[ OPENS WITH SHORT INTRODUCTION AND DREAM THEATER VERSION OF PERFECT STRANGERS ]
KF (Klaus Fleming): The first interview was cancelled because Ritchie had to go to the dentist. So the first question is: Ritchie, you don't have dentures yet?
RB: No, not yet. Haha
KF: What reasons led to the re-forming of Rainbow?
RB: I think I wanted to get back to the music I was doing when I first formed Rainbow. So I just got togetger a group of guys I thought could do the job very well, and I was very unhappy with what I was doing in the Deep Purple setup. That's the basics of why I put it all back together again.
KF: Did you feel that in your point of view Deep Purple did not develop any more?
RB: Yes and no. It was kind of very restricting, I felt personally, with the Deep Purple line-up, especially in the vocal department. That was my big problem. The rest of them are very good musicians. But it's not so much you can do if one can't sing.
KF: How about otherwise, do you think that Deep Purple had become a touring jukebox which always played the same songs and a couple of new ones from the latest album? Were you bored of the old songs and playing them? Many of them were 25 years old?
RB: Yes, it was a travelling circus actually. It was just not working. I had been with the group for quite a while and it was time to do something different for change. Not so much with the tunes, they were OK. I got fed up with the amateurish approach doing tunes from again the vocalist area. I think the band was very professional and they always played very well. But my big problem was with the vocalist. Forgetting words, singing out of tune, not caring about what the people heard. That really bothered me.
[TOO LATE FOR TEARS]
KF: This new RB's Rainbow consist of very unknown artists - the maestro excluded. Was this on purpose, or did you ever think about using old friends' musical services?
RB: Yes it was... I thought about the old guys, but not for more than a couple of seconds because every person that I ever worked with, I felt I've done as much I can do with them in that style. Ronnie Dio was very good vocalist but he is very limited in the other styles I wanted the singer singing. So I didn't approach to him and someone said the other day Joe Lynn Turner. Joe is very good but I think he's having problems at the moment with his voice. So I didn't approach him.
I wanted someone to have combine maybe Ronnie Dio with Joe Lynn Turner and more bluesy kind of voice, like Paul Rogers type thing too. That's why I got Doogie. I thought he can do all three. And I do like working with people that are unknown, because it's a kind of going against the system.
A lot of people like to pick someone who's safe and known to be a good player or good person but I like to take a chance with the new people. I also like the enthusiasm, I like the new blood in the band and it's great touring and being around guys haven't done it for a long time and they haven't become bitter and they are still enthusiastic and fresh. [One sentence missing] That robs[?] of all that enthusiasm that they have for touring and being in the studio. Whereas if I'm with professionals that have done it all before it tends to be a little bit boring.
KF: Ritchie, it seems like you've gotten to do what you really want in the new STRANGER IN US ALL album because the guitar plays major part in it?
RB: Yes. That was to be quite honest I have a tendency of writing a song and writing a riff, hearing that it's going well and then I'll do it in the studio and I tend to walk away from it because I get bored. I think that the fact that guitar is up in the mix is more to the producer. The producer was told by the record company they wanted more guitar. Because I said to the record company, well I want to split the guitar with the keyboards and they say no, you have your name on it so we want more guitar. So the producer was very well aware that he had to make the guitar louder.
KF: How would you characterise changes in your playing during the years and decades? In the early Purple days your sound was quite raw and compared to that the current sound is much more sophisticated.
RB: I suppose it has matured over the years and playing as long as I have you can't help getting a little bit better, I'm playing better now. But my actual style is probably not rock 'n' roll. My personal likes are renaissance music and older music and I tend to play that on the acoustic and around the house. When I'm on stage I'm playing rock 'n' roll but that's not my first love. It's something I do and I like to play but it is... I also like as much playing renaissance music. So maybe that as you said that slight sophistication comes through on the rock 'n' roll side because I have tendency of ... I find it very difficult to play straightforward 12-bar headbanging song if it didn't have a good melody or some sort of hook. I find it very difficult relating to just plugging in the guitar and playing as loud as I can. Maybe I kind of enjoyed that thirty years ago but not now.
KF: In the song Black Masquerade you play a kind of a gypsy styled piece of solo with acoustic.
RB: That was inspired, that style of playing again from the 1600's. Listening to lot of renaissance and medieval music I listened to more gypsy music. I threw that in as a taster because my next project will be a lot more of that romantic gypsy style that I'll be doing in about three months time. It not much solo again. It's myself with people playing more folk renaissance music. Most of it will be acoustic guitar. I have already written about eight songs for that but it's taken from airs and leads[?] from 1500's changed into a new age kind of music.
