Why Ritchie Blackmore ended up hating Deep Purple
There’s a relatively tired and clichéd adage that children often get told in primary school that tells you ‘if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all’. It’s sage advice for sure and probably helps youngsters develop better social skills and relationships with their peers, but when it comes to being in close quarters with someone you actively resent for long periods of time, those words can quite suddenly become hard to live by. Many rock groups have collapsed or lost members over the years due to in-fighting and legendary slanging matches, and Deep Purple were certainly no strangers to this situation.
At the heart of this was guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, whose fiery personality caused a number of tensions among the group over the years, with him often being the root cause of members’ departures. Ian Gillan and Roger Glover both left the band at the end of what would be referred to as Mark II of the group, which many regard as being the band’s classic lineup that also featured Blackmore, Ian Paice and Jon Lord.
This was largely down to the decision of Blackmore, who had seen his relationship with both members become fractured over the previous few albums, and he would soon settle on bringing in new bassist Glenn Hughes and vocalist David Coverdale, who added a far more soulful edge to the band. However, it wouldn’t be long until Blackmore got fed up with the sound that they had shifted towards, with the straw that broke the camel’s back being the release of 1974’s Stormbringer.
Glenn Hughes recalled in a Metal Evolution documentary that “by the time we were making Stormbringer, Ritchie had already got in his head that he wanted to start making Bach-influenced medieval music,” which is evidently a far cry from the funk sounds that the band were exploring at the time. His distaste for the direction in which they had moved was what caused him to depart the band and form Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio.
It was evident that things had always previously operated on a basis of ‘Ritchie’s way or no way at all’, but this Mark III era that he had attempted to create for the band was such a drastic misfire on his part that he was forced to accept his error and leave the band to be able to get his own way on this occasion. Rainbow was what he wanted to do, and he would spend nine years with the band on their initial run, despite things getting off to a shaky start when bassist Jimmy Bain made the mistake of showing up in Blackmore’s presence in a Stormbringer T-shirt.
Deep Purple’s fourth incarnation didn’t last long at all, with the band breaking up entirely in 1976, only two years after Blackmore’s departure. While he might have been a controversial figure in the band and one with a hot temper, he was clearly what made the rest of the group click, and he had unbelievable chemistry with his bandmates during the early ‘70s.
The initial split of Rainbow led to the Mark II incarnation of Deep Purple reuniting for a short period, although it didn’t quite have the same magic as beforehand. Despite that, the brief window of acclaim that that version of the band had on their first run is still heralded as a creative period that helped shape the emergence of hard rock and heavy metal at the beginning of the ‘70s.
