The song that rendered Ritchie Blackmore speechless: “Such an amazing, big, hard sound”
Ritchie Blackmore has spent the majority of his life directly in the eye of the rock and roll storm, performing alongside a litany of iconic names, lending his own talents to a plethora of legendary records, and generally living the kind of hedonistic lifestyle that the world has come to expect from its rock stars.
In other words, there isn’t much that the guitarist hasn’t seen.
Entering the rock world during one of its most prolific eras, joining the likes of Jimmy Page as one of the most sought-after session guitarists of the 1960s, Blackmore already boasted an extensive knowledge of the music world before even joining the ranks of hard rock progenitors Deep Purple.
Whether it was performing for German pop alien Heinz or lending his six-stringed mastery to the visceral rock theatrics of Screaming Lord Sutch, Blackmore did it all, becoming a hardened rock and roll veteran in the process. Then, during the momentous rise, fall, and subsequent rise of Deep Purple, Blackmore got the chance to immerse himself in all the hedonistic fruits that the rock scene of the early 1970s had to offer, rendering himself somewhat jaded in the process.
Nevertheless, in the wake of what would come to be viewed as Blackmore’s magnum opus, Deep Purple In Rock, the guitarist encountered a song that would completely change his understanding and enjoyment of his fellow hard rock masters. “I remember Ian Paice and I were out for a drink in a bar in Germany, in 1970 I think it was,” he once recalled to Newsweek. “We were pretty pleased with our record In Rock, and they were playing it.”
Inevitably, when presented with free rein of a bar, Blackmore and the Deep Purple drummer ended up staying at that particular venue long after In Rock had clicked into the dead wax. Eventually, that led them to – perish the thought – hearing music by other bands.
“This other record came on. We didn’t know who it was,” the guitarist continued, “But it was such an amazing, big, hard sound. We looked at each other very nervously and thought, ‘Who the hell is that?’” Fortunately, the pair weren’t so inebriated that they were unable to find the answer to that question.
“We asked the DJ and it was Mountain, with ‘Mississippi Queen,’” he said. “And that thundered! We couldn’t speak because we didn’t know what to say. We thought, ‘Oh, my God, that is one hell of a sound.’”
Blackmore wasn’t alone in that astonishment, either. ‘Mississippi Queen’ blew open the doors for countless future hard rock outfits, and arguably made Mountain one of the greatest one-hit wonders of that particular era in rock. Its awe-inspiringly heavy sound and driving riff rivalled any and every other rock outfit of the early 1970s, Deep Purple certainly included.
It doesn’t take much of a stretch, in fact, to hear the lineage of ‘Mississippi Queen’ on some of Blackmore’s later work, both with the Purple and during his later exploits with Rainbow. Mountain themselves might never have struck upon the same stature as either of those outfits, struggling to create a follow-up to that masterful single, but they still had an inarguable impact on the wider scene, and Ritchie Blackmore in particular.
