Ritchie Blackmore was born on April 14, 1945,

in Weston-super-Mare, England. When he was

11 years old he asked his father for a guitar, and

was given the instrument on with one condition;

in his words: “He said if I was going to play this

thing, he was either going to have someone

teach it to me properly, or he was going to

smash me across the head with it. So I actually

took the lessons for a year – classical lessons –

and it got me on to the right footing, using all the

fingers and the right strokes of the plectrum and

the nonsense that goes with it.”

By the early 60s, Blackmore was playing as a

session guitarist for Joe Meek’s Music Productions. While there he recorded with Heinz, playing guitar on his hit song “Just Like Eddie” and met Derek Lawrence, who would become the producer for Deep Purple. In 1968 Ritchie and organist Jon Lord formed a hard rock group called Roundabout. The band later changed their name to Deep Purple after Ritchie’s grandmother’s favorite song. They had a hit single in the US when they recorded a remake of the song “Hush” by Joe South.

Inspired by the Detroit sound, Deep Purple decided to go in a harder direction for their fourth album and replaced their bass player and vocalist. Blackmore’s heavy riffs played a prominent role in the new direction the band was taking, establishing him as one of the pioneers of early heavy guitar. The band’s most popular song from this era, and Blackmore’s most popular rock riff came about when the band was set to record their album “Machine Head” at a Montreux casino. The night before they were to begin recording a fan at a Frank Zappa concert fired a flare gun and burned the casino down. Members of Deep Purple were in attendance and documented the events in the rock staple “Smoke on the Water”.

In 1974, Deep Purple was scheduled to play a televised festival called “California Jam”; they were to go on at sundown. One of the other bands scheduled to perform at the festival finished their set early, and when the staff told Deep Purple it was their turn to go on Blackmore refused. He reasoned that going on before the sun was down would ruin the elaborate light show that the band had planned. He only agreed to go on when ABC, who was broadcasting the event, brought in a Sheriff to arrest him. In true rock star fashion however, Blackmore destroyed his guitar and threw several amplifiers off of the stage. During the outburst, he also hit a cameraman with a guitar and had a stage hand blow up an amplifier with pyrotechnics, causing a large fireball. The band avoided the authorities by making a quick exit from the venue in a helicopter.

When Deep Purple released its next album, “Stormbringer”, Blackmore publicly expressed his dislike for the funk and soul elements that the band had used on the record and left Deep Purple. After his departure, Ritchie formed a new band with Ronnie James Dio called Rainbow. Dio’s singing style and lyrical tastes allowed Blackmore to explore the classical music training that his father made him take when he was first starting out. The band recorded several albums between 1975 and 1984, but underwent many lineup changes, with Dio and Blackmore remaining the only constants.

In 1984, Deep Purple reunited and recorded two studio albums and one live album before Ian Gillian was fired in 1989 for tensions between he and Blackmore. His replacement was Joe Lynn Turner, who had sang for Rainbow. With Turner on vocals, the band recorded one album, “Slaves and Masters”. The album was a favorite of Blackmore’s, but a critical and commercial flop. The other band members agreed that Ian Gillian was important to the band’s sound. Eventually Blackmore relented and agreed to let Gillian come back for the next album, “The Battle Rages On”. The group wouldn’t even make it through the album’s support tour that year before Gillian and Blackmore’s relationship reached it’s boiling point and Blackmore walked away from Deep Purple for good. Joe Satriani came in as an emergency replacement.

Once again, Blackmore formed Rainbow, this time with an all new lineup and no Dio. The band released a few albums, but the only consistent member was Blackmore himself. The latest incarnation of Rainbow failed to regain commercial success and in 1997 Blackmore went in a totally different direction, forming Blackmore’s Night. The new band, featuring Ritchie’s future wife, Candice Night, is a folk rock group with Renaissance themes. The band’s debut album, “Shadow of the Moon”, went gold in Japan.