Ritchie Blackmore Delivers Verdict On Deep Purple Successor Steve Morse
The rock giant talks about his fellow guitar figureheads.
Ritchie Blackmore has posted a new, short interview on his YouTube channel in which he reveals his opinions about Steve Morse, his successor in Deep Purple, and Joe Satriani, who worked with Purple briefly in the 1990s.
“Joe Satriani is a brilliant player, but I never see him really searching for notes,” says Blackmore in the clip, which you can hear in full below. “I never hear him playing a wrong note. Jimi Hendrix used to play lots of wrong notes because he was searching all the time… ‘Where the hell is that correct note?!’ And when he did find that right note, wow, that was incredible.
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“But if you’re always playing the correct notes, there’s something wrong, you’re not searching, you’re not reaching for anything. But that’s not to say that he isn’t a very brilliant player. Same thing with Steve Morse, fantastic player.
“I’m just glad they [Purple] found a guitar player to carry on because I thought I was going to be shackled to this band for the rest of my life. It was like a ball-and-chain thing, and luckily they said, ‘Well, we found someone.’ ‘Thank God I can get out!’ I haven’t listened much, I just know that Joe Satriani and Steve Morse are brilliant players. I remember Steve Morse with the Dixie Dregs, they’re fantastic.
“Certain people play from the heart and other people play from the head. I prefer a ‘heart’ player, I prefer…Jeff Healy, I think, is tremendous. If I hear someone really technical running up and down the fingerboard, I can hear that for a couple of minutes, then I start to get bored and I’m thinking of other things, like playing football. But I do like to hear someone reaching for something.”
He goes on to talk about technique, his fondness for distinctly non-rock instruments such as the lute and the crumhorm and his admiration for the classical guitarist John Williams.
Blackmore and his band Rainbow recently released the new live album Memories In Rock II, led off by the lead single ‘Waiting For A Sign.’
Explore our Rainbow Artist Page.
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