1 00:00:12,462 --> 00:00:16,630 It all began here, at 33 Addicott Road, in Weston-super-Mare, 2 00:00:16,718 --> 00:00:20,079 in 1945, when Ritchie Blackmore was born. 3 00:00:25,966 --> 00:00:29,109 He would go on not only to write one of rock's most famous riffs, 4 00:00:29,198 --> 00:00:32,144 but to explore a number of musical forms including Bach, 5 00:00:32,270 --> 00:00:36,372 classical symphonic rock, hard rock, blues and medieval ballads. 6 00:00:40,462 --> 00:00:42,961 Ritchie was interested in the guitar from an early age 7 00:00:43,021 --> 00:00:46,000 but his father insisted he took proper lessons. 8 00:00:50,349 --> 00:00:53,012 My father insisted I went to music lessons when I was eleven. 9 00:00:54,029 --> 00:00:55,027 He said to me at the time, 10 00:00:55,085 --> 00:00:59,188 "If you don't learn this properly, I'm gonna put it across your head." 11 00:00:59,277 --> 00:01:03,150 I used to cycle about four miles to the guy who was teaching me. 12 00:01:05,197 --> 00:01:06,834 And I'd often fall off my bike. 13 00:01:20,909 --> 00:01:24,052 Throughout his life, Ritchie has been the object of much criticism, 14 00:01:24,141 --> 00:01:26,007 adulation and speculation. 15 00:01:26,061 --> 00:01:29,814 But until now, he has never given the world his take on his story. 16 00:01:29,901 --> 00:01:35,280 A story with more than its fair share of tantrums, break-ups, rivalry and rouse. 17 00:01:35,341 --> 00:01:38,451 He was such an advanced musician, way ahead of his time, 18 00:01:38,541 --> 00:01:39,665 way, way ahead. 19 00:01:39,789 --> 00:01:42,648 He's a fire ball, you know, he really is beyond belief. 20 00:01:42,701 --> 00:01:45,582 His technique is incredible. Where did that come from? I have no idea. 21 00:01:50,957 --> 00:01:52,430 And this is before Hendrix. 22 00:01:52,524 --> 00:01:58,548 Ritchie really is a great originator and creator of the wild electric guitar. 23 00:02:05,741 --> 00:02:10,062 The way he holds the guitar and everything, it's sort of ingrained in my mind 24 00:02:10,189 --> 00:02:12,490 as that's what a cool guitar player is supposed to look like, 25 00:02:12,588 --> 00:02:14,084 that's how they are supposed to behave. 26 00:02:14,156 --> 00:02:18,161 In a lot of ways, ifs a little tragic that Ritchie didn't stand up 27 00:02:18,220 --> 00:02:22,159 and shine the light on himself. 28 00:02:22,220 --> 00:02:24,468 Which is why I'm happy to be here. 29 00:02:24,557 --> 00:02:27,438 He needs the light right on him, 30 00:02:27,500 --> 00:02:30,708 because unlike many people he actually deserves it. 31 00:02:40,876 --> 00:02:45,263 It's like a sword' almost like a clean sharp sword, 32 00:02:45,356 --> 00:02:48,150 that weighs a real lot, you know. 33 00:02:49,228 --> 00:02:52,752 His precision when he plays was stunning. 34 00:02:52,940 --> 00:02:58,319 A true pioneer as somebody who was truly unique and original. 35 00:03:03,596 --> 00:03:06,455 To me he was like the Caucasian Hendrix. 36 00:03:12,203 --> 00:03:14,236 It actually changed my life. It was my first gig ever. 37 00:03:14,348 --> 00:03:17,392 We got right up against the stage, right in front of Ritchie. 38 00:03:17,484 --> 00:03:20,430 He came out and Purple came out and he just blew me away. 39 00:03:20,524 --> 00:03:25,074 It was way more than I expected, it was just a lot. 40 00:03:25,163 --> 00:03:26,451 After that I was dazed, 41 00:03:26,540 --> 00:03:29,845 I went home to my mum and dad and said, "I need a guitar, I have to have a guitar." 42 00:03:40,267 --> 00:03:42,548 He is measured, he is thoughtful. 43 00:03:42,668 --> 00:03:48,309 He knows the value of clear space, of daylight between the notes. 44 00:03:48,395 --> 00:03:51,276 It's not all about... 45 00:03:51,339 --> 00:03:54,482 It's about phrasing, it's about time. It's about... 46 00:03:54,540 --> 00:03:57,682 The spaces are as important as the notes that they separate. 47 00:04:06,315 --> 00:04:09,589 It's a mystery. I still find Ritchie Blackmore a complete mystery. 48 00:04:09,707 --> 00:04:11,823 It's also a mystery that people don't talk about him that much. 49 00:04:11,947 --> 00:04:15,603 It's odd because he's absolutely there as one of the pioneers. 50 00:04:15,979 --> 00:04:19,503 The pioneering Ritchie was single-minded from an early age. 51 00:04:20,843 --> 00:04:23,822 I won't do what I'm told to do. 52 00:04:23,915 --> 00:04:25,901 That seemed to go back to when I was five. 53 00:04:26,282 --> 00:04:27,548 I've seen pictures of me at five, 54 00:04:27,627 --> 00:04:30,933 and I remember distinctively, my mother saying, "Smile for the cameraman." 55 00:04:31,019 --> 00:04:32,787 And I'm going, "No", 56 00:04:32,906 --> 00:04:35,023 and I felt resentment to the cameraman. 57 00:04:35,307 --> 00:04:36,267 Why do you need... 58 00:04:36,363 --> 00:04:39,244 And I used to say to my mother, "Why do you need a picture of me?" 59 00:04:39,339 --> 00:04:43,954 She goes, "Because to remember you, you're five." 60 00:04:44,043 --> 00:04:46,924 "Well, I'm here now." And I couldn't understand the principle. 61 00:04:47,658 --> 00:04:50,801 There's something in there psychologically. 62 00:04:50,858 --> 00:04:54,285 Why was I so uptight at the age of five? 63 00:04:55,819 --> 00:04:57,586 But before he was in his teens, 64 00:04:57,674 --> 00:05:01,712 Ritchie made a promise to himself to be the best there was, whatever it took. 65 00:05:02,506 --> 00:05:03,826 I was such a poor pupil 66 00:05:03,915 --> 00:05:08,628 and I was always near the bottom of the class, in my tests. 67 00:05:08,746 --> 00:05:10,281 I thought, "You know what I'm gonna do?" 68 00:05:10,346 --> 00:05:14,034 "I'm going to excel in music, on the guitar." 69 00:05:14,122 --> 00:05:19,021 So they go, "Well, he was a terrible pupil, but he was a really good guitar player." 70 00:05:19,114 --> 00:05:23,599 And I had that thought in my head, ever since I was 12, onwards. 71 00:05:24,586 --> 00:05:27,979 Well, he doesn't know anything, but he can really play the guitar. 72 00:05:28,074 --> 00:05:30,955 And I always wanted the teachers to say that. 73 00:05:36,522 --> 00:05:39,348 From the age of eighteen, Ritchie worked for producer Joe Meek, 74 00:05:39,466 --> 00:05:43,601 as a sessions musician in London and toured with Screaming Lord Sutch. 75 00:05:47,498 --> 00:05:50,542 And later with Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis 76 00:05:50,665 --> 00:05:52,848 until the gigs dried up in 1968. 77 00:05:53,258 --> 00:05:56,117 I was working in a dry cleaners, 78 00:05:56,202 --> 00:06:00,239 I had about sixteen telegrams from Chris Curtis, 79 00:06:00,298 --> 00:06:04,303 who was in the band The Searchers, who I had met in Hamburg. 80 00:06:04,394 --> 00:06:07,340 And he really liked my playing, 81 00:06:07,466 --> 00:06:11,634 and he said, "I have a backer, I want you to come to England", 82 00:06:11,721 --> 00:06:16,435 "I'm gonna start a band, you're gonna play second guitar." 83 00:06:17,257 --> 00:06:19,473 Okay, who's playing first guitar? 84 00:06:19,561 --> 00:06:21,907 "I am", Chris Curtis. 85 00:06:22,057 --> 00:06:23,825 Okay, good. 86 00:06:23,913 --> 00:06:25,997 Who's playing drums then? 'Cause he's a drummer. 87 00:06:26,057 --> 00:06:28,305 He said, "I'm playing drums." 88 00:06:28,842 --> 00:06:31,603 Bass? He goes, "I'm bass player." 89 00:06:32,457 --> 00:06:35,152 "Yeah, I kind of thought that was gonna happen." 90 00:06:35,273 --> 00:06:37,008 I said, "ls there anybody else in this band?" 91 00:06:37,097 --> 00:06:39,563 He said, "We have a keyboard player, Jon Lord.“" 92 00:06:40,457 --> 00:06:44,146 It was the start of a partnership that would last for 25 years. 93 00:06:44,233 --> 00:06:47,921 We played together for a little bit, and I realised how good he was. 94 00:06:47,977 --> 00:06:49,036 And it was mutual. 95 00:06:49,417 --> 00:06:51,283 I said, "I can get a brilliant drummer." 96 00:06:51,337 --> 00:06:55,658 Jon said, "I know a really good bass player." It was Nick Simper. 97 00:06:55,785 --> 00:06:58,763 And so we just needed a singer. 98 00:06:58,857 --> 00:07:00,690 They took on Rod Evans as vocalist. 99 00:07:00,777 --> 00:07:04,683 And Chris Curtis soon dropped out to be replaced by Ian Paice on drums. 100 00:07:04,776 --> 00:07:07,276 All they needed now was a name. 101 00:07:09,193 --> 00:07:11,277 Jon put in Orpheus. 102 00:07:11,337 --> 00:07:14,796 The drummer put in The Hill. And I put in Deep Purple. 103 00:07:14,921 --> 00:07:16,875 Just 'cause of the song Deep Purple, 104 00:07:16,937 --> 00:07:20,080 my grandmother used to play it on the piano. 105 00:07:20,136 --> 00:07:22,056 And they seemed to like that. 106 00:07:22,153 --> 00:07:25,426 In those days you have to have a double-barrel name. 107 00:07:27,337 --> 00:07:30,642 Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple. 108 00:07:31,400 --> 00:07:34,543 It was a name that would become synonymous with British hard rock, 109 00:07:34,633 --> 00:07:37,514 and launched the career of Ritchie Blackmore. 110 00:07:45,736 --> 00:07:51,018 We did the usual, going away to a cottage in the country. 111 00:07:51,144 --> 00:07:53,392 Which was the in thing to do at the time. 112 00:07:53,480 --> 00:07:57,485 Proverbial cottage, we were practicing. 113 00:07:57,576 --> 00:08:01,514 Thief's hole, I think it was called. And it was haunted. It had to be haunted. 114 00:08:01,992 --> 00:08:04,753 And we made that record, the first one in 24 hours. 115 00:08:04,840 --> 00:08:07,023 We did it in two days. The whole thing. 116 00:08:07,112 --> 00:08:09,971 And while it wasn't an amazing record in its own right, 117 00:08:10,056 --> 00:08:13,034 you do get struck by the fact that there are times on the record 118 00:08:13,096 --> 00:08:15,628 when Ritchie Blackmore's guitar performances 119 00:08:15,720 --> 00:08:18,033 were different to anything else. 120 00:08:18,120 --> 00:08:19,658 They weren't a copy of Hendrix. 121 00:08:19,784 --> 00:08:21,803 Even though you could hear little bits of notations 122 00:08:21,896 --> 00:08:24,525 that maybe led towards Hendrix. 123 00:08:24,616 --> 00:08:26,448 They weren't a copy of anybody else. 124 00:08:26,536 --> 00:08:30,671 They were influenced by, yet taking its own direction. 125 00:08:30,760 --> 00:08:34,001 He had a classical feel, the rock feel and a rock and roll feel. 126 00:08:51,751 --> 00:08:54,348 Some tracks also had a distinctly pop feel. 127 00:08:54,439 --> 00:08:57,320 And it was a cover of a Joe South song, Hush, 128 00:08:57,415 --> 00:08:59,183 which launched the band in the U.S.A. 129 00:09:08,263 --> 00:09:11,623 Back in England, Ritchie heard Robert Plant singing. 130 00:09:11,944 --> 00:09:14,322 There was a place called Mothers in Birmingham, 131 00:09:14,375 --> 00:09:18,347 Robert started singing and I'm going, "My God, who's this? This amazing singer." 132 00:09:18,439 --> 00:09:22,280 He had the range, the voice and the look. 133 00:09:22,375 --> 00:09:24,775 That's when I decided we have to get someone 134 00:09:24,871 --> 00:09:27,883 who can belt it out and project. 135 00:09:28,519 --> 00:09:30,537 That when we got Ian Gillan. 136 00:09:30,855 --> 00:09:33,965 As soon as I heard him scream, I went, "That's the guy for us.“" 137 00:09:34,055 --> 00:09:38,769 He looked like Jim Morrison, which I knew that would go down well. 138 00:09:39,623 --> 00:09:41,489 So we have someone who looks like Jim Morrison 139 00:09:41,575 --> 00:09:44,204 and who can scream like Arthur Brown and Edgar Winter. 140 00:09:44,551 --> 00:09:46,766 That scream was his identity. 141 00:10:03,078 --> 00:10:07,312 In came Ian Gillan and his scream and new bassist Roger Glover. 142 00:10:07,399 --> 00:10:09,318 And out went Evans and Simper. 143 00:10:09,414 --> 00:10:10,800 Ritchie was now lead guitar 144 00:10:10,855 --> 00:10:13,736 in what was to become the classic Deep Purple line-up. 145 00:10:15,591 --> 00:10:17,642 It became, I suppose, 146 00:10:17,734 --> 00:10:22,666 obvious to all of us that they were not just another flash-in-the-pan 147 00:10:22,758 --> 00:10:25,552 pop rock band, but there was something more of substance. 148 00:10:25,894 --> 00:10:29,517 And Ritchie was a figure of mystery and wonder already, you know. 149 00:10:29,574 --> 00:10:31,342 Ritchie Blackmore was something incredible. 150 00:10:31,462 --> 00:10:33,342 I mean, nobody could play like that in those days. 151 00:10:53,510 --> 00:10:54,699 No, it's not just speed, you know, 152 00:10:54,822 --> 00:10:58,062 there are a lot of people who can play fast, you know, now. 153 00:10:58,182 --> 00:10:59,982 But they can't be Ritchie Blackmore. 