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Too busy practicing, or thinking

Here is an interview with Ritchie Blackmore circa 1983, taken from an unidentified source. In this fascinating archival interview, legendary guitarist Ritchie Blackmore talks about his life and career, including his early beginnings, session work, forming and working with Deep Purple, the creation of his own band Rainbow, and his work with Ronnie James Dio. […]

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Knocking off beers in the dressing room

Craig Goldy recalls his interactions with his guitar hero Ritchie Blackmore when Giuffria was opening for Deep Purple on the Perfect Strangers tour

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Screener of the auras

This mini-documentary about the death of Randy Rhoads has an amusing Blackmore hearsay appearance, with his alleged premonition of the tragedy.

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An owl meeting a bumblebee in mid-flight

Guitar Player has an undated interview with Ritchie Blackmore, where he discusses searching for the perfect guitar tone back in the day. “It’s interesting to note that Jim Marshall didn’t know much about amplifiers,” Ritchie Blackmore says. “And yet he knew how to design something that caught on like crazy. This is a similar situation […]

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Live Archive 1975

Another batch of historic Deep Purple bootlegs have been digitally released through official channels. This one includes two Mark 3 performances from Copenhagen (March 20) and Gothenburg (March 21), and three from Mark 4: Auckland (November 13), Melbourne (November 25), and Nagoya (December 8). That’s 77 tracks in total. They are available on streaming platforms […]

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Rather they bought it than stole

Jon Lord promoting his then new album Beyond the Notes on a German TV morning show. This happened on September 23, 2004.

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Insecurities and more insecurities

Guitar Player has an article on Ritchie Blackmore based on an interview he gave to the paper version of the magazine circa 1996. That relentless, almost surgical pursuit of perfection was felt far beyond his own ranks; it reverberated through the generation of electric guitar players raised on his records. As Billy Corgan of the […]

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The rubble moved

In this collection of bite-sized memoirs, Ritchie Blackmore talks about the earliest days of Deep Purple: meeting Derek Lawrence, signing an unfavourable contract, covering Hush, and 16 telegrams from Chris Curtis.

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Purpendicular at 30

Purpendicular holds a special place in our hearts, as its release and events leading to it coincided with the formation of the online community that had founded this website and still runs it to this day. It is also one of the seminal albums in the history of the band — alongside with In Rock, […]

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Artwoods: Live at Klooks Kleek

From the letters to our better-late-then-never desk, we are glad to present you an actually pretty decent quality recording of the two early Artwoods performances from 1964, featuring Jon Lord. It apparently came out a few years ago: in 2016 on vinyl, and in 2023 on CD and digital. The latter are available via Amazon, […]

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||||Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
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