trying to tell me, "Ritch, you're breaking up your best guitar." And I saw him shouting at me. And after a while, I thought, "What is he saying?" And I suddenly realized I'd just broken up my best Fender. So I was not happy. What was your favorite place to visit during the recording of the castle tour in 2000? Ah castles. I love so many castles, especially in Germany. Rubinstein I like very much. And we have some people here that were with us at the time. And I remember one night very late at night in Rubinstein. They were very nice to us and we went looking for some food. We went into the kitchen and there was a wild boar bleeding on the kitchen floor. And that was apparently to be the dinner for the people the next day. And at the time we were just looking for some beer. That was a little bit disconcerting. The wild boar. I'm an animal freak. I love animals and I don't like to see anything killed. I don't mind humans being killed [laughter]. Do you still sleep with your cats? I've changed my cat to Candice. I now sleep with Candice. But when she's away, my cat does sleep on the bed. And he snores. Did AC/DC open for Rainbow at the Calderone Concert Hall in 1978? Probably. I was never a fan of AC/DC's and I made a mention of that to the press, but I felt really silly because two weeks later they were supporting us. So now I've just said that I didn't like them as a band, now we're playing with them. And I had to go in to their dressing room and to apologize to them. I felt so badly because I was not a fan. And they weren't too happy with me. But, obviously now they've become very big and they've proven a point. They've proven that, they're very worthy musically. So, I was wrong. What was your main amplifier on the Perfect Strangers album? That would have been a Marshall I think, but I went especially to the factory of Marshall. I knew Jim Marshall as a friend when I first bought my Gibson 335. I bought it from an Ealing guitar shop. That guitar shop was run by Jim Marshall, and he happened to draw a stack, a Marshall stack, that became the famous Marshall stack. Jim did not know too much about Marshall amplification. He was a drum teacher, very nice man, and Mitch Mitchell was the sales representative in the shop that was selling me my Gibson guitar. Mitch Mitchell is the drummer that was with Hendrix. And he was a very nice guy. He was a boy actor when he was like 11, 12, 13. He would do a lot of acting in school plays and films. And if you look at those films, you sometimes can see him. I bought your Fender Strat at the music store in Cologne. Is that a good choice for me as a beginner guitarist? No, you you've made a completely bad mistake [laughter]. Can you tell us how you get that incredible synth sound that you used in 'Way to Mandalay'? Yes. That's a synth. I was very impressed with Trevor Rabin with Yes. when he did that song which is called.... 'Owner of a Lonely Heart'. I love that solo. It's like someone is tearing out the inners of some sort of rabid animal or something. And I love that solo. And that it was basically done with a synth, I think, in fifths. I did have that set up with the synthesizer and I just had it tuned in just for that particular sound. We're all dreaming of a live concert from Minstrel Hall like you did during the pandemic. Well, I have to wait for another pandemic. No, I'm sure there'll be another one. Do you still watch soccer? I still watch soccer. Overhere they have American football and our son he plays football, soccer and he plays American football, plays basketball and a lot of that stuff. It's very different to when I grew up in England. Of course, I was into soccer, but I love the team. I love German national team and they had Franz Beckenbauer and even the second team that they had, I have pictures all around the house of these players. I'm trying to think of the team that took over in 1980, which would have had... oh God I can't think of their names and they're good friends well acquaintances and I would have to think who they were but I've always been a Bayern Munich fan purely because of Franz Beckenbauer and unfortunately now he's gone I don't recognize the team and I've seen that apparently they've just beaten Real Madrid which is incredible. Somebody said Lothar Matthäus. Oh, Lothar Matthäus. That's who I'm thinking of. Lothar Matthäus was I'd like to think of as a good friend and I really admired him when he was with the 1980s team. Yes, 1980s team. And I used to go to the Giants Stadium to watch them. But my favorite team was the70'ss, again when I said