154 00:11:00,102 --> 00:11:01,575 He plays right on the money 155 00:11:01,702 --> 00:11:04,463 and leaves enough space to allow the music to breathe 156 00:11:04,550 --> 00:11:07,180 and the listener to become enveloped in 157 00:11:07,270 --> 00:11:11,242 the whole atmosphere of what's being performed and created and generated. 158 00:11:11,397 --> 00:11:14,027 I went through a period of shredding 159 00:11:14,117 --> 00:11:16,943 and thinking that everything revolved around speed. 160 00:11:17,061 --> 00:11:20,717 And now I go, "That really doesn't mean anything." 161 00:11:20,774 --> 00:11:25,739 It's good to be fast now and again, but you have to say something thoughtful. 162 00:11:25,830 --> 00:11:28,776 You can't just go, look at me... 163 00:11:28,870 --> 00:11:29,808 Am I not great? 164 00:11:29,893 --> 00:11:32,774 Ritchie will lake you on a couple of hours' journey of guitar playing, 165 00:11:32,869 --> 00:11:35,084 which will cover a lot more ground. 166 00:11:35,174 --> 00:11:39,146 It's not just like tipping a pot of multi-coloured paint over somebody, 167 00:11:39,237 --> 00:11:43,624 this is about drawing people into your dark mysterious web. 168 00:11:51,398 --> 00:11:54,540 But while Ritchie was keen to develop Deep Purple as a rock band, 169 00:11:54,661 --> 00:11:57,422 his co-founder Jon Lord had other ambitions. 170 00:11:58,117 --> 00:12:02,024 Jon Lord was inspired to write a concerto for group and orchestra, 171 00:12:02,117 --> 00:12:04,135 and it was a big challenging venture. 172 00:12:04,261 --> 00:12:07,502 The band Nice had previously recorded with orchestras 173 00:12:07,589 --> 00:12:11,245 and had classical aspirations. 174 00:12:11,333 --> 00:12:14,989 But Jon Lord wanted to write a really sort of important piece that would 175 00:12:15,077 --> 00:12:19,245 include the group with an orchestra in a kind of artistic way, 176 00:12:19,333 --> 00:12:21,417 a way that would work effectively. 177 00:12:21,541 --> 00:12:23,789 And they tried it out at the Royal Albert Hall. 178 00:12:23,877 --> 00:12:27,565 And it was a big success, a big challenge. 179 00:12:48,133 --> 00:12:51,308 You can see Ritchie in the video for the Albert Hall concert, 180 00:12:51,396 --> 00:12:54,702 and he plays great, but you could feel he's very constrained. 181 00:12:54,820 --> 00:12:57,166 He's sort of itching to break out somewhere. 182 00:12:57,252 --> 00:12:58,540 He has this edge to him, 183 00:12:58,660 --> 00:13:01,421 which is indefinable and not quite tameable. 184 00:13:01,508 --> 00:13:04,454 The first record we did, I thought was not bad. 185 00:13:05,796 --> 00:13:07,498 The two after that 186 00:13:07,876 --> 00:13:10,277 were lacking in direction. 187 00:13:11,172 --> 00:13:13,518 We were going in the studio with, really, no ideas, 188 00:13:13,572 --> 00:13:16,299 'cause we were on the road all the time. 189 00:13:16,420 --> 00:13:21,702 It wasn't until we did the concerto with Jon and the orchestra, 190 00:13:21,796 --> 00:13:25,353 and I said to them, "I really don't want to play with orchestras any more." 191 00:13:25,412 --> 00:13:27,911 "Let's do a rock and roll record." 192 00:13:28,420 --> 00:13:31,911 I said, "Jon, we'll do the whole thing as a rock and roll record", 193 00:13:31,972 --> 00:13:35,464 "and if it doesn't work, we'll play with orchestras for the rest of our lives." 194 00:13:35,556 --> 00:13:36,778 So he said, "Yeah, that's sounds fair." 195 00:13:36,900 --> 00:13:40,108 We had Zeppelin starting Black Sabbath. 196 00:13:40,196 --> 00:13:41,996 Everybody was hitting with hard rock. 197 00:13:42,116 --> 00:13:45,062 Gave me an idea to play the hard rock stuff. 198 00:13:45,156 --> 00:13:48,942 I was going through kind of a angry, uptight, 199 00:13:49,028 --> 00:13:51,822 "Come on, let's get on with it." 200 00:13:51,940 --> 00:13:56,392 I'd had enough of playing with orchestras and everything being wishy-washy. 201 00:13:56,452 --> 00:13:59,311 The wishy-washy orchestra versus hard rock debate 202 00:13:59,395 --> 00:14:02,156 was resolved when the band wrote and recorded Black Night. 203 00:14:02,212 --> 00:14:05,093 And it went to number two in the UK charts. 204 00:14:05,251 --> 00:14:09,703 We were in the studio doing Deep Purple in Rock 205 00:14:09,795 --> 00:14:11,814 and the management came in. 206 00:14:13,539 --> 00:14:16,780 Amazing, you know, these people that go, 207 00:14:16,900 --> 00:14:19,780 "You know, what you need is a hit record." 208 00:14:19,875 --> 00:14:23,978 And you go, "I never thought of that. A hit record, yeah." 209 00:14:24,132 --> 00:14:26,380 And I started playing. 210 00:14:27,620 --> 00:14:29,257 I just started playing. 211 00:14:34,915 --> 00:14:36,453 Okay, let's have a verse. 212 00:14:38,979 --> 00:14:40,714 Put a verse in there. 213 00:14:46,307 --> 00:14:49,035 And we did that very quickly. 214 00:14:49,091 --> 00:14:50,150 Very quickly. 215 00:14:50,211 --> 00:14:51,979 And all of a sudden, of course that went to number one 216 00:14:52,067 --> 00:14:53,900 or number two, number one. 217 00:14:55,011 --> 00:14:57,121 It was funny how it was written like that, very quickly, 218 00:14:57,155 --> 00:14:59,108 and that's the best way to write a song. 219 00:15:06,531 --> 00:15:07,972 And that is based on... 220 00:15:14,659 --> 00:15:19,078 Ricky Nelson put out a tune called Summertime in 1958. 221 00:15:21,411 --> 00:15:23,309 Which, he's singing, "Summertime..." 222 00:15:27,266 --> 00:15:29,416 "and the living is easy." 223 00:15:29,667 --> 00:15:32,711 That was the base riff, the top line was... 224 00:15:37,666 --> 00:15:39,237 Right? Adds that. 225 00:15:44,450 --> 00:15:47,429 So right there you got two hit records. 'Cause if you go... 226 00:15:59,587 --> 00:16:01,005 "Hey Joe..." 227 00:16:02,434 --> 00:16:06,340 As soon as I heard Hendrix play that intro, 228 00:16:08,674 --> 00:16:12,428 I thought' "He got that from the same record that we got the base riff from." 229 00:16:39,170 --> 00:16:40,555 The band were on a roll. 230 00:16:40,610 --> 00:16:43,970 And in 1970, their fourth album Deep Purple in Rock 231 00:16:44,065 --> 00:16:48,582 reached number four in the UK charts and went gold in Britain and America. 232 00:16:48,674 --> 00:16:51,718 I just knew I was happy with it at the time, 233 00:16:51,810 --> 00:16:53,577 because the previous three, 234 00:16:53,665 --> 00:16:55,881 I thought, "We don't know where we're going." 235 00:16:55,970 --> 00:16:58,469 "We're dilly-dallying, we're going all over the place." 236 00:16:58,530 --> 00:17:03,298 Ballads, a bit of blues, folk, it was like mishmash. 237 00:17:03,394 --> 00:17:06,853 People like to get a record and put it on, 238 00:17:06,978 --> 00:17:09,989 and go, "I can leave that on and it's party time." 239 00:17:10,049 --> 00:17:13,509 The Deep Purple in Rock, of course, was the definitive album, 240 00:17:13,569 --> 00:17:15,915 I think, for Deep Purple. 241 00:17:15,969 --> 00:17:18,948 It was the era of Black Sabbath, of course, and Led Zeppelin. 242 00:17:19,010 --> 00:17:22,436 Soto see Deep Purple really focusing, 243 00:17:22,529 --> 00:17:25,802 get down to it on their rock album 244 00:17:25,889 --> 00:17:28,835 that really convinced the vast mass of their fans. 245 00:17:28,929 --> 00:17:35,083 And really for the first time Deep Purple became among the top three British bands. 246 00:17:35,169 --> 00:17:38,955 I think what really inspired me more than anything else was the In Rock album. 247 00:17:39,009 --> 00:17:41,574 But it was the fire and it was the passion that really spoke. 248 00:17:41,697 --> 00:17:43,781 That was the bit I wanted to bottle and keep. 249 00:17:43,969 --> 00:17:45,224 When you hear Speed King, 250 00:17:45,313 --> 00:17:48,390 you're looking at, really, proto thrash, proto metal. 251 00:17:48,449 --> 00:17:53,032 This was so influential in what came later in metal terms, 252 00:17:53,089 --> 00:17:57,508 and was really Blackmore delivering a dynamic riff 253 00:17:57,568 --> 00:18:02,217 on which Gillan held his vocals and which Lord played off with keyboard. 254 00:18:16,449 --> 00:18:21,217 And Child in Time is just phenomenal, it's a remarkable piece of epic music. 255 00:18:21,312 --> 00:18:26,757 It's a story. It's almost biblical in the way it reaches out and envelops you. 256 00:18:26,848 --> 00:18:28,835 This was a classical piece of music. 257 00:18:28,929 --> 00:18:32,355 This was a performance by a band on an orchestral level. 258 00:18:58,336 --> 00:19:01,577 With the pressure on to follow up the success of Deep Purple in Rock, 259 00:19:01,664 --> 00:19:02,853 Ritchie and the band once again 260 00:19:02,944 --> 00:19:05,323 locked themselves away from the world to write. 261 00:19:05,408 --> 00:19:09,795 We rented this old dilapidated house down in Devon. 262 00:19:11,135 --> 00:19:13,798 And everybody had their bedroom. 263 00:19:14,848 --> 00:19:17,794 And mine was full of flies, and it was a dreadful place, 264 00:19:17,888 --> 00:19:20,288 but it had a good vibe to it or two. 265 00:19:20,416 --> 00:19:23,177 We were into doing lots of séances at the time. 266 00:19:23,263 --> 00:19:29,734 And I always felt that to do a séance, the best thing was to have a cross. 267 00:19:30,304 --> 00:19:33,795 It was in the early days when I kind of believed in that, 268 00:19:33,887 --> 00:19:38,274 and that was kind of a... As a form of protection. 269 00:19:39,168 --> 00:19:41,416 Of course I didn't have a cross on me. 270 00:19:41,792 --> 00:19:45,730 And I went up to Jon Lord's wife and said, 271 00:19:45,824 --> 00:19:49,381 "Do you have cross I could borrow?" She said, "I'm Jewish." 272 00:19:49,472 --> 00:19:51,654 That didn't go down too well. 273 00:19:51,807 --> 00:19:54,207 So I went, "Roger! Roger will have a cross." 274 00:19:54,303 --> 00:19:57,664 And I went to his bedroom outside, he'd gone to sleep. 275 00:19:57,887 --> 00:19:59,873 "Roger?" "What?" 276 00:19:59,967 --> 00:20:01,473 "Do you have a cross?" "Yeah." 277 00:20:01,567 --> 00:20:03,140 "I need the cross, we're doing a séance." 278 00:20:03,391 --> 00:20:05,159 "No, leave me alone." 279 00:20:05,407 --> 00:20:07,458 So, I got this axe, 280 00:20:07,551 --> 00:20:11,392 so I went crash crash at the door 281 00:20:11,487 --> 00:20:15,754 and made a hole, and I'm axing the door down. 282 00:20:16,607 --> 00:20:19,651 I pulled it and I got through the hole and went over to him. 283 00:20:19,775 --> 00:20:22,819 "I want your cross." "Go on, get off, get off." 284 00:20:22,911 --> 00:20:26,119 Roger is a very gentle man. 285 00:20:26,207 --> 00:20:30,343 Violence doesn't often occur to him as a means to anything. 286 00:20:30,431 --> 00:20:31,555 It was very un-Roger like, 287 00:20:31,647 --> 00:20:37,255 what followed, Roger chasing Ritchie around the house with said axe. 288 00:20:38,271 --> 00:20:40,257 You know, I said, "Roger, wow." 289 00:20:40,351 --> 00:20:41,508 So that was a lot of fun. 290 00:20:49,470 --> 00:20:53,224 In 1971 they released a new single, Strange Kind of Woman 291 00:20:53,310 --> 00:20:57,697 and a follow-up to their landmark Deep Purple in Rock, the album Fireball. 292 00:20:58,527 --> 00:21:01,254 It was great because, 293 00:21:01,375 --> 00:21:05,991 all of a sudden, starving for a few years before that, 294 00:21:06,046 --> 00:21:07,913 and we were suddenly in vogue 295 00:21:07,966 --> 00:21:11,905 and everybody had Deep Purple in Rock until we replaced it with Fireball. 296 00:21:11,966 --> 00:21:14,498 Fireball was put together loo quickly, 297 00:21:15,423 --> 00:21:18,533 for my liking, we didn't have the ideas. 298 00:21:18,622 --> 00:21:21,481 Fireball to me was artificial, contrived. 299 00:21:23,166 --> 00:21:24,770 Despite Ritchie's misgivings, 300 00:21:24,862 --> 00:21:27,176 Fireball reached number one on the UK charts, 301 00:21:27,295 --> 00:21:30,372 and the band set to work on what would be their third album, 302 00:21:30,462 --> 00:21:31,619 Machine Head. 303 00:21:32,670 --> 00:21:35,780 Machine Head, I have great memories of, we did that in the Swiss Alps, 304 00:21:35,870 --> 00:21:37,311 and that was fantastic. 305 00:21:37,406 --> 00:21:40,897 And we did it in three weeks and the ideas were just flowing. 306 00:21:41,054 --> 00:21:44,414 I had written a few things in my time off, so I had those, 307 00:21:44,510 --> 00:21:47,456 like Highway Star. 308 00:21:48,606 --> 00:21:51,814 I had written the solo basically at home, worked it out, 309 00:21:51,902 --> 00:21:53,637 which I had never done before. 310 00:21:53,725 --> 00:21:57,479 It was always on the fly, you know, just jamming. 311 00:21:57,565 --> 00:22:01,254 But, so we had a lot of constructive ideas. 