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It all began here, at 33 Addicott Road,
in Weston-super-Mare,

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in 1945, when Ritchie Blackmore was born.

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He would go on not only
to write one of rock's most famous riffs,

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but to explore a number of
musical forms including Bach,

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classical symphonic rock, hard rock,
blues and medieval ballads.

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Ritchie was interested in the guitar
from an early age

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but his father insisted
he took proper lessons.

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My father insisted I went to music lessons
when I was eleven.

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He said to me at the time,

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"If you don't learn this properly,
I'm gonna put it across your head."

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I used to cycle about four miles
to the guy who was teaching me.

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And I'd often fall off my bike.

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Throughout his life, Ritchie has been
the object of much criticism,

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adulation and speculation.

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But until now, he has never given the world
his take on his story.

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A story with more than its fair share
of tantrums, break-ups, rivalry and rouse.

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He was such an advanced musician,
way ahead of his time,

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way, way ahead.

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He's a fire ball, you know,
he really is beyond belief.

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His technique is incredible.
Where did that come from? I have no idea.

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And this is before Hendrix.

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Ritchie really is a great originator
and creator of the wild electric guitar.

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The way he holds the guitar and everything,
it's sort of ingrained in my mind

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as that's what a cool guitar player
is supposed to look like,

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that's how they are supposed to behave.

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In a lot of ways, ifs a little
tragic that Ritchie didn't stand up

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and shine the light on himself.

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Which is why I'm happy to be here.

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He needs the light right on him,

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because unlike many people
he actually deserves it.

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It's like a sword'
almost like a clean sharp sword,

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that weighs a real lot, you know.

33
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His precision when he plays was stunning.

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A true pioneer as somebody who was
truly unique and original.

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To me he was like the Caucasian Hendrix.

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It actually changed my life.
It was my first gig ever.

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We got right up against the stage,
right in front of Ritchie.

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He came out and Purple came out
and he just blew me away.

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It was way more than I expected,
it was just a lot.

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After that I was dazed,

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I went home to my mum and dad and said,
"I need a guitar, I have to have a guitar."

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He is measured, he is thoughtful.

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He knows the value of clear space,
of daylight between the notes.

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It's not all about...

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It's about phrasing, it's about time.
It's about...

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The spaces are as important
as the notes that they separate.

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It's a mystery. I still find Ritchie
Blackmore a complete mystery.

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It's also a mystery
that people don't talk about him that much.

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It's odd because he's absolutely there
<i>as</i> one of the pioneers.

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The pioneering Ritchie was single-minded
from an early age.

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I won't do what I'm told to do.

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That seemed to go back to when I was five.

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I've seen pictures of me at five,

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and I remember distinctively, my mother
saying, "Smile for the cameraman."

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And I'm going, "No",

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and I felt resentment to the cameraman.

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Why do you need...

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And I used to say to my mother,
"Why do you need a picture of me?"

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She goes, "Because to remember you,
you're five."

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"Well, I'm here now."
And I couldn't understand the principle.

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There's something in there psychologically.

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Why was I so uptight at the age of five?

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But before he was in his teens,

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Ritchie made a promise to himself to be
the best there was, whatever it took.

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I was such a poor pupil

66
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and I was always near the bottom
of the class, in my tests.

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I thought, "You know what I'm gonna do?"

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"I'm going to excel in
music, on the guitar."

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So they go, "Well, he was a terrible pupil,
but he was a really good guitar player."

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And I had that thought in my head,
ever since I was 12, onwards.

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Well, he doesn't know anything,
but he can really play the guitar.

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And I always wanted the
teachers to say that.

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From the age of eighteen,
Ritchie worked for producer Joe Meek,

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as a sessions musician in London
and toured with Screaming Lord Sutch.

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And later with Gene Vincent
and Jerry Lee Lewis

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until the gigs dried up in 1968.

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I was working in a dry cleaners,

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I had about sixteen telegrams
from Chris Curtis,

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who was in the band The Searchers,
who I had met in Hamburg.

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And he really liked my playing,

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and he said, "I have a backer,
I want you to come to England",

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"I'm gonna start a band,
you're gonna play second guitar."

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Okay, who's playing first guitar?

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"I am", Chris Curtis.

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Okay, good.

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Who's playing drums then?
'Cause he's a drummer.

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He said, "I'm playing drums."

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Bass? He goes, "I'm bass player."

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"Yeah, I kind of thought
that was gonna happen."

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I said, "ls there anybody
else in this band?"

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He said, "We have a keyboard player,
Jon Lord.“"

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It was the start of a partnership
that would last for 25 years.

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We played together for a little bit,
and I realised how good he was.

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And it was mutual.

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I said, "I can get a brilliant drummer."

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Jon said, "I know a really good
bass player." It was Nick Simper.

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And so we just needed a singer.

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They took on Rod Evans <i>as</i> vocalist.

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And Chris Curtis soon dropped out
to be replaced by Ian Paice on drums.

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All they needed now was a name.

101
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Jon put in Orpheus.

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The drummer put in The Hill.
And I put in Deep Purple.

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Just 'cause of the song Deep Purple,

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my grandmother used to
play it on the piano.

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And they seemed to like that.

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In those days you have to have
a double-barrel name.

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Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple.

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It was a name that would become
synonymous with British hard rock,

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and launched the career
of Ritchie Blackmore.

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We did the usual,
going away to a cottage in the country.

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Which was the in thing to do at the time.

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Proverbial cottage, we were practicing.

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Thief's hole, I think it was called.
And it was haunted. It had to be haunted.

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And we made that record,
the first one in 24 hours.

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We did it in two days. The whole thing.

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And while it wasn't an amazing record
in its own right,

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you do get struck by the fact
that there are times on the record

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when Ritchie Blackmore's
guitar performances

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were different to anything else.

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They weren't a copy of Hendrix.

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Even though you could hear
little bits of notations

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that maybe led towards Hendrix.

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They weren't a copy of anybody else.

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They were influenced by,
yet taking its own direction.

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He had a classical feel, the rock feel
and a rock and roll feel.

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Some tracks also had a distinctly pop feel.

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And it was a cover
of a Joe South song, Hush,

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which launched the band in the U.S.A.

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Back in England,
Ritchie heard Robert Plant singing.

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There was a place called Mothers
in Birmingham,

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Robert started singing and I'm going,
"My God, who's this? This amazing singer."

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He had the range, the voice and the look.

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That's when I decided
we have to get someone

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who can belt it out and project.

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That when we got Ian Gillan.

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As soon as I heard him scream,
I went, "That's the guy for us.“"

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He looked like Jim Morrison,
which I knew that would go down well.

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So we have someone
who looks like Jim Morrison

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and who can scream like Arthur Brown
and Edgar Winter.

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That scream was his identity.

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In came Ian Gillan and his scream
and new bassist Roger Glover.

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And out went Evans and Simper.

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Ritchie was now lead guitar

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in what was to become
the classic Deep Purple line-up.

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It became, I suppose,

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obvious to all of us that they were
not just another flash-in-the-pan

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pop rock band,
but there was something more of substance.

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And Ritchie was a figure of mystery
and wonder already, you know.

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Ritchie Blackmore was something incredible.

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I mean, nobody could play like
that in those days.

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No, it's not just speed, you know,

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there are a lot of people who
can play fast, you know, now.

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But they can't be Ritchie Blackmore.

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He plays right on the money

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and leaves enough space
to allow the music to breathe

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and the listener to become enveloped in

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the whole atmosphere of what's being
performed and created and generated.

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I went through a period of shredding

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and thinking that everything revolved
around speed.

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And now I go, "That really
doesn't mean anything."

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It's good to be fast now and again,
but you have to say something thoughtful.

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You can't just go, look at me...

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Am I not great?

164
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Ritchie will lake you on a couple of hours'
journey of guitar playing,

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which will cover a lot more ground.

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It's not just like tipping a pot
of multi-coloured paint over somebody,

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this is about drawing people into your
dark mysterious web.

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But while Ritchie was keen
to develop Deep Purple as a rock band,

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his co-founder Jon Lord
had other ambitions.

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Jon Lord was inspired to write
a concerto for group and orchestra,

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and it was a big challenging venture.

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The band Nice had previously
recorded with orchestras

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and had classical aspirations.

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But Jon Lord wanted to write a really
sort of important piece that would

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include the group with an orchestra
in a kind of artistic way,

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a way that would work effectively.

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And they tried it out at
the Royal Albert Hall.

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And it was a big success, a big challenge.

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You can see Ritchie in the video
for the Albert Hall concert,

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and he plays great,
but you could feel he's very constrained.

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He's sort of itching to
break out somewhere.

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He has this edge to him,

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which is indefinable and
not quite tameable.

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The first record we did,
I thought was not bad.

185
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The two after that

186
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were lacking in direction.

187
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We were going in the studio
with, really, no ideas,

188
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'cause we were on the road all the time.

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It wasn't until we did the concerto
with Jon and the orchestra,

190
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and I said to them, "I really don't want
to play with orchestras any more."

191
00:14:01,741 --> 00:14:04,347
"Let's do a rock and roll record."

192
00:14:04,877 --> 00:14:08,518
I said, "Jon, we'll do the whole thing
as a rock and roll record",

193
00:14:08,581 --> 00:14:12,222
"and if it doesn't work, we'll play with
orchestras for the rest of our lives."

194
00:14:12,318 --> 00:14:13,592
So he said, "Yeah, that's sounds fair."

195
00:14:13,720 --> 00:14:17,065
We had Zeppelin starting Black Sabbath.

196
00:14:17,156 --> 00:14:19,033
Everybody was hitting with hard rock.

197
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Gave me an idea to play
the hard rock stuff.

198
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I was going through kind
of a angry, uptight,

199
00:14:26,366 --> 00:14:29,279
"Come on, let's get on with it."

200
00:14:29,402 --> 00:14:34,044
I'd had enough of playing with orchestras
and everything being wishy-washy.

201
00:14:34,107 --> 00:14:37,088
The wishy-washy orchestra
versus hard rock debate

202
00:14:37,176 --> 00:14:40,055
was resolved when the band wrote
and recorded Black Night.

203
00:14:40,113 --> 00:14:43,117
And it went to number two in the UK charts.

204
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We were in the studio
doing Deep Purple in Rock

205
00:14:48,020 --> 00:14:50,125
and the management came in.

206
00:14:51,924 --> 00:14:55,303
Amazing, you know, these people that go,

207
00:14:55,428 --> 00:14:58,432
"You know, what you need is a hit record."

208
00:14:58,531 --> 00:15:02,809
And you go, "I never thought of that.
A hit record, yeah."

209
00:15:02,969 --> 00:15:05,313
And I started playing.

210
00:15:06,606 --> 00:15:08,313
I just started playing.

211
00:15:14,213 --> 00:15:15,817
Okay, let's have a verse.

212
00:15:18,451 --> 00:15:20,260
Put a verse in there.

213
00:15:26,092 --> 00:15:28,936
And we did that very quickly.

214
00:15:28,995 --> 00:15:30,099
Very quickly.

215
00:15:30,163 --> 00:15:32,006
And all of a sudden,
of course that went to number one

216
00:15:32,098 --> 00:15:34,009
or number two, number one.

217
00:15:35,168 --> 00:15:37,368
It was funny how it was written like that,
very quickly,

218
00:15:37,403 --> 00:15:39,440
and that's the best way to write a song.

219
00:15:47,180 --> 00:15:48,682
And that is based on...

220
00:15:55,655 --> 00:16:00,263
Ricky Nelson put out a tune
called Summertime in 1958.

221
00:16:02,695 --> 00:16:04,675
Which, he's singing, "Summertime..."

222
00:16:08,801 --> 00:16:11,042
"and the living is easy."

223
00:16:11,304 --> 00:16:14,478
That was the base riff, the top line was...

224
00:16:19,645 --> 00:16:21,283
Right? Adds that.

225
00:16:26,719 --> 00:16:29,825
So right there you got two hit records.
'Cause if you go...

226
00:16:42,502 --> 00:16:43,981
"Hey Joe..."

227
00:16:45,471 --> 00:16:49,544
As soon <i>as</i> I heard Hendrix play that intro,

228
00:16:51,978 --> 00:16:55,892
I thought' "He got that from the same
record that we got the base riff from."

229
00:17:23,776 --> 00:17:25,221
The band were on a roll.

230
00:17:25,278 --> 00:17:28,782
And in 1970,
their fourth album Deep Purple in Rock

231
00:17:28,881 --> 00:17:33,591
reached number four in the UK charts
and went gold in Britain and America.

232
00:17:33,686 --> 00:17:36,860
I just knew I was happy
with it at the time,

233
00:17:36,956 --> 00:17:38,799
because the previous three,

234
00:17:38,891 --> 00:17:41,201
I thought,
"We don't know where we're going."

235
00:17:41,294 --> 00:17:43,900
"We're dilly-dallying,
we're going all over the place."

236
00:17:43,963 --> 00:17:48,935
Ballads, a bit of blues, folk,
it was like mishmash.

237
00:17:49,035 --> 00:17:52,642
People like to get a record and put it on,

238
00:17:52,772 --> 00:17:55,912
and go, "I can leave that on
and it's party time."

239
00:17:55,975 --> 00:17:59,582
The Deep Purple in Rock, of course,
was the definitive album,

240
00:17:59,645 --> 00:18:02,091
I think, for Deep Purple.

