The guitarist who always impressed Ritchie Blackmore: “All because of him”
Few guitarists in the world of rock and roll can truly stand up and call themselves a pillar of the community. To pick up a six-string and wail is not enough to consider yourself an icon, and very few performers are able to complete the exercise. However, one man who is surely guaranteed his spot in the pantheon of rock’s finest guitarists is Ritchie Blackmore.
As the pivotal figure behind the heavy metal success of Deep Purple, as well as his own band Rainbow, Blackmore’s shadow has long loomed over the world of rock guitar. A fearsome player, he has rarely missed an opportunity to stand by his instrument with pride and proclaim himself one of the better players in the world. However, like any truly gifted musician, Blackmore recognises that he is still a student.
While it is important that some form of ego can drive one into the spotlight and then onwards to superstardom, it is just as vitally important that you are able to recognise the talent that surrounds you and, on a number of occasions, Blackmore has done just that. Speaking with International Musician, Blackmore once revealed his favourite guitarist of all time: “I like Jeff (Beck). He’s my favourite guitarist. There are a lot of guitarists around that get overlooked. When you’re a guitarist yourself you tend to get so buried in what you’re doing.”
He continued: “Being a guitarist, I obviously know a lot of tricks of the trade. But whenever I watch Beck, I think, ‘How the hell is he doing that?’ Echoes suddenly come from nowhere.” It is Beck’s versatility that truly inspired Blackmore: “He can play a very quiet passage with no sustain, and in the next second, suddenly race up the fingerboard with all this sustain coming out. He seems to have sustain completely at his fingertips. Yet he doesn’t have it all the time, only when he wants it”.
A guitarist very close to Beck, having both played with and endured an “uncomfortable rivalry” with him, Eric Clapton is often considered one of the finer performers in the British blues scene, and when Blackmore first met the guitarist he was blown away: “I remember Deep Purple was supporting Cream at the Forum in Los Angeles. Funny enough, in the front row I think was Jimi Hendrix and George Harrison sitting right there. Right in front of me, which was kind of strange. Before the show, I think Eric came into the dressing room I was in with Deep Purple. We never met formerly before, so we introduced each other, little bit of small talk.”
The meeting of two guitar heroes can often provide a frosty atmosphere, but Blackmore was in awe of the man: “I was always impressed with Eric’s; not only his ability to play brilliant guitar, but I loved his sound.” His adoration of his music would push Blackmore to change his own style.
Trying to figure out how Clapton achieved such a sound, Blackmore investigated and got the golden nugget of information he was looking for: “I loved the fat sound he got. So I was questioning him. I said: ‘What strings you were using when you first started playing?’ He said: ‘I was using Clifford Essex strings’. So I went: ‘Wow, Clifford Essex!’ Immediately after the meeting I got Clifford Essex strings, which I played for quite a while […] And all these strings I used for years — all because of him,” Blackmore confessed.
Many people do not achieve the status of pillar of the rock community, but the position of both Blackmore and Clapton as cornerstones is hard to ignore, even if, without the right strings and Clapton’s advice, Blackmore may never have achieved it.