312 00:22:01,374 --> 00:22:05,661 Roger Glover had written Maybe I'm a Leo, which I thought was a great tune. 313 00:22:06,813 --> 00:22:08,450 They were due to record in the casino, 314 00:22:08,541 --> 00:22:10,942 which was then the main concert venue in Montreux. 315 00:22:11,005 --> 00:22:12,446 But the evening before they were due to start, 316 00:22:12,542 --> 00:22:16,350 a fire ignited during a Frank Zappa concert, burning it to the ground. 317 00:22:20,382 --> 00:22:23,873 Festival organizer Claude Nobs came to their rescue. 318 00:22:24,445 --> 00:22:27,555 Claude with enormous selflessness said, 319 00:22:27,645 --> 00:22:31,334 "Don't worry, I'll help you to find somewhere else to record." 320 00:22:32,222 --> 00:22:33,378 Where? Anyway. 321 00:22:33,469 --> 00:22:39,558 So, there was this amazing Victorian glass-walled pavilion 322 00:22:40,350 --> 00:22:43,328 in some gardens, some lovely lakeside gardens. 323 00:22:43,901 --> 00:22:49,346 And with enormous disregard for anyone who might live within 10 or 12 miles of it, 324 00:22:49,405 --> 00:22:52,286 we set up in there, you know. 325 00:22:53,725 --> 00:22:58,625 And it was a very ill-chosen place, 326 00:22:58,685 --> 00:23:00,834 but it was a stopgap. 327 00:23:01,341 --> 00:23:03,970 The recording session was back on track. 328 00:23:04,508 --> 00:23:09,790 Ritchie was astonishingly prolific with guitar riffs. 329 00:23:09,885 --> 00:23:10,845 Profligate almost, you know? 330 00:23:10,941 --> 00:23:12,545 They would just tumble out of him. 331 00:23:12,605 --> 00:23:17,220 And that was heaven, absolute heaven for a band, 332 00:23:17,309 --> 00:23:22,470 because here was a guitarist who just would never tread, it seemed, the same road twice. 333 00:23:22,652 --> 00:23:25,958 And it was the fire that had destroyed their original recording venue 334 00:23:26,044 --> 00:23:29,733 that was to inspire the song that contains one of rock's greatest riffs. 335 00:23:30,492 --> 00:23:33,089 When we got back to the hotel, there was a... 336 00:23:33,181 --> 00:23:35,810 We looked out of the window, I think we all had stiff brandies or something. 337 00:23:35,933 --> 00:23:38,214 We looked out of the window and you could actually see the smoke 338 00:23:38,301 --> 00:23:40,352 from the casino coming across the lake. 339 00:23:40,444 --> 00:23:42,496 This big, billowing cloud coming across the lake, 340 00:23:42,589 --> 00:23:45,502 hence the title Smoke on the Water, the boys came up with that. 341 00:23:45,565 --> 00:23:49,405 The first time I heard Smoke on the Water, of course, from Machine Head, 342 00:23:49,500 --> 00:23:52,261 it was one of those riffs that hit you right away. 343 00:23:52,349 --> 00:23:55,654 It's a bit like Sunshine of Your Love by Cream, 344 00:23:55,741 --> 00:23:57,792 or Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. 345 00:23:57,884 --> 00:24:01,540 It was just... I don't know where guitarists find these riffs from, actually. 346 00:24:01,628 --> 00:24:05,250 When we did Smoke on the Water, 347 00:24:05,341 --> 00:24:08,134 it was-just Ian and myself, Paice and myself. 348 00:24:08,284 --> 00:24:11,295 I said, "What rhythm haven't we played?" and he went... 349 00:24:12,380 --> 00:24:14,846 He laid that down, so I just went... 350 00:24:17,500 --> 00:24:22,214 That's where we were and the next minute, 351 00:24:22,332 --> 00:24:25,692 the police were knocking at the door 'cause we were making so much racket. 352 00:24:26,780 --> 00:24:28,417 And we knew it was the police, 353 00:24:28,508 --> 00:24:32,927 so we said, "Let's go for a take before they throw us out of here." 354 00:24:34,364 --> 00:24:38,598 Every guitar player dreams of doing with its creators. 355 00:24:38,684 --> 00:24:41,957 Every kid who ever picked up a guitar can do... 356 00:24:42,524 --> 00:24:44,444 Funny thing is, they all do it different. 357 00:24:44,572 --> 00:24:47,410 That's the nice thing, and I found that I had it in my head how to play it, 358 00:24:47,452 --> 00:24:50,213 and it was completely different to the way Ritchie plays it. 359 00:24:50,844 --> 00:24:52,862 Somebody said that music 360 00:24:54,428 --> 00:25:00,287 is many different colours and one of those colours is silence, simplicity. 361 00:25:00,412 --> 00:25:04,547 The quiet pans, the easy parts, the parts you can immediately grasp on to 362 00:25:04,604 --> 00:25:06,852 and wonder why you didn't write it yourself. 363 00:25:06,939 --> 00:25:10,212 That's genius. That's a genius riff. Wish I'd wrote it. 364 00:25:30,587 --> 00:25:34,373 The second record that I ever bought in my life was Machine Head. 365 00:25:34,491 --> 00:25:36,608 What an album. Oh, my God! 366 00:25:36,699 --> 00:25:41,532 To have a record like that and to have a guitar player like Ritchie 367 00:25:41,627 --> 00:25:46,854 in your radar and your field, it was just the greatest. 368 00:25:46,971 --> 00:25:50,331 You just think, "What would my life have been like without that?" 369 00:26:18,523 --> 00:26:22,626 It's the way Ritchie plays the riff. It's not the way that 370 00:26:22,682 --> 00:26:26,818 two generations of kids have played it in the guitar shop and driven people mad, 371 00:26:26,907 --> 00:26:28,380 to the point where in some shops in London 372 00:26:28,442 --> 00:26:32,250 it says, "If you are trying out a guitar please don't play Smoke on the Water." 373 00:26:32,346 --> 00:26:35,554 The first guitar, that guitar, right over there. 374 00:26:35,643 --> 00:26:38,753 You see the Strat with the maple body, 375 00:26:38,842 --> 00:26:41,374 that was my first real guitar. 376 00:26:41,466 --> 00:26:47,009 And I got it because of the poster on my wall in my bedroom of Ritchie playing. 377 00:26:47,098 --> 00:26:48,898 It was that guitar. 378 00:26:48,986 --> 00:26:52,064 And that's what I wanted. I wanted the Ritchie Blackmore Strat. 379 00:27:03,802 --> 00:27:06,464 Ritchie's solo on Machine Head's Highway Star 380 00:27:06,522 --> 00:27:09,381 was also set to become a Deep Purple statement. 381 00:27:09,690 --> 00:27:14,753 Highway Star is... That's crazy. That's just a crazy song for a guitar player. 382 00:27:14,842 --> 00:27:18,148 It makes everyone who thinks they are a guitar player need to pick up their guitar 383 00:27:18,201 --> 00:27:21,857 and see, "Well, if I'm that good, can I do that?" 384 00:27:22,522 --> 00:27:26,843 Highway Star solo was one of the first things I could get my head around. 385 00:27:26,938 --> 00:27:29,884 Even when I was like 16 or 17, 386 00:27:30,010 --> 00:27:33,469 it wasn't the standard notes you'd use. It wasn't just the blues scale. 387 00:27:33,561 --> 00:27:39,388 It was classically... There was classical stuff coming in there and with this aggression. 388 00:27:39,481 --> 00:27:42,624 Ritchie was really looking to expand on his solos 389 00:27:42,682 --> 00:27:44,602 and wanted a particular sequence, 390 00:27:44,729 --> 00:27:46,497 which is actually almost a classical sequence. 391 00:27:46,586 --> 00:27:49,729 It's probably the defining moment 392 00:27:49,849 --> 00:27:55,131 for Ritchie's soloing, Highway Star to me. It's the most recognizable solo. 393 00:27:55,226 --> 00:27:57,725 I like solos where you know them, 394 00:27:57,850 --> 00:28:00,611 solos where it's just a.” Nothing. 395 00:28:01,082 --> 00:28:05,184 So I think Highway Star was just stunning for that effect. 396 00:28:44,217 --> 00:28:47,938 I always thought American players always go right to the edge of the cliff and fall off 397 00:28:48,025 --> 00:28:50,371 and wave as they are going down. 398 00:28:50,489 --> 00:28:55,322 But the British players seem to take that one half a step back from the cliff 399 00:28:55,449 --> 00:28:58,777 and so it's together right till the end of the song, 400 00:28:58,841 --> 00:29:01,241 but it's still extremely thrilling. 401 00:29:01,336 --> 00:29:06,170 And funny thing about that song is that, 402 00:29:06,265 --> 00:29:09,986 having played it, you can get carried away with the emotion of the song, 403 00:29:10,041 --> 00:29:11,262 the intensity of it, 404 00:29:11,321 --> 00:29:14,681 of what you're doing, and it ruins it in a way. 405 00:29:14,776 --> 00:29:20,385 And that's part of Ritchie's charm for me is his restraint at the right moments, 406 00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:23,583 and it creates a lot of drama in his parts. 407 00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:24,600 It was a game changer, 408 00:29:24,696 --> 00:29:26,538 I thought Machine Head was a game changer myself. 409 00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:30,524 Machine Head reached number seven and went double platinum in the USA 410 00:29:30,648 --> 00:29:33,027 and gold at number one in the UK. 411 00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,124 but Ritchie's desire to control events was now leading to clashes 412 00:29:36,216 --> 00:29:38,136 with vocalist Ian Gillan. 413 00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:42,521 He was, as they say, an alpha guy. So was I. 414 00:29:42,648 --> 00:29:47,329 He wanted to control, I wanted to control, so we butted heads because of that. 415 00:29:48,024 --> 00:29:51,134 We still respected each other, but we never got on. 416 00:29:51,224 --> 00:29:53,407 And we just couldn't be in the same room. 417 00:29:53,528 --> 00:29:54,520 That was the problem. 418 00:29:54,616 --> 00:29:57,475 I wasn't speaking to him, he wasn't speaking to me. 419 00:29:59,160 --> 00:30:00,666 We weren't being creative. 420 00:30:00,984 --> 00:30:02,272 The band then toured Japan 421 00:30:02,359 --> 00:30:07,739 which produced their hugely successful 1972 live album, Made in Japan. 422 00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:10,943 Things were coming to a head with Ian Gillan. 423 00:30:10,999 --> 00:30:15,069 I think it started with coming back on the Japanese flight. 424 00:30:16,503 --> 00:30:21,054 Paul Rodgers' you know, to me was just mind-blowing, his voice. 425 00:30:22,136 --> 00:30:24,285 I wanted Ian to be able to do that, 426 00:30:24,407 --> 00:30:27,801 and I couldn't relate lo Ian's screaming and yelling 427 00:30:27,895 --> 00:30:30,012 and the Elvis Presley impersonation. 428 00:30:31,127 --> 00:30:35,132 He said, "So, how do you want me to sing? I'll sing any way you want me to sing". 429 00:30:35,223 --> 00:30:41,497 And I went, "Ian, you can't sing that way, that's a blues thing", you know? 430 00:30:42,647 --> 00:30:45,888 I think after that, that turned him off. 431 00:30:46,327 --> 00:30:49,405 He was rejected, so we went downhill from there. 432 00:30:56,855 --> 00:30:59,321 The aptly titled Who Do We Think We Are 433 00:30:59,448 --> 00:31:03,485 was lo be the final album before Ian Gillan and Roger Glover left the band. 434 00:31:05,335 --> 00:31:09,209 I think Ritchie Blackmore spent a lot of his career looking for the perfect line-up. 435 00:31:09,302 --> 00:31:11,616 And when he found it, he still wasn't happy with it. 436 00:31:11,799 --> 00:31:12,923 We started looking for other people, 437 00:31:13,047 --> 00:31:15,774 we found Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale. 438 00:31:15,863 --> 00:31:16,823 I'd left art college, 439 00:31:16,919 --> 00:31:20,280 and I was working in a boutique in Redcar in the north of England. 440 00:31:20,374 --> 00:31:22,458 And I read in the Melody Maker that... 441 00:31:22,519 --> 00:31:26,360 It was a picture of Jon at his organ, very Monty Python, 442 00:31:26,455 --> 00:31:32,609 saying, "Deep Purple still haven't found a singer and are considering unknowns." 443 00:31:33,302 --> 00:31:37,372 Which was basically a little ding moment. 444 00:31:37,462 --> 00:31:38,968 Paice played me this tape, he said, 445 00:31:39,062 --> 00:31:40,928 "What do you think of this singer?" And it was David Coverdale. 446 00:31:41,015 --> 00:31:42,782 And Jon would go, "What's wrong with him?" 447 00:31:42,839 --> 00:31:45,785 And I'd go, "You can't have him after Gillan." 448 00:31:46,487 --> 00:31:49,248 Gillan was this God with the women, 449 00:31:49,334 --> 00:31:52,990 and we've got to have someone that can 450 00:31:53,078 --> 00:31:56,538 fire up the female interest there. 451 00:31:57,239 --> 00:32:00,599 And they said, "No, we disagree." 452 00:32:01,302 --> 00:32:03,615 The girls in the office think he is cute. 453 00:32:03,702 --> 00:32:05,503 I'm going, "Cute? Okay." 454 00:32:31,702 --> 00:32:35,129 Then we did Mistreated, which is a bluesy thing, and we had that voice, 455 00:32:35,254 --> 00:32:38,047 Paul Rodgers kind of overturned to it. 456 00:32:38,262 --> 00:32:40,445 And Burn itself, the song worked, 457 00:32:40,566 --> 00:32:42,999 I felt we had some good songs there. 