it was the people that... I've forgotten what I was saying. Somebody said I remember Beckenbauer with the New York Cosmos soccer team in the70'ss. Yes, I used to go to see the Cosmos with Beckenbauer, Pele and all the other guys. But now unfortunately I don't know the people in the team of Germany. I only know I think it's Neuer in goal. Everybody else is new. I had lots of insults from my English friends for backing the German team instead of the English team. But I was just more impressed with the way the Germans played and it's terrible to say, I mean the English are obviously very very good but it's not my style. I like the dainty style. Someone said: I heard Autumn singing with Candice. She has a lovely voice. Does Rory play guitar? No, Rory is more interested in playing American football and basketball. We call netball. He's an athlete more than he is a musician. Although he can sing. We've heard him sing and he's very good. Autumn is the singer and the guitarist. Did you ever meet football player George Best? Yes, I did. I met him when we did a show in Manchester. It was a TV show and he was there in the audience. Very nice guy. Had a veryhigh pitchedd voice. It was very bizarre, from someone who could run down the whole field and beat every soccer player on the field. He had this very high pitched voice. The York Ghost Story I was in a band called The Outlaws and we had no money and we were playing in this theater. We said to the man that owned the theater, do you know of anywhere where we can stay for the night? He said, you can stay here if you want to. And we said, oh, absolutely. We had some sleeping bags. And we decided to stay in this theater. But before we stayed in the theater, we went down to the local pub. I didn't drink in those days, which is a kind of marvel in itself. And everybody else in the band was an alcoholic. So, we were in this pub in York and they said, "Where are you staying tonight, lads?" And we said, "We're staying at the so and so theater down the road." They said, "Oh, you know, that's haunted." So, me being the only sober one in the bunch went, "Oh." And the rest of them just laughed it off. Anyway, we all had our sleeping bags. We got into the dressing room and we all just went to sleep. And I was a little bit concerned because being sober as opposed to everybody else snoring and being drunk. I heard this name and it came out of the air and it just said Aubrey. It's the name. So the next day when we woke up, we spoke to the man that owned the theater and he said, "How did you get on, you know, sleeping?" And I said, "Well, I heard this name Aubrey. Does that mean anything to you?" He said, "Yes, that's the ghost of the theater." And apparently he had tried to pay people to stay in the theater overnight and nobody would do it. A few people took up the challenge and ran out in the middle of the night because they were so scared. So we had no idea that we were sleeping in a haunted theater until the next day more or less. And we have played that theater in York since. And I took a picture of the seats in the audience empty in the afternoon because we were doing a rehearsal. I just had a feeling I might pick up the ghost and I did. In my photograph there was a person sitting there and there was nobody there in the rehearsals. Favorite period in medieval or Renaissance history? My favorite period is probably 1550s and that kind of stuff. Were you using Engls during the recording of 'Stranger In Us All' or those Marshalls? I can't remember. I usually use Engls. How was Paicey after you blew up an amp next to him? He wasn't too happy. He'd gone a little bit deaf and it blew off his glasses, we couldn't find his glasses and we had to do a show. So apparently that didn't go down too well blowing up the stage, but it had to be done because when I saw what Keith Emerson had in store for a revolving piano he had, I knew that we had to kind of really pull something out of the bag to kind of try and upstage them, which I think we did. And I love Keith Emerson's playing. He was always great to watch. In the video for 'Can't Let You Go', you played a really nice sunburst Telecaster. Is that the guitar that you used for the recording of it? No. I always used the white Strat for the recording of anything I did. If I used a Strat, I used the white one. Is there a new Blackmore's Night album coming? We have three tracks so far and we're thinking of getting our producer in shortly, and we'll see how that goes. Did you ever meet Peter Green? Yes, I did. And I don't think he met me [laughter]. But I was a big fan of Peter Green when he was doing John Mayall's 'Hard Road'. I was living in Hamburg and all I played was John Mayall's 'Hard Road' and Bob Dylan's 'Blonde on Blonde'. That's the only two records I have. And I did meet Peter Green, but when I said hello, he just kind of looked at me like I was from out of space. And that was the end of that. But I loved his playing on it's a 'Hard Road'. I recommend John Mayall's 'Hard Road'. And that came out in '67 I think. Do you remember the song 'Wring That Neck' and what is your opinion on it? I remember it... which is kind of incredible. Are guitars with scalloped fretboards easy to play? Yes, for me, I would always scallop my necks. That goes back to when I was like 17, 18 because it gave me more leverage over the threats. And if you believe that, you'll believe anything. No, that's true. Cod or haddock? Rock salmon. I love rock salmon and it's disappeared. I would come home from school, go to the fish shop, and get rock salmon and chips, nearly every day. Who is the artist that you have never worked with, but you would like to? Probably Paul Rogers and Johan Sebastian Bach. Do you remember Lionel Digby from when the Savages played Torquay? I know that name from somewhere.... Lionel Digby? Lord Sutch and the Savages, we did play Torquay. Lionel Digby? You have to wonder about that one. Do you miss Lumley Castle? Yes, I do. I love Lumley Castle. I love the stage. That's a wonderful castle. It's a perfect castle. Oh, it says he was a promoter. Who? Who we were talking about before. Oh, right. So, what are we talking about? Lumley or Torquay? Torquay Great place. Great English seaside town. act. I think you can get Torquay rock. Are you and David Coverdale friends now? Yes, we keep in contact quite often. He's living out in... where is he living? California, Tahoe. Yeah, Lake Tahoe. Dave's living in Lake Tahoe and he's apparently is retired, which he really pushes his voice. So, I could see why he would have to retire. Great guy. Will you write an autobiography? I don't think so. I have too many secrets. If they made a movie of your life, who would play you? Robert Culp, probably Quasimodo [laughter]. Errol Flynn isn't around anymore. It would have to be Errol Flynn, of course. My favorite. Is it true you wanted Phil Lynott for Deep Purple after Gillan and Glover left? Yes. We were going to form a small band called Baby Face. Phil Lynott vocals, Ian Paice, and myself. And then Ian taught me out of it, Ian Paice, which I'm glad he did in a way. That was '71, '72. And he said, "Well, Purple's doing well. Let's stay within those boundaries." So I said, "Okay." But Phil, fantastic guy. And I had a good time playing stuff with Phil and he called the band Baby Face. Do you like jazz? Only if it's played by Django Reinhardt or George Benson. Now you got two incredible guitar boys. But I'm not a jazz person by nature. I have an allergy to major 7ths. I break out in a sweat. Who was your favorite bass player to work with? During what period? I don't know. Have you ever met Jimmy Hendrix? Yes. Have you ever met Angus Young? Yes. They're the same person. Are you in contact with Joe Lynn Turner? Yes, sometimes. Not a lot. Not as much as David Coverdale. I only want to say that you're the greatest guitarist I've ever heard. Well, then you're tone deaf [laughter]. I'm a pretty good guitar player, but there are so many incredible guitarists. Have you met Ozzy? Ofcourse. Ozzy I thought had the best rock and roll band back in the late 90's. I thought he had a great band. They're all good musicians. And his voice, he had a certain tone to his voice that just projected. And you knew when you heard Ozzy it was him. A lot of other singers all sounded the same. Ozzy had a certain tone to his voice that made it. And his stuff was very musical. It's very melodic. I do like melody. I don't like just yelling and screaming for the sake of it. Did you modify your old Marshall amps and what was done to the circuit? Yes, I went to the factory of Jim Marshall and had an extra output stage put onto my Marshall. And they told me if I told anybody, they would say I was lying because they were so sick of me turn up to the factory and saying, "Come on, guys. It doesn't sound right." So they would be there with their soldering irons taking out resistors, putting in capacitors, trying to get me the sound that I wanted. And they couldn't understand why I didn't like the sound. All they would say is, "Well, it sounds loud." And I go, "Yes, it's loud, but it's not the right sound." I