KF: So there are gonna be vocals?
RB: Yes, there will be vocals. My fiancee will be singing. She's on the LP too.
[HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING]
KF: There is no mention that the song Hall of the Mountain King is based on the tune by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. So maybe you should be a little bit careful when you are visiting Norway next time.
RB: Haha. No, it should have been credited to him actually, that 's very strange. It must have been [...] on the side because everybody know that it was Grieg. I think the reason I played that was because it was an old tune that I had playing around for a long time and I've always wanted to do that as a vocal. It was a chancy[?] thing to do because everybody knows the melody that I found so exciting and it was worth doing and so we did it. And to me it is probably my favourite track on the LP. I think it has a lot of excitement. It's not that difficult to play but sometimes things don't have to be that difficult to be exciting.
KF: [Not to Ritchie] There is also another familiar song on the album, Still I'm Sad. According to Ritchie it should have been as a bonus track on the Japanese release but for some reason the bonus track is actually a song called Emotional Crime which is missing from the European release.
KF: The song Too Late for Tears sounds quite much as Can't Happen Here and for the song Silence the theme from TV-series Man with the Golden Arm is borrowed. And the song starts as an old Purple song You Fool No One. Well, you did not fool me.
RB: That's right. I think that in music it tends to go around circles and sometimes I play something not even knowing that I've done it before. Or sometimes I play something I'm very well aware of but I like so much at the time it can be redone with slightly different angle. So with that one I was well aware of that was similar to Can't Happen Here but I liked the tune so much I thought it was very valid. So if I thought the tune was just a rip-off of Can't Happen Here I wouldn't have done it. But I thought it was valid. So take a little bit of one tune. Because as we were playing I said: "Well this is a bit like Can't Happen Here" and someone said in the band: "What are you gonna do. Sue yourself?" And I said: "Okay, all right"
KF: These Rainbow line-ups used to change very often. Are you satisfied with the current group?
RB: Yes. This week.
KF: Your long-time co-worker basist Roger Glover characterise you some time ago as a person who demands a lot from everybody in the band, but most from himself. Do you recognise yourself from this description, Ritchie?
RB: Yes, that's true and it gives me no end of problems because I find myself very unsatisfied with a lot of music that I play. So in the end I tend a kind of either walk away from the music or throw my hands up and say it's not working and then somebody finishes the project. Or I change it around. I tend to change things. When I'm on the recording mood I have a bad habit getting very bored quickly. So, within ten minutes of writing something I keep changing it and much to the consternation of the other members who have to keep re-learning the same song and I play it different way. But that's true... I'm kind of demanding in the studio. And he is right in a way about, yes, I can be very easy to work with but other times it depends on my moods. I have my moods where I'm not feeling that enthusiastic so I can't fake it. I tend to be how I feel.
KF: Press has sometimes said that you are gloomy and mystic guy.
RB: Yes, I feel comfortable with the mystic and the moodiness because it's very, very true. I have lots of moods. And the mystical side, I find life full of mystery. I'm attracted to mysterious things. Part of my life is being involved in the mystery of psychic phenomenon and communication, re-incarnation. That is part of me so I don't take that in derogatory sense. A lot of people might think, I would not like to be called this. But I kind of realise that and I'm [...] more serious mystical negative things. I don't like to be called nasty or some other things that have been said about me which are not true.
KF: In the picture from you in the Stranger In Us All album you look like, well not actually nasty but somehow like you would like to murder someone.
RB: I think that's a ... ah, maybe it's the hat. It could be the hat. But I have one of those faces that just looks, my father has a same type of face, even when we are very happy we look annoyed. So I think as a child I was always been told: what's wrong with you, you don't look very happy. And I would be very happy or content. After a while you tend to get fed up with that and I thought maybe I'll play on this angle and I'll just be... I'll kind of make up my mind and I'm gonna be mad and just go along with it. Because someone's going to say I'll look angry anyway so be angry. It's strange, my face when it's relaxed, which is not very often, it comes across like I'm in a bad mood.
KF: Is there some symbolism on the cover of Stranger In Us All, because on it Ritchie Blackmore standing backwards looks like a scarecrow? In other words, because the title of the album tells that there is something strange in us all, have you found a scarecrow inside of you?