458 00:33:00,598 --> 00:33:03,773 And, of course, Glenn was very effervescent. 459 00:33:03,861 --> 00:33:07,321 He had a great funky way of playing the bass. 460 00:33:08,245 --> 00:33:09,980 He was a very rhythmic bass player. 461 00:33:20,533 --> 00:33:23,894 'Cause before that we had more of a... 462 00:33:24,502 --> 00:33:27,131 Glenn was more... 463 00:33:27,221 --> 00:33:28,924 There would be this rhythmic... 464 00:33:29,717 --> 00:33:33,787 He was very good with his rhythmic syncopation. 465 00:33:46,997 --> 00:33:50,302 You know, it bears noting that, for me, Ritchie Blackmore, 466 00:33:50,357 --> 00:33:53,085 unlike many guitar players, 467 00:33:53,973 --> 00:33:58,523 never lost his edge, if it were. 468 00:33:59,285 --> 00:34:02,973 Burn is every bit as important as Space Truckin' 469 00:34:03,060 --> 00:34:05,406 and some of the later stuff. 470 00:34:05,525 --> 00:34:10,359 You can actually hear a guitar player at the lop of his game. 471 00:34:43,796 --> 00:34:46,742 Ritchie is convinced that the clock in his bar is haunted 472 00:34:46,836 --> 00:34:49,084 and chimes whenever it is happy. 473 00:34:51,220 --> 00:34:52,606 Very happy.- 474 00:34:53,781 --> 00:34:56,028 - It doesn't do it at a set time or anything? - No. 475 00:34:56,116 --> 00:34:57,720 - It does it just... - No, only when it's happy. 476 00:34:57,844 --> 00:34:59,743 It will stay off for months. 477 00:35:00,436 --> 00:35:02,162 It's haunted, it was given to me by a friend. 478 00:35:09,812 --> 00:35:13,085 Ritchie's lifelong interest in haunting and practical jokes 479 00:35:13,204 --> 00:35:16,444 was something else newcomer Coverdale had to get used to. 480 00:35:16,564 --> 00:35:19,129 Some of them were very close to the knuckle. 481 00:35:19,220 --> 00:35:22,264 We were at Clearwell Castle in Gloucestershire, Forest of Dean. 482 00:35:22,676 --> 00:35:27,641 A guy called Tony Ashton was coming down from London for the weekend, for the hang. 483 00:35:28,916 --> 00:35:32,986 So Ritchie and I had the crew empty the guest bedroom 484 00:35:33,076 --> 00:35:36,535 of all the furniture and took up the carpets, took up the floor boards, 485 00:35:36,595 --> 00:35:39,738 and put a huge speaker, I mean, a really big Marshall speaker 486 00:35:39,796 --> 00:35:43,320 underneath the bed. 487 00:35:43,444 --> 00:35:47,449 Put the boards back in, put the carpets back over, 488 00:35:47,540 --> 00:35:49,526 everything just looking normal. 489 00:35:49,683 --> 00:35:52,859 Fed the wires down to another room down the way, 490 00:35:52,915 --> 00:35:57,661 and sat up and waited for Tony Ashton to come back from the pub. 491 00:35:57,715 --> 00:36:01,404 And as we hear the steps coming down the corridor 492 00:36:01,523 --> 00:36:04,884 and Tony's door close. 493 00:36:04,979 --> 00:36:09,333 So we give him time to bathroom and whatever and get into bed' 494 00:36:09,395 --> 00:36:13,717 And then we turn the speaker, the microphone on, and I went up, 495 00:36:13,843 --> 00:36:18,906 started scratching against a board, which you can imagine, this is under a bed, 496 00:36:18,995 --> 00:36:22,355 and saying, "Let me out." 497 00:36:23,795 --> 00:36:25,978 Well... 498 00:36:26,035 --> 00:36:29,243 We heard the most unearthly scream and... 499 00:36:29,331 --> 00:36:32,823 Which, you know, and panicking footsteps running down the corridor. 500 00:36:32,915 --> 00:36:35,131 It certainly wasn't a guy's voice. 501 00:36:35,219 --> 00:36:36,376 Tony was still at the pub, 502 00:36:36,435 --> 00:36:38,835 this was a guest of the family who owned the castle, 503 00:36:38,963 --> 00:36:43,001 who'd actually just come back from Bristol after seeing The Exorcist movie. 504 00:36:43,091 --> 00:36:47,575 So, and was last seen heading into the deep, dark forest. 505 00:36:48,275 --> 00:36:53,982 He has no boundaries when it comes to his pranks, his japes. 506 00:36:57,875 --> 00:37:01,497 This is Ontario, 40 miles east of Los Angeles. 507 00:37:01,555 --> 00:37:04,414 The only sound you'll hear today are the railway track to the south 508 00:37:04,498 --> 00:37:06,200 and the highway to the north. 509 00:37:07,571 --> 00:37:12,219 But the 40,000 plus people who gathered here for the 1974 Cal Jam festival 510 00:37:12,275 --> 00:37:15,418 were about to witness Ritchie at his most theatrical. 511 00:37:16,723 --> 00:37:21,884 Cal Jam, it was pretty romantic when it happened, I'll tell you, it was. 512 00:37:21,971 --> 00:37:25,331 I remember a beautiful southern California day. 513 00:37:29,714 --> 00:37:32,758 I'd come from driving a little transit van's local gigs 514 00:37:32,882 --> 00:37:37,367 into flying in a customized, private 707, 727. 515 00:37:37,458 --> 00:37:41,244 The star ship, which is how we flew into that environment. 516 00:37:41,331 --> 00:37:42,968 It was breath-taking to me. 517 00:37:43,251 --> 00:37:45,945 There must have been 350,000 people there. 518 00:37:46,034 --> 00:37:50,039 I think 100,000 burned the fence down. 519 00:37:50,162 --> 00:37:51,897 Then it was probably 350,000. 520 00:37:52,018 --> 00:37:55,226 When we look at the visual images from above, 521 00:37:55,314 --> 00:38:00,596 you cannot imagine what it's like to walk onto a stage and you can't see... 522 00:38:01,682 --> 00:38:06,036 You can see the skyline, but in the skyline there is people. 523 00:38:06,193 --> 00:38:08,277 It really was stunning. 524 00:38:08,434 --> 00:38:10,518 There was a whole host, the Emerson, Lake & Palmer 525 00:38:10,641 --> 00:38:14,744 and Black Sabbath, Earth, Wind & Fire, Seals and Crofts, 526 00:38:14,833 --> 00:38:18,587 Black Oak Arkansas and Rare Earth. I think that was the bill. 527 00:38:18,673 --> 00:38:21,467 And we were offered the headline slot. 528 00:38:21,553 --> 00:38:25,459 John Coletta, the management, called me up six months before that festival 529 00:38:25,553 --> 00:38:28,761 and said, "They want you to do California Jam." 530 00:38:28,881 --> 00:38:31,860 I said, "No, thanks. I'm not interested in any more festivals." 531 00:38:31,954 --> 00:38:33,853 They are a nightmare, they always will be, 532 00:38:33,937 --> 00:38:36,731 there is always complete catastrophe backstage. 533 00:38:36,817 --> 00:38:40,439 Nothing ever goes right, you're always on late or early. 534 00:38:40,561 --> 00:38:43,639 The billing is all wrong, it's just awful. 535 00:38:43,730 --> 00:38:47,003 I said, "You know what, I might do it", 536 00:38:47,089 --> 00:38:50,995 "but we have to write down all these conditions," 537 00:38:51,121 --> 00:38:53,554 "because I'm tired of doing festivals." 538 00:38:53,682 --> 00:38:57,948 We're gonna go on at dusk, which is 9:00, around there. 539 00:38:58,033 --> 00:39:00,914 And I said, "We'll be the first band with lights, 'cause that's important." 540 00:39:01,010 --> 00:39:03,159 It's a subliminal thing, people see lights, 541 00:39:03,282 --> 00:39:06,108 and they go, "I really like this band compared to the rest of them." 542 00:39:06,193 --> 00:39:08,758 It's only 'cause they've got lights going on, 543 00:39:08,881 --> 00:39:13,203 and it's a psychological thing that I've noticed, so I insisted on that. 544 00:39:14,289 --> 00:39:16,373 And they said, "Absolutely no problem." 545 00:39:16,753 --> 00:39:20,692 In the event, the organizers demanded the band go on when it was still light. 546 00:39:20,753 --> 00:39:23,219 But Ritchie stuck to his guns. 547 00:39:23,313 --> 00:39:27,219 People were yelling and screaming and threatening this and threatening that, 548 00:39:27,313 --> 00:39:31,448 and I just get the door bolted, and I'd have a few drinks playing the guitar. 549 00:39:31,536 --> 00:39:32,922 I was not gonna go on. 550 00:39:33,361 --> 00:39:37,365 Finally when it was dark, Ritchie, the musician, went on stage. 551 00:39:37,552 --> 00:39:41,241 You look fucking great from here. Really good. 552 00:39:42,033 --> 00:39:44,019 And they were terrific on stage, they were absolutely terrific. 553 00:39:44,112 --> 00:39:47,702 Ritchie is a spectacularly visual guitarist, he was. 554 00:39:49,072 --> 00:39:52,116 He ran around, put his back to the audience, threw his guitar around, 555 00:39:52,208 --> 00:39:54,358 and of course, he did a bit of a Townshend sometimes, 556 00:39:54,449 --> 00:39:55,409 and smashed the guitar at the end. 557 00:39:55,473 --> 00:40:00,023 Of all the guys in Deep Purple, it was Ritchie who was the most quixotic 558 00:40:00,113 --> 00:40:01,466 and mischievous. 559 00:40:02,033 --> 00:40:06,168 And the quixotic and mischievous Ritchie was also on stage that night. 560 00:40:06,768 --> 00:40:11,122 He's had enough, you know, he's playing away and you can hear, 561 00:40:11,216 --> 00:40:14,643 he said he could hear this guy going, "Limey, get back in there, so I can..." 562 00:40:14,736 --> 00:40:16,602 You know, and all this kind of stuff, 563 00:40:16,689 --> 00:40:20,410 and he killed the camera, it was brilliant showmanship. 564 00:40:20,496 --> 00:40:25,723 Probably among the definitive moments of his kind of sense of spectacle 565 00:40:25,841 --> 00:40:30,292 and wanting to kind of turn it up to another notch or whatever. 566 00:40:55,632 --> 00:40:59,221 And Ritchie had plans for notching things up even further. 567 00:41:00,111 --> 00:41:01,879 So, I went to my roadie and said, 568 00:41:01,968 --> 00:41:04,914 "What I'm gonna do is blow up the amplifiers." 569 00:41:05,040 --> 00:41:09,208 I said, "What I want you to do is cover the amplifiers in petrol." 570 00:41:09,295 --> 00:41:13,812 "I'll go across one side of the stage. You douse my Marshalls," 571 00:41:13,872 --> 00:41:15,890 "dummy Marshalls, with petrol." 572 00:41:15,952 --> 00:41:20,436 Ronnie Quinton, his beloved guitar tech, who is no longer with us, 573 00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:25,492 loaded way too much gun powder into Ritchie's stuff, 574 00:41:25,552 --> 00:41:28,912 so when that... It blew Paice's glasses off. I thought I was gonna die. 575 00:41:48,847 --> 00:41:51,859 Exploded and, like, blew a hole in the stage, 576 00:41:51,951 --> 00:41:56,501 Paice's glasses got blown off, he was like... He can't see anything. 577 00:41:56,591 --> 00:42:00,344 It made some cameraman temporarily deaf. 578 00:42:01,775 --> 00:42:03,161 But, it looked great. 579 00:42:04,079 --> 00:42:09,557 Everybody was up and happy. Deep Purple just killed, I mean, they killed. 580 00:42:09,647 --> 00:42:15,604 Because this was still a bit of a transition into heavy metal, still kinda new. 581 00:42:15,694 --> 00:42:18,040 They really came through, let me tell you. They were good. 582 00:42:18,127 --> 00:42:23,735 I was a total novice outside of the remarkable 583 00:42:23,791 --> 00:42:27,958 schooling of working men's clubs and it's just a walk in the park, you know, 584 00:42:28,047 --> 00:42:31,255 after you've played Wingate Constitutional Club. 585 00:42:31,310 --> 00:42:34,038 Yeah, he did a great job, he pulled it off. 586 00:42:44,334 --> 00:42:45,556 And we had a helicopter, 587 00:42:45,678 --> 00:42:48,984 we were bundled into the helicopter and flown out. 588 00:42:49,071 --> 00:42:52,398 The police were coming to arrest us, for blowing up the stage, 589 00:42:52,494 --> 00:42:55,637 being dangerous to all the people, what have you. 590 00:42:56,366 --> 00:43:01,844 You know, it worked, and the idea was to upstage ELP, which I think we did. 591 00:43:02,830 --> 00:43:07,216 That was probably one of the peak moments certainly in economic terms 592 00:43:07,310 --> 00:43:09,526 and in terms of record breaking. 593 00:43:09,614 --> 00:43:11,797 That was one of the highlights of Deep Purple's career, 594 00:43:11,886 --> 00:43:14,101 because they played to this vast audience. 595 00:43:14,190 --> 00:43:16,340 I think it is in the Guinness Book of Records, 596 00:43:16,430 --> 00:43:19,638 some hundreds of thousands of people at this event. 597 00:43:19,726 --> 00:43:21,625 I think it got better musically for them. 598 00:43:21,710 --> 00:43:25,137 They continued, thank God, to progress musically. 599 00:43:25,230 --> 00:43:30,740 But, I don't know that their popularity ever got bigger than Cal Jam ll' 600 00:43:32,750 --> 00:43:36,274 Cal Jam had radically ramped up Ritchie's profile in America, 601 00:43:36,366 --> 00:43:40,436 but he was growing increasingly unhappy with the funky direction the band was taking. 602 00:43:41,646 --> 00:43:44,275 My first LP Burn was great. 603 00:43:44,398 --> 00:43:48,370 We had Mistreated, Burn, and it was all working. 604 00:43:48,430 --> 00:43:52,598 Now, the second record we made, Stormbringer was good. 605 00:43:54,317 --> 00:43:58,671 But Jon, I think Ian, and even Dave, 606 00:43:58,765 --> 00:44:02,933 and, of course, Glenn, were getting into this funk stuff. 