241
00:18:02,148 --> 00:18:05,254
It was the era of Black Sabbath, of course,
and Led Zeppelin.

242
00:18:05,318 --> 00:18:08,891
Soto see Deep Purple really focusing,

243
00:18:08,988 --> 00:18:12,401
get down to it on their rock album

244
00:18:12,491 --> 00:18:15,563
that really convinced
the vast <i>mass</i> of their fans.

245
00:18:15,661 --> 00:18:22,078
And really for the first time Deep Purple
became among the top three British bands.

246
00:18:22,168 --> 00:18:26,116
I think what really inspired me more than
anything else was the In Rock album.

247
00:18:26,172 --> 00:18:28,846
But it was the fire and it was the passion
that really spoke.

248
00:18:28,975 --> 00:18:31,148
That was the bit I wanted
to bottle and keep.

249
00:18:31,344 --> 00:18:32,652
When you hear Speed King,

250
00:18:32,745 --> 00:18:35,954
you're looking at, really,
proto thrash, proto metal.

251
00:18:36,015 --> 00:18:40,794
This was so influential
in what came later in metal terms,

252
00:18:40,853 --> 00:18:45,461
and was really Blackmore delivering
a dynamic riff

253
00:18:45,524 --> 00:18:50,371
on which Gillan held his vocals
and which Lord played off with keyboard.

254
00:19:05,211 --> 00:19:10,183
And Child in Time is just phenomenal,
it's a remarkable piece of epic music.

255
00:19:10,282 --> 00:19:15,960
It's a story. It's almost biblical in the
way it reaches out and envelops you.

256
00:19:16,055 --> 00:19:18,126
This was a classical piece of music.

257
00:19:18,224 --> 00:19:21,797
This was a performance
by a band on an orchestral level.

258
00:19:48,888 --> 00:19:52,267
With the pressure on to follow up
the success of Deep Purple in Rock,

259
00:19:52,358 --> 00:19:53,598
Ritchie and the band once again

260
00:19:53,693 --> 00:19:56,173
locked themselves away from the world
to write.

261
00:19:56,262 --> 00:20:00,836
We rented this old dilapidated house
down in Devon.

262
00:20:02,234 --> 00:20:05,010
And everybody had their bedroom.

263
00:20:06,105 --> 00:20:09,177
And mine was full of flies,
and it was a dreadful place,

264
00:20:09,275 --> 00:20:11,778
but it had a good vibe to it or two.

265
00:20:11,911 --> 00:20:14,790
We were into doing lots of séances
at the time.

266
00:20:14,880 --> 00:20:21,627
And I always felt that to do a séance,
the best thing was to have a cross.

267
00:20:22,221 --> 00:20:25,862
It was in the early days when I kind of
believed in that,

268
00:20:25,958 --> 00:20:30,532
and that was kind of a...
As a form of protection.

269
00:20:31,464 --> 00:20:33,808
Of course I didn't have a cross on me.

270
00:20:34,200 --> 00:20:38,307
And I went up to Jon Lord's wife and said,

271
00:20:38,404 --> 00:20:42,113
"Do you have cross I could borrow?"
She said, "I'm Jewish."

272
00:20:42,208 --> 00:20:44,484
That didn't go down too well.

273
00:20:44,643 --> 00:20:47,146
So I went, "Roger! Roger
will have a cross."

274
00:20:47,246 --> 00:20:50,750
And I went to his bedroom outside,
he'd gone to sleep.

275
00:20:50,983 --> 00:20:53,054
"Roger?" "What?"

276
00:20:53,152 --> 00:20:54,722
"Do you have a cross?" "Yeah."

277
00:20:54,820 --> 00:20:56,460
"I need the cross, we're doing a séance."

278
00:20:56,722 --> 00:20:58,565
"No, leave me alone."

279
00:20:58,824 --> 00:21:00,963
So, I got this axe,

280
00:21:01,060 --> 00:21:05,065
so I went crash crash at the door

281
00:21:05,164 --> 00:21:09,613
and made a hole,
and I'm axing the door down.

282
00:21:10,503 --> 00:21:13,677
I pulled it and I got through the hole
and went over to him.

283
00:21:13,806 --> 00:21:16,980
"I want your cross." "Go
on, get off, get off."

284
00:21:17,076 --> 00:21:20,421
Roger is a very gentle man.

285
00:21:20,513 --> 00:21:24,825
Violence doesn't often occur to him
<i>as</i> a means to anything.

286
00:21:24,917 --> 00:21:26,089
It <i>was</i> very un-Roger like,

287
00:21:26,185 --> 00:21:32,033
what followed, Roger chasing Ritchie
around the house with said axe.

288
00:21:33,092 --> 00:21:35,163
You know, I said, "Roger, wow."

289
00:21:35,261 --> 00:21:36,467
So that was a lot of fun.

290
00:21:44,770 --> 00:21:48,684
In 1971 they released a new single,
Strange Kind of Woman

291
00:21:48,774 --> 00:21:53,348
and a follow-up to their landmark
Deep Purple in Rock, the album Fireball.

292
00:21:54,213 --> 00:21:57,057
It <i>was</i> great because,

293
00:21:57,183 --> 00:22:01,996
all of a sudden,
starving for a few years before that,

294
00:22:02,054 --> 00:22:04,000
and we were suddenly in vogue

295
00:22:04,056 --> 00:22:08,163
and everybody had Deep Purple in Rock
until we replaced it with Fireball.

296
00:22:08,227 --> 00:22:10,867
Fireball was put together loo quickly,

297
00:22:11,831 --> 00:22:15,074
for my liking, we didn't have the ideas.

298
00:22:15,167 --> 00:22:18,148
Fireball to me was artificial, contrived.

299
00:22:19,905 --> 00:22:21,578
Despite Ritchie's misgivings,

300
00:22:21,674 --> 00:22:24,086
Fireball reached number one
on the UK charts,

301
00:22:24,210 --> 00:22:27,419
and the band set to work on
what would be their third album,

302
00:22:27,513 --> 00:22:28,719
Machine Head.

303
00:22:29,815 --> 00:22:33,058
Machine Head, I have great memories of,
we did that in the Swiss Alps,

304
00:22:33,152 --> 00:22:34,654
and that was fantastic.

305
00:22:34,753 --> 00:22:38,394
And we did it in three weeks
and the ideas were just flowing.

306
00:22:38,557 --> 00:22:42,061
I had written a few things in my time off,
so I had those,

307
00:22:42,161 --> 00:22:45,233
like Highway Star.

308
00:22:46,432 --> 00:22:49,777
I had written the solo basically at home,
worked it out,

309
00:22:49,869 --> 00:22:51,678
which I had never done before.

310
00:22:51,770 --> 00:22:55,684
It was always on the fly,
you know, just jamming.

311
00:22:55,774 --> 00:22:59,620
But, so we had a lot of constructive ideas.

312
00:22:59,745 --> 00:23:04,216
Roger Glover had written Maybe I'm a Leo,
which I thought was a great tune.

313
00:23:05,417 --> 00:23:07,124
They were due to record in the casino,

314
00:23:07,219 --> 00:23:09,722
which was then the main concert venue
in Montreux.

315
00:23:09,788 --> 00:23:11,290
But the evening before
they were due to start,

316
00:23:11,390 --> 00:23:15,361
a fire ignited during a Frank Zappa
concert, burning it to the ground.

317
00:23:19,565 --> 00:23:23,206
Festival organizer Claude Nobs
came to their rescue.

318
00:23:23,802 --> 00:23:27,045
Claude with enormous selflessness said,

319
00:23:27,139 --> 00:23:30,985
"Don't worry, I'll help you to find
somewhere else to record."

320
00:23:31,911 --> 00:23:33,117
Where? Anyway.

321
00:23:33,212 --> 00:23:39,561
So, there was this amazing
Victorian glass-walled pavilion

322
00:23:40,386 --> 00:23:43,492
in some gardens,
some lovely lakeside gardens.

323
00:23:44,089 --> 00:23:49,767
And with enormous disregard for anyone
who might live within 10 or 12 miles of it,

324
00:23:49,828 --> 00:23:52,832
we set up in there, you know.

325
00:23:54,333 --> 00:23:59,442
And it was a very ill-chosen place,

326
00:23:59,505 --> 00:24:01,746
but it was a stopgap.

327
00:24:02,274 --> 00:24:05,016
The recording session was back on track.

328
00:24:05,577 --> 00:24:11,084
Ritchie was astonishingly prolific
with guitar riffs.

329
00:24:11,183 --> 00:24:12,184
Profligate almost, you know?

330
00:24:12,284 --> 00:24:13,957
They would just tumble out of him.

331
00:24:14,019 --> 00:24:18,832
And that was heaven,
absolute heaven for a band,

332
00:24:18,924 --> 00:24:24,306
because here was a guitarist who just would
never tread, it seemed, the same road twice.

333
00:24:24,496 --> 00:24:27,943
And it was the fire that had destroyed
their original recording venue

334
00:24:28,033 --> 00:24:31,879
that was to inspire the song that contains
one of rock's greatest riffs.

335
00:24:32,671 --> 00:24:35,379
When we got back to the
hotel, there was a...

336
00:24:35,474 --> 00:24:38,216
We looked out of the window, I think we
all had stiff brandies or something.

337
00:24:38,344 --> 00:24:40,722
We looked out of the window
and you could actually see the smoke

338
00:24:40,813 --> 00:24:42,952
from the casino coming across the lake.

339
00:24:43,048 --> 00:24:45,187
This big, billowing cloud
coming across the lake,

340
00:24:45,284 --> 00:24:48,322
hence the title Smoke on the Water,
the boys came up with that.

341
00:24:48,387 --> 00:24:52,392
The first time I heard Smoke on the Water,
of course, from Machine Head,

342
00:24:52,491 --> 00:24:55,370
it was one of those riffs
that hit you right away.

343
00:24:55,461 --> 00:24:58,908
It's a bit like Sunshine of Your Love
by Cream,

344
00:24:58,998 --> 00:25:01,137
or Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin.

345
00:25:01,233 --> 00:25:05,045
It was just... I don't know where
guitarists find these riffs from, actually.

346
00:25:05,137 --> 00:25:08,914
When we did Smoke on the Water,

347
00:25:09,008 --> 00:25:11,921
it was-just Ian and
myself, Paice and myself.

348
00:25:12,077 --> 00:25:15,217
I said, "What rhythm haven't we played?"
and he went...

349
00:25:16,348 --> 00:25:18,919
He laid that down, so I just went...

350
00:25:21,687 --> 00:25:26,602
That's where we were and the next minute,

351
00:25:26,725 --> 00:25:30,229
the police were knocking at the door
'cause we were making so much racket.

352
00:25:31,363 --> 00:25:33,070
And we knew it was the police,

353
00:25:33,165 --> 00:25:37,773
so we said, "Let's go for a take
before they throw us out of here."

354
00:25:39,271 --> 00:25:43,686
Every guitar player
dreams of doing with its creators.

355
00:25:43,776 --> 00:25:47,189
Every kid who ever picked up a guitar
can do...

356
00:25:47,780 --> 00:25:49,782
Funny thing is, they all do it different.

357
00:25:49,915 --> 00:25:52,875
That's the nice thing, and I found that
I had it in my head how to play it,

358
00:25:52,918 --> 00:25:55,797
and it was completely different to the way
Ritchie plays it.

359
00:25:56,455 --> 00:25:58,560
Somebody said that music

360
00:26:00,192 --> 00:26:06,302
is many different colours and one of those
colours is silence, simplicity.

361
00:26:06,432 --> 00:26:10,744
The quiet pans, the easy parts,
the parts you can immediately grasp on to

362
00:26:10,803 --> 00:26:13,147
and wonder why you didn't
write it yourself.

363
00:26:13,238 --> 00:26:16,651
That's genius.
That's a genius riff. Wish I'd wrote it.

364
00:26:37,896 --> 00:26:41,844
The second record that I ever bought
in my life was Machine Head.

365
00:26:41,967 --> 00:26:44,174
What an album. Oh, my God!

366
00:26:44,269 --> 00:26:49,309
To have a record like that
and to have a guitar player like Ritchie

367
00:26:49,408 --> 00:26:54,858
in your radar and your field,
it was just the greatest.

368
00:26:54,980 --> 00:26:58,484
You just think, "What would my life have
been like without that?"

369
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:32,158
It's the way Ritchie plays the riff.
It's not the way that

370
00:27:32,217 --> 00:27:36,529
mo generations of kids have played it
in the guitar shop and driven people mad,

371
00:27:36,622 --> 00:27:38,158
to the point where in some shops in London

372
00:27:38,223 --> 00:27:42,194
it says, "If you are trying out a guitar
please don't play Smoke on the Water."

373
00:27:42,294 --> 00:27:45,639
The first guitar, that
guitar, right over there.

374
00:27:45,731 --> 00:27:48,974
You see the Strat with the maple body,

375
00:27:49,067 --> 00:27:51,707
that was my first real guitar.

376
00:27:51,803 --> 00:27:57,583
And I got it because of the poster on my
wall in my bedroom of Ritchie playing.

377
00:27:57,676 --> 00:27:59,553
It was that guitar.

378
00:27:59,645 --> 00:28:02,854
And that's what I wanted.
I wanted the Ritchie Blackmore Strat.

379
00:28:15,093 --> 00:28:17,869
Ritchie's solo on
Machine Head's Highway Star

380
00:28:17,930 --> 00:28:20,911
was also set to become
a Deep Purple statement.

