The only musician Ritchie Blackmore was honoured to give his guitar up to: “It was very overwhelming”
It seems that at some point down the line, every artist, no matter what calibre or style, was influenced by The Beatles.
This is exactly why it’s a bit maddening when people come out with the old line that the Beatles are overrated. How can you really be overrated when almost everything in modern music – whether it’s the sound, the image, or the way it’s sold – traces back to you in some way? Their impact runs so deep that, whether you’re looking close to home or far afield, you’ll still spot traces of them everywhere in the industry.
Ozzy Osbourne put it best, saying that it wasn’t just The Beatles’ sound, but the way they opened up how good music could be. “When I heard the Beatles. I knew what I wanted to do,” said Osbourne. “My son says to me, Dad, I like the Beatles, but why do you go so crazy? The only way I can describe it, is like this, ‘Imagine you go to bed today and the world is black and white and then you wake up, and everything’s in colour. That’s what it was like!’ That’s the profound effect it had on me.”
Take a band like Deep Purple, for instance. They’re hardly behemoths within the world of pop music, and you can’t draw loads of parallels between the two bands, but there is no escaping the fact that Deep Purple wouldn’t exist without the impact of The Beatles. While their specific sound was largely influenced by the likes of Mountain and Jimi Hendrix, their initial love for music was the by-product of the Fab Four.
The music Deep Purple wound up making didn’t particularly resonate with The Beatles. George Harrison, for instance, wasn’t aware of a great deal of their music, given he didn’t have much of an appetite for hard rock.
“They live near me. I’ve known them now for probably 8, 9 years,” said Harrison, “Yet they were so famous in the 70s, I got to know them in the period after they broken up before they reformed. So I never knew their music. I mean, I heard this one thing about ‘Smoke On The Water’ or something like that. I’ve actually never seen them.”
Of course, that attitude wasn’t reciprocated. Despite The Beatles not making the kind of music Deep Purple became famous for, Ritchie Blackmore was never shy about admitting how much of a big fan of them he was. He particularly loved the guitar work of George Harrison, which was often overlooked in the grand scheme of the Beatles, but really is something to be marvelled at.
“I mean, there will never be another band like The Beatles. (They) early stuff, I absolutely love, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, ‘From Me To You’, that stuff,” said Blackmore, “These simple melodies were fantastic. George was very modest, a very quiet man.”
Blackmore was such a fan that he was even willing to give up his guitar for Harrison. After playing a gig in Australia, Harrison asked if he could go up and play something, and Blackmore was more than happy to oblige.
“He was over in Australia when we were there as Deep Purple and he said to me, very politely, ‘Can I get up on stage with you and use your guitar?’ I said: ‘Of course!’ I was flattered!” recalled the Deep Purple guitarist, “Sure enough we all got up on stage and we did the old Rock and Roll number… (plays his acoustic guitar to remember which song it was). It was ‘Lucille’ by Little Richard, not played as badly as that. We had a good time, he was a very nice man. Very serious and very complimentary. It was very overwhelming to play with a Beatle.”
