A biography for Ritchie Blackmorehasn’t been written yet.
“I feel like I own the stage.”
“Johnny Winter is one of the best blues players in the world. He's very underrated.”
“Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and I wanted to be a hard rock band - we wanted to play rock and roll only.”
“But you have to give your whole life to a cello. When I realized that, I went back to the guitar and just turned the volume up a bit louder.”
“Playing a Fender is an art itself. They're always going out of tune.”
“Stevie Ray Vaughan was very intense. Maybe that's what caught everybody's attention. As a player, he didn't do anything amazing.”
“I think a lot about death more than life, because we're going towards death.”
“If you can play well in the studio, you can play well on stage.”
“Everything I do is usually totally spontaneous.”
“I can do the old hand vibrato just fine, but I like attacking the strings.”
“What's the point of re-releasing an album? The original sounded good, why change something about it?”
“I found the blues too limiting, and classical was too disciplined.”
“I was impressed by Hendrix. His attitude was brilliant. Even the way he walked was amazing.”
“I was always stuck in a musical no man's land.”
“I can never remember what I do even in the studio.”
“When you're recording, if you're not really clean in your playing, it sounds like a mess.”
“Pete Townshend used to crash chords and let the guitar feed back. He's overrated.”
“Learning to play with a big amplifier is like trying to control an elephant.”
“I can imagine that Rod Stewart likes giving autographs because he's pure showbusiness.”
“I can turn on some jazz guitarist, and he won't do a thing for me, if he's not playing electrically. But Jeff Beck's great to listen to.”