Ritchie Blackmore Livestream Birthday Interview with questions asked by fans What was your favorite solo with a Gibson? Probably Hush. We did that in two takes and the guitar was feeding back, which I liked because this is semi acoustic, which would feed back with the amplifier. And if you listen right in the beginning of the first four chords, then it feeds back. And I would say Hush because it was tricky to try and get in to playing parts. Somebody wanted to know if you would be coming to Germany again. Oh, I'm suffering from so many ailments. one is traveling and as much as obviously I love coming to Germany, I did since 1963 with Jerry Lee Lewis and I love the country and I've always loved the country and the people were very hardwork but they like to enjoy themselves at the same time. Plus the biggest musicians in the world have come from Germany. Bach, etc. Do you have any advice for a new guitarist? Yes, get a get a a lawyer immediately. Somebody else wants to know this the story behind this guitar you're holding. Oh, you can see it. Okay! This is a Lakewood made specially for me. I put a pickup in here. I wanted a small parlor guitar and I always I always like Martin Seeliger's Lakewoods. I've just got some two new ones, but I've had this probably 20 years, 30 years. He wants to know if that guitar is scalloped. No, not particularly. No, it's not. I just what I do instead of scalloping an acoustic, I make sure they're very big frets. Usually Gibson frets. I have them do a refretting job. And these are big frets, although they're probably Lakewood. Somebody's saying woolly bully. [laughter] Woolly bully traumatized me. I heard it for a year non-stop when I was living in Germany in Hamburg. And of course, when I first heard it, I hated it. But then I became to like it because it was so ridiculous, the song, and then I went to see them at the Starclub and obviously they'd never rehearsed before so they didn't know when they were starting or when they were stopping and I like that it was so off the cuff and natural. Obviously, they've never rehearsed the band. And as soon as you hear that chord, as soon as you hear that A7th, you know it's Woolly Bully. That is quite a feat. Really is. Speaking of feet, I have my feet. I'm not showing your feet. Do you have an anecdote about Joe Meek? Oh, many stories. I was kind of starving in those days until he would give me a session and every time we played a session we got nine pounds and sometimes he would come up with 10 sessions a week. So, we were rolling in money and Joe was very helpful to me, but he was different. He wasn't your normal guy. He had a bit of a temper. So, if you didn't play something correct, he sometimes might lose his temper. So, like we all do, but it's a shame what happened in the end. He was in constant turmoil. I did notice that. But we both loved Buddy Holly. So, we would often talk about Buddy Holly. So somebody says they still honor your name in Hanwell. Yes, I remember Hanwell. We used to rehearse there. We used to rehearse there with Deep Purple mainly because it was quite close to me. I was living in Harlington and I think Ian was living in Hounslow. So Hanwell was a close by place. But the only problem with that place was the echo, it was so much that it was sometimes hard to actually play because there was so much repeat on every instrument. That's where I introduced Jon Lord to the the big sound that he used to get. Obviously, Jon did the hard work, but when he was having a cup of tea, I plugged him into my Marshall amp, which had an overdrive. I had a Hornby Skewes overdrive. I wanted to hear Jon because Jon wanted a distorted sound, but he didn't know how to get it. I knew how to get it because of the guitar. So I plugged him into my amp on the tea break and then when he came back I said, "Jon, what do you think of this sound?" And he played it and he loved it and he played it that way for about two years. When was the last time you threw a javelin? Threw a javelin? About six months ago. Teaching my son to play, to throw the javelin. He's already throwing it further than me, which is embarrassing. [laughter] What do you think about Tommy Bolin as a guitarist? Well, I knew him more as a friend and he was such a nice guy that I couldn't believe he was a guitar player because most guitar players aren't nice people. He was so nice and he was an Indian. I think Sioux Indian or something and 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. And I said to Tommy once, "When did you last change your strings?" And he looked at me like, I should change them? I said, "Well, well, yeah." And he said, "Well, probably about five years ago." Because they were so caked in dirt and grit and brilliant player, great player, but he never changed his guitar strings. Somebody wants to know if we jam every day at home. Absolutely not. [laughter] I eat jam, [laughter] but No, we don't jam. Whenever we play, Candy and I, it's always something more worked out. Not a jam. I don't believe in jamming. That's usually an excuse for everybody to make a noise. So, I was never a person to jam with other guitar players. Is there anything that you regret in life? I can't tell you because it's too personal. No, I many things I regret. I remember when I was five I threw this girl in the bushes, stinging nettles. To this day I don't know why I did that. And my biggest regret was knocking somebody who I was racing on my bicycle with. I kicked him