Opeth leader Mikael Åkerfeldt has never hidden his adoration for rock’s greatest guitar heroes, but none looms larger for him than Deep Purple and Rainbow legend Ritchie Blackmore. So when Opeth and Blackmore’s Rainbow were booked for the same festival in Spain, Åkerfeldt didn’t just look forward to seeing his hero — he stalked him backstage.
Speaking to Loudwire, the 52-year-old recalls that there was no hesitation when Opeth were invited to play the 2019 Rock the Coast festival in Málaga. Blackmore was going to be there, so the answer was an immediate yes.
“I figured there’s a chance I’ll maybe be able to nod to him from a distance,” he says. “I didn’t think I was going to shake his hand and take a picture with him or whatever. But we arrived there, and I was sitting outside our little cubicle dressing room waiting for Blackmore like a stalker.”
Opeth were among the festival’s star attractions at the 10th-century Sohail Castle, with Blackmore’s recently reformed Rainbow and the Scorpions headlining the weekend. Åkerfeldt, meanwhile, was watching the cars arrive backstage.
“Is it him? No, it’s just Judas Priest,” he recalls. “Then another car comes along, and it’s Blackmore in the backseat with his wife [Candice Night]. I was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s him.’ And he drives straight into his own sealed-off section of the backstage area. And he never walks out.”
That wasn’t entirely surprising. Blackmore has long kept his distance from the rock-star circus, once telling The Guardian, “I’m not a guy who likes jamming and having fun. Music is very serious.” He also famously had little interest in the sort of backstage socializing that Eddie Van Halen embraced.
Åkerfeldt still had one potential ace up his sleeve: Opeth keyboard player Jens Johansson, who had previously played on Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force and worked with Allan Holdsworth. Johansson was also Swedish, so perhaps he could arrange an introduction.
“No chance,” Johansson told him.
So Åkerfeldt settled for watching Rainbow. But then the promoter approached him with some news.
“Ritchie Blackmore is in a bad mood,” he was told.
“Okay, why is that?”
“Well, his dressing room is too close to the stage. He thinks it’s too noisy.”
Åkerfeldt quickly realized that Opeth were about to become the source of Blackmore’s irritation: they were playing immediately before Rainbow.
“And I was like, ‘Okay, he’s going to hate us the most because we’re going to interfere with his preparation for the show.’”
But then Blackmore’s guitar tech offered Åkerfeldt exactly what he had been hoping for. He could stand at the side of the stage and watch Rainbow’s set.
“That’s really what I wanted to do,” Åkerfeldt says. “I wanted to see what he’s doing between the songs. How he’s moving, walking around, all that stuff.”
And then Blackmore delivered.
“We were standing there, and it was such a fantastic show. Fantastic. They played ‘Stargazer,’ and at the end of the solo I thought, ‘I’m going to start crying.’ It was so good I missed my plane back home the next morning.”
In related news, Blackmore recently spoke with Guitar Player about his historic reunion with Deep Purple on August 12, saying, “I think we realized it could be the last time we see each other.”