381
00:28:21,233 --> 00:28:26,512
Highway Star is... That's crazy. That's
just a crazy song for a guitar player.

382
00:28:26,605 --> 00:28:30,052
It makes everyone who thinks they are a
guitar player need to pick up their guitar

383
00:28:30,108 --> 00:28:33,920
and see,
"Well, if I'm that good, can I do that?"

384
00:28:34,613 --> 00:28:39,119
Highway Star solo was one of the first
things I could get my head around.

385
00:28:39,218 --> 00:28:42,290
Even when I was like 16 or 17,

386
00:28:42,421 --> 00:28:46,028
it wasn't the standard notes you'd use.
It wasn't just the blues scale.

387
00:28:46,124 --> 00:28:52,200
It was classically... There was classical stuff
coming in there and with this aggression.

388
00:28:52,297 --> 00:28:55,574
Ritchie was really looking to expand
on his solos

389
00:28:55,634 --> 00:28:57,636
and wanted a particular sequence,

390
00:28:57,769 --> 00:28:59,612
which is actually
almost a classical sequence.

391
00:28:59,705 --> 00:29:02,982
It's probably the defining moment

392
00:29:03,108 --> 00:29:08,615
for Ritchie's soloing, Highway Star to me.
It's the most recognizable solo.

393
00:29:08,714 --> 00:29:11,320
I like solos where you know them,

394
00:29:11,450 --> 00:29:14,329
solos where it's just a.” Nothing.

395
00:29:14,820 --> 00:29:19,098
So I think Highway Star was just stunning
for that effect.

396
00:29:59,798 --> 00:30:03,678
I always thought American players always go
right to the edge of the cliff and fall off

397
00:30:03,769 --> 00:30:06,215
and wave as they are going down.

398
00:30:06,338 --> 00:30:11,378
But the British players seem to take
that one half a step back from the cliff

399
00:30:11,510 --> 00:30:14,980
and so it's together
right till the end of the song,

400
00:30:15,047 --> 00:30:17,550
but it's still extremely thrilling.

401
00:30:17,649 --> 00:30:22,689
And funny thing about that song is that,

402
00:30:22,788 --> 00:30:26,668
having played it, you can get carried away
with the emotion of the song,

403
00:30:26,725 --> 00:30:27,999
the intensity of it,

404
00:30:28,060 --> 00:30:31,564
of what you're doing, and
it ruins it in a way.

405
00:30:31,663 --> 00:30:37,511
And that's part of Ritchie's charm for me
is his restraint at the right moments,

406
00:30:37,569 --> 00:30:40,846
and it creates a lot of drama in his parts.

407
00:30:40,906 --> 00:30:41,907
It was a game changer,

408
00:30:42,007 --> 00:30:43,927
I thought Machine Head
was a game changer myself.

409
00:30:44,409 --> 00:30:48,084
Machine Head reached number seven
and went double platinum in the USA

410
00:30:48,213 --> 00:30:50,693
and gold at number one in the UK.

411
00:30:50,749 --> 00:30:53,923
but Ritchie's desire to control events
was now leading to clashes

412
00:30:54,019 --> 00:30:56,021
with vocalist Ian Gillan.

413
00:30:57,589 --> 00:31:00,593
He was, as they say, an alpha guy.
So was I.

414
00:31:00,726 --> 00:31:05,607
He wanted to control, I wanted to control,
so we butted heads because of that.

415
00:31:06,331 --> 00:31:09,574
We still respected each other,
but we never got on.

416
00:31:09,668 --> 00:31:11,944
And we just couldn't be in the same room.

417
00:31:12,070 --> 00:31:13,105
That was the problem.

418
00:31:13,205 --> 00:31:16,186
I wasn't speaking to him,
he wasn't speaking to me.

419
00:31:17,943 --> 00:31:19,513
We weren't being creative.

420
00:31:19,845 --> 00:31:21,188
The band then toured Japan

421
00:31:21,279 --> 00:31:26,888
which produced their hugely successful
1972 live album, Made in Japan.

422
00:31:26,952 --> 00:31:30,229
Things were coming to a head
with Ian Gillan.

423
00:31:30,288 --> 00:31:34,532
I think it started with coming back
on the Japanese flight.

424
00:31:36,027 --> 00:31:40,772
Paul Rodgers' you know,
to me was just mind-blowing, his voice.

425
00:31:41,900 --> 00:31:44,141
I wanted Ian to be able to do that,

426
00:31:44,269 --> 00:31:47,807
and I couldn't relate lo Ian's
screaming and yelling

427
00:31:47,906 --> 00:31:50,113
and the Elvis Presley impersonation.

428
00:31:51,276 --> 00:31:55,452
He said, "So, how do you want me to sing?
I'll sing any way you want me to sing".

429
00:31:55,547 --> 00:32:02,089
And I went, "Ian, you can't sing that way,
that's a blues thing", you know?

430
00:32:03,288 --> 00:32:06,667
I think after that, that turned him off.

431
00:32:07,125 --> 00:32:10,334
He was rejected,
so we went downhill from there.

432
00:32:18,103 --> 00:32:20,674
The aptly titled Who Do We Think We Are

433
00:32:20,806 --> 00:32:25,016
was lo be the final album before
Ian Gillan and Roger Glover left the band.

434
00:32:26,945 --> 00:32:30,984
I think Ritchie Blackmore spent a lot of
his career looking for the perfect line-up.

435
00:32:31,082 --> 00:32:33,494
And when he found it,
he still wasn't happy with it.

436
00:32:33,685 --> 00:32:34,857
We started looking for other people,

437
00:32:34,986 --> 00:32:37,830
we found Glenn Hughes
and David Coverdale.

438
00:32:37,923 --> 00:32:38,924
I'd left art college,

439
00:32:39,024 --> 00:32:42,528
and I was working in a boutique
in Redcar in the north of England.

440
00:32:42,627 --> 00:32:44,800
And I read in the Melody Maker that...

441
00:32:44,863 --> 00:32:48,868
It was a picture of Jon at his organ,
very Monty Python,

442
00:32:48,967 --> 00:32:55,384
saying, "Deep Purple still haven't found
a singer and are considering unknowns."

443
00:32:56,107 --> 00:33:00,351
Which was basically a little ding moment.

444
00:33:00,445 --> 00:33:02,015
Paice played me this tape, he said,

445
00:33:02,113 --> 00:33:04,059
"What do you think of this singer?"
And it was David Coverdale.

446
00:33:04,149 --> 00:33:05,992
And Jon would go,
"What's wrong with him?"

447
00:33:06,051 --> 00:33:09,123
And I'd go, "You can't
have him after Gillan."

448
00:33:09,855 --> 00:33:12,734
Gillan was this God with the women,

449
00:33:12,824 --> 00:33:16,636
and we've got to have someone that can

450
00:33:16,728 --> 00:33:20,335
fire up the female interest there.

451
00:33:21,066 --> 00:33:24,570
And they said, "No, we disagree."

452
00:33:25,303 --> 00:33:27,715
The girls in the office think he is cute.

453
00:33:27,806 --> 00:33:29,683
I'm going, "Cute? Okay."

454
00:33:57,002 --> 00:34:00,575
Then we did Mistreated, which is
a bluesy thing, and we had that voice,

455
00:34:00,705 --> 00:34:03,618
Paul Rodgers kind of overturned to it.

456
00:34:03,842 --> 00:34:06,118
And Burn itself, the song worked,

457
00:34:06,244 --> 00:34:08,781
I felt we had some good songs there.

458
00:34:27,132 --> 00:34:30,443
And, of course, Glenn
was very effervescent.

459
00:34:30,535 --> 00:34:34,142
He had a great funky way
of playing the bass.

460
00:34:35,106 --> 00:34:36,915
He was a very rhythmic bass player.

461
00:34:47,919 --> 00:34:51,423
'Cause before that we had more of a...

462
00:34:52,057 --> 00:34:54,799
Glenn was more...

463
00:34:54,893 --> 00:34:56,668
There would be this rhythmic...

464
00:34:57,495 --> 00:35:01,739
He was very good
with his rhythmic syncopation.

465
00:35:15,513 --> 00:35:18,960
You know, it bears noting that,
for me, Ritchie Blackmore,

466
00:35:19,017 --> 00:35:21,861
unlike many guitar players,

467
00:35:22,787 --> 00:35:27,532
never lost his edge, if it were.

468
00:35:28,326 --> 00:35:32,172
Burn is every bit as important
<i>as</i> Space Truckin'

469
00:35:32,263 --> 00:35:34,709
and some of the later stuff.

470
00:35:34,833 --> 00:35:39,873
You can actually hear a guitar player
at the lop of his game.

471
00:36:14,739 --> 00:36:17,811
Ritchie is convinced that the
clock in his bar is haunted

472
00:36:17,909 --> 00:36:20,253
and chimes whenever it is happy.

473
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:23,925
Very happy.-

474
00:36:25,150 --> 00:36:27,494
- It doesn't do it at a set time or anything?
- No.

475
00:36:27,585 --> 00:36:29,258
- It does it just...
- No, only when it's happy.

476
00:36:29,387 --> 00:36:31,367
It will stay off for months.

477
00:36:32,090 --> 00:36:33,890
It's haunted, it was
given to me by a friend.

478
00:36:41,866 --> 00:36:45,279
Ritchie's lifelong interest in haunting
and practical jokes

479
00:36:45,403 --> 00:36:48,782
was something else newcomer Coverdale
had to get used to.

480
00:36:48,907 --> 00:36:51,581
Some of them were very
close to the knuckle.

481
00:36:51,676 --> 00:36:54,850
We were at Clearwell Castle
in Gloucestershire, Forest of Dean.

482
00:36:55,280 --> 00:37:00,457
A guy called Tony Ashton was coming down
from London for the weekend, for the hang.

483
00:37:01,786 --> 00:37:06,030
So Ritchie and I had the crew empty
the guest bedroom

484
00:37:06,124 --> 00:37:09,731
of all the furniture and took up the
carpets, took up the floor boards,

485
00:37:09,794 --> 00:37:13,071
and put a huge speaker, I mean, a really
big Marshall speaker

486
00:37:13,131 --> 00:37:16,806
underneath the bed.

487
00:37:16,935 --> 00:37:21,111
Put the boards back in,
put the carpets back over,

488
00:37:21,206 --> 00:37:23,277
everything just looking normal.

489
00:37:23,441 --> 00:37:26,752
Fed the wires down to another room
down the way,

490
00:37:26,811 --> 00:37:31,760
and sat up and waited for Tony Ashton
to come back from the pub.

491
00:37:31,816 --> 00:37:35,662
And as we hear the steps coming down
the corridor

492
00:37:35,787 --> 00:37:39,291
and Tony's door close.

493
00:37:39,390 --> 00:37:43,930
So we give him time to bathroom
and whatever and get into bed'

494
00:37:43,995 --> 00:37:48,501
And then we turn the speaker,
the microphone on, and I went up,

495
00:37:48,633 --> 00:37:53,912
started scratching against a board,
which you can imagine, this is under a bed,

496
00:37:54,005 --> 00:37:57,509
and saying, "Let me out."

497
00:37:59,010 --> 00:38:01,286
Well...

498
00:38:01,346 --> 00:38:04,691
We heard the most unearthly scream and...

499
00:38:04,783 --> 00:38:08,424
Which, you know, and panicking footsteps
running down the corridor.

500
00:38:08,520 --> 00:38:10,830
It certainly wasn't a guy's voice.

501
00:38:10,922 --> 00:38:12,128
Tony was still at the pub,

502
00:38:12,190 --> 00:38:14,693
this was a guest of the family
who owned the castle,

503
00:38:14,826 --> 00:38:19,036
who'd actually just come back from Bristol
after seeing The Exorcist movie.

504
00:38:19,130 --> 00:38:23,806
So, and was last seen heading
into the deep, dark forest.

505
00:38:24,536 --> 00:38:30,487
He has no boundaries
when it comes to his pranks, his japes.

506
00:38:34,546 --> 00:38:38,323
This is Ontario, 40 miles
east of Los Angeles.

507
00:38:38,383 --> 00:38:41,364
The only sound you'll hear today are the
railway track to the south

508
00:38:41,452 --> 00:38:43,227
and the highway to the north.

509
00:38:44,656 --> 00:38:49,503
But the 40,000 plus people who gathered
here for the 1974 Cal Jam festival

510
00:38:49,561 --> 00:38:52,838
were about to witness Ritchie
at his most theatrical.

511
00:38:54,199 --> 00:38:59,581
Cal Jam, it was pretty romantic
when it happened, I'll tell you, it was.

512
00:38:59,671 --> 00:39:03,175
I remember a beautiful
southern California day.

513
00:39:07,745 --> 00:39:10,919
I'd come from driving a little
transit van's local gigs

514
00:39:11,049 --> 00:39:15,725
into flying in a customized,
private 707, 727.

515
00:39:15,820 --> 00:39:19,768
The star ship, which is how we flew
into that environment.

516
00:39:19,858 --> 00:39:21,565
It was breath-taking to me.

517
00:39:21,860 --> 00:39:24,670
There must have been 350,000 people there.

518
00:39:24,762 --> 00:39:28,938
I think 100,000 burned the fence down.

519
00:39:29,067 --> 00:39:30,876
Then it was probably 350,000.

