“Never lost his edge”: Gene Simmons on rock ‘n’ roll’s most overlooked guitarist
Gene Simmons has had his bass chops questioned more times than Shaggy’s whereabouts. His rebuttal has always been an obvious and easy one: Kiss have sold more than 100 million records, they’re icons of rock ‘n’ roll, single-handedly helped to launch a new brand of mainstream shock rock, and his bass features heavily in everything they do. In short, he knows a thing or two about being overlooked yet highly influential.
However, he doesn’t know nearly as much as this next guy. Ritchie Blackmore might have redefined hard rock with Deep Purple, but he hasn’t drawn quite as many compliments as he has deserved. In part, this might be because he’s barely been complimentary to his peers in return. “I was impressed by Hendrix,” Ritchie Blackmore once said.
“His attitude was brilliant. Even the way he walked was amazing,” he added. However, the Deep Purple guitarist wasn’t impressed by much else. He openly said that he didn’t like The Rolling Stones, called Jeff Beck a guitar hero of his, but quickly followed with the backhand that he couldn’t write a song, and claimed that Jimmy Page was lacking when it came to improv. He’s barely even mentioned Kiss.
Simmons hasn’t minded, and he was happy to heap praise upon his overlooked hero. “In a lot of ways, it’s a little tragic that Ritchie didn’t stand up and shine the light on himself,“ he told The Ritchie Blackmore Story. “Which is why I’m happy to be here. He needs the light right on him. Because unlike many people he actually deserves it.”
As Brian May professed, ”He was such a trailblazer and technically incredible, unpredictable in every possible way which is great. I mean, that’s what you love, isn’t it?” But that pizzazz, that footloose nature and range of style has also, oddly, worked against Blackmore in the ‘acclaimed’ stakes. You have to listen to him a lot to fully revere his wide-ranging repertoire.
Thankfully, Simmons has always studied him. “You know, it bears noting that, for me, Ritchie Blackmore, unlike many guitar players, never lost his edge,“ he says. “‘Burn’ is every bit as important as ‘Space Truckin” and some of the later stuff. You can actually hear a guitar player at the top of his game.” In fact, he argues that his game has never faltered, he’s just changed his stance.
He even heralded a new brand of rock ‘n’ roll, and somewhere down the line, in a truly nebulous sense, you could argue that he is partly responsible for the new folk revival of the indie age thanks to the way he reappropriated the past. As Simmons explains: “When Ritchie plunged into medieval music it wasn’t so much as a surprise as a natural course of events. You know, there are people who enter this band thing for lots of different reasons. For money, for fame and for the chicks. It seems to me Ritchie Blackmore entered into this for the music.” Thus, he has never stopped exploring.
Needless to say, Blackmore likely doesn’t care one jot what Simmons thinks of him, and that is perhaps what makes him a great guitarist in the first place. It’s unlikely that Simmons cares anyway, either.
