The band that shocked Ritchie Blackmore into silence: “Who the hell is that?”
Ritchie Blackmore is a guitarist who transcends both time and genre. Regardless of the style of music he wanted to create and how that impacted his guitar playing, he was always listening out for other pieces of music that could influence him. There was never a finishing point with Blackmore; he never reached a period in his life where he thought he had worked his playing style. Instead, he was always on the hunt for something new.
You can hear this in Deep Purple’s sound. The band started by trying to make music that was big and ready for stadiums. They did this by incorporating classic themes into their music, as Blackmore played riffs based on classical music and the band inserted string sections into some tracks. This worked well for them, but after a while, Blackmore wanted to make hard rock, which led to their famous album, In Rock.
“We were trying to find our way as a band, some sort of ‘category’,” explained Blackmore, “Jon [Lord] was into the classical stuff, and, although I love classical music, I wanted to follow up the Deep Purple album […] The last one with the original line-up, with something heavier, out-and-out rock. I said, ‘If that doesn’t work, let’s go back to playing with orchestras’.”
Deciding to go heavier was a good move for the band, as they made one of their most critically acclaimed albums. In Rock was a huge-sounding album, where each track flowed seamlessly into one another. It cemented Deep Purple as one of the best hard rock bands on the planet; however, even with this newfound legacy in the world of hard rock, there was one band that Blackmore heard and couldn’t believe how heavy they sounded.
“My biggest influences were Vanilla Fudge and Mountain,” he said, “Ian Paice and I were out for a drink in a bar in Germany, in 1970 I think it was, and we were pretty pleased with our record In Rock, and they were playing it. And then this other record came on, and we didn’t know who it was, but it was such an amazing, big, hard sound.”
Blackmore continued: “We looked at each other very nervously and thought, ‘Who the hell is that?’ We asked the DJ, and it was Mountain, with ‘Mississippi Queen’, and that thundered! We couldn’t speak because we didn’t know what to say. We thought, ‘Oh my god, that is one hell of a sound’.”
Ritchie Blackmore was fully enveloped in the world of hard rock and was considered one of the best guitarists in the genre. When he heard the lively sound of Mountain, he saw just how much depth there was within the style of hard rock and how much there was still for Deep Purple to tackle. If anything, hearing them inspired him a lot more to continue making great music.