520
00:39:31,002 --> 00:39:34,347
When we look at the visual images
from above,

521
00:39:34,439 --> 00:39:39,946
you cannot imagine what it's like
to walk onto a stage and you can't see...

522
00:39:41,079 --> 00:39:45,619
You can see the skyline,
but in the skyline there is people.

523
00:39:45,783 --> 00:39:47,956
It really was stunning.

524
00:39:48,119 --> 00:39:50,292
There was a whole host,
the Emerson, Lake <i>&</i> Palmer

525
00:39:50,421 --> 00:39:54,699
and Black Sabbath, Earth, Wind & Fire,
Seals and Crofts,

526
00:39:54,792 --> 00:39:58,706
Black Oak Arkansas and Rare Earth.
I think that was the bill.

527
00:39:58,796 --> 00:40:01,709
And we were offered the headline slot.

528
00:40:01,799 --> 00:40:05,872
John Coletta, the management, called
me up six months before that festival

529
00:40:05,970 --> 00:40:09,315
and said, "They want you
to do California Jam."

530
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:12,546
I said, "No, thanks.
I'm not interested in any more festivals."

531
00:40:12,644 --> 00:40:14,624
They are a nightmare, they always will be,

532
00:40:14,712 --> 00:40:17,625
there is always
complete catastrophe backstage.

533
00:40:17,715 --> 00:40:21,492
Nothing ever goes right,
you're always on late or early.

534
00:40:21,619 --> 00:40:24,828
The billing is all wrong, it's just awful.

535
00:40:24,923 --> 00:40:28,336
I said, "You know what, I might do it",

536
00:40:28,426 --> 00:40:32,499
"but we have to write down
all these conditions,"

537
00:40:32,630 --> 00:40:35,167
"because I'm tired of doing festivals."

538
00:40:35,300 --> 00:40:39,749
We're gonna go on at dusk,
which is 9:00, around there.

539
00:40:39,837 --> 00:40:42,841
And I said, "We'll be the first band
with lights, 'cause that's important."

540
00:40:42,941 --> 00:40:45,182
It's a subliminal thing, people see lights,

541
00:40:45,310 --> 00:40:48,257
and they go, "I really like this band
compared to the rest of them."

542
00:40:48,346 --> 00:40:51,020
It's only 'cause they've
got lights going on,

543
00:40:51,149 --> 00:40:55,655
and it's a psychological thing
that I've noticed, so I insisted on that.

544
00:40:56,788 --> 00:40:58,961
And they said, "Absolutely no problem."

545
00:40:59,357 --> 00:41:03,464
In the event, the organizers demanded
the band go on when it was still light.

546
00:41:03,528 --> 00:41:06,099
But Ritchie stuck to his guns.

547
00:41:06,197 --> 00:41:10,270
People were yelling and screaming
and threatening this and threatening that,

548
00:41:10,368 --> 00:41:14,680
and I just get the door bolted, and I'd
have a few drinks playing the guitar.

549
00:41:14,772 --> 00:41:16,217
I was not gonna go on.

550
00:41:16,674 --> 00:41:20,850
Finally when it was dark,
Ritchie, the musician, went on stage.

551
00:41:21,045 --> 00:41:24,891
You look fucking great from here.
Really good.

552
00:41:25,717 --> 00:41:27,788
And they were terrific on stage,
they were absolutely terrific.

553
00:41:27,885 --> 00:41:31,628
Ritchie is a spectacularly
visual guitarist, he was.

554
00:41:33,057 --> 00:41:36,231
He ran around, put his back to the
audience, threw his guitar around,

555
00:41:36,327 --> 00:41:38,568
and of course,
he did a bit of a Townshend sometimes,

556
00:41:38,663 --> 00:41:39,664
and smashed the guitar at the end.

557
00:41:39,731 --> 00:41:44,476
Of all the guys in Deep Purple,
it was Ritchie who was the most quixotic

558
00:41:44,569 --> 00:41:45,980
and mischievous.

559
00:41:46,571 --> 00:41:50,883
And the quixotic and mischievous Ritchie
was also on stage that night.

560
00:41:51,509 --> 00:41:56,049
He's had enough, you know,
he's playing away and you can hear,

561
00:41:56,147 --> 00:41:59,720
he said he could hear this guy going,
"Limey, get back in there, so I can..."

562
00:41:59,817 --> 00:42:01,763
You know, and all this kind of stuff,

563
00:42:01,853 --> 00:42:05,733
and he killed the camera,
it was brilliant showmanship.

564
00:42:05,823 --> 00:42:11,273
Probably among the definitive moments
of his kind of sense of spectacle

565
00:42:11,396 --> 00:42:16,038
and wanting to kind of turn it up
to another notch or whatever.

566
00:42:42,460 --> 00:42:46,203
And Ritchie had plans
for notching things up even further.

567
00:42:47,131 --> 00:42:48,974
So, I went to my roadie and said,

568
00:42:49,067 --> 00:42:52,139
"What I'm gonna do is
blow up the amplifiers."

569
00:42:52,270 --> 00:42:56,616
I said, "What I want you to do is
cover the amplifiers in petrol."

570
00:42:56,707 --> 00:43:01,417
"I'll go across one side of the stage.
You douse my Marshalls,"

571
00:43:01,479 --> 00:43:03,584
"dummy Marshalls, with petrol."

572
00:43:03,648 --> 00:43:08,324
Ronnie Quinton, his beloved guitar tech,
who is no longer with us,

573
00:43:08,453 --> 00:43:13,596
loaded way too much gun powder
into Ritchie's stuff,

574
00:43:13,658 --> 00:43:17,162
so when that... It blew Paice's glasses
off. I thought I was gonna die.

575
00:43:37,949 --> 00:43:41,089
Exploded and, like, blew
a hole in the stage,

576
00:43:41,185 --> 00:43:45,930
Paice's glasses got blown off, he
was like... He can't see anything.

577
00:43:46,023 --> 00:43:49,937
It made some cameraman temporarily deaf.

578
00:43:51,429 --> 00:43:52,874
But, it looked great.

579
00:43:53,831 --> 00:43:59,543
Everybody was up and happy. Deep Purple
just killed, I mean, they killed.

580
00:43:59,637 --> 00:44:05,849
Because this was still a bit of a transition
into heavy metal, still kinda new.

581
00:44:05,943 --> 00:44:08,389
They really came through, let me tell you.
They were good.

582
00:44:08,479 --> 00:44:14,327
I was a total novice
outside of the remarkable

583
00:44:14,385 --> 00:44:18,731
schooling of working men's clubs
and it's just a walk in the park, you know,

584
00:44:18,823 --> 00:44:22,168
after you've played
Wingate Constitutional Club.

585
00:44:22,226 --> 00:44:25,070
Yeah, he did a great job, he pulled it off.

586
00:44:35,806 --> 00:44:37,080
And we had a helicopter,

587
00:44:37,208 --> 00:44:40,655
we were bundled into the helicopter
and flown out.

588
00:44:40,745 --> 00:44:44,215
The police were coming to arrest us,
for blowing up the stage,

589
00:44:44,315 --> 00:44:47,592
being dangerous to all the people,
what have you.

590
00:44:48,352 --> 00:44:54,064
You know, it worked, and the idea was
to upstage ELP, which I think we did.

591
00:44:55,092 --> 00:44:59,666
That was probably one of the peak moments
certainly in economic terms

592
00:44:59,764 --> 00:45:02,074
and in terms of record breaking.

593
00:45:02,166 --> 00:45:04,442
That was one of the highlights
of Deep Purple's career,

594
00:45:04,535 --> 00:45:06,845
because they played to this vast audience.

595
00:45:06,938 --> 00:45:09,179
I think it is in the
Guinness Book of Records,

596
00:45:09,273 --> 00:45:12,618
some hundreds of thousands of people
at this event.

597
00:45:12,710 --> 00:45:14,690
I think it got better musically for them.

598
00:45:14,779 --> 00:45:18,352
They continued, thank God,
to progress musically.

599
00:45:18,449 --> 00:45:24,195
But, I don't know that their popularity
ever got bigger than Cal Jam ll'

600
00:45:26,290 --> 00:45:29,965
Cal Jam had radically ramped up
Ritchie's profile in America,

601
00:45:30,061 --> 00:45:34,305
but he was growing increasingly unhappy with
the funky direction the band was taking.

602
00:45:35,566 --> 00:45:38,308
My first LP Burn was great.

603
00:45:38,436 --> 00:45:42,578
We had Mistreated, Burn,
and it was all working.

604
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:46,986
Now, the second record we made,
Stormbringer was good.

605
00:45:48,779 --> 00:45:53,319
But Jon, I think Ian, and even Dave,

606
00:45:53,417 --> 00:45:57,763
and, of course, Glenn,
were getting into this funk stuff.

607
00:46:01,158 --> 00:46:03,832
And I'm like, "That's not me."

608
00:46:04,328 --> 00:46:07,969
It's gonna be rock, blues.
I don't wanna be involved in that.

609
00:46:08,099 --> 00:46:11,103
Me, Jon and David wrote Holy Man together.

610
00:46:11,168 --> 00:46:14,479
And it was, "You can't do it right
with the one you love".

611
00:46:14,572 --> 00:46:18,611
It was group compositions, Hold On.

612
00:46:19,277 --> 00:46:22,986
Jon came up with that great
Fender Rhodes thing.

613
00:46:44,335 --> 00:46:45,939
And with his Deep Purple colleagues

614
00:46:46,037 --> 00:46:48,950
unwilling to take the music
in the direction he wanted,

615
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:53,352
Ritchie now found someone who was,
a singer named Ronnie James Dio.

616
00:46:54,512 --> 00:46:56,788
That's when I did,

617
00:46:56,881 --> 00:46:59,384
I think, 16th Century Greensleeves
with Ronnie.

618
00:47:13,497 --> 00:47:17,877
He actually recorded an album with Ronnie
and the guys is in Elf.

619
00:47:17,968 --> 00:47:19,641
And we didn't know about this.

620
00:47:20,471 --> 00:47:21,882
And that turned out even better,

621
00:47:21,972 --> 00:47:25,852
and I went, "We've gotta form a band
'cause this is just flowing."

622
00:47:27,078 --> 00:47:30,685
There is none of this...
No committee meetings.

623
00:47:30,748 --> 00:47:33,490
And no briefcases involved

624
00:47:33,584 --> 00:47:35,825
and trying to get hold of people
that were never around.

625
00:47:36,887 --> 00:47:39,731
Because Purple became a big business,
the monster.

626
00:47:40,091 --> 00:47:44,062
So, that's when I left 'em
and formed Rainbow.

627
00:47:44,695 --> 00:47:46,174
Ritchie's new band was named after

628
00:47:46,263 --> 00:47:48,607
the famous rock and roll
Rainbow Bar and Grill

629
00:47:48,733 --> 00:47:50,940
on Sunset Boulevard in west Hollywood.

630
00:47:51,035 --> 00:47:53,174
<i>He was his</i> own <i>boss at last.</i>

631
00:48:18,062 --> 00:48:20,702
It was very exciting. We had Ronnie Dio.

632
00:48:20,798 --> 00:48:22,607
He could come around
and write a tune like that.

633
00:48:22,700 --> 00:48:27,115
I'd give him an idea, he'd put the top line
to it, everything was fresh.

634
00:48:27,204 --> 00:48:28,706
He had that ridiculous voice.

635
00:48:29,407 --> 00:48:30,647
After the first album,

636
00:48:30,741 --> 00:48:34,120
Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow became
simply Rainbow.

637
00:48:34,445 --> 00:48:37,949
We held auditions to put Rainbow together.

638
00:48:38,115 --> 00:48:41,756
And the 13th drummer was Cozy Powell.

639
00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:45,280
And he was the only one that could
play a shuffle.

640
00:48:45,656 --> 00:48:50,162
I was looking for some fire
and then Cozy came in and he did it.

641
00:49:08,179 --> 00:49:10,125
He and Ritchie got on very well together.

642
00:49:10,181 --> 00:49:15,028
They both shared a love,
apart from rock and roll, of pranking.

643
00:49:15,152 --> 00:49:17,598
Practical jokes, so...

644
00:49:17,688 --> 00:49:21,500
And, of course, Cozy is quite
a strong personality as well so,

645
00:49:21,592 --> 00:49:23,868
they respected each other
and they liked each other,

646
00:49:23,994 --> 00:49:27,032
and that was really the basis of the
success of Rainbow,

647
00:49:27,164 --> 00:49:32,273
I think, was this very powerful guitar
player, incredibly strong drummer

648
00:49:32,369 --> 00:49:34,975
and enormously talented singer.

649
00:49:35,039 --> 00:49:38,043
I think Cozy was a perfect
foil for Ritchie,

650
00:49:38,142 --> 00:49:40,281
and I know even Cozy
found it hard at times.

651
00:49:40,377 --> 00:49:42,687
Cozy used to tell me,
"It isn't easy, you know?"

652
00:49:42,780 --> 00:49:44,817
But I think Cozy had such
a respect for Ritchie

653
00:49:44,882 --> 00:49:47,055
and likewise the other way around.

654
00:49:47,184 --> 00:49:50,063
So, yeah, I think it was great combination.

655
00:49:50,154 --> 00:49:56,161
As a fan, it seemed like it was
one more step into what was heavy metal.

656
00:49:58,529 --> 00:50:03,569
Certainly with Dio singing,

657
00:50:03,701 --> 00:50:07,046
it was a remarkable step forward
in that genre.