off of his bicycle by mistake. I wanted to push him back, but I accidentally kicked him off his bicycle. He flew in the air and I had to take him to the hospital. I regret that more than anything in my life. Were you and Jeff Beck friends? Yes, loved Jeff Beck's playing. I first met Jeff Beck doing a session for Jimmy Page. Jimmy Page was producing. Jimmy Page wasn't playing. So Jeff Beck and I were the guitar players and there was a bass player and drummer and everything. And Jeff was not a reader of music, nor was I, but I could read chord structures. So, as I was playing, Jeff would say to me, "What key are you playing in? What are you doing?" And I said, "Well, I'm in B." And I remember the chords to this day, B, A, and E. And I don't know what Jimmy Page did with the production, but Jeff Beck took a solo. And I noticed that whenever he took a solo, he had his full rig, his echo and his effects always. Normally in a studio you play very bland, add the effects post song, but Jeff Beck had just had a way of playing that was so different. It was magical, and I never quite understood how he would.... I used to see him with with BBA, I think they're called. And I would always go to see Jeff because I always felt I got my money's worth watching him. He was never flying around the fingerboard. He didn't need to. He was just pulling notes out of nowhere. As I said in my epitaph to him, he would pull notes down and make them into magic. And I would often say that he had notes on his guitar that I never had on mine. So he was cheating. When was the last time you spoke to Jimmy Page? Jimmy Page, very good friend. Don't believe what you say. I read the other day that I hated him. I can't believe they said that. I The first time I met him was 1963 or two. He was in a band called Neil Christian and the Crusaders. I was in Lord Sutch and the Savages and 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. And he was a good businessman too. Not only guitar player, he was a good businessman. Last time I spoke to him was probably in the Rainbow in Hollywood. And 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 extemporzations, improvisational inversions." And that was quite a compliment coming from him. And Jim was actually grew up in the same town that I grew up in, the same village. It was peculiar that very small village called Heston in Middlesex. And he grew up in Middlesex. I went to school in Middle Sex, Heston. And I never knew that he was even in the village. And that would have been when we were both 15 or 16. But a magical guy, a great guy. Always will be. What do you think of Eddie Van Halen? Fantastic. He again very humble, almost too humble. He would often come backstage at our shows and go, "Well, you don't want to talk to me because I'm nobody." And I could never understand why he would say that. He always used to underestimate himself. And of course, he basically reinvented the guitar with his hammer technique. I never took to the hammer technique, but it was amazing how he got all that. But unfortunately for Eddie, he was too sensitive and of course the business brought him down. He started drinking because he needed to drink because to socialize. He was very sensitive and I can relate to that. He was an actual great keyboard player. So was his parents. They were all musicians. He was a born musician. And he stirred up a lot of guitar players when he started playing that fast technique of tapping. I think a lot of guitar players were dreading who the hell this was, which was kind of funny as when you talk to him, he's so sensitive and and humble. Great guitar player. Will we missed. Thoughts on Rory Gallagher? Rory Gallagher. Unfortunately, Rory and I decided one night on tour, he was supporting Deep Purple, we would have a few drinks in my room in the hotel. He being an Irishman could drink anybody under the table. So now he's drinking and I'm drinking and I'm trying to keep up with him and we had a great night talking and I said to him, I said, "Well, Rory, it's great that you have your own band. I wish I had my own band because then I could connect. I could conduct everything." and he said, "Yes, but the trouble is when you have your own band, you get all the acclaim, but you also get all the blame if it goes wrong." And I went, "Okay, I see that." Anyway, we drank into the small hours, 4 or 5 in the morning, talking about God knows what. And the next day, I had a massive headache from drinking. And I saw him and he was bright and bushy-tailed. It was like nothing. He was totally sober. And I went, "How can you drink that much and not have a headache? I've got a headache. I've got a hangover. I never want to drink again." And he just laughed the whole thing off. Mr. Humble, Mr. Nice Guy. And we got along like the best of friends. There was not even a thought about the guitar. No competition. He just knew how to drink. And I went, "My god, I'm not going to go to a room with Rory again and get drunk because I can't. He can handle the drinking. I couldn't, and I could drink, but not as much as he could. Great guy, great guitar player. Anything about Iron Maiden? Iron Maiden are great soccer players and I knew obviously Steve and good very good soccer player and that's how we kind of met through playing soccer. We did a charity in Frankfurt, played with a few German national players and I had a great time. So did he. And I got two goals. He got three. So he was happy about that. We went