Ritchie Blackmore speaks to Michael Hann about the inspirational nature of Tommy Steele, playing badly on purpose and why he prefers the sackbut, the crumhorn, the shawm, the hurdy gurdy & mandola to the lute….
some snippets include
Do you have a favourite era of Rainbow?
RB: I liked right in the beginning, with Ronnie Dio and myself for the first year. I also liked the American era [in the 1980s] of songs like ‘Stone Cold’ and ‘Street of Dreams’. Around the Long Live Rock ’n’ Roll era [in 1978], it was getting very tense. We were in a French chateau, all living together, and everybody was beginning to hate each other. You go through these periods of being with the same people for so long that their idiosyncrasies get magnified, including my own. It’s a bit like being married – it’s hard to keep it all together. And I’ve noticed that a lot of bands, even the people I look up to, can only take so long before they change and go somewhere else.
Do you still feel as good a rock guitarist after the years not doing rock music?
RB: That’s a good point, because I’d adopted a different style with the renaissance thing. I play finger style, for probably four hours sometimes, and with rock & roll, I play with a plectrum, and my right-hand technique seems to have suffered a bit. I notice that I’ll go to play something and I’m not as fluid as I should be, until I’ve had a few drinks, of course. But it does interfere with the rigid plectrum style: if you’re playing with all your fingers on the right hand, that particular plectrum style is totally different, it’s just a thumb and finger. And so I’ve noticed that it takes me sometimes 15, 20 minutes to get into the flow of playing with a plectrum again.
Do you think of yourself as a bandleader or a writer or a player, principally?
RB: Obviously I’ve become a so-called bandleader now, but I did like the days when I could just hide behind the leader of the band and say it was all his fault. Now, of course, it’s all my fault. I think all three, really. It depends what kind of frame of mind I’m in at the time, because I’ve never quite figured out what the hell I am doing. One of the reasons I took up the guitar was I didn’t want to speak to anybody. I really felt uncomfortable speaking to people, so I took the guitar up so I could hide behind it. I’m not comfortable explaining things, because my brain doesn’t work that way;.
This past Sunday evening June 25th I had the good fortune to see Ritchie and his band perform at the Hydro SSE Arena in Glasgow, Scotland.
I estimated the crowd size to be about 6000 to 7000 or so. When the lights went down we could hear the first strains of Land of Hope and Glory through the cheers. However when a flying Union Jack appeared on the stage’s video screen, the local crowd seemed to become a bit more subdued, and even a few boos could be heard.
After Somewhere Over the Rainbow, all seemed forgiven once the band jumped into Spotlight Kid.
The band then settled into I Surrender with a quite nice solo by Ritchie.
Next up was Mistreated, with strong vocals by Ronnie Romero and a gorgeous bluesy solo by Ritchie with some renaissance / medieval flourishes (I noticed lots of Blackmore’s Night style trilling and arpeggios in Ritchie’s playing throughout the evening). On Since You’ve Been Gone the crowd was really into it, singing right along with Ronnie R. That song then blended seamlessly into Man on the Silver Mountain. From my vantage point I could see Ritchie smiling a lot – he seemed very happy all evening.
Ritchie played a very nice extended solo on Sixteenth Century Greensleeves, very melodic. Ritchie may not be the “speed demon” he once was, but he put every note exactly in its right place, no noodling, just tasty, classy improvisation to enhance each song. And the band seemed quite tight on this evening, more so that I can recall from the Memories of Rock CDs of the Germany 2016 performances.
On with the show; Ritchie brought out an acoustic guitar and sat down to play a beautiful version of Soldier of Fortune. Then came Perfect Strangers which was nicely done, but I felt it sounded as if it was missing something…perhaps I am more accustomed to hearing the fuller-sounding version played by the Morse-led Purps. Difficult to Cure demonstrated that Ritchie can still play with considerable speed. What kind of slowed down the momentum of the concert was a quite long and somewhat plodding keyboard solo by Jens Johansson. It was well played with great skill but it was very down-tempo and lengthy to the point that some in the audience started to get restless. Ritchie came back in to save the song and then jumped into All Night Long which brought the crowd back onside.
The two big highlights of the evening were Child in Time and Stargazer. On the former, Ritchie showed how nimble he can still be on the fretboard. On the latter he produced a very nice, hypnotic middle-eastern-tinged solo. Nice work on the vocals by Ronnie too. Both songs got huge appreciative responses from the audience. Afterwards it was Long Live Rock and Roll, Burn, and the closer – Black Night complete with a drum solo. After very brief interlude came the encore songs: Temple of the King, and finally, Smoke on the Water. At the end lots of smiles and waves from Ritchie. Candice came out too to take a bow along with the band.