658
00:50:07,137 --> 00:50:09,913
I mean, a lot of people today,
they listen to those records

659
00:50:10,007 --> 00:50:12,647
and they think that's
where it really started.

660
00:50:12,743 --> 00:50:15,246
It's almost as if he is playing more
on those records,

661
00:50:15,379 --> 00:50:17,416
there is like more of Ritchie
on those records.

662
00:50:17,548 --> 00:50:21,257
It was a band in his own image,
which Deep Purple would never...

663
00:50:21,552 --> 00:50:25,398
Deep Purple were partly his image
and partly his creativity,

664
00:50:25,489 --> 00:50:27,400
but it belonged to everybody else.

665
00:50:27,491 --> 00:50:28,561
Rainbow was him.

666
00:50:28,659 --> 00:50:32,835
Rainbow was definitely his moment
of stepping into the spotlight

667
00:50:32,930 --> 00:50:35,035
and saying, "This is me,
this is where I want to go."

668
00:50:35,266 --> 00:50:39,112
Cozy suddenly turned up,
turned around, Cozy Powell, and said,

669
00:50:39,236 --> 00:50:41,876
"You know who my favourite band is?"

670
00:50:41,939 --> 00:50:44,749
It's "ABBA“ and we went..."

671
00:50:46,043 --> 00:50:47,044
"ABBA!"

672
00:50:48,045 --> 00:50:50,582
"How could you?“ as in like...

673
00:50:50,681 --> 00:50:54,686
And he is like, "Yeah, I know,
but that's my favourite band."

674
00:50:54,885 --> 00:50:57,388
Then I <i>said,</i> "And mine."

675
00:50:59,456 --> 00:51:03,097
Then, I think
the bass player there went, "And mine."

676
00:51:03,193 --> 00:51:06,037
And we suddenly all went,
"Let's play some ABBA."

677
00:51:06,797 --> 00:51:10,939
But, unsurprisingly, no ABBA tracks made it
on to the band's second album,

678
00:51:11,035 --> 00:51:12,378
Rainbow Rising.

679
00:51:28,619 --> 00:51:33,090
Rainbow Rising was done in Munich
in the studio Arabella House, I think.

680
00:51:34,291 --> 00:51:37,738
That was done quickly and done very well,

681
00:51:37,828 --> 00:51:39,569
and we had a good time playing it.

682
00:51:39,663 --> 00:51:41,233
By the time we got
to Long Live Rock 'N' Roll,

683
00:51:41,332 --> 00:51:43,175
things were getting...

684
00:51:44,435 --> 00:51:47,939
Ronnie was more into his girlfriend Wendy,

685
00:51:48,072 --> 00:51:50,348
and things were starting to slow down
for ideas.

686
00:51:50,441 --> 00:51:54,184
I don't think Rainbow ever equalled
the success of Deep Purple,

687
00:51:54,311 --> 00:51:58,782
not in the public's perception
or in the critics' minds, should we say.

688
00:51:59,583 --> 00:52:02,189
Despite the fact that it did produce
some great music.

689
00:52:02,286 --> 00:52:04,789
It was very... And it
was a great live band.

690
00:52:04,855 --> 00:52:06,129
It was very entertaining,

691
00:52:06,190 --> 00:52:09,694
and gave Ritchie Blackmore opportunities
to play with other people.

692
00:52:10,260 --> 00:52:13,036
As far as the personnel changes go,

693
00:52:13,130 --> 00:52:18,011
you would need an abacus
and a Cray Computer

694
00:52:18,102 --> 00:52:20,446
to figure that one out.

695
00:52:20,537 --> 00:52:24,781
But, that family tree is tall, wide
and complicated.

696
00:52:24,875 --> 00:52:27,879
But through it all, there
is Ritchie Blackmore.

697
00:52:51,301 --> 00:52:55,909
And a Ritchie Blackmore who was still
unpredictable and more than a little scary.

698
00:52:56,073 --> 00:52:59,077
I have seen Ritchie lose it with someone,
I better not say who it is.

699
00:52:59,209 --> 00:53:02,918
but it was very explosive.

700
00:53:03,047 --> 00:53:06,893
Yeah, he doesn't suffer people to be fools.

701
00:53:06,984 --> 00:53:09,931
And I know Ritchie can be quite physical.

702
00:53:10,254 --> 00:53:14,430
Ritchie got physical in Vienna in 1977.

703
00:53:15,592 --> 00:53:20,837
We were playing in Austria to
about 5,000-?, 000 people.

704
00:53:20,931 --> 00:53:25,937
A good show and this little girl comes
up to the front stage,

705
00:53:26,070 --> 00:53:29,608
she had come up and handed up a note,

706
00:53:29,740 --> 00:53:33,381
like, "I'm a big fan of the band"
or something like that, I don't know.

707
00:53:33,444 --> 00:53:35,117
And I'm just watching her

708
00:53:35,212 --> 00:53:39,786
and the next minute she gets hit by this
guy with a truncheon and this bouncer,

709
00:53:40,617 --> 00:53:43,928
and, of course, I thought,
"He is not gonna get away with that."

710
00:53:44,021 --> 00:53:46,262
So I kicked him.

711
00:53:46,356 --> 00:53:50,361
And I have strong legs,
so of course I broke his jaw

712
00:53:50,461 --> 00:53:53,601
and he went down, blood, and I went...

713
00:53:53,964 --> 00:53:57,969
The resourceful stage crew hid Ritchie
in a large flight case

714
00:53:58,102 --> 00:53:59,911
and pushed him towards the exit.

715
00:54:00,037 --> 00:54:04,452
Every exit had police helmets and dogs.

716
00:54:04,541 --> 00:54:08,990
And they were about to push me up
into the truck, into the lorry.

717
00:54:09,379 --> 00:54:13,987
And they insisted, opened it up,
and, of course,

718
00:54:14,118 --> 00:54:17,622
I just came out like a Jack in the box,
"Hi, everybody.“"

719
00:54:18,489 --> 00:54:21,936
And then they locked me up for four days,
which was pretty miserable.

720
00:54:22,326 --> 00:54:26,172
'Cause the first night, they would
just like, throw me on the floor.

721
00:54:27,331 --> 00:54:30,491
And they wanted to beat the shit out of me
because I just hit one of their guys.

722
00:54:30,667 --> 00:54:33,238
The consulate was of no use whatsoever,

723
00:54:33,337 --> 00:54:36,147
they just came and said,
"You have done a really bad thing."

724
00:54:36,240 --> 00:54:38,345
"You might be here forever."

725
00:54:39,409 --> 00:54:40,752
That's a wakeup call.

726
00:54:40,844 --> 00:54:45,486
You know, I had a bad temper.
My temper is not so bad any more

727
00:54:45,582 --> 00:54:46,902
'cause I always think about that.

728
00:54:46,950 --> 00:54:49,089
As well as his unscheduled jail visit,

729
00:54:49,186 --> 00:54:52,190
Ritchie now had to contend with
a changing music market

730
00:54:52,289 --> 00:54:53,962
and an unchanging Ronnie.

731
00:55:09,706 --> 00:55:12,778
Ronnie Dio and Ritchie Blackmore
had a chemistry,

732
00:55:12,876 --> 00:55:17,188
but then, as Blackmore got further
into the Rainbow career,

733
00:55:17,281 --> 00:55:21,559
he saw himself as wanting to become
a little bit more commercial.

734
00:55:21,652 --> 00:55:27,000
And Dio very much wanted to stay
into the myths and the dragons feel

735
00:55:27,057 --> 00:55:31,199
that he would put forward
in the lyrics, metaphorical,

736
00:55:31,295 --> 00:55:33,400
rather than physical, than actual.

737
00:55:33,530 --> 00:55:36,409
So that the two of them went their
separate ways, as we know.

738
00:55:37,034 --> 00:55:40,504
But that isn't the whole story,
as Ritchie now reveals.

739
00:55:41,205 --> 00:55:44,311
Wendy, apparently,
had told him transatlantically,

740
00:55:44,408 --> 00:55:46,888
she said, called him up and said, "Ronnie",

741
00:55:46,977 --> 00:55:50,652
"Ritchie is on the front page
of Circus magazine in America"

742
00:55:50,747 --> 00:55:52,226
"and you two aren't."

743
00:55:52,316 --> 00:55:54,193
"There should have been the three of us."

744
00:55:54,685 --> 00:55:56,392
That's what did it.

745
00:55:56,486 --> 00:56:02,402
And he said to me, "Cozy and I are not
gonna... We are not your sidekicks",

746
00:56:02,492 --> 00:56:04,995
"and we are not standing for it."

747
00:56:05,362 --> 00:56:08,707
I don't want to work with someone
who is that trivial, that ridiculous.

748
00:56:08,765 --> 00:56:13,441
I said, "I can't work with this guy any
more, just get him out of my life."

749
00:56:13,570 --> 00:56:19,111
And I remembered Graham Bonnet
from the Marbles,

750
00:56:19,209 --> 00:56:23,351
and I said to Roger Glover, I said,
"What about trying to find him?"

751
00:56:23,447 --> 00:56:25,007
"I wonder what he is doing these days."

752
00:56:25,048 --> 00:56:28,518
So I had to learn a Rainbow song
because I knew nothing.

753
00:56:28,619 --> 00:56:31,122
I didn't know who Rainbow was,
I had no clue.

754
00:56:31,221 --> 00:56:33,599
So I had to go out and buy albums
and listen to the music.

755
00:56:33,690 --> 00:56:37,194
And I thought,
"I don't think this is really me."

756
00:56:37,394 --> 00:56:40,307
I'm more into like R&B
and pop kind of stuff.

757
00:56:40,464 --> 00:56:43,308
That guy had an amazing voice.

758
00:56:43,400 --> 00:56:46,574
Could sing an F-sharp above Top C
and that was going some.

759
00:56:46,637 --> 00:56:48,116
I remember going over there one afternoon,

760
00:56:48,205 --> 00:56:50,085
and I heard this
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

761
00:56:50,140 --> 00:56:52,552
or something in the background,
and it was off of my album.

762
00:56:52,643 --> 00:56:55,920
I said to Roger, "Why is he playing that?"
He <i>says,</i> "He just loves your voice."

763
00:56:55,979 --> 00:56:59,426
Ritchie also loved the idea of
being more commercial.

764
00:57:23,407 --> 00:57:24,784
We needed some radio play.

765
00:57:24,841 --> 00:57:27,014
We got a little bit too underground.

766
00:57:27,110 --> 00:57:29,021
Since You've Been Gone, we got rid of that,
and <i>we...</i>

767
00:57:29,112 --> 00:57:32,616
'Cause it's a number one, all of a sudden
we were a big band.

768
00:57:33,850 --> 00:57:38,526
We were riding high at that time,
1980 was our biggest moment, I think.

769
00:57:39,456 --> 00:57:41,129
We were quite big in England.

770
00:57:41,591 --> 00:57:42,865
I love Since You've Been Gone.

771
00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:48,342
It's uncompromising and it has the perfect
element of pop, which is you can sing it

772
00:57:48,432 --> 00:57:51,538
and it's in your head all day,
and it's passionate.

773
00:57:51,635 --> 00:57:56,812
It has a real tug on your emotions.

774
00:57:56,873 --> 00:58:00,377
But Ritchie's in it,
and Ritchie is powering the whole thing.

775
00:58:00,477 --> 00:58:02,047
The under solo is just brilliant.

776
00:58:19,663 --> 00:58:21,506
They did the immortal version of it.

777
00:58:22,499 --> 00:58:24,979
Powered by their more commercial sound,

778
00:58:25,068 --> 00:58:29,414
Rainbow headlined the first ever
Monsters of Rock festival at Donington.

779
00:58:30,474 --> 00:58:32,010
The critics hated us.

780
00:58:32,676 --> 00:58:35,919
For whatever reason,
we were not a fashionable,

781
00:58:36,013 --> 00:58:38,220
on the front page of Rolling Stones
type of band.

782
00:58:38,315 --> 00:58:41,762
We were... They just hated us.

783
00:58:41,852 --> 00:58:43,559
But the more they hated us,

784
00:58:43,653 --> 00:58:47,157
the more the people kind of went,
"We love them."

785
00:58:47,657 --> 00:58:49,432
The fans may have loved Rainbow,

786
00:58:49,559 --> 00:58:53,268
but Ritchie was now having a problem
with Graham Banners hair.

787
00:58:53,397 --> 00:58:57,436
Ritchie was 100% behind me being
in the band,

788
00:58:57,534 --> 00:59:00,208
but 100% against my haircut.

789
00:59:01,038 --> 00:59:03,245
There was a hair situation.

790
00:59:03,340 --> 00:59:07,584
We were known to have Denim people
following us,

791
00:59:07,677 --> 00:59:10,317
and most people were kind of growing
their hair long in those days.

792
00:59:10,514 --> 00:59:13,222
I went to get my hair cut in Sheffield
really short.

793
00:59:13,283 --> 00:59:15,456
I mean, like, spiky and the whole thing.

794
00:59:20,957 --> 00:59:23,767
And I went on stage
and Ritchie hadn't seen me all day,

795
00:59:23,860 --> 00:59:26,306
and there he was playing his guitar,
and the first song comes up

796
00:59:26,396 --> 00:59:27,716
and he turns to me and he goes...

797
00:59:27,764 --> 00:59:29,471
You know, his mouth dropped.