out later and had a few drinks with this... what's his name... from... Was it Franz Beckenbauer? No no, with um... we were out with him the other night. This is terrible... from Mega.... Oh, Lars. Lars was playing with us, too. Metallica . Yes Lars! Lars was on the field playing and we went out later and all had drinks and I saw Lars the other night. Lars is Mr. Nice Guy. I mean, you don't get much better than Lars as a person and he's a good drummer. Would you still like one day to work with Paul Rogers or are there any singers you wish you recorded more with? I would like to have done a blues with Paul Rogers. He did come in the studio when we were in the studio one time and Rory was a little bit envious of him and that was a bit embarrassing but it was in the Arabella studios in Munich and Paul Rogers was just there as kind of pretending he's a producer and it was good fun and Paul's Paul had in my opinion, the best voice in rock and roll. Any of that Free stuff, especially Heartbreaker was one of my favorites. I love that guy's voice. I think he's probably the best vocalist in the world. He knew how to sing and he will just bring out this blues side of him which is fantastic. But I never got to play with him. We were close. I remember calling him up and speaking to his wife and I said, "Is Paul there?" And she said, "No, he's gone for a walk." And she was apparently Japanese. And then I found out later after we wanted him in Deep Purple, but he turned us down and I could see why because we weren't blues oriented. But it was funny to hear that he was married to a woman that only spoke... she never spoke particularly English. And then I assumed that Paul could speak Japanese. But then I found out that he couldn't speak Japanese. So I thought that was probably an interesting arrangement. What do you think of Randy Rhoads? Oh, brilliant. I met him in a place called The Ship in Wardour Street. It was a pub where all musicians used to meet. And he's a small guy, very very kind of nice when I met him. He was he was a fan of mine. And I thought, well, that's nice because he's so good and he was ahead of his time and it's terrible that he died in that plane crash, but almost like Eddie Van Halen, very similar attitude, very humble, which I always appreciate. When I talk to people, there's no no reason to be conceited, you know, about music. Hey, we're in the middle of something. Can you move? Sorry, Rich. There's a cat. [laughter] There's a cat in front of you. Stealing the scene. Rude. He's such a Blackmore. Did you ever jam with Bonzo? Yes. He used to come down to our rehearsals because he was very close friends with Cozy. I would very often go out drinking with Bonzo and he knew how to drink. He knew how to fight too. He had a tendency to lose his temper with people. We were both in Hollywood under a tax situation. We had to leave England because we had to pay 82% tax. So his band was doing great, Led Zeppelin, and Purple was doing great. So we were making money. We had to leave our actual own country otherwise we have to pay 82%. Which no one was going to do that and Bonzo, very very sensitive man, but he liked to get into trouble and he did like to drink. Do you still keep in contact with the members of Deep Purple? Yes, Ian Paice sends me regards now and again and I talk to Ian Gillan occasionally and David Coverdale but I don't know the new people in the band. I mean obviously Don who was in Rainbow. Don is a brilliant keyboard player but he has been in every band in the business. What do you think about Serbia? Love Serbia. Love any of those Balkan countries. I love the music. I often tune in on the website to people playing bags and there's these these players that play in such a way. I just love the way they play. They play a different style to the western and it seems to soothe my soul when I hear them playing in those countries. Love those countries. Can you recommend a book or a writer? Well, I'm very old-fashioned. My book would be Sherlock Holmes or actually Greg Gutfeld... if you like comedy. Greg Gutfeld is a friend of mine and he sent me this book which was him in England when he first went there and he couldn't understand things like queues which is a line and he wrote this book sent it to me and I read it nearly every night and it makes me laugh. Greg Gutfeld is an American comedian and he loves England, I think, more than he loves America. And Greg is the biggest comedian in America at the moment, rightfully so. And his book that he sent me, I feel very honored that he sent me this book. He loves musicians, rock and roll musicians. Why did you switch from Marshalls to Engl? Yes. Well, I've always liked smaller amps. I had a hard time getting used to Marshalls. They were so big, but they look good. And I wanted to have that big cabinet, those stacks behind me. But to be quite honest, I only used to plug into one 4x12. And half the time I was playing through a box and I knew Jim very well. Jim Marshall, he was a drummer, a drum teacher. He taught Mitch Mitchell and he had a musical shop in Ealing where I bought my first Gibson. So we were all very close. Mitch Mitchell was one of the servers there. He worked in the shop. What do you think of Greek music? I love being in Greece when I was there. I love the openness and the open cafes and the weather. I know one of your favorite songs is by Helena Paparasu One of my favorite all time songs. I think it's called My Number One. Yes. and