Ritchie Blackmore Story 2015

Mark Laurie

Jan 28, 2016

Ritchie Blackmore is without a doubt one of the greatest guitar players of all time. Starting with his roots in pop music with The Outlaws and many studio recordings in the sixties via the thrilling hard rock of Deep Purple and Rainbow in the seventies and eighties to the medieval rock with Blackmore's Night, Blackmore has shown that he is a guitar master of all classes. For the first time, "The Richie Blackmore Story" tells us the whole story of his remarkable career, including videos from "Smoke On The Water", "Highway Star”, "Since You've Been Gone”, "Wring That Neck”, "Space Truckin'”, "All Night Long”, "Long Live Rock‘n'Roll”, "Hush”, "Black Night”, "Child In Time”, "Mistreated”, "Burn” etc.. In addition, there are extensive, current interviews with Blackmore and many of his colleagues and admirers, such as Brian May, Glenn Hughes, Lars Ulrich, Steve Lukather, Joe Satriani, the deceased Jon Lord, David Coverdale, Gene Simmons, Joe Lynn Turner, Steve Vai, Graham Bonnet and Ian Anderson. This is the ultimate story of a real guitar hero. The bonus material contains more than 40 minutes of additional interviews with Richie Blackmore and his companions.

Quite a long but entertaining story about my main guitar 'hero' from my youth.

But he wasn't my first guitar 'hero' because that was George Kooymans when I heard him play in 'She Flies On Strange Wings'.
But soon after that I discovered Ritchie Blackmore and the way he played on 'Speed King' and the other songs on 'Deep Purple in Rock' impressed me so much that I wanted to be a guitarist too, and like him I was a high school drop out because I couldn't wrap my head around what those folks were actually trying to teach me, and even though I'm almost 15 years younger than Ritchie, I also didn't have an amplifier at all when I had a cheap electric guitar, and I didn't even have any idea how to play that thing because I had never started on an acoustic guitar, but immediately started with an electric guitar, and I also plugged that thing into a transistor radio because I didn't have a real amplifier, which I only bought later.

I also discovered that I could get a distortion effect by playing the guitar through the radio and through the amplifier, because I didn't know anything about effect pedals yet.

Yes, I also quickly discovered Jimi Hendrix and many other good rock guitarists at that time. 

Why did I make this topic?

Because I want Ritchie (and his wife and children) to be saved!

My 'problem' was that I also wanted to sing like Ian Gillan, and I could do that, and just as loud and high.
But in the band Deep Purple, Blackmore and Gillan were each other's opposites and those two sides were also represented in me, and that is why none of my musical ambitions came to fruition, because you can only excel in one thing!

And besides, I'm way 'too' analytical to be an artist.

In retrospect, it makes sense that I ended up with the greatest artist of all time: God, aka JESUS Christ! 

JESUS Christ really puts everyone in the shade, because He created EVERYTHING and therefore also music!

But I didn't want anything to do with JESUS first because I was an atheist!

So I was 'Runnin' with the Devil'.

This had all kinds of causes, but that is not the point now, because that is in the past.
Eddie van Halen (Dutch by birth) was also someone who was very influenced by Ritchie Blackmore.

Ritchie didn't like Punk...well I did, but I did like the more intelligent forms of that genre, like the Stranglers.

They turned out to be influenced by 'the Doors'.

I also loved the guitarist of 'Alice Cooper' (Glen Buxton) and Andy Scott of 'The Sweet'.
And of course Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath and Rory Gallagher, Pete Townsend of the WHO and Jimi Page of Led Zeppelin, Jan Akkerman and Johan Slager of KAYAK, David Gilmore of Pink Floyd... too many to mention, but I always ended up with Ritchie Blackmore.

No, in 'my time' there were no female guitar heroes'...but during my military service, mainly in Germany, I was very impressed by the female band Wicked Lady.

I also started to appreciate classical music thanks to Deep Purple and Jon Lord and also through Keith Emerson and the Dutch band Ekseption.

I could make this personal story long now, but I won't because it always comes down to wanting to encourage people to make the greatest discovery of their lives and that is by getting to know OUR CREATOR, God-the Lord JESUS Christ.

You can be saved by Him right now (from something VERY terrible!) by simply believing the following:

We all need to be saved from having to spend our eternity in God's lake of fire, because that's a fate we ALL deserve.
So be SAVED and believe that God LOVES us so MUCH that He manifested Himself on earth as the Lord JESUS Christ who shed His sinless blood for the forgiveness of our sins, who was buried and rose from the dead, three days later, 1 Corinthians 15:1-4.
If you believe this you're not only saved but sealed with the Holy Spirit and rapture-ready.
Read your Bible every day and talk to our creator about everything and make Him your best Friend and share this GOOD NEWS = GOSPEL with others.