The band Ritchie Blackmore thought the world would be better without: “Abhorrent”
When you’ve been in the game as long as Ritchie Blackmore, speaking your honest views and opinions comes a bit easier – but it also helps if you’re already outspoken to begin with.
On top of this, if, like Blackmore, you had your start in an arena as cut-throat and competitive as rock can be, then it’s more likely that you’ll let slip a negative remark or two, especially when it comes to bands and artists that everybody seems to be loving and celebrating, and you can’t understand why.
For Blackmore, it often came down to this. Whenever he’d look at those around him, he saw imitation instead of innovation, and a lack of substance instead of talent or musical excellence. For instance, he once said that Cream’s only offering was imitating older blues styles and legends, and that he was never “knocked out” by Eric Clapton’s guitar playing.
He was also sceptical about The Rolling Stones for similar reasons, though his comments seemed far more charged with bitterness than they had been about Clapton, likely because The Stones were more forceful when it came to what it was that they were about – and Blackmore, as always, despised it when people were inauthentic and tried to pass off as things that they weren’t.
As is evidenced by his comments to Trouser Press in the 1970s, “The Stones? I considered them idiots. It was just a nick from Chuck Berry riffs. Chuck Berry was OK. Sometimes I’m outspoken, but I don’t have any time for The Stones. I can see why they’re respected, and their rhythms are very good, very steady on record. I respect them, but I don’t like them.”
On the punk scene, Blackmore once said he didn’t really buy into the whole idea because it seemed more like hype than good music and rallying cries for a better society. And when bands like The Police started to replace the rawer tropes of traditional rock ‘n’ roll like Deep Purple, Blackmore had something to say about that, too.
“I think it was on the first part of the tour, in Australia,” he said, recalling to Metal Hammer in 1987 why their reunion would succeed. “I suddenly realised that there was a gap for this type of music because only ZZ Top were doing that aggressive stuff.”
Adding, “Everyone was playing like The Police. And can I state here that I hate The Police? There just wasn’t a band playing that earthy kind of rock. Our music isn’t contrived, and there isn’t that sheen of gloss… As long as the world doesn’t need The Police, that’s all I care about.”
Somehow, it seemed that the two bands were fated to dismiss each other, especially when you consider that there was no active overlap between them, and that Sting delivered a similar review a few years earlier, telling Musician magazine that he “hated” bands like Deep Purple, and described them as “abhorrent”.
He said, “It was a very rich education which was totally outside of rock and roll. I wasn’t interested in rock’n’roll. The halcyon days for me to be interested in rock music were the early ’70s. I found the rock music of the time abhorrent. It was Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple – music I just hated.”
Evidently, their mutual dislike came down to differing tastes, with Blackmore preferring something harder and heavier that hinged on the more familiar pillars of traditional rock ‘n’ roll. Sting, on the other hand, never looked in that direction to begin with, instead preferring to explore his own diverse tastes to create something that existed solely in its own category.