Rainbow’s concert run time was about 2 hours. A total of 17 songs in all, 10 Rainbow and 7 Deep Purple ones. The sound was very good and as such I am hopeful that a CD of the show might be released in future.
Gary Halverson
The media blitz continues, this time it’s the turn of Don Airey to be interviewed by Rockpages.gr.
On Blackmore
Rockpages.gr: Do you think that will ever be a chance that the guys would bury the hatchet and Ritchie of course and play all of them together? Even if it’s for one show?
Don Airey: No! I doubt it. I don’t think it will ever happen. Not because of any ranker… it’s just the practicalities of it. I mean we’ve got a band here that’s called Deep Purple and that’s the band. It takes enough to put all that together and having to deal with getting other guys involved, having a lot of musicians on stage.
On Future of music
I thought when I went to see Sabbath’s last concert at Birmingham that I was very aware that I wasn’t going to see anything like that anymore in my life. Because, somebody like Tony Iommi makes it look easy and Geezer… they make it look very easy, but it’s really very difficult. I think people have changed, they are so obsessed with themselves. They are not bothered about other people and one of the things about being in a band is care about the people you are playing with and what they are playing. I see it a lot when I go to jam sessions. People, young players are getting up and they just playing without any regard about the people around them. They are into their own little world kind of thing. Ozzy said “music is dead”. He doesn’t think there is anything any good anymore.
On The last album
Rockpages.gr: When you are making an album that might be your last one, what is your mentality? What are you thinking about? Do you think that if that’s your last one then it should be a great one?
Don Airey: I am thinking… B flat to D and there’s 8 bars in A… hehehe… A Major… I’ve got to play this part with Steve… how are we going to end this track? That’s what you think about. You don’t think big picture, you think small picture. Young groups ask me for advice… what should we do? And I say: “just make sure that the bridge is really the best on you can do and the ending is good and that it hangs together as a piece of music”… that’s what you concern about. Because the hardest part in being is the music business is music. Trying to get that right. If you get the music right then the rest comes out easy.
A few days ago in Rome Ian Gillan was interviewed on the local Radio Rock station.
And the whole show can be heard on the link below, mostly in Italian excepting IG’s answers.
For those on Facebook (isn’t EVERYONE?) you can access their page and view more pictures and video of the day.
The ARTE channel in France have posted some footage of this years Hellfest festival, including from around the 22 minute mark Smoke on the Water and Uncommon Man from DP’s set.
A further longer show, approx. 1 hour, of the Deep Purple set is due to be aired in July for those with access to a European satellite feed.
A lengthy, technical at times, and very interesting interview with Steve Morse has appeared on the website of Ultimate Guitar.
UG: What’s the Purple album and solo you’re most proud of?
Steve: I don’t know. I don’t dwell too much on the albums or the solos. In a way it’s like children you give up for adoption. You love ‘em and you’ve been waiting for them to have their life but once they’re on their own, you can’t do anything more with ‘em, hahaha. They’re done. But I think Purpendicular was magic because it was the newness of being in the band and there were the most question marks. Like, “What’s it gonna be like? What’s gonna happen?”
UG: Nothing ever compares to the first time.
Steve: There’s a song called “Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming” and it was so far out of left field because it was something I was practicing as a little guitar thing and not as a Deep Purple idea. Jon heard it and we went from there and he was like, “Let’s take this further. Let’s modulate and change this” and that was really cool.
UG: Do you remember the first time you heard Purple?
Steve: I heard “Hush” and living in the South at that time, we heard the original version of “Hush” too [by Joe South]. That was when they had Rod Evans singing and he sounds more like a pop singer and it didn’t hit me until the organ and Ritchie’s happened and that it was like, “Oh, OK. Cool. This is a heavy version of it.”
UG: Had you done Purple songs in cover bands?
Steve: Oh, yeah. We were jamming on “Hush” the minute it came out. Of course, I paid for my first car by playing “Smoke On the Water” in cover bands.
UG: Have you ever picked up another guitar like a Strat or a Les Paul?
Steve: Actually, I pick up a Les Paul from time to time. Bob’s got his favorite Les Paul that he’s convinced has to be on every record so we double some parts with that but it’s generally like power chords. As long as he knows it’s there, he’s happy.
UG: You’ve just described your live sound and your guitars. Achieving a great guitar sound is really a lifetime pursuit, right?
Steve: Yeah. I try to play to the vision too. For instance, I’m always doing little subtle things that no one would notice but it does make a difference. When Ian starts singing a verse and there’s a big chord, I’ll hit the big chord then roll off the tone control on the next drum beat or the next snare beat. What that does is give him a lot of top end to sing over and makes me a little less obvious in the mix. When I’m doing a line I’m trying to bring out, I push down on the pedal for the short delay so it’s suddenly coming through two amps in what sounds like a stereo chorus. When you have one dry and one modulated, that’s basically the way the old Roland Choruses [amps] were. They were stereo: one was straight and one was modulated. Your ears hear it as stereo.
