Ritchie Blackmore has launched a new autobiographical video series that finds him regaling the finest rock n’ roll stories from his rather eventful, 55+-year career.
The Deep Purple guitarist has previously insisted he would never write a book, despite the fact he likely has enough stories for several volumes. Thankfully, the new video series offers a quirky alternative and a platform for Blackmore to air his anecdotes.
The series kicks off with Blackmore discussing how he first met Eric Clapton, with the two would-be legends both spritely startups back in 1968. A later encounter, however, proved far more awkward and, at least retrospectively, entertaining.
In 1968 and Deep Purple were supporting Cream at The Forum in Los Angeles, with Jimi Hendrix and Geroge Harrison among those enjoying front-row seats. Backstage, Blackmore sized the chance to steal some gear tips from Slowhand, having found himself in the same room as him for the first time.
“Before the show, Eric came into the dressing room I was in with Purple,” Blackmore relays. “I was always impressed not only by his ability to play brilliant guitar but also loved the fat sound sound he got. So I was questioning him.
“I was trying to figure out how he got this great sound. Basically, he was using Clifford Essex strings in the beginning, and then he went to Picato, and all these strings I used for years all because of him.”
Blackmore's move to the Fender Stratocaster was also inspired by Clapton, with him buying one of the guitarist's Strats off his roadie for £60.
After that, they met in slightly more unusual circumstances, after Blackmore's decision to crank Marshall amps in his hotel room at 3 a.m. to retaliate against noisy maintenance work backfired tremendously.
“We were in a hotel, I think it was in Melbourne, Australia,” Blackmore remembers. “What happened was, I knew that Eric was with his band in that hotel. We'd had three days there where we'd been woken up very early with hammering – the usual nonsense that goes on in hotels.”
After several days of this, Blackmore’s patience was wearing thin. He had an idea.
“We were so sick of it we actually threatened the front desk, ‘If you wake us up again tomorrow we will bring all our amplification into a room and play at 3 o'clock in the morning, and see how your patrons like hearing this noise,’” he continues.
“Which we did. The next day the hammering started as per usual, they took no notice of what we said, so we went ahead and brought in some Marshalls, stacked them, and my friend actually started playing the guitar – he started playing some bad blues, actually.
“As soon as he started playing we were so loud we got a bang on the door, and it was Eric's security.”
Up until this point, Blackmore believed that Clapton was staying on a different floor of the hotel. Not only did he turn out to be wrong – Clapton happened to be in the next room over – he suddenly felt embarrassed by what he must have heard.
“Believe it or not, Eric was in the next room to where we were,” Blackmore continues. “The next day we had some words with his security and I said, ‘I'm really sorry, I didn't realize we were next door.’ That was embarrassing, especially to think that Eric might have thought it was me making this racket on the guitar.
“I was in there having a drink, but I wasn't playing. That doesn't get me off the hook – it was really my idea to make all this noise.”
Check out Blackmore’s YouTube channel for further updates from the series.
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