798
00:59:29,566 --> 00:59:31,773
He was singing to the audience
and doing his bit,

799
00:59:31,868 --> 00:59:34,974
and I saw the back of the shaved neck,
you know that.

800
00:59:35,072 --> 00:59:40,146
You know, very cut hair and I went,

801
00:59:40,243 --> 00:59:42,814
"I'm just gonna put my guitar across
his head."

802
00:59:42,913 --> 00:59:44,153
but then I might...

803
00:59:44,247 --> 00:59:46,318
I'll be back in prison again, you know.

804
00:59:46,450 --> 00:59:49,954
I really was, like, so tempted just to
take it off and go whack.

805
01:00:01,264 --> 01:00:03,904
Graham Bonnet and his hair lived to sing
another day.

806
01:00:04,000 --> 01:00:07,504
But he had no luck persuading drummer
Cozy Powell to stay on board.

807
01:00:07,804 --> 01:00:12,082
Powell didn't like the overtly
commercial work the band was now doing.

808
01:00:12,509 --> 01:00:13,647
And he was gone.

809
01:00:13,743 --> 01:00:19,193
And it was a very sad day,
and he left the band and later I did.

810
01:00:19,282 --> 01:00:22,627
That was my last show too,
but I didn't know this at that time.

811
01:00:22,686 --> 01:00:24,427
Graham Bonnet was a great singer

812
01:00:24,521 --> 01:00:28,128
and Down to Earth was a thoroughly
undervalued Rainbow album.

813
01:00:28,191 --> 01:00:31,035
But again, the problem was
that Blackmore saw Bonnet

814
01:00:31,161 --> 01:00:34,438
not quite as having what it took
in terms of personality,

815
01:00:34,531 --> 01:00:36,875
to allow Blackmore to be himself.

816
01:00:37,501 --> 01:00:40,038
Song writing wasn't good,
the way we wanted it to.

817
01:00:40,170 --> 01:00:41,444
It was very slow.

818
01:00:41,538 --> 01:00:45,850
Nothing was happening, we had one song
and that was the song Russ Ballard wrote.

819
01:00:45,942 --> 01:00:47,888
I Surrender, the song was called.

820
01:00:48,011 --> 01:00:49,285
And that's all we had.

821
01:00:49,379 --> 01:00:51,882
And so we... It was...

822
01:00:51,982 --> 01:00:54,519
I left because Ritchie didn't
come to rehearsal sometimes.

823
01:01:07,964 --> 01:01:10,137
Graham left the band in 1980.

824
01:01:10,634 --> 01:01:14,047
Like a month or so later, I thought,
"What have I done?"

825
01:01:14,137 --> 01:01:17,243
I have left something that was great.

826
01:01:17,340 --> 01:01:20,810
It would be nice to see him again
'cause I like him very much.

827
01:01:20,911 --> 01:01:26,361
He was a good friend, and he taught me a lot
about the music I was suddenly pushed into,

828
01:01:26,416 --> 01:01:29,260
which I knew nothing about,
and he was a great teacher.

829
01:01:29,753 --> 01:01:33,200
Ritchie's friend Barry Ambrosio suggested
Joe Lynn Turner

830
01:01:33,256 --> 01:01:35,395
as a replacement for Graham Bonnet.

831
01:01:36,059 --> 01:01:37,936
He said, "Listen to this record."

832
01:01:38,061 --> 01:01:42,532
I said "Look, Barry, I've heard
so many singers, I can! Hear any more."

833
01:01:42,599 --> 01:01:44,078
"I've got to get out of here."

834
01:01:44,167 --> 01:01:47,842
He said, "Just listen to this,"
and he played one track as I was leaving.

835
01:01:47,938 --> 01:01:49,178
And I went,

836
01:01:49,272 --> 01:01:51,775
"Actually, that sounds interesting,
who is this guy?“

837
01:01:51,875 --> 01:01:53,912
And he said, "Guy from New Jersey."

838
01:01:54,077 --> 01:01:56,785
I didn't know that he came to see me.

839
01:01:56,913 --> 01:02:00,122
I later found oui when I got a phone call,

840
01:02:00,217 --> 01:02:04,359
living in Manhattan, lower Manhattan
in the west village,

841
01:02:04,688 --> 01:02:07,294
one-room studio, I think you call it.

842
01:02:07,457 --> 01:02:09,562
And mattress on the floor,

843
01:02:09,626 --> 01:02:11,299
money running out.

844
01:02:11,428 --> 01:02:14,932
And got a phone call from Barry Ambrosio,

845
01:02:15,031 --> 01:02:17,637
and he put Ritchie on the phone,

846
01:02:17,767 --> 01:02:20,475
and of course I... Complete disbelief.

847
01:02:20,604 --> 01:02:24,108
And he said, "No, it's really me."
And I said, "Well, all right."

848
01:02:24,207 --> 01:02:26,551
And they told...
They put their road manager on

849
01:02:26,643 --> 01:02:29,817
and told me the train to take
and to go out to the studio.

850
01:02:56,906 --> 01:02:59,512
I was playing in New Jersey,
and I went to see him.

851
01:02:59,643 --> 01:03:03,955
And I really liked his voice,
very resonant and warm.

852
01:03:04,014 --> 01:03:06,858
He came in with a couple of beers
and said, "You got the job if you want it."

853
01:03:06,983 --> 01:03:09,156
And I <i>said,</i> "Want it? I need it."

854
01:03:09,619 --> 01:03:14,090
And kept me there in the studio
and we just kept being creative,

855
01:03:14,190 --> 01:03:17,637
and Glover and I started
to write more lyrics,

856
01:03:17,694 --> 01:03:22,006
and we finished the album Difficult to
Cure, like, in a couple of weeks, I think,

857
01:03:22,098 --> 01:03:23,543
since my entrance.

858
01:03:24,367 --> 01:03:27,871
Ritchie recorded three Rainbow albums
with Joe Lynn Turner.

859
01:03:29,673 --> 01:03:33,849
I think I wrote, with Joe,

860
01:03:33,943 --> 01:03:37,186
one of my favourite tunes
which is Street of Dreams.

861
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:41,729
That, to me, was the ultimate Rainbow song.
I love that song.

862
01:03:42,319 --> 01:03:45,357
Come on the jukebox,
I go, "I'm proud of that."

863
01:03:45,789 --> 01:03:47,860
'Cause it was exactly where I wanted to go.

864
01:03:47,991 --> 01:03:50,028
When we heard it,
we knew we had something.

865
01:03:50,126 --> 01:03:54,336
There was just chills up and down our...
We felt it.

866
01:03:54,397 --> 01:03:56,673
We said, "Man, this is deep,
this is something."

867
01:04:15,385 --> 01:04:18,423
And the fact that I could kind of
write something that was poppy

868
01:04:18,555 --> 01:04:20,557
was something new for me.

869
01:04:20,657 --> 01:04:22,000
And I liked that groove.

870
01:04:22,092 --> 01:04:26,234
I just don't want to play, crash,
crash, crash for the sake of it.

871
01:04:26,329 --> 01:04:27,706
I've got to hear a melody.

872
01:04:27,831 --> 01:04:32,439
Melody was always at the bottom of,
for me musically, where I was going.

873
01:04:50,787 --> 01:04:52,858
While Ritchie had been developing Rainbow,

874
01:04:52,956 --> 01:04:58,269
his Deep Purple fans still wanted to see the
classic Mark ll line-up back together again.

875
01:04:59,796 --> 01:05:05,872
1983, I think, the management called me up
and said, "Purple wants to re-form."

876
01:05:05,969 --> 01:05:07,778
I said, "Well, I have to think about it."

877
01:05:07,871 --> 01:05:11,944
Rainbow was just now taking off really big
in America.

878
01:05:12,041 --> 01:05:15,989
And we were really getting somewhere,
we were doing big shows.

879
01:05:16,112 --> 01:05:20,322
I don't know if I want... It's so easy
to just go back to Purple, you know.

880
01:05:20,984 --> 01:05:22,964
I was like...

881
01:05:23,052 --> 01:05:24,827
And Gillan was really up for it.

882
01:05:24,954 --> 01:05:28,333
And I'm like, "Okay, let's try it."

883
01:05:29,092 --> 01:05:34,337
I put up no fuss, no fight, no nothing
like that, so I really felt good about it.

884
01:05:34,431 --> 01:05:36,570
And also at that point in time,

885
01:05:36,666 --> 01:05:40,273
I had a solo album for Elektra Records,

886
01:05:40,336 --> 01:05:41,747
and things were going well for me.

887
01:05:41,838 --> 01:05:44,842
And Ritchie and I promised to get back
together again anyway.

888
01:05:44,941 --> 01:05:48,855
So, I had no compunction about it.
I felt good about it.

889
01:05:49,479 --> 01:05:51,652
Of course there was money entered into it.

890
01:05:51,748 --> 01:05:55,821
And the management is going,
"It's worth X amount..."

891
01:05:55,919 --> 01:05:59,833
I'm like, "Might be an interesting idea.
Okay, I'll try it.“"

892
01:06:00,757 --> 01:06:02,361
Cut a long story short.

893
01:06:02,992 --> 01:06:04,699
So we did it.

894
01:06:04,994 --> 01:06:08,498
You know, we had a good time,
Perfect Strangers is a good record.

895
01:06:08,765 --> 01:06:10,335
And we all had a good time doing it.

896
01:06:10,867 --> 01:06:12,847
It was very comfortable being with them.

897
01:06:29,385 --> 01:06:32,298
Perfect Strangers was a brilliant
comeback album by Purple.

898
01:06:32,388 --> 01:06:34,629
It was a phenomenal performance

899
01:06:34,724 --> 01:06:37,170
because it got Mark ll back together.

900
01:06:37,227 --> 01:06:39,036
They did it in the mid-80's fashion.

901
01:06:39,128 --> 01:06:40,471
They weren't living in the past.

902
01:06:40,563 --> 01:06:43,567
They weren't living in 1971, 72,

903
01:06:43,700 --> 01:06:47,238
they were actually being part of
the modern hard rock world.

904
01:06:48,538 --> 01:06:51,576
I think the relationship at the time
between Gillan and Blackmore,

905
01:06:51,674 --> 01:06:55,349
which is always pointed out
as being the problem, was quite amicable.

906
01:06:56,246 --> 01:06:59,750
The amicable band
toured in support of the album.

907
01:07:00,250 --> 01:07:01,251
They were trying to say

908
01:07:01,351 --> 01:07:03,331
that Bruce Springsteen
was doing the biggest business.

909
01:07:03,419 --> 01:07:07,595
Biggest business was us and Grateful Dead,
then Bruce Springsteen.

910
01:07:08,558 --> 01:07:11,937
I don't know what people see
in Bruce Springsteen whatsoever.

911
01:07:12,061 --> 01:07:13,096
I have never got that.

912
01:07:13,997 --> 01:07:17,069
The ticket sales showed
that the old magic was still there,

913
01:07:17,166 --> 01:07:19,544
but so were the old rivalries with Gillan.

914
01:07:19,702 --> 01:07:25,175
I put it down to he wanted to kind of
maybe steer the band,

915
01:07:25,275 --> 01:07:26,879
and I was steering the band.

916
01:07:26,943 --> 01:07:29,685
So I think it was that more than anything.

917
01:07:29,846 --> 01:07:32,884
Of course it worked, I thought,
Perfect Strangers worked.

918
01:07:32,949 --> 01:07:36,692
Everybody was on form, we played,
it worked.

919
01:07:36,786 --> 01:07:39,062
But, we should have stopped right there.

920
01:07:39,689 --> 01:07:43,136
And then we did...
House of Blue Light, to me, was disastrous.

921
01:08:09,552 --> 01:08:13,159
And the relationship with Ian
was soon back in the disaster zone too.

922
01:08:13,823 --> 01:08:15,461
He had lost his voice completely.

923
01:08:15,558 --> 01:08:17,231
And we are going, "What are we gonna do?"

924
01:08:17,327 --> 01:08:21,400
I was always already disgusted with Ian,
we weren't getting along.

925
01:08:21,497 --> 01:08:24,808
Soto me, I was like,
"We gotta get another singer."

926
01:08:24,901 --> 01:08:26,101
"I mean, this is just a joke."

927
01:08:27,170 --> 01:08:31,949
By 1987 Ritchie had played with scares
of musicians and dozens cf bands.

928
01:08:32,008 --> 01:08:35,512
A self-confessed wind-up merchant
who thrived on conflict.

929
01:08:35,645 --> 01:08:38,626
The uneasy rider
was about to meet his match.

930
01:08:38,681 --> 01:08:41,184
Appropriately enough,
on the football field.

931
01:08:42,018 --> 01:08:45,192
I used to have my roadie call up
radio stations too.

932
01:08:45,288 --> 01:08:49,361
Deep purple would like to do
a game of soccer against you,

933
01:08:49,492 --> 01:08:51,631
if you feel like playing a charity.

934
01:08:51,694 --> 01:08:54,538
It's kind of my fairy tale Cinderella story

935
01:08:54,664 --> 01:08:58,476
because I was working for this
radio station on Long Island.

936
01:08:58,534 --> 01:08:59,706
I was interning there.

937
01:08:59,802 --> 01:09:02,715
And apparently somebody from Deep Purple
had called up.

938
01:09:03,373 --> 01:09:04,977
So the DJs came out and they played,

939
01:09:05,041 --> 01:09:07,351
and Purple showed up,
it was Ritchie and Roger.

