Ritchie Blackmore quit classical music because he thought it was “too difficult” for him
Given Ritchie Blackmore‘s constant pursuit of perfectionism and refusal to do things any other way than his own, you’d think that he would be the sort of musician who exists without faults.
During his various stints with Deep Purple, Blackmore was often the one calling the shots and removing people from the band when they weren’t pulling their weight, and in instances where things were beyond him being able to repair, he would unceremoniously back out of the band. Given how there have been nine different incarnations of the group, it’s clear that there have been many times when Blackmore was dissatisfied with how things were going, and his precise methods were being jeopardised by the other musicians around him.
This did mean that when they were at their peak, they were one of the most untouchable hard rock bands on the circuit, but as we’ve mentioned, he could only do so much to rescue certain incarnations of the band from complete disaster, no matter how much influence or stake he had in the project.
It was Blackmore who introduced certain facets of their sound to the rest of the band in the first place, one of which was a love of classical music. This might not necessarily have always been related to their sound, but in terms of compositional elements, there were plenty of features, such as sprawling song structures that were borrowed heavily from Blackmore’s appreciation for classical music.
However, his relationship with the art form is a complex one, and he’s had plenty of ups and downs with this lifelong appreciation. As a young musician, he confesses that he found it tough to penetrate through and become accomplished at playing the pieces he was listening to, and during an interview with Fuzz in 1998, he spoke about how he had to eventually abandon any ideas of becoming a classical musician, and instead divert his focus elsewhere.
When asked if he had started out as a classical musician, he admitted: “I did, for about nine months to a year.” While this would have been a great place to start as a musician, he noted that things suddenly got significantly tougher for him to wrap his head around. “It got me off on the right foot, but I found it a little bit too boring,” he continued. “It’s also very difficult to play, some of that Segovia stuff – playing ‘Gavotte’ by Segovia was not music for me then. I got through the first page and I thought, ‘Mmm – that’s enough… it’s too difficult for me.’”
It is perhaps one of the most intricate forms of music, and while learning to play it isn’t the be-all and end-all, it’s certainly a good thing that he persisted with it from the angle of appreciating it and taking inspiration. Deep Purple may still have been an untouchable force in hard rock, but without the additional influence of classical music and Blackmore’s interest in composition, it would undoubtedly have sounded a lot different.
