Ritchie Blackmore

Placidcasual79 · April 2016

I've just watched The Ritchie Blackmore Story on Sky Arts 1. Jesus what a c*nt.

Headphones · April 2016

I suspect that's an analysis he might feel proud of.

Not seen it myself yet, tomorrow's fun.

viz · April 2016

Why, what did he do?

richardhomer · April 2016

viz;1039381" said:
Why, what did he do?

Have a nice Strat that he'd use for a whole gig - and then played a crap one for the encore and smash it up.

Bastard.....

EricTheWeary · April 2016

I've watched about half of it so far. Misses out a lot of the bad stuff about firing people. Might just be the edit but there's not a lot of evidence of remorse for the various amounts of messing people around hitting the odd one as well. David Coverdale usually strikes me as a c**t as well as there's a bit of him in the documentary which doesn't contradict that.

Placidcasual79 · April 2016

He just comes across as having a totally disproportionate sense of self importance - takes himself entirely too seriously and walks round dressed in medieval clobber (I should say I am all for artistic expression but he wears random bits of sacks tied round the bottom of his legs - get down to JD sports son!).

He seemed cold, arrogant and out of touch, totally without humour.....

All this combined = c*ntdom.

Neil · April 2016

Not seen the show so will look out for it.

I've heard he was a bit "difficult" but what cannot be argued with is his place in British rock history all the way from The Outlaws working for Joe Meek to his guitar God status in Deep Purple.

mart · April 2016

richardhomer said:

viz;1039381" said:
Why, what did he do?
Have a nice Strat that he'd use for a whole gig - and then played a crap one for the encore and smash it up.

Bastard.....

Ahh, is that why the crap ones have "Encore" written on them - so he wouldn't get confused?

Paul_C · April 2016

scrumhalf · April 2016

He is clearly a member of the pantheon of great musicians whose musical skills have led them to come up short on general life skills.

He's very single-minded and won't do stuff he doesn't want to do. Fair play to him, he's been involved in some of the best rock music of all time and was part of a band (Mark 2 Purple) that were amazingly musical.

I would rather the programme spent a bit more time on his pre-Purple days and summed up the last few years briefly along the lines of "he now wears sacking and a magnificent syrup whilst poncing about with a very attractive blonde playing very old music".

EricTheWeary · April 2016

It's made by his own production company ( although not sponsored by Grecian 2000 as might have been expected...) and still makes him look a bit of a cock, although perhaps that explains why it shows almost nothing of the early interesting stuff and quite a lot of the recent hey diddle diddle stuff . Or fails to ask the question: so, at 18 years of age Candice when you were an unpaid intern at a radio station what first attracted you to to the middle aged , balding, tempremental millionaire Ritchie Blackmore?

Fretwired · April 2016

EricTheWeary said:

It's made by his own production company ( although not sponsored by Grecian 2000 as might have been expected...) and still makes him look a bit of a cock, although perhaps that explains why it shows almost nothing of the early interesting stuff and quite a lot of the recent hey diddle diddle stuff . Or fails to ask the question: so, at 18 years of age Candice when you were an unpaid intern at a radio station what first attracted you to to the middle aged , balding, tempremental millionaire Ritchie Blackmore?

"So Candice, what attracted you to Richie's millions in the bank" ....

He's a great guitarist and Purple and Rainbow were two great bands ...

Placidcasual79 · April 2016

In fairness I have to say I don't know Deep Purples music and am generally not a fan of that type of early 70's heavy rock. But those first Deep Purple mark II albums sounded good - great rhythm section. I'll skip anything that came after that.

Philly_Q · April 2016

I've been a Blackmore fan since I was 14 or 15 and, somehow, I manage to turn a blind eye to his faults - the obnoxiousness, the big-headedness, the sub-par live performances, the silly clothes, the Irish jig, the thirteen-year-old-Asian-boy moustache, etc etc. I still love the guy.

Completly the opposite with Coverdale, I can't stand the sight of him now. Although I that case I was starting to get inklings of his knobbishness even as I eagerly collected the first few Whitesnake albums in the early '80s.

I'd like to see this documentary, I hope it ends up on BBC4 sometime.

EricTheWeary · April 2016

Philly_Q said:

I've been a Blackmore fan since I was 14 or 15 and, somehow, I manage to turn a blind eye to his faults - the obnoxiousness, the big-headedness, the sub-par live performances, the silly clothes, the Irish jig, the thirteen-year-old-Asian-boy moustache, etc etc. I still love the guy.

Completly the opposite with Coverdale, I can't stand the sight of him now. Although I that case I was starting to get inklings of his knobbishness even as I eagerly collected the first few Whitesnake albums in the early '80s.

I'd like to see this documentary, I hope it ends up on BBC4 sometime.

There's quite a lot of short clips on YouTube if you don't mind watching in 90 second chunks.

Philly_Q · April 2016

EricTheWeary said:

Philly_Q said:

I've been a Blackmore fan since I was 14 or 15 and, somehow, I manage to turn a blind eye to his faults - the obnoxiousness, the big-headedness, the sub-par live performances, the silly clothes, the Irish jig, the thirteen-year-old-Asian-boy moustache, etc etc. I still love the guy.

Completly the opposite with Coverdale, I can't stand the sight of him now. Although I that case I was starting to get inklings of his knobbishness even as I eagerly collected the first few Whitesnake albums in the early '80s.

I'd like to see this documentary, I hope it ends up on BBC4 sometime.

There's quite a lot of short clips on YouTube if you don't mind watching in 90 second chunks.

I've just seen it's available on Blu-ray (assuming it's the same film). I've added to my Lovefilm rental list.

Phil_aka_Pip · April 2016

I'm not defending bad behaviour here, but Ritchie has always come across as single-minded and determined to get whatever he's looking for. I suspect that he may not have known exactly what he was looking for, but that possibly he'd recognise it when he saw/heard it.

Reading between the lines, one suspects his time working for Joe Meek was not exactly a happy one, which may explain why he's not talked about it much.

Anyone criticising him for scoring Candice Knight is probably just jealous. He's laughing all the way to the bedroom.

mudslide73 · April 2016

I watched it - he's a moody bugger but what a fantastic guitarist. As I mentioned yesterday in the psa thread I've had a Ritchie listening phase this past few weeks. His technique and musicality at the time must have been mind blowing.

Fwiw Neil Young, Dylan and even Robert Plant have fired/left more people than Ritchie and we celebrate that as a good thing.

John_P · April 2016

Just watched it and really enjoyed it, I thought he came across a lot better than I expected. He seemed quite open about his faults and there were some funny anecdotes.

ICBM · April 2016

mudslide73 said:
Fwiw Neil Young, Dylan and even Robert Plant have fired/left more people than Ritchie and we celebrate that as a good thing.

Do we? I read the 'Shakey' biography of Neil Young and was left with the impression that he's a monumental dick. He just thinks he can do whatever he likes because he's Neil Young.

He also happens to be one of my favourite musicians.

So it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Blackmore is similar - the most creative people quite often turn out to be "difficult" personalities, to put it politely. I'm sure there are exceptions too.

earwighoney · April 2016

Doesn't Richie Blackmore now dress like a medieval wizard now and play the lute and sing songs about the plague or something?

That's why kids should keep away from drugs.

@ICBM I've never understood why fans of musicians have to stick up for their heroes being dicks. Someone can be a dick and also be a great musician. It's probably down to being an Ike Turner fan, little chance I could ever stick up for his persona... I'm a big Neil Young fan as well. I know little of his personality but he seems to have done something positive with Farm Aid.

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