940
01:09:07,443 --> 01:09:10,117
He signed an autograph for me
and he looked up at me and said,

941
01:09:10,213 --> 01:09:13,160
in that very classy English accent
that I'm sure you are familiar with,

942
01:09:13,650 --> 01:09:16,324
"You are very beautiful girl."
And I went, "That's nice."

943
01:09:16,386 --> 01:09:17,956
And that would have been
my Ritchie Blackmore story

944
01:09:18,054 --> 01:09:19,328
that he said I was beautiful.

945
01:09:19,389 --> 01:09:21,027
And that was enough at that point.

946
01:09:21,124 --> 01:09:22,967
And I said, "Thank you",
and I walked off the field.

947
01:09:23,059 --> 01:09:26,233
And he sent his roadies through the crowd
to find out who I was

948
01:09:26,329 --> 01:09:28,309
and to ask me to meet him at a pub later.

949
01:09:28,665 --> 01:09:33,808
Candice Night was a musical New Yorker,
who had been modelling from age 12.

950
01:09:33,903 --> 01:09:35,507
She had her own radio rock show,

951
01:09:35,571 --> 01:09:40,645
and had studied communications
at New York Institute of Technology.

952
01:09:40,743 --> 01:09:44,919
And Ritchie had the most brilliant, proper

953
01:09:45,014 --> 01:09:47,995
upper-class English way
of breaking the ice.

954
01:09:48,084 --> 01:09:51,031
- He was taking off his soccer cleats.
- Oh, right.

955
01:09:51,087 --> 01:09:53,897
And his dirty, mud-filled,
sweaty soccer socks

956
01:09:53,990 --> 01:09:57,267
and he balled one up
and threw it right in my face.

957
01:09:58,828 --> 01:10:00,432
That's the way to get a girl.

958
01:10:00,530 --> 01:10:02,373
And I didn't worry about my nails
after that any more

959
01:10:02,432 --> 01:10:04,241
'cause I thought this is ridiculous,
and we just...

960
01:10:04,333 --> 01:10:05,937
After that, there was really nothing...

961
01:10:06,035 --> 01:10:08,174
That totally relaxed

962
01:10:08,271 --> 01:10:10,911
- the whole entire environment.
- It was a magical smell.

963
01:10:11,507 --> 01:10:14,750
He said to me that
when I walked into the room,

964
01:10:14,844 --> 01:10:17,051
meeting him at that pub that afternoon.

965
01:10:17,113 --> 01:10:22,062
He said, "I felt like, when you walked in
that an old friend had walked into the room."

966
01:10:22,118 --> 01:10:23,597
"Like it felt like home."

967
01:10:23,686 --> 01:10:26,257
Ritchie now had an ally
who put him at ease.

968
01:10:26,355 --> 01:10:31,031
Soon their shared interest in medieval life
and music was to take centre stage.

969
01:10:31,127 --> 01:10:34,131
But first, a replacement had to be found
for Gillan.

970
01:10:34,230 --> 01:10:37,939
Ritchie approached his Rainbow vocalist,
Joe Lynn Turner.

971
01:10:38,101 --> 01:10:40,809
At first, Joe hesitated, I think.

972
01:10:40,903 --> 01:10:43,816
You know, Paice is going well
and he was in Rainbow.

973
01:10:43,940 --> 01:10:45,942
So I was like, "Yeah, well..."

974
01:10:46,042 --> 01:10:47,419
Got any other ideas?

975
01:10:48,277 --> 01:10:51,656
And Jon's like, "Yeah, sounds great."

976
01:10:51,781 --> 01:10:54,091
So we tried him out, it worked,
and then he was in.

977
01:10:54,817 --> 01:10:58,230
He started playing Hey Joe,
I grabbed the mike, started singing it.

978
01:10:58,321 --> 01:11:00,824
Never even said, "Hello" to Jon or Ian
at that point.

979
01:11:00,923 --> 01:11:03,096
Finished the song and then there were
some handshakes.

980
01:11:03,159 --> 01:11:06,663
And Jon started to play this keyboard bit,

981
01:11:06,763 --> 01:11:09,767
which later became on the Purple album
The Cut Runs Deep.

982
01:11:09,832 --> 01:11:12,438
And I started singing the exact lyric

983
01:11:12,502 --> 01:11:15,915
as Ritchie always called it,
I had a magic bag of lyrics.

984
01:11:16,005 --> 01:11:19,748
And I would just pull out a lyric
that suited this and sing a melody,

985
01:11:19,842 --> 01:11:23,847
and it was the exact lyric... There it was.
There's the song.

986
01:11:23,946 --> 01:11:26,859
So Jon and Ian were convinced
that I should be the guy.

987
01:11:48,471 --> 01:11:51,543
But it was to be Joe Lynn's only album
with Deep Purple.

988
01:11:51,641 --> 01:11:53,678
He left the band in 1992.

989
01:11:54,377 --> 01:11:57,221
There was a lot of frustration going on,

990
01:11:57,346 --> 01:11:59,155
lot of unhappiness.

991
01:11:59,315 --> 01:12:04,458
The guys, I believe it was Ian and Jon,
and I say this with all love and respect

992
01:12:04,554 --> 01:12:07,057
felt they needed Ian
Gillan back in the band.

993
01:12:07,156 --> 01:12:11,400
And Ritchie was staunch about me staying
in the band and there was a...

994
01:12:11,494 --> 01:12:17,410
And there just wasn't any way that I could
deal with the emotions that were happening.

995
01:12:17,500 --> 01:12:21,744
So, I think I quit and got fired
at the same time.

996
01:12:21,838 --> 01:12:23,749
Whatever, doesn't really matter.

997
01:12:23,840 --> 01:12:28,255
But, it was nerve-racking and just turmoil

998
01:12:28,344 --> 01:12:30,915
and very stressful.

999
01:12:32,048 --> 01:12:35,325
Meanwhile, Ritchie and Candice
had moved in together.

1000
01:12:35,418 --> 01:12:38,024
- By '91 I had moved in with you.
- Yeah.

1001
01:12:38,087 --> 01:12:40,863
She moved in but I didn't know who she was.

1002
01:12:41,724 --> 01:12:44,728
I just knew that there was a great female
in the house.

1003
01:12:44,827 --> 01:12:45,771
I'm not gonna knock it.

1004
01:12:45,895 --> 01:12:48,205
- I don't know who she is.
- I locked my door every night, I bolted it.

1005
01:12:48,264 --> 01:12:50,437
I was on tour <i>as</i> his girlfriend, yes.

1006
01:12:50,566 --> 01:12:53,376
But at our parties at the house...

1007
01:12:53,436 --> 01:12:57,043
When we have parties at our house,
everybody has to contribute something,

1008
01:12:57,106 --> 01:12:59,746
so if Ritchie is going to bring out
the acoustic guitar and play for people,

1009
01:12:59,842 --> 01:13:01,962
he wants everybody to give
a little bit of themselves.

1010
01:13:02,011 --> 01:13:05,288
So he doesn't care if it's a speech
about the Alamo, right?

1011
01:13:05,381 --> 01:13:09,796
Or tap dance or a song
or something, anything.

1012
01:13:09,886 --> 01:13:14,631
So, when I was at the parties with Ritchie,

1013
01:13:14,724 --> 01:13:16,704
he and I would be doing songs together.

1014
01:13:16,792 --> 01:13:19,033
That's how he first got
me singing with him.

1015
01:13:19,762 --> 01:13:22,766
The first song they wrote together
was a wedding anniversary present

1016
01:13:22,865 --> 01:13:24,776
for Candice's parents.

1017
01:13:25,735 --> 01:13:29,808
This is something that Rainbow
would never have done,

1018
01:13:29,939 --> 01:13:31,941
play a waltz.

1019
01:13:32,408 --> 01:13:33,910
A waltz, go.

1020
01:13:54,263 --> 01:13:55,264
Just follow me.

1021
01:13:55,331 --> 01:13:56,776
With what we didn't see...

1022
01:14:00,670 --> 01:14:02,445
That was very subtle.

1023
01:14:16,786 --> 01:14:18,697
- First song we wrote?
- Be Mine Tonight.

1024
01:14:18,854 --> 01:14:20,629
That's what makes me laugh
when people say,

1025
01:14:20,690 --> 01:14:22,670
"She must have made him do
Renaissance music"

1026
01:14:22,758 --> 01:14:24,965
because you don't make him do anything.

1027
01:14:25,027 --> 01:14:27,473
You never make Ritchie Blackmore
do anything.

1028
01:14:27,530 --> 01:14:32,707
Everything that he... His choice
of direction is solely up to him,

1029
01:14:32,835 --> 01:14:36,214
and I feel like I'm really on a journey
that he has led the way and taken...

1030
01:14:36,339 --> 01:14:39,286
He is the captain of this journey.

1031
01:14:39,375 --> 01:14:40,979
I'll be the co-captain, that's fine.

1032
01:14:42,011 --> 01:14:44,958
Ritchie would make one more album
with Deep Purple.

1033
01:14:45,047 --> 01:14:46,390
With Joe Lynn Turner gone,

1034
01:14:46,482 --> 01:14:50,294
the band put down backing tracks
and looked for a singer.

1035
01:14:50,386 --> 01:14:54,232
The band thinks that we should get Gillan
back, and the record label,

1036
01:14:54,323 --> 01:14:59,033
they sent the tapes of Ian singing,
like, three songs that we had done.

1037
01:14:59,128 --> 01:15:01,734
Three backing tracks
he had put his voice over.

1038
01:15:01,897 --> 01:15:04,741
And I'm like...

1039
01:15:04,867 --> 01:15:07,575
"This is absolutely dreadful."

1040
01:15:07,670 --> 01:15:12,085
"This is rotten to the core,
this is just rubbish."

1041
01:15:12,208 --> 01:15:13,915
That's how bad it was to me.

1042
01:15:14,010 --> 01:15:15,717
It was deadly.

1043
01:15:16,345 --> 01:15:21,988
And then he said, "How much would you take
to work with that?"

1044
01:15:22,918 --> 01:15:25,421
I said, "Well, it really
doesn't come into it."

1045
01:15:27,089 --> 01:15:29,228
The album was made with Gillan on vocals.

1046
01:15:29,325 --> 01:15:33,603
Then the record company wanted the band
to go on tour to promote it.

1047
01:15:33,696 --> 01:15:36,609
It was also the 25th
anniversary of Mark ll.

1048
01:15:36,732 --> 01:15:40,339
Ritchie demanded a vast fee
thinking it would be refused,

1049
01:15:40,436 --> 01:15:42,541
but his strategy backfired.

1050
01:15:43,606 --> 01:15:48,453
I went, "You know what? I'll take X
amount", which was over the top.

1051
01:15:49,045 --> 01:15:53,221
Just to get them off my back
so I could look for another singer.

1052
01:15:53,282 --> 01:15:56,388
<i>And they came back with BMG,</i>

1053
01:15:56,452 --> 01:15:59,558
"Okay, they'll pay you that
if you work with Gillan."

1054
01:15:59,622 --> 01:16:03,126
And I went, "Now I'm caught."

1055
01:16:28,984 --> 01:16:32,488
Of course I got halfway through the tour and
I was like, "I can't take this any more."

1056
01:16:32,655 --> 01:16:38,833
I'm selling my soul here, this is awful.
This is dreadful, certainly, you know.

1057
01:16:40,830 --> 01:16:45,779
Ian and I had a showdown with spaghetti,
and it was in Cleveland.

1058
01:16:46,635 --> 01:16:50,139
Jim picked up my food from catering,

1059
01:16:50,272 --> 01:16:53,310
and Ian had gone, "Who is that for?"

1060
01:16:53,409 --> 01:16:55,116
And Jim goes, "It's Ritchie's food."

1061
01:16:55,177 --> 01:17:00,354
He says, "Let me add some ketchup to it."
And, of course, he put ketchup all over it.

1062
01:17:00,449 --> 01:17:05,262
And I went up to him and I said,
"Did you do this to my food?"

1063
01:17:05,354 --> 01:17:07,766
And he went, "Yeah."

1064
01:17:07,857 --> 01:17:10,337
And with that, I saw Jon Lord go...

1065
01:17:11,827 --> 01:17:16,537
And they all parted,
it was like a high noon, you know.

1066
01:17:16,632 --> 01:17:18,475
I went, "Really?"

1067
01:17:19,835 --> 01:17:22,145
And then I got it and
went, right in his face.

1068
01:17:26,041 --> 01:17:27,611
Well, battle rages on,

1069
01:17:27,710 --> 01:17:29,815
this was the first time we played
in Czechoslovakia,

1070
01:17:29,879 --> 01:17:33,986
and he asked me to sing the...

1071
01:17:34,049 --> 01:17:37,462
Just like a vocal part just...
Like background...

1072
01:17:37,553 --> 01:17:40,625
Candice was singing off stage
and out of sight,

1073
01:17:40,723 --> 01:17:43,363
which confused some local reviewers.

1074
01:17:43,692 --> 01:17:47,162
There was a Czechoslovakian paper
who had written the review and said that,

1075
01:17:47,229 --> 01:17:52,076
"Jon Lord must have sampled
a female vocal into his keyboards"

1076
01:17:52,168 --> 01:17:55,012
"because they could
clearly hear some girl singing."

1077
01:18:03,312 --> 01:18:08,853
I knew if I went to the manager and I said,
"I want to leave Bruce Payne management."