607 00:44:06,189 --> 00:44:08,753 And I'm like, "That's not me." 608 00:44:09,229 --> 00:44:12,721 It's gonna be rock, blues. I don't wanna be involved in that. 609 00:44:12,846 --> 00:44:15,727 Me, Jon and David wrote Holy Man together. 610 00:44:15,789 --> 00:44:18,964 And it was, "You can't do it right with the one you love". 611 00:44:19,053 --> 00:44:22,927 It was group compositions, Hold On. 612 00:44:23,566 --> 00:44:27,123 Jon came up with that great Fender Rhodes thing. 613 00:44:47,597 --> 00:44:49,135 And with his Deep Purple colleagues 614 00:44:49,229 --> 00:44:52,023 unwilling to take the music in the direction he wanted, 615 00:44:52,109 --> 00:44:56,245 Ritchie now found someone who was, a singer named Ronnie James Dio. 616 00:44:57,357 --> 00:44:59,540 That's when I did, 617 00:44:59,629 --> 00:45:02,029 I think, 16th Century Greensleeves with Ronnie. 618 00:45:15,564 --> 00:45:19,765 He actually recorded an album with Ronnie and the guys is in Elf. 619 00:45:19,852 --> 00:45:21,456 And we didn't know about this. 620 00:45:22,252 --> 00:45:23,606 And that turned out even better, 621 00:45:23,692 --> 00:45:27,413 and I went, "We've gotta form a band 'cause this is just flowing." 622 00:45:28,589 --> 00:45:32,048 There is none of this... No committee meetings. 623 00:45:32,108 --> 00:45:34,738 And no briefcases involved 624 00:45:34,828 --> 00:45:36,977 and trying to get hold of people that were never around. 625 00:45:37,996 --> 00:45:40,723 Because Purple became a big business, the monster. 626 00:45:41,069 --> 00:45:44,877 So, that's when I left 'em and formed Rainbow. 627 00:45:45,484 --> 00:45:46,902 Ritchie's new band was named after 628 00:45:46,988 --> 00:45:49,236 the famous rock and roll Rainbow Bar and Grill 629 00:45:49,357 --> 00:45:51,473 on Sunset Boulevard in west Hollywood. 630 00:45:51,564 --> 00:45:53,616 He was his own boss at last. 631 00:46:17,484 --> 00:46:20,016 It was very exciting. We had Ronnie Dio. 632 00:46:20,108 --> 00:46:21,843 He could come around and write a tune like that. 633 00:46:21,932 --> 00:46:26,166 I'd give him an idea, he'd put the top line to it, everything was fresh. 634 00:46:26,251 --> 00:46:27,692 He had that ridiculous voice. 635 00:46:28,364 --> 00:46:29,553 After the first album, 636 00:46:29,643 --> 00:46:32,884 Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow became simply Rainbow. 637 00:46:33,196 --> 00:46:36,556 We held auditions to put Rainbow together. 638 00:46:36,715 --> 00:46:40,207 And the 13th drummer was Cozy Powell. 639 00:46:41,707 --> 00:46:43,587 And he was the only one that could play a shuffle. 640 00:46:43,947 --> 00:46:48,269 I was looking for some fire and then Cozy came in and he did it. 641 00:47:05,548 --> 00:47:07,414 He and Ritchie got on very well together. 642 00:47:07,468 --> 00:47:12,116 They both shared a love, apart from rock and roll, of pranking. 643 00:47:12,235 --> 00:47:14,581 Practical jokes, so... 644 00:47:14,667 --> 00:47:18,323 And, of course, Cozy is quite a strong personality as well so, 645 00:47:18,411 --> 00:47:20,594 they respected each other and they liked each other, 646 00:47:20,715 --> 00:47:23,628 and that was really the basis of the success of Rainbow, 647 00:47:23,755 --> 00:47:28,654 I think, was this very powerful guitar player, incredibly strong drummer 648 00:47:28,746 --> 00:47:31,246 and enormously talented singer. 649 00:47:31,307 --> 00:47:34,188 I think Cozy was a perfect foil for Ritchie, 650 00:47:34,283 --> 00:47:36,334 and I know even Cozy found it hard at times. 651 00:47:36,426 --> 00:47:38,642 Cozy used to tell me, "It isn't easy, you know?" 652 00:47:38,731 --> 00:47:40,684 But I think Cozy had such a respect for Ritchie 653 00:47:40,747 --> 00:47:42,831 and likewise the other way around. 654 00:47:42,954 --> 00:47:45,716 So, yeah, I think it was great combination. 655 00:47:45,803 --> 00:47:51,564 As a fan, it seemed like it was one more step into what was heavy metal. 656 00:47:53,835 --> 00:47:58,668 Certainly with Dio singing, 657 00:47:58,795 --> 00:48:02,003 it was a remarkable step forward in that genre. 658 00:48:02,090 --> 00:48:04,752 I mean, a lot of people today, they listen to those records 659 00:48:04,842 --> 00:48:07,374 and they think that's where it really started. 660 00:48:07,466 --> 00:48:09,867 It's almost as if he is playing more on those records, 661 00:48:09,994 --> 00:48:11,948 there is like more of Ritchie on those records. 662 00:48:12,074 --> 00:48:15,631 It was a band in his own image, which Deep Purple would never... 663 00:48:15,914 --> 00:48:19,603 Deep Purple were partly his image and partly his creativity, 664 00:48:19,690 --> 00:48:21,523 but it belonged to everybody else. 665 00:48:21,610 --> 00:48:22,636 Rainbow was him. 666 00:48:22,730 --> 00:48:26,735 Rainbow was definitely his moment of stepping into the spotlight 667 00:48:26,826 --> 00:48:28,845 and saying, "This is me, this is where I want to go." 668 00:48:29,067 --> 00:48:32,755 Cozy suddenly turned up, turned around, Cozy Powell, and said, 669 00:48:32,874 --> 00:48:35,406 "You know who my favourite band is?" 670 00:48:35,466 --> 00:48:38,161 It's "ABBA“ and we went..." 671 00:48:39,402 --> 00:48:40,362 "ABBA!" 672 00:48:41,322 --> 00:48:43,755 "How could you?“ as in like... 673 00:48:43,850 --> 00:48:47,691 And he is like, "Yeah, I know, but that's my favourite band." 674 00:48:47,882 --> 00:48:50,282 Then I said, "And mine." 675 00:48:52,265 --> 00:48:55,757 Then, I think the bass player there went, "And mine." 676 00:48:55,849 --> 00:48:58,577 And we suddenly all went, "Let's play some ABBA." 677 00:48:59,306 --> 00:49:03,278 But, unsurprisingly, no ABBA tracks made it on to the band's second album, 678 00:49:03,370 --> 00:49:04,658 Rainbow Rising. 679 00:49:20,234 --> 00:49:24,521 Rainbow Rising was done in Munich in the studio Arabella House, I think. 680 00:49:25,673 --> 00:49:28,979 That was done quickly and done very well, 681 00:49:29,065 --> 00:49:30,735 and we had a good time playing it. 682 00:49:30,825 --> 00:49:32,331 By the time we got to Long Live Rock 'N' Roll, 683 00:49:32,426 --> 00:49:34,193 things were getting... 684 00:49:35,402 --> 00:49:38,762 Ronnie was more into his girlfriend Wendy, 685 00:49:38,890 --> 00:49:41,072 and things were starting to slow down for ideas. 686 00:49:41,162 --> 00:49:44,751 I don't think Rainbow ever equalled the success of Deep Purple, 687 00:49:44,873 --> 00:49:49,161 not in the public's perception or in the critics' minds, should we say. 688 00:49:49,929 --> 00:49:52,428 Despite the fact that it did produce some great music. 689 00:49:52,521 --> 00:49:54,922 It was very... And it was a great live band. 690 00:49:54,985 --> 00:49:56,207 It was very entertaining, 691 00:49:56,265 --> 00:49:59,626 and gave Ritchie Blackmore opportunities to play with other people. 692 00:50:00,169 --> 00:50:02,831 As far as the personnel changes go, 693 00:50:02,921 --> 00:50:07,602 you would need an abacus and a Cray Computer 694 00:50:07,689 --> 00:50:09,937 to figure that one out. 695 00:50:10,024 --> 00:50:14,095 But, that family tree is tall, wide and complicated. 696 00:50:14,185 --> 00:50:17,066 But through it all, there is Ritchie Blackmore. 697 00:50:39,528 --> 00:50:43,947 And a Ritchie Blackmore who was still unpredictable and more than a little scary. 698 00:50:44,105 --> 00:50:46,985 I have seen Ritchie lose it with someone, I better not say who it is. 699 00:50:47,112 --> 00:50:50,669 but it was very explosive. 700 00:50:50,793 --> 00:50:54,481 Yeah, he doesn't suffer people to be fools. 701 00:50:54,569 --> 00:50:57,395 And I know Ritchie can be quite physical. 702 00:50:57,705 --> 00:51:01,709 Ritchie got physical in Vienna in 1977. 703 00:51:02,824 --> 00:51:07,854 We were playing in Austria to about 5,000-7,000 people. 704 00:51:07,944 --> 00:51:12,745 A good show and this little girl comes up to the front stage, 705 00:51:12,873 --> 00:51:16,266 she had come up and handed up a note, 706 00:51:16,392 --> 00:51:19,884 like, "I'm a big fan of the band" or something like that, I don't know. 707 00:51:19,944 --> 00:51:21,549 And I'm just watching her 708 00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:26,027 and the next minute she gets hit by this guy with a truncheon and this bouncer, 709 00:51:26,824 --> 00:51:29,999 and, of course, I thought, "He is not gonna get away with that." 710 00:51:30,088 --> 00:51:32,237 So I kicked him. 711 00:51:32,327 --> 00:51:36,168 And I have strong legs, so of course I broke his jaw 712 00:51:36,264 --> 00:51:39,276 and he went down, blood, and I went... 713 00:51:39,624 --> 00:51:43,465 The resourceful stage crew hid Ritchie in a large flight case 714 00:51:43,592 --> 00:51:45,327 and pushed him towards the exit. 715 00:51:45,448 --> 00:51:49,682 Every exit had police helmets and dogs. 716 00:51:49,767 --> 00:51:54,034 And they were about to push me up into the truck, into the lorry. 717 00:51:54,407 --> 00:51:58,826 And they insisted, opened it up, and, of course, 718 00:51:58,952 --> 00:52:02,312 I just came out like a Jack in the box, "Hi, everybody.“" 719 00:52:03,144 --> 00:52:06,450 And then they locked me up for four days, which was pretty miserable. 720 00:52:06,824 --> 00:52:10,512 'Cause the first night, they would just like, throw me on the floor. 721 00:52:11,624 --> 00:52:14,654 And they wanted to beat the shit out of me because I just hit one of their guys. 722 00:52:14,823 --> 00:52:17,289 The consulate was of no use whatsoever, 723 00:52:17,384 --> 00:52:20,078 they just came and said, "You have done a really bad thing." 724 00:52:20,168 --> 00:52:22,186 "You might be here forever." 725 00:52:23,207 --> 00:52:24,495 That's a wakeup call. 726 00:52:24,583 --> 00:52:29,035 You know, I had a bad temper. My temper is not so bad any more 727 00:52:29,127 --> 00:52:30,393 'cause I always think about that. 728 00:52:30,439 --> 00:52:32,490 As well as his unscheduled jail visit, 729 00:52:32,583 --> 00:52:35,464 Ritchie now had to contend with a changing music market 730 00:52:35,559 --> 00:52:37,164 and an unchanging Ronnie. 731 00:52:52,262 --> 00:52:55,209 Ronnie Dio and Ritchie Blackmore had a chemistry, 732 00:52:55,303 --> 00:52:59,438 but then, as Blackmore got further into the Rainbow career, 733 00:52:59,527 --> 00:53:03,630 he saw himself as wanting to become a little bit more commercial. 734 00:53:03,719 --> 00:53:08,848 And Dio very much wanted to stay into the myths and the dragons feel 735 00:53:08,903 --> 00:53:12,875 that he would put forward in the lyrics, metaphorical, 736 00:53:12,967 --> 00:53:14,986 rather than physical, than actual. 737 00:53:15,110 --> 00:53:17,871 So that the two of them went their separate ways, as we know. 738 00:53:18,471 --> 00:53:21,799 But that isn't the whole story, as Ritchie now reveals. 739 00:53:22,471 --> 00:53:25,450 Wendy, apparently, had told him transatlantically, 740 00:53:25,543 --> 00:53:27,921 she said, called him up and said, "Ronnie", 741 00:53:28,006 --> 00:53:31,531 "Ritchie is on the front page of Circus magazine in America" 742 00:53:31,622 --> 00:53:33,040 "and you two aren't." 743 00:53:33,127 --> 00:53:34,927 "There should have been the three of us." 744 00:53:35,399 --> 00:53:37,036 That's what did it. 745 00:53:37,126 --> 00:53:42,799 And he said to me, "Cozy and I are not gonna... We are not your sidekicks", 746 00:53:42,886 --> 00:53:45,286 "and we are not standing for it." 747 00:53:45,638 --> 00:53:48,846 I don't want to work with someone who is that trivial, that ridiculous. 748 00:53:48,902 --> 00:53:53,386 I said, "I can't work with this guy any more, just get him out of my life." 749 00:53:53,510 --> 00:53:58,824 And I remembered Graham Bonnet from the Marbles, 750 00:53:58,918 --> 00:54:02,890 and I said to Roger Glover, I said, "What about trying to find him?" 751 00:54:02,982 --> 00:54:04,478 "I wonder what he is doing these days." 752 00:54:04,518 --> 00:54:07,845 So I had to learn a Rainbow song because I knew nothing. 753 00:54:07,942 --> 00:54:10,343 I didn't know who Rainbow was, I had no clue. 754 00:54:10,438 --> 00:54:12,718 So I had to go out and buy albums and listen to the music. 755 00:54:12,806 --> 00:54:16,166 And I thought, "I don't think this is really me." 756 00:54:16,358 --> 00:54:19,151 I'm more into like R&B and pop kind of stuff. 757 00:54:19,302 --> 00:54:22,030 That guy had an amazing voice. 