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How come Blackmore does not get the Respect he deserves ?


lynxwizard

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I like Deep Purple and Rainbow. I think that Ritchie Blackmore is a great, but somehow under-rated/over-looked guitar player. I do not consider him to be on the same level of Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix but that is just my opinion. I do like Ritchie's guitar playing a bit more than Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Someone said earlier that Ritchie seemed to be more a guitar player in a band rather than more of a standout (or something like that) like Jimmy or Jimi. I tend to agree with that.

I will admit that I really have not heard very much of what he is doing nowadays. I do think that He certainly does deserve a little more respect or appreciation for what he did with both Deep Purple and Rainbow.

I think that it is a matter of opinion if "Smoke on the Water" is the greatest or most known guitar riff of all-time. What about "Whole Lotta Love" or "Heartbreaker"?

I would personally put Ritchie Blackmore in my top 10 favorite guitarist.

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I think probably the single biggest reason why Ritchie Blackmore does not get that recognition is the fact that he hasn't had a conventional "rock" career.As has been mentioned,ever since he decided that he wanted to be a wandering minstrel he has been out of the mainstream.Personally,I take my hat off to him.He's doing what he wants,has a beautiful hippy chick wife and he's making a living.Sounds pretty good,doesn't it? :D

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I think probably the single biggest reason why Ritchie Blackmore does not get that recognition is the fact that he hasn't had a conventional "rock" career.As has been mentioned,ever since he decided that he wanted to be a wandering minstrel he has been out of the mainstream.Personally,I take my hat off to him.He's doing what he wants,has a beautiful hippy chick wife and he's making a living.Sounds pretty good,doesn't it? :D

it sure does.

It takes a lot of guts to walk away from the cash cow and do what's really in your heart.

sounds like someone we all know.....

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I think he gets his just due. He's not gonna be on many magazine covers b/c Page, Hendrix or some new hard rockers are gonna sell more magazines, but if you open those magazines up there's always plenty of people that cite him as an influence.

I really don't think the fact that he quit playing rock music has too much to do with it. I'm sure it's had an effect since some people just haven't had the chance to see him wail.

I think overall, hard rock with fast shreddy solos just isn't that popular right now compared to other forms of guitar music.

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I actually saw Blackmore's group some years ago, and it amazed me how good the man actually was on an acoustic guitar, still very fluent and precise. Still a great live player, despite his Rumpelstiltskin outfit.

Another great not before mentioned record with him on it is "Burn"....just love that record because of it's straightforward nature and good compositions.

As far to the other mentioned guitarists I personally think that Clapton is overrrated and boring, musically and presence-wise.

I also just wonder why nobody in the world ever mentions Frank Zappa as beeing influential.............where would all the Vai's and Satriani's be without him?

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As far to the other mentioned guitarists I personally think that Clapton is overrrated and boring, musically and presence-wise.

+1.

If he were a car, he'd be a 70s fake wood-panelled station wagon :P

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Deep Purple legend a hurdy-gurdy man

By Don Hammontree

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - Updated 2 weeks ago

In 1971, if you’d have told British guitar star Ritchie Blackmore that in 40 years he’d be playing Renaissance fair music on a hurdy-gurdy in castle courtyards throughout Europe he would never have believed you.

That was the year Blackmore and his Deep Purple band mates recorded one of the greatest guitar anthems of all time, “Smoke on the Water,” for their now-classic hard rock/heavy metal album “Machine Head.”

Churning out molten metal riffs and blistering solos in Deep Purple and Rainbow was Blackmore’s stock in trade until 1997, when he and his wife, Candice Night, released their first album together, “Shadow of the Moon,” under the name Blackmore’s Night. Since then, the guitarist has focused on medieval-flavored folk-rock featuring arrangements for penny whistles, recorders, mandolins and hurdy-gurdy.

Blackmore calls Blackmore’s Night — which plays Berklee Performance Center on Thursday — his “labor of love.” The duo’s latest CD, “Autumn Sky” (dedicated to the couple’s infant daughter), topped Billboard’s New Age charts earlier this year.

“I didn’t embark on this project intending it to be successful,” Blackmore, 66, said by phone from his home on Long Island. “I just have an incredible passion for this kind of music and wanted to do it. During my final days in Deep Purple and Rainbow, I felt I was getting stale at writing hard-rock riffs, that I was repeating myself, and I just couldn’t stand it. So switching to this was rejuvenating, very refreshing.

Influenced by acts as diverse as the late English folk musician David Munrow, the German band Des Geyers, Bob Dylan and even Stevie Nicks (one of Night’s favorites), Blackmore’s Night has its strongest following in Europe, where the band often performs in historic castles and fortresses. “Actually, it’s harder to book shows here in America,” Night said. “But in Europe, the castles aren’t all that difficult. We have a great, hard-working crew that’s always up for a challenge. We even performed a show in an underground salt mine in Poland that took hours and hours to set up, but they pulled it off.”

With his quirky new direction and partnership with Night, Blackmore has found an unlikely niche in an industry he has often viewed with disdain.

“Bob Dylan has always been one of my heroes because he’s never wanted to deal with the nonsense side of the music business,” he said of the man who, like him-self, has been labeled as “mysterious” and “difficult” to work with. “Having to follow this trend, talk to this person on the radio, be on this show. I find it’s very hard for me to do. I don’t like having to sell myself constantly.”

Blackmore’s Night at Berklee Performance Center, Thursday. Tickets: $30-$45; 617-747-2261.

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Probably cos DP were more of a twin-lead band, with a neo-classical style not to everyone's taste. More often than not, IMO, his better work in DP was drowned out or unisoned with that horrible parping organ.