1078
01:18:09,318 --> 01:18:12,925
That would go no further
and I'd be back at square one.

1079
01:18:13,022 --> 01:18:17,402
So I thought, "I'm gonna have to write a
letter to the band to explain how I feel",

1080
01:18:17,493 --> 01:18:19,063
"and I've got to leave,"

1081
01:18:19,161 --> 01:18:21,437
"and I'll not be going to Japan with them."

1082
01:18:37,546 --> 01:18:41,255
Ritchie played his last concert
with Deep Purple in Helsinki

1083
01:18:41,350 --> 01:18:43,956
on 17th November, 1993.

1084
01:18:46,288 --> 01:18:49,462
So we went back to the hotel,

1085
01:18:49,558 --> 01:18:52,368
and we proceeded to say goodbyes.

1086
01:18:52,461 --> 01:18:55,465
I think I said goodbye to Ian Paice,
that was it.

1087
01:18:55,564 --> 01:18:57,475
Everybody else just ran away.

1088
01:18:57,967 --> 01:19:01,437
Paice came up to me and said,
"Make some good decisions"

1089
01:19:01,537 --> 01:19:04,643
- and left, and Candice was with me.
- That's right.

1090
01:19:04,740 --> 01:19:07,152
And I think Jon was too embarrassed
to say anything.

1091
01:19:07,276 --> 01:19:08,836
- Jon went right up to his room.
- Yeah.

1092
01:19:11,380 --> 01:19:12,825
It was such a relief.

1093
01:19:14,617 --> 01:19:18,326
Ritchie reformed Rainbow,
now with Dougie White on vocals

1094
01:19:18,454 --> 01:19:21,901
and made one final album with them too,
Stranger in Us All.

1095
01:19:38,974 --> 01:19:42,012
I think Rainbow probably gave him
a little bit more freedom in that regard,

1096
01:19:42,111 --> 01:19:46,355
and then the album I did certainly did
give him more freedom.

1097
01:19:46,815 --> 01:19:49,125
This freedom also enabled Ritchie
and Candice

1098
01:19:49,184 --> 01:19:51,255
to develop their writing partnership,

1099
01:19:51,353 --> 01:19:55,130
and the album included one of
the first songs they wrote together, Ariel.

1100
01:20:13,709 --> 01:20:17,316
The Blackmore side thing kind of happened
when we were doing the last Rainbow record.

1101
01:20:17,846 --> 01:20:21,206
We would kind of get together as a son of
a jam night thing at the end of the evening

1102
01:20:21,283 --> 01:20:24,162
when we were recording at
Long View Farm in Massachusetts.

1103
01:20:24,219 --> 01:20:28,224
And we would just kind of sit around
the fire and they were just gonna jam,

1104
01:20:28,357 --> 01:20:32,669
and they would do stuff, Renaissance stuff
like Greensleeves, that sort of thing.

1105
01:20:32,995 --> 01:20:34,872
When I was 10,

1106
01:20:34,963 --> 01:20:39,412
there was this kid singing Greensleeves,
and I was really taken by that mode.

1107
01:20:42,571 --> 01:20:46,678
Just, it was very reminiscent
of another time,

1108
01:20:46,742 --> 01:20:48,244
almost spiritual, I thought.

1109
01:21:02,925 --> 01:21:07,567
And it just seemed to
go straight to my soul.

1110
01:21:07,663 --> 01:21:08,733
And I have always been that way.

1111
01:21:08,831 --> 01:21:11,573
If I hear medieval music,
I'll immediately come alive.

1112
01:21:15,003 --> 01:21:17,449
Ritchie and Candice
formed Blackmore's Night

1113
01:21:17,539 --> 01:21:21,419
and made their first album
Shadow of the Moon in 1997.

1114
01:21:22,511 --> 01:21:27,893
His escape from the stress and pressures
of that rock and roll world

1115
01:21:27,950 --> 01:21:31,454
wound up being just to sit
and just open up on acoustic.

1116
01:21:31,587 --> 01:21:35,125
And just really look into the fire place
and just go someplace else.

1117
01:21:35,257 --> 01:21:39,205
And that's where I think the beginning of
our project happened, really.

1118
01:21:56,245 --> 01:21:59,317
He often says that if you listen to
Smoke on the Water,

1119
01:21:59,415 --> 01:22:03,261
you'll hear medieval fourths and fifths,
the modal scales of that era.

1120
01:22:03,318 --> 01:22:06,299
So that was going back to 1971,
so that was in him there as well,

1121
01:22:06,388 --> 01:22:09,460
and then of course, fast-forward to Rainbow
and you've got

1122
01:22:09,558 --> 01:22:12,505
everything from Temple of The King,
16th Century Greensleeves.

1123
01:22:12,628 --> 01:22:16,132
So it's a lot of medieval flare
in a lot of those songs.

1124
01:22:37,686 --> 01:22:41,634
And we are still scratching the surface,
it's like,

1125
01:22:41,690 --> 01:22:45,001
I still feel there's so far to go with it.

1126
01:22:45,093 --> 01:22:48,267
Whereas with the others I felt
we were at the end.

1127
01:22:48,597 --> 01:22:50,804
One of the best compliments I had was,

1128
01:22:50,866 --> 01:22:54,939
"I hate medieval and Renaissance music,
but I love your music."

1129
01:22:55,270 --> 01:23:00,686
And I went, "That's a big compliment,
much more than you think."

1130
01:23:16,525 --> 01:23:22,339
With our show, it's more the audience is
part of us, we are there to entertain them.

1131
01:23:22,397 --> 01:23:25,241
We are not there to show off
and wiggle our hips.

1132
01:23:26,068 --> 01:23:28,708
Since that first album in 1997,

1133
01:23:28,804 --> 01:23:31,580
Ritchie and Candice
have made another nine together.

1134
01:23:40,749 --> 01:23:42,854
When Ritchie plunged into medieval music,

1135
01:23:42,918 --> 01:23:47,367
it wasn't so much as a surprise
as a natural course of events.

1136
01:24:08,110 --> 01:24:12,354
I also feel that urge because somehow
when you've done all the big heavy stuff,

1137
01:24:12,447 --> 01:24:15,189
it's always attractive but you want to
explore the other side.

1138
01:24:15,584 --> 01:24:21,535
The minstrels, the peasant,
kind of walking from town to town,

1139
01:24:21,623 --> 01:24:25,867
just telling the news from the last town,
bit of gossip,

1140
01:24:25,961 --> 01:24:28,635
plays a few tunes, that's what I relate to.

1141
01:24:29,431 --> 01:24:33,743
That doesn't mean that some of the songs
don't still include modern rock influences.

1142
01:24:49,217 --> 01:24:51,060
It's like me, I love what I do.

1143
01:24:51,153 --> 01:24:54,566
I truly love what I do, and I can hear
that Ritchie loves what he does,

1144
01:24:54,656 --> 01:24:55,964
and I salute him for it.

1145
01:25:11,974 --> 01:25:17,856
True musicians, people who don't
have a choice, you know,

1146
01:25:17,946 --> 01:25:21,189
they just love music
and that's the path they follow.

1147
01:25:21,750 --> 01:25:25,357
If he wants to switch into something else,

1148
01:25:25,487 --> 01:25:28,934
that's because his inner musical
inspiration pulls him there,

1149
01:25:29,024 --> 01:25:33,439
and true musicians are
almost slaves to that.

1150
01:25:34,162 --> 01:25:36,301
The music may be historically inspired,

1151
01:25:36,365 --> 01:25:41,610
but Ritchie's electric guitar virtuosity is still
very much a part of their medieval journey.

1152
01:26:02,724 --> 01:26:06,137
He sees himself, I think,
as the quiet musketeer.

1153
01:26:06,228 --> 01:26:09,573
His rather romantic sort of
heroic dashing figure.

1154
01:26:09,665 --> 01:26:11,702
I never feel like we are
done, we're just like...

1155
01:26:11,800 --> 01:26:13,040
We are still learning so much about

1156
01:26:13,135 --> 01:26:15,376
the instruments and the songs
and ourselves, really'

1157
01:26:32,054 --> 01:26:33,931
It takes me back to another life.

1158
01:26:34,056 --> 01:26:38,664
It might be a past life, reincarnation.

1159
01:26:38,760 --> 01:26:42,867
I just love to be in the 1500's,
without getting the plague,

1160
01:26:42,931 --> 01:26:46,105
and having central heating
and a satellite dish.

1161
01:26:46,201 --> 01:26:50,547
Whereas if I hear rock and roll,
I've heard it all before, Christ.

1162
01:26:50,605 --> 01:26:54,951
It all ended about 30 years ago,
everybody now is so generic.

1163
01:26:56,044 --> 01:26:59,514
How long can you keep flogging something?

1164
01:27:00,415 --> 01:27:03,692
It's nearly 50 years since
the young school boy from Heston

1165
01:27:03,785 --> 01:27:06,356
decided to show his teachers
they were wrong about him,

1166
01:27:06,455 --> 01:27:08,696
by achieving true excellence on the guitar.

1167
01:27:08,790 --> 01:27:11,236
And to make good on the faith
his parents had shown in him

1168
01:27:11,293 --> 01:27:14,035
by putting the music first.

1169
01:27:14,129 --> 01:27:15,631
Of all the great guitar players,

1170
01:27:15,764 --> 01:27:18,438
he was the one that people
knew least about, I think,

1171
01:27:18,533 --> 01:27:19,944
and that was partly his own doing.

1172
01:27:20,035 --> 01:27:23,949
His confidence was overwhelming.

1173
01:27:24,039 --> 01:27:25,450
It <i>was</i> frightening.

1174
01:27:25,540 --> 01:27:27,110
Inspiring and frightening.

1175
01:27:27,442 --> 01:27:32,983
I think Ritchie will be remembered as
somebody wild and untamed

1176
01:27:33,081 --> 01:27:34,151
to the end of his days.

1177
01:27:34,282 --> 01:27:36,785
And I think that's a
magnificent thing to be.

1178
01:27:36,918 --> 01:27:39,655
I can buy a Strat, you
can buy a Strat, right?

1179
01:27:39,681 --> 01:27:42,359
We can get a Marshall,
he can get a Marshall.

1180
01:27:42,424 --> 01:27:45,268
But, none of us ever wind up
sounding like Ritchie.

1181
01:27:45,627 --> 01:27:50,440
A high degree of being completely
in the moment, impulsive,

1182
01:27:50,499 --> 01:27:54,345
and just being kind of true to himself

1183
01:27:54,469 --> 01:27:59,077
and true to what his perception of
that moment was in a live situation.

1184
01:27:59,174 --> 01:28:01,677
He is not an extrovert,
he is very much an introvert.

1185
01:28:01,810 --> 01:28:05,257
And when you have somebody like that,
they create brilliantly,

1186
01:28:05,347 --> 01:28:09,591
but there is also a lot of depth that
they are always constantly dealing with.

1187
01:28:09,785 --> 01:28:14,200
There is nothing better than just sitting
with the guitar and emoting.

1188
01:28:14,322 --> 01:28:16,131
I can be in Hawaii,

1189
01:28:16,191 --> 01:28:19,331
and everybody is on water skis and things.

1190
01:28:19,427 --> 01:28:22,271
I'm watching the dolphins,
but I'm in my room just looking out,

1191
01:28:22,364 --> 01:28:25,777
looking at the horizons, gotta be playing.

1192
01:28:25,867 --> 01:28:29,838
And that's my friend that
I'm kind of emoting with.

1193
01:28:30,372 --> 01:28:33,842
My gut feeling is that Ritchie is probably
at his best when he

1194
01:28:33,942 --> 01:28:40,052
tends to actually live
out the rather quiet,

1195
01:28:40,148 --> 01:28:46,121
withdrawn, artistic and thoughtful person
that I think really

1196
01:28:46,221 --> 01:28:48,064
is what he is ultimately about.

1197
01:28:48,156 --> 01:28:50,193
When people get things all in perspective,

1198
01:28:50,292 --> 01:28:55,173
Ritchie will be right there as one of the
cornerstones of what rock and roll is today.

1199
01:28:55,230 --> 01:28:58,234
There's a long list of rock guitar players

1200
01:28:58,333 --> 01:29:00,574
that wouldn't exist
without Ritchie Blackmore.

1201
01:29:01,002 --> 01:29:06,008
There are people who enter this band thing
for lots of different reasons,

1202
01:29:06,074 --> 01:29:09,317
for money, for fame and for the chicks.

1203
01:29:09,411 --> 01:29:13,826
It seems to me Ritchie Blackmore
entered into this for the music.

1204
01:29:14,683 --> 01:29:19,655
And for the two people who encouraged him
to take guitar lessons in the first place,

1205
01:29:19,754 --> 01:29:22,860
his mother and especially his father.

1206
01:29:23,491 --> 01:29:27,166
He came to the Albert Hall
when we did the orchestra thing,

1207
01:29:27,262 --> 01:29:30,709
Deep Purple and the
orchestra, he loved that.

1208
01:29:30,765 --> 01:29:35,441
I think then he suddenly realised,
"I think my son's doing something, yeah."

1209
01:29:35,537 --> 01:29:39,041
5,000 people and there's an orchestra.

1210
01:29:40,609 --> 01:29:43,419
If that childhood photograph
was taken today,

1211
01:29:43,511 --> 01:29:45,787
they'd probably all be smiling.