758 00:54:22,118 --> 00:54:25,162 Could sing an F-sharp above Top C and that was going some. 759 00:54:25,222 --> 00:54:26,641 I remember going over there one afternoon, 760 00:54:26,726 --> 00:54:28,529 and I heard this Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow 761 00:54:28,582 --> 00:54:30,895 or something in the background, and it was off of my album. 762 00:54:30,982 --> 00:54:34,125 I said to Roger, "Why is he playing that?" He says, "He just loves your voice." 763 00:54:34,181 --> 00:54:37,487 Ritchie also loved the idea of being more commercial. 764 00:55:00,486 --> 00:55:01,806 We needed some radio play. 765 00:55:01,861 --> 00:55:03,945 We got a little bit too underground. 766 00:55:04,037 --> 00:55:05,870 Since You've Been Gone, we got rid of that, and we... 767 00:55:05,957 --> 00:55:09,317 'Cause it's a number one, all of a sudden we were a big band. 768 00:55:10,501 --> 00:55:14,985 We were riding high at that time, 1980 was our biggest moment, I think. 769 00:55:15,877 --> 00:55:17,482 We were quite big in England. 770 00:55:17,925 --> 00:55:19,146 I love Since You've Been Gone. 771 00:55:19,238 --> 00:55:24,399 It's uncompromising and it has the perfect element of pop, which is you can sing it 772 00:55:24,485 --> 00:55:27,464 and it's in your head all day, and it's passionate. 773 00:55:27,557 --> 00:55:32,522 It has a real tug on your emotions. 774 00:55:32,581 --> 00:55:35,941 But Ritchie's in it, and Ritchie is powering the whole thing. 775 00:55:36,037 --> 00:55:37,543 The under solo is just brilliant. 776 00:55:54,437 --> 00:55:56,204 They did the immortal version of it. 777 00:55:57,157 --> 00:55:59,535 Powered by their more commercial sound, 778 00:55:59,620 --> 00:56:03,788 Rainbow headlined the first ever Monsters of Rock festival at Donington. 779 00:56:04,805 --> 00:56:06,278 The critics hated us. 780 00:56:06,917 --> 00:56:10,027 For whatever reason, we were not a fashionable, 781 00:56:10,117 --> 00:56:12,233 on the front page of Rolling Stones type of band. 782 00:56:12,325 --> 00:56:15,630 We were... They just hated us. 783 00:56:15,717 --> 00:56:17,354 But the more they hated us, 784 00:56:17,444 --> 00:56:20,804 the more the people kind of went, "We love them." 785 00:56:21,284 --> 00:56:22,986 The fans may have loved Rainbow, 786 00:56:23,108 --> 00:56:26,665 but Ritchie was now having a problem with Graham Bannet's hair. 787 00:56:26,789 --> 00:56:30,662 Ritchie was 100% behind me being in the band, 788 00:56:30,756 --> 00:56:33,321 but 100% against my haircut. 789 00:56:34,117 --> 00:56:36,233 There was a hair situation. 790 00:56:36,324 --> 00:56:40,394 We were known to have Denim people following us, 791 00:56:40,484 --> 00:56:43,015 and most people were kind of growing their hair long in those days. 792 00:56:43,204 --> 00:56:45,801 I went to get my hair cut in Sheffield really short. 793 00:56:45,860 --> 00:56:47,944 I mean, like, spiky and the whole thing. 794 00:56:53,220 --> 00:56:55,914 And I went on stage and Ritchie hadn't seen me all day, 795 00:56:56,004 --> 00:56:58,349 and there he was playing his guitar, and the first song comes up 796 00:56:58,436 --> 00:56:59,702 and he turns to me and he goes... 797 00:56:59,748 --> 00:57:01,385 You know, his mouth dropped. 798 00:57:01,476 --> 00:57:03,592 He was singing to the audience and doing his bit, 799 00:57:03,683 --> 00:57:06,662 and I saw the back of the shaved neck, you know that. 800 00:57:06,756 --> 00:57:11,622 You know, very cut hair and I went, 801 00:57:11,715 --> 00:57:14,181 "I'm just gonna put my guitar across his head." 802 00:57:14,276 --> 00:57:15,465 but then I might... 803 00:57:15,555 --> 00:57:17,541 I'll be back in prison again, you know. 804 00:57:17,668 --> 00:57:21,028 I really was, like, so tempted just to take it off and go whack. 805 00:57:31,875 --> 00:57:34,407 Graham Bonnet and his hair lived to sing another day. 806 00:57:34,499 --> 00:57:37,859 But he had no luck persuading drummer Cozy Powell to stay on board. 807 00:57:38,147 --> 00:57:42,250 Powell didn't like the overtly commercial work the band was now doing. 808 00:57:42,659 --> 00:57:43,751 And he was gone. 809 00:57:43,843 --> 00:57:49,070 And it was a very sad day, and he left the band and later I did. 810 00:57:49,155 --> 00:57:52,363 That was my last show too, but I didn't know this at that time. 811 00:57:52,419 --> 00:57:54,089 Graham Bonnet was a great singer 812 00:57:54,179 --> 00:57:57,638 and Down to Earth was a thoroughly undervalued Rainbow album. 813 00:57:57,699 --> 00:58:00,426 But again, the problem was that Blackmore saw Bonnet 814 00:58:00,547 --> 00:58:03,690 not quite as having what it took in terms of personality, 815 00:58:03,779 --> 00:58:06,027 to allow Blackmore to be himself. 816 00:58:06,627 --> 00:58:09,061 Song writing wasn't good, the way we wanted it to. 817 00:58:09,187 --> 00:58:10,409 It was very slow. 818 00:58:10,499 --> 00:58:14,634 Nothing was happening, we had one song and that was the song Russ Ballard wrote. 819 00:58:14,723 --> 00:58:16,589 I Surrender, the song was called. 820 00:58:16,707 --> 00:58:17,929 And that's all we had. 821 00:58:18,019 --> 00:58:20,419 And so we... It was... 822 00:58:20,515 --> 00:58:22,948 I left because Ritchie didn't come to rehearsal sometimes. 823 00:58:35,842 --> 00:58:37,926 Graham left the band in 1980. 824 00:58:38,403 --> 00:58:41,676 Like a month or so later, I thought, "What have I done?" 825 00:58:41,762 --> 00:58:44,741 I have left something that was great. 826 00:58:44,834 --> 00:58:48,162 It would be nice to see him again 'cause I like him very much. 827 00:58:48,259 --> 00:58:53,486 He was a good friend, and he taught me a lot about the music I was suddenly pushed into, 828 00:58:53,538 --> 00:58:56,266 which I knew nothing about, and he was a great teacher. 829 00:58:56,739 --> 00:59:00,044 Ritchie's friend Barry Ambrosio suggested Joe Lynn Turner 830 00:59:00,098 --> 00:59:02,149 as a replacement for Graham Bonnet. 831 00:59:02,786 --> 00:59:04,586 He said, "Listen to this record." 832 00:59:04,706 --> 00:59:08,994 I said "Look, Barry, I've heard so many singers, I can! Hear any more." 833 00:59:09,058 --> 00:59:10,477 "I've got to get out of here." 834 00:59:10,562 --> 00:59:14,087 He said, "Just listen to this," and he played one track as I was leaving. 835 00:59:14,179 --> 00:59:15,368 And I went, 836 00:59:15,458 --> 00:59:17,858 "Actually, that sounds interesting, who is this guy?“ 837 00:59:17,954 --> 00:59:19,908 And he said, "Guy from New Jersey." 838 00:59:20,066 --> 00:59:22,663 I didn't know that he came to see me. 839 00:59:22,786 --> 00:59:25,863 I later found oui when I got a phone call, 840 00:59:25,955 --> 00:59:29,927 living in Manhattan, lower Manhattan in the west village, 841 00:59:30,242 --> 00:59:32,742 one-room studio, I think you call it. 842 00:59:32,898 --> 00:59:34,917 And mattress on the floor, 843 00:59:34,978 --> 00:59:36,582 money running out. 844 00:59:36,706 --> 00:59:40,067 And got a phone call from Barry Ambrosio, 845 00:59:40,162 --> 00:59:42,661 and he put Ritchie on the phone, 846 00:59:42,785 --> 00:59:45,383 and of course I... Complete disbelief. 847 00:59:45,506 --> 00:59:48,867 And he said, "No, it's really me." And I said, "Well, all right." 848 00:59:48,962 --> 00:59:51,210 And they told... They put their road manager on 849 00:59:51,298 --> 00:59:54,342 and told me the train to take and to go out to the studio. 850 01:00:20,321 --> 01:00:22,820 I was playing in New Jersey, and I went to see him. 851 01:00:22,946 --> 01:00:27,081 And I really liked his voice, very resonant and warm. 852 01:00:27,138 --> 01:00:29,865 He came in with a couple of beers and said, "You got the job if you want it." 853 01:00:29,985 --> 01:00:32,069 And I said, "Want it? I need it." 854 01:00:32,513 --> 01:00:36,801 And kept me there in the studio and we just kept being creative, 855 01:00:36,897 --> 01:00:40,203 and Glover and I started to write more lyrics, 856 01:00:40,257 --> 01:00:44,393 and we finished the album Difficult to Cure, like, in a couple of weeks, I think, 857 01:00:44,481 --> 01:00:45,867 since my entrance. 858 01:00:46,657 --> 01:00:50,017 Ritchie recorded three Rainbow albums with Joe Lynn Turner. 859 01:00:51,745 --> 01:00:55,750 I think I wrote, with Joe, 860 01:00:55,840 --> 01:00:58,951 one of my favourite tunes which is Street of Dreams. 861 01:00:59,041 --> 01:01:03,307 That, to me, was the ultimate Rainbow song. I love that song. 862 01:01:03,873 --> 01:01:06,787 Come on the jukebox, I go, "I'm proud of that." 863 01:01:07,201 --> 01:01:09,187 'Cause it was exactly where I wanted to go. 864 01:01:09,313 --> 01:01:11,266 When we heard it, we knew we had something. 865 01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:15,398 There was just chills up and down our... We felt it. 866 01:01:15,456 --> 01:01:17,639 We said, "Man, this is deep, this is something." 867 01:01:35,585 --> 01:01:38,498 And the fact that I could kind of write something that was poppy 868 01:01:38,625 --> 01:01:40,545 was something new for me. 869 01:01:40,641 --> 01:01:41,929 And I liked that groove. 870 01:01:42,017 --> 01:01:45,989 I just don't want to play, crash, crash, crash for the sake of it. 871 01:01:46,080 --> 01:01:47,401 I've got to hear a melody. 872 01:01:47,521 --> 01:01:51,940 Melody was always at the bottom of, for me musically, where I was going. 873 01:02:09,536 --> 01:02:11,522 While Ritchie had been developing Rainbow, 874 01:02:11,616 --> 01:02:16,712 his Deep Purple fans still wanted to see the classic Mark ll line-up back together again. 875 01:02:18,176 --> 01:02:24,003 1983, I think, the management called me up and said, "Purple wants to re-form." 876 01:02:24,096 --> 01:02:25,831 I said, "Well, I have to think about it." 877 01:02:25,920 --> 01:02:29,826 Rainbow was just now taking off really big in America. 878 01:02:29,919 --> 01:02:33,706 And we were really getting somewhere, we were doing big shows. 879 01:02:33,824 --> 01:02:37,861 I don't know if I want... It's so easy to just go back to Purple, you know. 880 01:02:38,496 --> 01:02:40,395 I was like... 881 01:02:40,479 --> 01:02:42,181 And Gillan was really up for it. 882 01:02:42,303 --> 01:02:45,544 And I'm like, "Okay, let's try it." 883 01:02:46,272 --> 01:02:51,302 I put up no fuss, no fight, no nothing like that, so I really felt good about it. 884 01:02:51,392 --> 01:02:53,443 And also at that point in time, 885 01:02:53,535 --> 01:02:56,995 I had a solo album for Elektra Records, 886 01:02:57,055 --> 01:02:58,408 and things were going well for me. 887 01:02:58,495 --> 01:03:01,376 And Ritchie and I promised to get back together again anyway. 888 01:03:01,471 --> 01:03:05,225 So, I had no compunction about it. I felt good about it. 889 01:03:05,823 --> 01:03:07,907 Of course there was money entered into it. 890 01:03:07,999 --> 01:03:11,906 And the management is going, "It's worth X amount..." 891 01:03:12,000 --> 01:03:15,753 I'm like, "Might be an interesting idea. Okay, I'll try it.“" 892 01:03:16,639 --> 01:03:18,178 Cut a long story short. 893 01:03:18,783 --> 01:03:20,420 So we did it. 894 01:03:20,703 --> 01:03:24,063 You know, we had a good time, Perfect Strangers is a good record. 895 01:03:24,319 --> 01:03:25,825 And we all had a good time doing it. 896 01:03:26,335 --> 01:03:28,234 It was very comfortable being with them. 897 01:03:44,094 --> 01:03:46,888 Perfect Strangers was a brilliant comeback album by Purple. 898 01:03:46,974 --> 01:03:49,124 It was a phenomenal performance 899 01:03:49,215 --> 01:03:51,560 because it got Mark ll back together. 900 01:03:51,615 --> 01:03:53,350 They did it in the mid-80's fashion. 901 01:03:53,438 --> 01:03:54,726 They weren't living in the past. 902 01:03:54,814 --> 01:03:57,695 They weren't living in 1971, 72, 903 01:03:57,823 --> 01:04:01,216 they were actually being part of the modern hard rock world. 904 01:04:02,463 --> 01:04:05,376 I think the relationship at the time between Gillan and Blackmore, 905 01:04:05,470 --> 01:04:08,995 which is always pointed out as being the problem, was quite amicable. 906 01:04:09,855 --> 01:04:13,215 The amicable band toured in support of the album. 907 01:04:13,695 --> 01:04:14,655 They were trying to say 908 01:04:14,751 --> 01:04:16,650 that Bruce Springsteen was doing the biggest business. 909 01:04:16,734 --> 01:04:20,739 Biggest business was us and Grateful Dead, then Bruce Springsteen. 910 01:04:21,663 --> 01:04:24,903 I don't know what people see in Bruce Springsteen whatsoever. 911 01:04:25,022 --> 01:04:26,015 I have never got that. 912 01:04:26,879 --> 01:04:29,825 The ticket sales showed that the old magic was still there, 913 01:04:29,918 --> 01:04:32,198 but so were the old rivalries with Gillan. 