had a Vox AC30 before that. That was the perfect sound and they were trying to recreate that sound. But like I said, now that I've mentioned that, Ken Bran, Ken Flegg, the two people that worked for Jim Marshall would say, "If I ever mentioned it, they would say I was lying." So, they didn't have to bother with changing other amplifiers. Do you ever get nervous on stage even after all your success? I get nervous offstage all the time. On stage? Not particularly. Do you still talk to Gillan? Yes. Oh, yeah. He lives in Portugal. If you haven't gotten into music, what would you have taken up as a profession? Mind control [laughter]. Do you still have contact with Glenn Hughes? No, not very much. Glenn's jumping around from band to band. I hope he's doing well. He's a very nice guy and very talented, but not my type. He was more into Stevie Wonder. I was not a Stevie Wonder fan. That was more soul music. I was more into rock and blues. What do you think about Paul Kossoff? I didn't know Paul Kossoff very well. Very sad what happened to him. He had a drug problem. I know that when I asked Paul Rogers. Paul Rogers thought he was fantastic. So, but I really liked the music of Free. It's one of my favorite bands. But I must say that was because of the singer. And stuff like 'Heartbreaker'. Fantastic. I think 'Heartbreaker' kind of gave me the inspiration to do 'Mistreated'. Do you still do magic tricks? Of course. I'm about to disappear [laughter]. I don't know why they're laughing. What is your opinion on Fleetwood Mac? Yes, I knew Fleetwood Mac. They used to tour with us and open for us for a long time, so I knew them very well. And they have their own sound. Mick Fleetwood, I would always insist on him telling his ghost stories about coming up the A3 in England. And anybody who meets Mick Fleetwood should ask him about the ghost of the A3 in England. Have you ever gotten lost while traveling or touring overseas? Always funnily enough, I have reoccurring dreams where I'm lost and I can't find my way back to my home. I don't know why I have that. I have that a lot. That particular dream, it bothers me. Do you play the nyckelharpa? I try to. But I don't play it very well. But I play it well enough to impress my friends, especially if they're drunk and they think I'm really good. Do you like horror movies? I did way back when I was 12 and 13. No, I don't. I don't like horror at all. I would like people like The Pit and the Pendulum, things like that, horror films like that. Can you tell the story of how the song Ariel was created? Yes. I was down here in the bar and I just came up with a the construction and Candice put the lyrics to it. Funny enough to take that a bit further, we were in a studio with the band and Pat Reagan, our producer, had done a really good version of the finished product. And I said, "Pat, that's great." He said, "Well, that's all very fine, but there isn't anybody playing from the band. It's all me." And I said, "Well, who cares?" But that was aneye openerr, when he said, "But nobody from the band is playing on that record." So I thought, "Well, doesn't matter. It sounds great." What was your favorite rock American rock and roll band? Well, it started with Dwayne Eddie to Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers. The old band, they started everything. Probably Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Do you also make music at home as a family together with your children? No, I beat them up whenever I when they get out of control. We have one daughter, Autumn. She is incredible, memory and she's amazing singer. She's got about four octaves. And we have Rory who's a handful according to Autumn. And there was a story once when someone said: "Rory your brother isn't he?" and Autumn said "well that's his name but I call him handful". She was about four years old when she said that. I love that. But Rory is more the athlete. He's about 20 feet tall and he's built like Hulk Hogan, who was incidentally one of my favorites and I met him in Japan. I was very impressed with him, not Rory, Hulk Hogan and Rory is an athlete. He's into basketball and American football. I don't understand either one, but he looks good when he's running around doing his thing. Do you still speak a little German? Danke schön. Natürlich ich bin ein Deutscher. That gets me into trouble because that means naturally I'm a German and then people go off on a tangent. Who's your best friend? Well, of course, Candice is on the camera. he's my best friend along with my along with my cat called Winter. He