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One of rock’s great unfinished stories
Ultimate Guitar publishes an article by Greg Prato on the “Tommy Bolin dilemma”:
When Tommy Bolin stepped into the James Gang, he was replacing Domenic Troiano and, previously, Joe Walsh. When he later joined Deep Purple, he was replacing Ritchie Blackmore. Two wildly different guitarists, two established legacies, and Bolin was expected to fill both without missing a step.
What made Bolin’s path unique is that he didn’t approach either role as a continuation of what came before. Rather than mimic Walsh’s laid-back, groove-driven style or Blackmore’s classically influenced precision, Bolin leaned into a fluid, genre-blurring approach that pulled from jazz, funk, Latin rhythms, and straight-ahead rock. And this was evident throughout the two studio albums Bolin appeared on with the James Gang (1973’s “Bang” and 1974’s “Miami”), as well as the lone studio offering he appeared on with Deep Purple (1975’s “Come Taste the Band”).
That instinctive, open-ended style reshaped the bands around him as much as it defined his own voice. In the James Gang, it marked a return to a heavier, more direct rock feel; in Deep Purple, it pushed the group into unfamiliar territory, adding color and looseness to a band previously rooted in structure and precision. Bolin wasn’t trying to outdo the players who came before him—he was rewriting the role entirely, even if audiences and expectations hadn’t quite caught up yet.
Continue reading in Ultimate Guitar.
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