914 01:04:32,350 --> 01:04:37,599 I put it down to he wanted to kind of maybe steer the band, 915 01:04:37,695 --> 01:04:39,233 and I was steering the band. 916 01:04:39,294 --> 01:04:41,924 So I think it was that more than anything. 917 01:04:42,078 --> 01:04:44,992 Of course it worked, I thought, Perfect Strangers worked. 918 01:04:45,054 --> 01:04:48,644 Everybody was on form, we played, it worked. 919 01:04:48,734 --> 01:04:50,917 But, we should have stopped right there. 920 01:04:51,518 --> 01:04:54,824 And then we did... House of Blue Light, to me, was disastrous. 921 01:05:20,158 --> 01:05:23,617 And the relationship with Ian was soon back in the disaster zone too. 922 01:05:24,254 --> 01:05:25,824 He had lost his voice completely. 923 01:05:25,917 --> 01:05:27,522 And we are going, "What are we gonna do?" 924 01:05:27,614 --> 01:05:31,520 I was always already disgusted with Ian, we weren't getting along. 925 01:05:31,613 --> 01:05:34,788 So to me, I was like, "We gotta get another singer." 926 01:05:34,878 --> 01:05:36,029 "I mean, this is just a joke." 927 01:05:37,054 --> 01:05:41,637 By 1987 Ritchie had played with scores of musicians and dozens of bands. 928 01:05:41,693 --> 01:05:45,054 A self-confessed wind-up merchant who thrived on conflict. 929 01:05:45,181 --> 01:05:48,040 The uneasy rider was about to meet his match. 930 01:05:48,093 --> 01:05:50,494 Appropriately enough, on the football field. 931 01:05:51,293 --> 01:05:54,337 I used to have my roadie call up radio stations too. 932 01:05:54,429 --> 01:05:58,336 Deep purple would like to do a game of soccer against you, 933 01:05:58,461 --> 01:06:00,513 if you feel like playing a charity. 934 01:06:00,573 --> 01:06:03,300 It's kind of my fairy tale Cinderella story 935 01:06:03,421 --> 01:06:07,077 because I was working for this radio station on Long Island. 936 01:06:07,133 --> 01:06:08,257 I was interning there. 937 01:06:08,349 --> 01:06:11,142 And apparently somebody from Deep Purple had called up. 938 01:06:11,773 --> 01:06:13,312 So the DJs came out and they played, 939 01:06:13,373 --> 01:06:15,588 and Purple showed up, it was Ritchie and Roger. 940 01:06:15,677 --> 01:06:18,241 He signed an autograph for me and he looked up at me and said, 941 01:06:18,333 --> 01:06:21,159 in that very classy English accent that I'm sure you are familiar with, 942 01:06:21,629 --> 01:06:24,194 "You are very beautiful girl." And I went, "That's nice." 943 01:06:24,253 --> 01:06:25,759 And that would have been my Ritchie Blackmore story 944 01:06:25,853 --> 01:06:27,075 that he said I was beautiful. 945 01:06:27,133 --> 01:06:28,704 And that was enough at that point. 946 01:06:28,797 --> 01:06:30,565 And I said, "Thank you", and I walked off the field. 947 01:06:30,653 --> 01:06:33,697 And he sent his roadies through the crowd to find out who I was 948 01:06:33,789 --> 01:06:35,688 and to ask me to meet him at a pub later. 949 01:06:36,029 --> 01:06:40,961 Candice Night was a musical New Yorker, who had been modelling from age 12. 950 01:06:41,053 --> 01:06:42,591 She had her own radio rock show, 951 01:06:42,652 --> 01:06:47,518 and had studied communications at New York Institute of Technology. 952 01:06:47,612 --> 01:06:51,617 And Ritchie had the most brilliant, proper 953 01:06:51,708 --> 01:06:54,567 upper-class English way of breaking the ice. 954 01:06:54,653 --> 01:06:57,479 - He was taking off his soccer cleats. - Oh, right. 955 01:06:57,533 --> 01:07:00,227 And his dirty, mud-filled, sweaty soccer socks 956 01:07:00,317 --> 01:07:03,459 and he balled one up and threw it right in my face. 957 01:07:04,956 --> 01:07:06,495 That's the way to get a girl. 958 01:07:06,589 --> 01:07:08,356 And I didn't worry about my nails after that any more 959 01:07:08,413 --> 01:07:10,148 'cause I thought this is ridiculous, and we just... 960 01:07:10,236 --> 01:07:11,774 After that, there was really nothing... 961 01:07:11,868 --> 01:07:13,919 That totally relaxed 962 01:07:14,013 --> 01:07:16,544 - the whole entire environment. - It was a magical smell. 963 01:07:17,116 --> 01:07:20,226 He said to me that when I walked into the room, 964 01:07:20,316 --> 01:07:22,433 meeting him at that pub that afternoon. 965 01:07:22,492 --> 01:07:27,238 He said, "I felt like, when you walked in that an old friend had walked into the room." 966 01:07:27,292 --> 01:07:28,711 "Like it felt like home." 967 01:07:28,796 --> 01:07:31,262 Ritchie now had an ally who put him at ease. 968 01:07:31,356 --> 01:07:35,840 Soon their shared interest in medieval life and music was to take centre stage. 969 01:07:35,932 --> 01:07:38,813 But first, a replacement had to be found for Gillan. 970 01:07:38,908 --> 01:07:42,465 Ritchie approached his Rainbow vocalist, Joe Lynn Turner. 971 01:07:42,620 --> 01:07:45,217 At first, Joe hesitated, I think. 972 01:07:45,308 --> 01:07:48,101 You know, Paice is going well and he was in Rainbow. 973 01:07:48,220 --> 01:07:50,140 So I was like, "Yeah, well..." 974 01:07:50,236 --> 01:07:51,557 Got any other ideas? 975 01:07:52,379 --> 01:07:55,620 And Jon's like, "Yeah, sounds great." 976 01:07:55,740 --> 01:07:57,955 So we tried him out, it worked, and then he was in. 977 01:07:58,651 --> 01:08:01,925 He started playing Hey Joe, I grabbed the mike, started singing it. 978 01:08:02,012 --> 01:08:04,412 Never even said, "Hello" to Jon or Ian at that point. 979 01:08:04,507 --> 01:08:06,591 Finished the song and then there were some handshakes. 980 01:08:06,652 --> 01:08:10,012 And Jon started to play this keyboard bit, 981 01:08:10,108 --> 01:08:12,989 which later became on the Purple album The Cut Runs Deep. 982 01:08:13,051 --> 01:08:15,551 And I started singing the exact lyric 983 01:08:15,612 --> 01:08:18,885 as Ritchie always called it, I had a magic bag of lyrics. 984 01:08:18,971 --> 01:08:22,561 And I would just pull out a lyric that suited this and sing a melody, 985 01:08:22,651 --> 01:08:26,492 and it was the exact lyric... There it was. There's the song. 986 01:08:26,587 --> 01:08:29,381 So Jon and Ian were convinced that I should be the guy. 987 01:08:50,107 --> 01:08:53,053 But it was to be Joe Lynn's only album with Deep Purple. 988 01:08:53,147 --> 01:08:55,101 He left the band in 1992. 989 01:08:55,771 --> 01:08:58,499 There was a lot of frustration going on, 990 01:08:58,619 --> 01:09:00,353 lot of unhappiness. 991 01:09:00,507 --> 01:09:05,439 The guys, I believe it was Ian and Jon, and I say this with all love and respect 992 01:09:05,531 --> 01:09:07,932 felt they needed Ian Gillan back in the band. 993 01:09:08,027 --> 01:09:12,097 And Ritchie was staunch about me staying in the band and there was a... 994 01:09:12,187 --> 01:09:17,861 And there just wasn't any way that I could deal with the emotions that were happening. 995 01:09:17,947 --> 01:09:22,017 So, I think I quit and got fired at the same time. 996 01:09:22,107 --> 01:09:23,940 Whatever, doesn't really matter. 997 01:09:24,027 --> 01:09:28,261 But, it was nerve-racking and just turmoil 998 01:09:28,347 --> 01:09:30,812 and very stressful. 999 01:09:31,899 --> 01:09:35,042 Meanwhile, Ritchie and Candice had moved in together. 1000 01:09:35,131 --> 01:09:37,630 - By '91 I had moved in with you. - Yeah. 1001 01:09:37,690 --> 01:09:40,353 She moved in but I didn't know who she was. 1002 01:09:41,178 --> 01:09:44,059 I just knew that there was a great female in the house. 1003 01:09:44,154 --> 01:09:45,060 I'm not gonna knock it. 1004 01:09:45,179 --> 01:09:47,394 - I don't know who she is. - I locked my door every night, I bolted it. 1005 01:09:47,450 --> 01:09:49,534 I was on tour as his girlfriend, yes. 1006 01:09:49,658 --> 01:09:52,353 But at our parties at the house... 1007 01:09:52,411 --> 01:09:55,870 When we have parties at our house, everybody has to contribute something, 1008 01:09:55,930 --> 01:09:58,462 so if Ritchie is going to bring out the acoustic guitar and play for people, 1009 01:09:58,554 --> 01:10:00,587 he wants everybody to give a little bit of themselves. 1010 01:10:00,634 --> 01:10:03,777 So he doesn't care if it's a speech about the Alamo, right? 1011 01:10:03,866 --> 01:10:08,100 Or tap dance or a song or something, anything. 1012 01:10:08,187 --> 01:10:12,737 So, when I was at the parties with Ritchie, 1013 01:10:12,826 --> 01:10:14,725 he and I would be doing songs together. 1014 01:10:14,810 --> 01:10:16,959 That's how he first got me singing with him. 1015 01:10:17,658 --> 01:10:20,539 The first song they wrote together was a wedding anniversary present 1016 01:10:20,634 --> 01:10:22,467 for Candice's parents. 1017 01:10:23,386 --> 01:10:27,292 This is something that Rainbow would never have done, 1018 01:10:27,418 --> 01:10:29,338 play a waltz. 1019 01:10:29,786 --> 01:10:31,226 A waltz, go. 1020 01:10:50,745 --> 01:10:51,705 Just follow me. 1021 01:10:51,770 --> 01:10:53,155 With what we didn't see... 1022 01:10:56,890 --> 01:10:58,592 That was very subtle. 1023 01:11:12,346 --> 01:11:14,178 - First song we wrote? - Be Mine Tonight. 1024 01:11:14,329 --> 01:11:16,031 That's what makes me laugh when people say, 1025 01:11:16,090 --> 01:11:17,989 "She must have made him do Renaissance music" 1026 01:11:18,073 --> 01:11:20,190 because you don't make him do anything. 1027 01:11:20,249 --> 01:11:22,595 You never make Ritchie Blackmore do anything. 1028 01:11:22,649 --> 01:11:27,614 Everything that he... His choice of direction is solely up to him, 1029 01:11:27,737 --> 01:11:30,978 and I feel like I'm really on a journey that he has led the way and taken... 1030 01:11:31,098 --> 01:11:33,924 He is the captain of this journey. 1031 01:11:34,009 --> 01:11:35,547 I'll be the co-captain, that's fine. 1032 01:11:36,537 --> 01:11:39,363 Ritchie would make one more album with Deep Purple. 1033 01:11:39,449 --> 01:11:40,737 With Joe Lynn Turner gone, 1034 01:11:40,825 --> 01:11:44,481 the band put down backing tracks and looked for a singer. 1035 01:11:44,569 --> 01:11:48,257 The band thinks that we should get Gillan back, and the record label, 1036 01:11:48,345 --> 01:11:52,862 they sent the tapes of Ian singing, like, three songs that we had done. 1037 01:11:52,953 --> 01:11:55,452 Three backing tracks he had put his voice over. 1038 01:11:55,608 --> 01:11:58,336 And I'm like... 1039 01:11:58,457 --> 01:12:01,054 "This is absolutely dreadful." 1040 01:12:01,145 --> 01:12:05,379 "This is rotten to the core, this is just rubbish." 1041 01:12:05,497 --> 01:12:07,134 That's how bad it was to me. 1042 01:12:07,225 --> 01:12:08,862 It was deadly. 1043 01:12:09,464 --> 01:12:14,876 And then he said, "How much would you take to work with that?" 1044 01:12:15,768 --> 01:12:18,169 I said, "Well, it really doesn't come into it." 1045 01:12:19,768 --> 01:12:21,820 The album was made with Gillan on vocals. 1046 01:12:21,913 --> 01:12:26,015 Then the record company wanted the band to go on tour to promote it. 1047 01:12:26,105 --> 01:12:28,898 It was also the 25th anniversary of Mark ll. 1048 01:12:29,016 --> 01:12:32,475 Ritchie demanded a vast fee thinking it would be refused, 1049 01:12:32,568 --> 01:12:34,587 but his strategy backfired. 1050 01:12:35,609 --> 01:12:40,257 I went, "You know what? I'll take X amount", which was over the top. 1051 01:12:40,825 --> 01:12:44,830 Just to get them off my back so I could look for another singer. 1052 01:12:44,888 --> 01:12:47,867 And they came back with BMG, 1053 01:12:47,928 --> 01:12:50,907 "Okay, they'll pay you that if you work with Gillan." 1054 01:12:50,968 --> 01:12:54,329 And I went, "Now I'm caught." 1055 01:13:19,127 --> 01:13:22,488 Of course I got halfway through the tour and I was like, "I can't take this any more." 1056 01:13:22,648 --> 01:13:28,573 I'm selling my soul here, this is awful. This is dreadful, certainly, you know. 1057 01:13:30,488 --> 01:13:35,234 Ian and I had a showdown with spaghetti, and it was in Cleveland. 1058 01:13:36,055 --> 01:13:39,416 Jim picked up my food from catering, 1059 01:13:39,543 --> 01:13:42,457 and Ian had gone, "Who is that for?" 1060 01:13:42,552 --> 01:13:44,189 And Jim goes, "It's Ritchie's food." 1061 01:13:44,247 --> 01:13:49,212 He says, "Let me add some ketchup to it." And, of course, he put ketchup all over it. 1062 01:13:49,303 --> 01:13:53,919 And I went up to him and I said, "Did you do this to my food?" 1063 01:13:54,007 --> 01:13:56,320 And he went, "Yeah." 1064 01:13:56,408 --> 01:13:58,786 And with that, I saw Jon Lord go... 1065 01:14:00,215 --> 01:14:04,732 And they all parted, it was like a high noon, you know. 1066 01:14:04,823 --> 01:14:06,591 I went, "Really?" 