UG: These are effects you would do on the fly while recording the track?
Steve: Yes and sometimes it annoys the engineers because they think they have to do everything like you can’t fade out your own chords because they want to fade it out in the rare event they get that way. But in general they like if I shape the tone and do it the way I do it because that way there’s one less decision.
UG: That would absolutely make an engineer’s life easier.
Steve: Also with the long airy delays when I’m hitting a clean chord, I’ll push down the long delay and I can make it stop instantly when the next bar comes.
Deep Purple live at Graspop Metal Meeting (Dessel, Belgium 2017-06-17)
I was on saturday 17th of june in Dessel at the Graspop Metal Meeting & I saw once again Deep Purple as Headliner of the day. No doubt about it, it was a fabulous GIG. I saw Purple many times but this time it was extra ordinary! OK, we can discuss about the setlist but for me one thing is very clear, Deep Purple is awesome! With their ages , they blow still everyone away.
Also the press is very possitive “oldies but goldies”. If this was the last concert in Belgium, well this was really a great one!
But with the energy & the technologie they plaid, I can hardly belief that they will stop playing.
It’s impossible to belief but these guys are so good & their smiles are so great…go to see them, it’s unbeliefable but thrue!
Deep Purple live at Schleyerhalle (Stuttgart, Germany 2017-06-14)
Here we go again …Stuttgart, Schleyerhalle. MONSTER TRUCK were one of the better guests Purple had during the years as far as we were concerned. Us being the girl and me and two of our boys, 16 and 10 years old, that are really in DP (and were lucky enough to catch a drum stick from Ian Paice each – but after a PURPENDICULAR-show earlier in the year, where Ian signed booklets and was kind enough to chat and have a pic taken. They are so proud…) Back to Stuttgart: Purple started in time and with a powerful 4-pack of Bedlam, Fireball, Bloodsucker, Strange Kind of Woman. I could easyly do without the last one for years now, but have to say, this time it was special. Ian Gillan started a rap at the end, talking to Steve at the speed of light and being very funny, well the bits I could understand at least. Just when you were tempted to think “clever move, he just can not do the call and reaponse bit with the screaming and all anymore …Ian screamed. And man did he scream! Just as if to show ’em … and show ’em he did! Oooh my soul, I love you baby! Yep.
Don Airey was very much in the front throughout the whole show and I wonder if he covers up a bit for Steve Morse who has reportedly issues with his right hand. Steve’s playing was flawless though (even with a broken string for the encore of Black Night). And I for one did not mind they dropped Contact Lost after all those years ….
Of course I would have loved to hear even more new stuff or some rather obscure songs but that’s just me being very picky, given the fact they played 4 songs from Infinite and even 2 songs from What Now. And as a matter of fact folks yelled and danced to the classics so the band may hardly see a reason to change the old homerun we’re all used to: Perfect Strangers, Space Trucking, Smoke on the Water, Hush (with an opening of Peter Gunn this time) and Black Night. A pity they did not add Roadhouse Blues to the shuffle of Black NIght (as coverband PURPENDICULAR did – and that was were Ian Paice got the idea to cover the song from) but as lots of people on the net put down Purple’s go at the classic the band might not have been very encouraged to do so …
The new stuff sure was impressive and sounded well rehearsed and went smoothly. It fitted in better than the songs from Now What did on the last tour, I’d say. Maybe that’s because I like Infinite much better anyway. Jonny’s Band and especially The Surprising were great additions to the set. Birds of Prey has never been my favourite despite many people singing it’s praise but came across very good here. I would have loved to see Top of the World or One Night in Vegas (grooves like Ted, doesn’t it) played but you can’t have it all. It is nothing short of breathtaking at times how the band manages to squeeze something fresh from every single tune they play at every single show they play – so hats off!
The last few days of the European tour are upon us, and in Germany the media bandwagon has been rolling on, with many interviews being broadcast and published.
According to a post on the Manchester Arena The Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow show on 22nd June will not now go ahead.
Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow
Promoter statement
Following last month’s tragic incident and the subsequent temporary closure of the main area outside the venue, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow show on Thursday 22 June 2017 is unfortunately no longer able to take place at Manchester Arena.
Other shows on Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow tour are not affected and will continue as planned, including London’s The O2 (Stone Free Festival) on Sat 17 June, Glasgow The SSE Hydro on Sun 25 June and Birmingham Genting Arena on Wed 28 June.
From Rainbow – “Ritchie, all band members and management are sorry that this tragedy has occurred. Our heartfelt sympathy to all victims and everyone in Manchester”.
Posted in News by The Spanish Archer on 2017-06-14 6 Comments
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