He was more prominent and successful in early Rainbow, IMO. If they'd carried on with the Rising/LLR&R style, maybe he would have gained greater plaudits. But unfortunately, Rainbow turned to shit.

I Loved that 'Horrible parping organ' as you call it, that was part of the sound of DP like it or not and most seemed to like it very much. Lord and Blackmore pushed each other on stage trying to out play the other, Loved that intro to Lazy and Perfect Strangers, Classic Hammond sound.

While I agree with you early Rainbow was the best some of the latter stuff is really not too bad. not sure how you measure success sometimes but if you go by record sales their numbers were better with the later records.

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I will admit that in general I just don't worry a lot about whether the musicians I like are underrated, not respected enough, etc. The period of rock music that is already being commonly referred to as the era of "classic rock" - mainly the 1960s and 1970s - is decades behind us now, and there has been a lot of discussion about it. Following that, things will tend to gradually fall into perspective, also with respect to the contribution of individual musicians and bands, and as far as I'm concerned there are no crying injustices in how the era is usually evaluated. There is a spectrum of different opinions, but within certain limits, because there's also quite a lot that informed opinions are more or less agreed upon.

Ritchie Blackmore is a very respected guitarist, and one that everybody with a serious interest in heavy rock knows, or at any rate will know about very soon. But how he is evaluated depends on what you are interested in, what the context is, what criteria you choose, etc. If what you are interested in is heavy rock, by now a huge phenomenon in its own right, and his contribution to the development of that whole scene as we know it today, then he is without doubt one of the greatest ever. And he does get his due in discussions on that level it seems to me. But this is exactly why he often isn't considered one of the all-time greatest guitarists in pop and rock music in a more general sense, because it also just means that his influence has stayed within the boundaries of a particular current of rock music that had already, by and large, been created, whereas Jimmy Page was one of the people who, amongst other things, formed the whole idea of heavy rock music. Blackmore knew this perfectly well himself, and has said as much - he was interested in what a few bands were doing and had been hugely influenced by Jimi Hendrix in 1967-1968, and there was Vanilla Fudge and other bands, but it was Led Zeppelin that made him want to play heavy rock. And the fact is that the basic parameters for that had already been set.

Deep Purple were a really talented group, and certainly had a quality of their own. As I see it, "Deep Purple" is basically something that happens between Blackmore, Lord and Paice. One of the things they did was to incorporate classical influences within what was definitely heavy rock, and not progressive rock, and they did it brilliantly. What I am getting at is that they had a take of their own on what heavy rock meant, and this quite early, by 1969-70; there was a lot of talent, and for instance Blackmore is without question one of the most amazing writer of riffs ever. But if you look at the larger picture of rock and popular music, he sometimes seems like an important figure, but often he doesn't, and it's because the field of operation, so to speak, had already been defined to a very large extent. This you can not say about Eric Clapton. If you know how electric rock guitar sounded before 1965 and then listen to the Bluesbreakers album, the importance of what he did, his influence on everybody at the time, becomes simply obvious. After that Clapton formed Cream which influenced everybody and their uncle, including Jimi Hendrix. The significance of what he did in the 1960s is beyond question, whether you happen to particularly like him or not. And Jeff Beck was an important influence on many guitarists already in the 1960s, and has continued to develop his style right into the present. He is known and respected by blues people, fans of heavy rock, of progressive rock, jazz even, you name it.

Ritchie Blackmore is a guitarist that I have loved since I was a kid, but I feel he is respected and recognized for what he really achieved. As a technical player, on the whole he was probably better and more consistent than Jimmy Page in the 1970s, but in fact there's a lot of sloppiness in his playing too. If we are evaluating pure general technicality of playing (a criterion I always find somewhat ridiculous) then there are lots of people who are better than Blackmore - not just five or ten, but literally dozens of them. Who cares? I don't! One of the guitarists that Blackmore really likes is Martin Barre of Jethro Tull, and he is an absolutely fantastic guitarist and a very, very consistent one. I love his playing, and he really has a style of his own. In terms of influence, however, he simply isn't a pioneer. He is practically never considered one of the all-time 5-10 greatest guitarists - and it isn't unfair either.

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+1.

If he were a car, he'd be a 70s fake wood-panelled station wagon :P

It makes me bloody puke when he's refered to as a "blues legend".A good copyist nothing more and if he was any further in the middle of the road he'd be run over.

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Copyist my ASS:):):)!!!

I've not heard every note he's ever played but the only thing I've ever liked by the man,apart from some of the tracks on '461 Ocean Boulevard ',is his guitar playing on the 'Live Peace In Toronto',Plastic Ono Band album.The word blistering does it justice.Now can you keep your ass out of this forum mate? :D

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I've not heard every note he's ever played but the only thing I've ever liked by the man,apart from some of the tracks on '461 Ocean Boulevard ',is his guitar playing on the 'Live Peace In Toronto',Plastic Ono Band album.The word blistering does it justice.Now can you keep your ass out of this forum mate? :D

My ass is here....there.......and EVERYWHERE MAN :):)B)

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I still like Ritchie's early music with Deep Purple and the late 70s Rainbow, but maybe he's doing country or something and has lost his credibility.

That happens with some aging Rock Stars ya know.

:hysterical: lol mmm well there are some good country songs. But country songs are like Stairway to Heaven; even if they are good, it gets to the point where you gasp for fresh air, or at least I do; maybe not with Stairway to Heaven, but most definitely with some country songs. Sometimes country gets a little too bland, over-syrupy and tedious, as the fiddles saw and grind yet another predictable passage, and the charm wears thin to the point where it's an exercise rather than exhiliration.But then there are some sweet fiddles, so it really all depends.

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