1067 01:14:07,895 --> 01:14:10,110 And then I got it and went, right in his face. 1068 01:14:13,847 --> 01:14:15,352 Well, battle rages on, 1069 01:14:15,447 --> 01:14:17,466 this was the first time we played in Czechoslovakia, 1070 01:14:17,527 --> 01:14:21,466 and he asked me to sing the... 1071 01:14:21,527 --> 01:14:24,800 Just like a vocal part just... Like background... 1072 01:14:24,887 --> 01:14:27,833 Candice was singing off stage and out of sight, 1073 01:14:27,927 --> 01:14:30,459 which confused some local reviewers. 1074 01:14:30,775 --> 01:14:34,102 There was a Czechoslovakian paper who had written the review and said that, 1075 01:14:34,167 --> 01:14:38,815 "Jon Lord must have sampled a female vocal into his keyboards" 1076 01:14:38,903 --> 01:14:41,631 "because they could clearly hear some girl singing." 1077 01:14:49,591 --> 01:14:54,905 I knew if I went to the manager and I said, "I want to leave Bruce Payne management." 1078 01:14:55,351 --> 01:14:58,810 That would go no further and I'd be back at square one. 1079 01:14:58,903 --> 01:15:03,103 So I thought, "I'm gonna have to write a letter to the band to explain how I feel", 1080 01:15:03,191 --> 01:15:04,696 "and I've got to leave," 1081 01:15:04,790 --> 01:15:06,973 "and I'll not be going to Japan with them." 1082 01:15:22,422 --> 01:15:25,979 Ritchie played his last concert with Deep Purple in Helsinki 1083 01:15:26,070 --> 01:15:28,569 on 17th November, 1993. 1084 01:15:30,806 --> 01:15:33,850 So we went back to the hotel, 1085 01:15:33,942 --> 01:15:36,637 and we proceeded to say goodbyes. 1086 01:15:36,726 --> 01:15:39,607 I think I said goodbye to Ian Paice, that was it. 1087 01:15:39,702 --> 01:15:41,535 Everybody else just ran away. 1088 01:15:42,006 --> 01:15:45,334 Paice came up to me and said, "Make some good decisions" 1089 01:15:45,430 --> 01:15:48,409 - and left, and Candice was with me. - That's right. 1090 01:15:48,502 --> 01:15:50,815 And I think Jon was too embarrassed to say anything. 1091 01:15:50,934 --> 01:15:52,430 - Jon went right up to his room. - Yeah. 1092 01:15:54,870 --> 01:15:56,256 It was such a relief. 1093 01:15:57,974 --> 01:16:01,531 Ritchie reformed Rainbow, now with Dougie White on vocals 1094 01:16:01,654 --> 01:16:04,960 and made one final album with them too, Stranger in Us All. 1095 01:16:21,333 --> 01:16:24,247 I think Rainbow probably gave him a little bit more freedom in that regard, 1096 01:16:24,342 --> 01:16:28,412 and then the album I did certainly did give him more freedom. 1097 01:16:28,853 --> 01:16:31,068 This freedom also enabled Ritchie and Candice 1098 01:16:31,125 --> 01:16:33,111 to develop their writing partnership, 1099 01:16:33,205 --> 01:16:36,827 and the album included one of the first songs they wrote together, Ariel. 1100 01:16:54,645 --> 01:16:58,104 The Blackmore side thing kind of happened when we were doing the last Rainbow record. 1101 01:16:58,613 --> 01:17:01,835 We would kind of get together as a son of a jam night thing at the end of the evening 1102 01:17:01,909 --> 01:17:04,670 when we were recording at Long View Farm in Massachusetts. 1103 01:17:04,725 --> 01:17:08,566 And we would just kind of sit around the fire and they were just gonna jam, 1104 01:17:08,693 --> 01:17:12,828 and they would do stuff, Renaissance stuff like Greensleeves, that sort of thing. 1105 01:17:13,141 --> 01:17:14,941 When I was 10, 1106 01:17:15,028 --> 01:17:19,295 there was this kid singing Greensleeves, and I was really taken by that mode. 1107 01:17:22,325 --> 01:17:26,263 Just, it was very reminiscent of another time, 1108 01:17:26,325 --> 01:17:27,765 almost spiritual, I thought. 1109 01:17:41,845 --> 01:17:46,297 And it just seemed to go straight to my soul. 1110 01:17:46,389 --> 01:17:47,415 And I have always been that way. 1111 01:17:47,509 --> 01:17:50,138 If I hear medieval music, I'll immediately come alive. 1112 01:17:53,428 --> 01:17:55,774 Ritchie and Candice formed Blackmore's Night 1113 01:17:55,860 --> 01:17:59,581 and made their first album Shadow of the Moon in 1997. 1114 01:18:00,628 --> 01:18:05,790 His escape from the stress and pressures of that rock and roll world 1115 01:18:05,844 --> 01:18:09,205 wound up being just to sit and just open up on acoustic. 1116 01:18:09,332 --> 01:18:12,726 And just really look into the fire place and just go someplace else. 1117 01:18:12,852 --> 01:18:16,638 And that's where I think the beginning of our project happened, really. 1118 01:18:32,980 --> 01:18:35,926 He often says that if you listen to Smoke on the Water, 1119 01:18:36,020 --> 01:18:39,709 you'll hear medieval fourths and fifths, the modal scales of that era. 1120 01:18:39,763 --> 01:18:42,622 So that was going back to 1971, so that was in him there as well, 1121 01:18:42,708 --> 01:18:45,654 and then of course, fast-forward to Rainbow and you've got 1122 01:18:45,748 --> 01:18:48,574 everything from Temple of The King, 16th Century Greensleeves. 1123 01:18:48,692 --> 01:18:52,052 So it's a lot of medieval flare in a lot of those songs. 1124 01:19:12,723 --> 01:19:16,510 And we are still scratching the surface, it's like, 1125 01:19:16,563 --> 01:19:19,739 I still feel there's so far to go with it. 1126 01:19:19,827 --> 01:19:22,871 Whereas with the others I felt we were at the end. 1127 01:19:23,187 --> 01:19:25,304 One of the best compliments I had was, 1128 01:19:25,363 --> 01:19:29,269 "I hate medieval and Renaissance music, but I love your music." 1129 01:19:29,587 --> 01:19:34,781 And I went, "That's a big compliment, much more than you think." 1130 01:19:49,971 --> 01:19:55,547 With our show, it's more the audience is part of us, we are there to entertain them. 1131 01:19:55,602 --> 01:19:58,330 We are not there to show off and wiggle our hips. 1132 01:19:59,123 --> 01:20:01,655 Since that first album in 1997, 1133 01:20:01,747 --> 01:20:04,409 Ritchie and Candice have made another nine together. 1134 01:20:13,203 --> 01:20:15,221 When Ritchie plunged into medieval music, 1135 01:20:15,283 --> 01:20:19,549 it wasn't so much as a surprise as a natural course of events. 1136 01:20:39,443 --> 01:20:43,513 I also feel that urge because somehow when you've done all the big heavy stuff, 1137 01:20:43,602 --> 01:20:46,232 it's always attractive but you want to explore the other side. 1138 01:20:46,610 --> 01:20:52,318 The minstrels, the peasant, kind of walking from town to town, 1139 01:20:52,402 --> 01:20:56,472 just telling the news from the last town, bit of gossip, 1140 01:20:56,562 --> 01:20:59,127 plays a few tunes, that's what I relate to. 1141 01:20:59,890 --> 01:21:04,025 That doesn't mean that some of the songs don't still include modern rock influences. 1142 01:21:18,865 --> 01:21:20,633 It's like me, I love what I do. 1143 01:21:20,722 --> 01:21:23,995 I truly love what I do, and I can hear that Ritchie loves what he does, 1144 01:21:24,082 --> 01:21:25,336 and I salute him for it. 1145 01:21:40,690 --> 01:21:46,331 True musicians, people who don't have a choice, you know, 1146 01:21:46,417 --> 01:21:49,527 they just love music and that's the path they follow. 1147 01:21:50,065 --> 01:21:53,525 If he wants to switch into something else, 1148 01:21:53,649 --> 01:21:56,955 that's because his inner musical inspiration pulls him there, 1149 01:21:57,041 --> 01:22:01,276 and true musicians are almost slaves to that. 1150 01:22:01,969 --> 01:22:04,020 The music may be historically inspired, 1151 01:22:04,082 --> 01:22:09,112 but Ritchie's electric guitar virtuosity is still very much a part of their medieval journey. 1152 01:22:29,361 --> 01:22:32,634 He sees himself, I think, as the quiet musketeer. 1153 01:22:32,721 --> 01:22:35,929 His rather romantic sort of heroic dashing figure. 1154 01:22:36,017 --> 01:22:37,971 I never feel like we are done, we're just like... 1155 01:22:38,065 --> 01:22:39,254 We are still learning so much about 1156 01:22:39,345 --> 01:22:41,494 the instruments and the songs and ourselves, really' 1157 01:22:57,489 --> 01:22:59,289 It takes me back to another life. 1158 01:22:59,409 --> 01:23:03,828 It might be a past life, reincarnation. 1159 01:23:03,920 --> 01:23:07,859 I just love to be in the 1500's, without getting the plague, 1160 01:23:07,920 --> 01:23:10,964 and having central heating and a satellite dish. 1161 01:23:11,056 --> 01:23:15,224 Whereas if I hear rock and roll, I've heard it all before, Christ. 1162 01:23:15,280 --> 01:23:19,448 It all ended about 30 years ago, everybody now is so generic. 1163 01:23:20,496 --> 01:23:23,824 How long can you keep flogging something? 1164 01:23:24,688 --> 01:23:27,831 It's nearly 50 years since the young school boy from Heston 1165 01:23:27,920 --> 01:23:30,386 decided to show his teachers they were wrong about him, 1166 01:23:30,481 --> 01:23:32,630 by achieving true excellence on the guitar. 1167 01:23:32,720 --> 01:23:35,066 And to make good on the faith his parents had shown in him 1168 01:23:35,120 --> 01:23:37,750 by putting the music first. 1169 01:23:37,840 --> 01:23:39,281 Of all the great guitar players, 1170 01:23:39,408 --> 01:23:41,973 he was the one that people knew least about, I think, 1171 01:23:42,064 --> 01:23:43,417 and that was partly his own doing. 1172 01:23:43,504 --> 01:23:47,258 His confidence was overwhelming. 1173 01:23:47,344 --> 01:23:48,697 It was frightening. 1174 01:23:48,784 --> 01:23:50,289 Inspiring and frightening. 1175 01:23:50,608 --> 01:23:55,922 I think Ritchie will be remembered as somebody wild and untamed 1176 01:23:56,016 --> 01:23:57,042 to the end of his days. 1177 01:23:57,168 --> 01:23:59,568 And I think that's a magnificent thing to be. 1178 01:23:59,696 --> 01:24:02,320 I can buy a Strat, you can buy a Strat, right? 1179 01:24:02,345 --> 01:24:04,914 We can get a Marshall, he can get a Marshall. 1180 01:24:04,976 --> 01:24:07,703 But, none of us ever wind up sounding like Ritchie. 1181 01:24:08,048 --> 01:24:12,664 A high degree of being completely in the moment, impulsive, 1182 01:24:12,720 --> 01:24:16,409 and just being kind of true to himself 1183 01:24:16,527 --> 01:24:20,947 and true to what his perception of that moment was in a live situation. 1184 01:24:21,040 --> 01:24:23,440 He is not an extrovert, he is very much an introvert. 1185 01:24:23,568 --> 01:24:26,873 And when you have somebody like that, they create brilliantly, 1186 01:24:26,960 --> 01:24:31,030 but there is also a lot of depth that they are always constantly dealing with. 1187 01:24:31,216 --> 01:24:35,450 There is nothing better than just sitting with the guitar and emoting. 1188 01:24:35,567 --> 01:24:37,302 I can be in Hawaii, 1189 01:24:37,359 --> 01:24:40,371 and everybody is on water skis and things. 1190 01:24:40,463 --> 01:24:43,190 I'm watching the dolphins, but I'm in my room just looking out, 1191 01:24:43,280 --> 01:24:46,553 looking at the horizons, gotta be playing. 1192 01:24:46,639 --> 01:24:50,447 And that's my friend that I'm kind of emoting with. 1193 01:24:50,959 --> 01:24:54,287 My gut feeling is that Ritchie is probably at his best when he 1194 01:24:54,383 --> 01:25:00,243 tends to actually live out the rather quiet, 1195 01:25:00,335 --> 01:25:06,063 withdrawn, artistic and thoughtful person that I think really 1196 01:25:06,159 --> 01:25:07,927 is what he is ultimately about. 1197 01:25:08,015 --> 01:25:09,968 When people get things all in perspective, 1198 01:25:10,063 --> 01:25:14,744 Ritchie will be right there as one of the cornerstones of what rock and roll is today. 1199 01:25:14,799 --> 01:25:17,680 There's a long list of rock guitar players 1200 01:25:17,775 --> 01:25:19,924 that wouldn't exist without Ritchie Blackmore. 1201 01:25:20,335 --> 01:25:25,135 There are people who enter this band thing for lots of different reasons, 1202 01:25:25,199 --> 01:25:28,309 for money, for fame and for the chicks. 1203 01:25:28,399 --> 01:25:32,633 It seems to me Ritchie Blackmore entered into this for the music. 1204 01:25:33,455 --> 01:25:38,223 And for the two people who encouraged him to take guitar lessons in the first place, 1205 01:25:38,318 --> 01:25:41,297 his mother and especially his father. 1206 01:25:41,902 --> 01:25:45,427 He came to the Albert Hall when we did the orchestra thing, 1207 01:25:45,519 --> 01:25:48,824 Deep Purple and the orchestra, he loved that. 1208 01:25:48,878 --> 01:25:53,363 I think then he suddenly realised, "I think my son's doing something, yeah." 1209 01:25:53,455 --> 01:25:56,815 5,000 people and there's an orchestra. 1210 01:25:58,319 --> 01:26:01,014 If that childhood photograph was taken today, 1211 01:26:01,102 --> 01:26:03,285 they'd probably all be smiling.