it had a hurdy gurdy in it which was unheard of. You don't put a hurdy gurdy on a hit record, but that woman did and she won the European Eurovision Song Contest. I thought she was fantastic. Is it true you and Cozy liked Abba? Oh, yeah. Of course, Abba, too. And getting back to the Greek girl, I have a good friend who's Greek who's here and he knows all about the woman I'm talking about. She was fantastic. I hope she's still famous in Greece cuz she was very exciting. Very exciting. Did you watch the movie called The Joe Meek Story? That Telstar movie? I felt very honored when Kevin Spacy mentioned my name Blackmore. We laughed. That was funny. Who's your favorite classical composer? Well, really Bach. I mean there there are so many but I'm just discovering Beethoven. But I just love his fuges and where he was going. Why was Gates of Babylon not performed live with Rainbow? Because I couldn't remember how to play the damn thing. I wrote it.. When we recorded it, we inverted the riff a few times to make it even more complicated. So when it came to rehearsals, we rehearsed it a few times and I couldn't... Cozy would tell me, "You're playing it wrong." And I go, "Why?" He said, "No, it's not the way you're playing it. So the end I said, look, Cozy, I can't even play this tune anymore. The riff changes so much that it doesn't stay the same. So I thought instead of trying to learn it properly, I just thought I can't play this. Let's forget this for on stage because although I wrote it on the cello, you know, the riff... but if you listen, the riff changes every time it's played. And I couldn't remember which way the riff was supposed to be played. So, in the end, I thought it was better to leave it alone. I still loved it as one of my favorite tunes. What are your future plans? Just to try and stay well and keep walking. I have a hard time with my feet and my back. I'm thinking about operating on my feet because I have something called gout and my back... I have what they call discs, slip discs, L4, L5 that are very painful all the time. Not right now because I've had some wine. [laughter] Do you have a memory of Ozzy Osbourne? Yes, many.... Ozzy and I were talking one day and I remember his nose was running cuz he had a cold and I thought, do I tell him his nose is running or I just leave it? I just left it and that was the end of the story. But it was very funny situation. I have one of your Fender issued guitars. What made you go with the scalloped fretboard? I first started scalloping when my sister-in-law gave me a classical guitar when I was about 18. And I noticed that the wood was all pitted and worn out, but I love the feeling that in between the frets, it was concave. So I thought, I wonder if I should do that to my guitars. So, I would tape up the frets and spend like three days sandpapering the wood down in between threats to give me more leverage if I was slurring a note. And it seemed to work. So, I did it to all my guitars. And then I heard, I think Johnny... I forgot his name, the guitar player did it, too. And a few people have now jumped on the bandwagon, but it was a long time ago that I started doing that. They want to know the name of the cat. Winter. Winter is the name of the cat. Woolly. He also has a thousand other names. Woolly. Winter. Woo. Doodle [laughter] Water bottle, water wimple water bottle, water wimple water wimple water water bottle [laughter]. He gets fed too much [laughter] He's a very big chubby cat, very solid, He's a maine coon, he does our accounts for us. [laughter and gasps] Keith Moon Wonderful fellow. Could make me cry with laughter all day long. He once he started getting me laughing, I couldn't stop. I said to him once, "Keith, have you heard from have you what's going on? what's going on with the Who? He said, I don't know, Richard. They haven't spoken to me in five years. And I kind of laughed and I thought, they haven't spoken to him in five years. But I love the Who came out? Can't explain, My Generation that they were my favorite band. I was very excited by that. Favorite Bach piece and why? I would say probably Jesu joy of man's desiring. Yet there is evidence that his wife might have written that which is a shock because at that point Bach had gone blind and was getting a bit deaf and his wife was dealing with all the music that he wrote and they seem to think that she might have written that piece. Why did you never do finger tapping? Me or Bach? You [laughter] I just never got around to it. I found playing the guitar was difficult enough without getting into strange areas. I didn't find it very rewarding. It was very impressive because it makes you sound much faster than you are. But I didn't get a feeling of fulfillment. I wanted to hear a note to be a note. The tapping for me was obviously very impressive, but I just come to terms with it. I would play around with it now and again, but I couldn't take it seriously. It was becoming too trendy, so I definitely didn't want to be involved in the trend. I'd leave that to Eddie. Did you ever meet Lemmy from Motorhead? Yeah, many times. Lemmy, very nice guy. We'd both usually be drinking at the time and I met him first when he was playing on a one bandit I think in Water Street and we got talking. He said to me very ominously he said I know more about you than you think and to this day I don't quite know what he meant but very nice guy. Do you like Belgium beer? It's incredibly strong. And I made