The group that Ritchie Blackmore was embarrassed to be a part of: “You learn by your mistakes”
Ritchie Blackmore is a great guitar player. Yeah, that’s a simple sentence, but it’s true, what more can I say?
The simple approach is something you could always associate with Blackmore, not necessarily when it came to his musicianship, but when it came to him as an individual. There was never any need to be flamboyant in how he dressed or acted, as he was happy to just let the music speak up for itself. Sometimes, in these instances, less is more, and that’s the effect that Blackmore managed to have.
Gene Simmons, arguably one of the most flamboyant and over-the-top musicians in the world, was a big fan of the way that Blackmore presented himself. He even went as far to say that Blackmore meant the world to him.
“To those of us who know, Ritchie Blackmore means the world, he’s got the goods,” said the Kiss bassist, “Ritchie Blackmore on stage sort of had the right thing that attracted our eyes because when people go to your concerts they listen with their eyes first, not so much the ears. That’s why visuals are so important, lights and all the rest of that. But Ritchie dressed in black and had the Strat, did all the physicality.”
Of course, while we can praise the mastery that Blackmore seems to have over both his playing style and how he looks, this wasn’t always the case. It takes a long time for a musician to truly find their style, and in the case of Blackmore, that meant trial and error with a few different bands, some of which had him do… questionable things… for the sake of their image.
Dressing up and standing out because of your attire wasn’t a new idea when one of Blackmore’s first bands started doing it. In fact, it was an idea he had seen done in practice before and quite enjoyed. So much so that their sound inspired some of Deep Purple’s earlier work.
“My interest in classical music overall is what led me in the direction of trying to combine blues, rock and classical ideas into the stylistic statement,” he said. “At the age of 15, I saw a band that did rocked-up classical tunes, called Nero and the Gladiators. They all wore togas, and you would think they must have looked really silly, but it worked.”
It seems that dressing up on stage was a popular trend surrounding Blackmore when he was growing up, as one of the earliest bands he was in wanted to do the same thing. It sounds good in theory, especially when it comes to making yourself stand out in a crowded market, but the end result was a band that Blackmore was deeply embarrassed to be a part of.
“[In] a couple of the bands I dressed up as a woman, but we won’t go into that,” he said, “I used to play on stage when I was 16, 17 […] We used to run on stage from the audiences as savages, we were called the Savages. So again, I was dressed up in a loin cloth and it was very embarrassing because back in those days I was very thin and very bony. The rest of the band were all built like, you know, muscle builders, so we’d run on stage and I’d always feel embarrassed because I had this little outfit on. But you learn by your mistakes.”