RB: Yes. The picture was taken of me from the back. And I just thought it might look good thing in the film because of the cloud formation, I love landscapes. And it came out well. But scarecrows are part of my life. I find a great deal of fascination with scarecrows. And I've seen a couple of films which have left a mark on me about scarecrows. I don't know what they are called but one was about a scarecrow with a lookout of smugglers. And it was actually a real person as a lookout who is pretending to be a scarecrow until the police would run after smugglers shot, shot the scarecrow because he thought it moved and then there was blood. When they got to the scarecrow there was blood on the floor. But it was still the scarecrow.
KF: But Ritchie, you have given very few interviews during the last decade. Have you thought that it is difficult for you to explain your music with words?
RB: Yes, it has been because my moods change and sometimes... I don't like to put the interviewer in the position of turning up to do an interview and suddenly I'll say I really don't feel like doing it today. And I find music very difficult to talk about sometimes and that's I'm in the mood to talk about it. It has to be again that right mood. If I'm in the band I don't like to put them in the position of where the band is let down by me because I'm not in the mood to do an interview. And if I say I will do one and then I don't it puts them in a bad like. That was one of my considerations all along with interviews because I don't get off on talking about myself and what I'm doing too much. I tend just watch and I rather talk about other things. There are lot of people in this business who like to talk about themselves, what they've done, and their tour and upcoming LP. And I find it's all been done, it's all a little bit predictable. [...] and another is I don't like to do interviews usually it's because if the interviewer is not polite, I have a nasty habit of being very nasty back. And in the fact I had one the other day. I've been very lucky on this new LP, everybody have been very polite. So I can be very polite back. But if I get someone asking me annoying questions, not predictable questions, not like Smoke on the Water or why did you leave Deep Purple I don't mind them, I just don't like these insulting questions. And sometimes an interviewer might come up with something they think is funny and that will annoy me and then I think what is the point of doing this interview if you just going to try to insult me.
KF: Could you give an example of insulting question?
RB: Things like...you're fifty years old, why do you still play rock'n'roll? Something like that. That's me[?] like saying: well why are you asking this question? I can't help being fifty years old. And if you don't like the music just switch it off. Why does it concern you? And I feel a lot of interviewers like to dig, sometimes the English press loves to get reaction from the person they are interviewing so that they can put it in the paper. And I don't like that kind of journalism so I tend to stay away from that.
[ STAND AND FIGHT ] KF: Rainbow's European tour is about to begin and if I understood correctly, you are nervous?
RB: Yes, I'm always nervous. The best[?] of times I'm nervous. And I'm even more nervous now. But, that's part of the business I suppose to be always nervous. I'm a nervous type of person. Haha.
KF: How do you feel right before the show?
RB: I usually have couple of drinks, to say at least. But I took up the guitar because maybe I'll [...] nervous type of person. And now I find myself doing a show, showing off that particular area of my talent or whatever you like to call it. But sometimes it's a strain, not the playing, but the actual facing the crowd because I'm a very nervous person and...that's the hardest thing to overcome is the nerve. But that's the only way of sharing with people something that you practise.
KF: Does the fact that the 1500 seater Helsinki Kulttuuritalo is sold out make you more nervous?
RB: That makes me feel great because then I know that those people coming are fans. Then I don't feel so nervous. If I'm told 1500 people sitting there with press cards, I'd feel nervous.
KF: What songs are you going to play in Helsinki?
RB: Yes, it's gonna be a lot of... I could say there is probably about five old Rainbow songs we play. It's after[?] we haven't played that often. Probably two or three Deep Purple songs and probably six or seven of the latest stuff. So we are trying to mix. Luckily, we have with Doogie the way he sings, he was a big fan of Ronnie Dio so he tends to like to play some of the Dio stuff. We'll be doing things like Temple of the King we haven't done before. And some of the old in the beginning music. I won't be playing any of the Joe Lynn Turner stuff on this tour. We just haven't got the time because we have so many numbers we have to do.
KF: According to an old story your mother had invited some friends to the little Ritchie's birthday. You didn't like to be in the centre of the sudden celebration and you ran to the attic and locked the door after you. Nothing helped and you announced that the presents can be left but the guests must go away. When you celebrated your 50th anniversary earlier this year, were you again so called away?
RB: No, I kind of celebrated it with about 20-30 of my friends. So the times have changed. But, yes I remember that story, I remember my mother telling me because I had forgotten the story which is that you just ran away when it was your birthday and people had presents and I said tell them to leave the presents but just go away. So, that's again being very shy, I suppose and not feeling very comfortable around lot of people. But, yes I celebrated 50th birthday.
[ BLACK MASQUERADE ]