doesn't say a word, so I kind of like that. Can you shoot lightning from your fingers? Occasionally. What's your favorite food? German food, which is some of my the Schnellimbiss. When I used to go to a Schnellimbiss in Hamburg and I would have... It was basically fried herring. It was called Brat herring with pommes frites. It's hard to say the R. Have you ever been to Romania? No. I always wanted to go, but we were always persuaded by lots of agents saying it's not a good place to go. And from their point of view, it was because there was not too much money there. But we always wanted to go because we felt it was very earthy and countryfied and it's a type of place that we wanted to be at. Did you make up with Dio before he died? Oh, yeah. Many years before... I went into the Rainbow, that was a bar and grill in Hollywood and Wendy Dio was there and she said why don't you come and say hello to Ronnie and I said well I will but isn't he upset about the situation, she said no not at all, so I went and sat with him and we talked like old days. Ritchie, are you okay with your gout? No, I'm about to go into the hospital to have operations on my feet because of my gout. Gout comes from ancestry. Was 'Maybe Next Time' improvised? No, I wrote the melody and played it. I didn't improvise particularly at the time. When I write an instrumental, I write it and play it. Although six months later, I could have played it much better. And I always felt 'Maybe Next Time' and even 'Carry on Jon' could have been played much better because at the time I just played it very stiffly and now I can play it with fluidity because I don't get emotionally involved. Do you ever play the guitar Dwayne Eddie sent you as a gift? Yes, I do. How did you know about that? My hero. What's your favorite beer? Mönchshof and Spartan. Those two plus obviously any Pils from Germany. I'm not a fan of American beer. Have you ever played ukulele? No thanks. Maestro, why don't you continue composing and recording Rainbow songs? It's not necessary to tour. That's a good point. I am coming to that conclusion because I can't stand traveling. I love going on stage in different places, but I hate traveling. I hate being in the hotels. And when I'm told that there's a wedding taking place, I want to shoot myself [laughter]. How many white strats do you have currently? I only have probably three. Two or three. Most of them have been stolen, whenever they're stored people steal them. How old is Autumn now? I remember you bringing her up on stage. She's 25 [laughter]. No, she's not. She's 15 and she's just accepted to play in a play called 'Little Women'. And she already has memorized her whole part as Megan. She is unbelievable. Do you have a story about Mick Underwood? Yes, many, but they're not for public consumption. Mick I met when I was 13. He lived just down the road from me and great drummer, and he was the one who introduced me to Ian Gillan. I said to him, "Do you know any singers?" He said, "Yes, what about our singer?" I said, "Well, aren't you using him?" They said, "No, we're breaking up. He's a good singer." And that was Ian Gillan. And that came from Mick Underwood. Mick was a fine fellow. Is it true that in the 1970s in France you pulled the chair out from under Ian Gillan and he hit his head? Yes. Unfortunately, I often thought that Ian had gone mad and we went to a club where we were all sitting together and Ian went to sit down and I pulled the chair away from him and I didn't realize that we were up on a rostrum of about 10 ft. So, he just fell back 10 ft. I thought I'd killed him. And then he appeared about 10 minutes later after he got up and I said, "Ian, are you okay?" I felt really badly. He said, "Fine." But I think after that day, he changed. And I felt really badly, I meant to just play a joke on him by pulling out the chair from his sitting down, but I didn't realize he was going to fall back that far and that shocked me. Have you ever met Mike Oldfield? Yes. very nice guy and a big in inspiration. Can you speak on the Green Bullfrog album? Yes. It was Albert Lee, my guitar teacher, Jim Sullivan, Chaz, and Nick Underwood I think. And I felt a bit embarrassed because I had no idea what we were going to play. Albert didn't know what we were going to play, nor did Jimmy Sullivan. So, we're all looking at each other saying, "Do you have any ideas?" And we really didn't have ideas. Where did you record in France? I don't know. One was a castle and one was in the Rolling Stones mobile. © Igor's Rock Universe, YouTube - April 14, 2026