the mistake of drinking two pints of the.... The Elephant beer? No, not elephant. Oh my god, I remember that. What does Chimay drink? [laughter] She beer. The Chimay beer will knock your head off. Bit like Elephant beer from Denmark. What's your favorite beer? My favorite at the moment is Spartan, but I do like Lööwenbräu. My favorite is probably Mönchshof, but not the dark. That's my favorite... Mönchshof. But over here you can get Spartan. They they don't want to... they're too obsessed with Budweiser over here. What was the Babyface project with Phil Lynott and Ian Paice? That lasted about a week. We went in the studio and tried to do a couple of songs and didn't really work out. Phil named the the band Baby Face and it was going to be a three-piece. And then Ian Paice said, "Do you really want to do this?" And I went, "Okay, we'll stay with Deep Purple because I I was going to leave Deep Purple round 71." And I was going to take Ian Paice with me, but then he started to get a little bit kind of afraid of leaving a band that was taking off, but Phil Lynott was one of my good friends. Can you speak German? Natürlich ich bin ein Deutscher. Did he understand that? I don't know. People are just writing in comments. Every time I say that that naturally I'm a German, then they go off into German and I go, "Wait a minute. I can speak quite a bit of German but not as much as having said that I'm naturally a German". I've lived a lot of my life in Germany. I love Germany. Thoughts on Freddy Mercury and Queen. Brilliant. I mean, Brian May, great guitar player. One of my favorite all time songs is Who Wants to Live Forever? And I to this day, I don't know how Brian wrote that. The chords are so vague. There's some weird chords in there in the beginning. And it's not like a a typical guitarist song, but it's a fantastic song. One of my favorite all time songs. Very sad song. And of course, the film was fantastic. And I sent Brian, or Candice sent him, an email from us saying it was just... I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. They were so different. At first, I didn't understand what they were about. Nor did Rory, who's spying on. So, this person said, "I've just had surgery on one of my feet. You could do the same and then come back on tour. I've seen Johnny Winter play blind and seated, and it was an amazing concert." Yep. Johnny Winter's a great guitar player. I don't play with my feet. It's not just my feet that I have a problem on tour with. I have a problem with my back, my heart, and my feet. And to go on tour at 81 is pushing it. And I don't really want to just sit down on stage, which I would have to do anyway. I'm kind of running out of energy a little bit, you know, when you play rock and roll, you got to have a lot of energy, but I tend to like sleeping a lot these days. Have you guys ever played with any of the German medieval bands? Yes, one of my biggest influences was Des Geyers Schwarzer Haufen, who introduced us to Renaissance medieval rock, medieval folk. Although David Munroe was really the first person that got me interested in Renaissance music. I love Renaissance music, if I'm in a bad mood, I'll often ask Candice to to play the shawm for me. That that brightens my day. For some reason, I'm hooked into shawms, crumhorns and the old instruments from the 1500s almost more than the guitar. Which is strange. When people say to me, "Have you heard so and so on the guitar? He's wonderful." I'm like, "Okay, great." Whereas if they say someone's plays with shawm, I'm a little bit more interested in hearing that shawm player and bagpipe player than I am a guitarist. I've heard a lot of guitarists. You've played with so many great musicians like yourself. Which do you think didn't get the recognition that they deserved? So many. My latest finding would be Trey Hensley. Have a listen to him. Monty Montgomery, all these players are hidden because they're usually from Tennessee and they play country, but I was brought up on country music way back when I was 15, 16. Albert Lee, when I first heard Albert Lee, fantastic. And, Chad Atkins, Jimmy Bryant, Speedy West. All these players I was very influenced by. They were very fast. But then as I got older around 25, I started to physically slow down. I wanted to play more meaningful notes slower. I didn't I wasn't caught up so much in speed as I was in the beginning back when I was in my teens. And of course, people like Dwayne, Eddie, Buddy Holly were my influences back when I was 13. Albert Lee was very, very good, Albert Lee was my favorite at the time. When I first saw him, I thought, "Oh my god, I'll never be that good." So, does that mean I should give up? Luckily, nobody else was that good. Is it true that Christopher Cross filled in for you in the 70s with Deep Purple? Apparently, so. What are your thoughts on Captain Beyond? Captain Beyond is Rod Evans band. Rod, very nice guy. He was our first singer and Deep Purple. He did Hush, very nice guy. And I met him the same time I met Ian Paice. They were in the same band called The Maze. Very good, but Rod was more of a ballad singer and we were looking for more of a hard rock singer. That's when we got Ian Gillan. And that trickling you hear now is my son in the [laughter] toilet. [gasps] Winter needs to say something on the microphone. [laughter] All right, we will sign off. All the best. All right, everyone. Thank you so much. © Igor's Rock Universe, YouTube - April 14, 2026