Ritchie Blackmore
April 14, 1945 — Weston-super-Mare, England
Richard Hugh Blackmore is an English rock guitarist and songwriter who co-founded Deep Purple in 1968 and later formed Rainbow, creating two of the most important groups in the history of hard rock — and developing a distinctive guitar style that merged classical structure, blues technique, and thunderous rock power in a way that profoundly shaped the sound of heavy metal.
The Man in Black
Born on April 14, 1945 in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, Blackmore was drawn to both classical music and early rock and roll as a child. He moved to London as a teenager and worked as a session guitarist through the early 1960s before joining the Outlaws as a backing guitarist. By 1968 he was ready to form his own band, co-founding Deep Purple with keyboardist Jon Lord and others. From the start, the interplay between Blackmore's guitar and Lord's Hammond organ gave the band a classical-rock fusion sound that was new and hard to categorize.
Deep Purple and Smoke on the Water
Deep Purple's "Machine Head" (1972) — recorded at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland after a fire (the fire that inspired "Smoke on the Water") drove them out of their intended studio — became one of the best-selling rock albums of all time. The opening riff of "Smoke on the Water" is one of the most immediately recognizable guitar phrases in popular music, the first thing millions of beginning guitarists learn to play. Blackmore left Deep Purple in 1975 to form Rainbow, a band that pursued a more blues-influenced, symphonic direction and produced classic albums including Rising (1976).
Did You Know?
Blackmore is known for incorporating classical modal scales and Baroque phrasing into rock guitar solos at a time when few rock guitarists thought in those terms. His use of the Dorian and Phrygian modes and his study of composers like Bach and Beethoven gave his playing a harmonic sophistication that helped create the foundation of neoclassical metal — a genre later developed explicitly by guitarists like Yngwie Malmsteen, who cites Blackmore as his primary influence.
Renaissance and Legacy
In the 1990s, Blackmore formed Blackmore's Night with vocalist Candice Night — a Renaissance folk rock project that represented a completely different side of his musical personality, featuring acoustic instruments, medieval melodies, and largely original compositions. He rejoined Deep Purple briefly in the mid-2000s before departing again. He was voted the 16th-greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone magazine and remains one of the most technically influential figures in the history of rock guitar — his fingerprints audible in the playing of a generation of metal guitarists who grew up on Deep Purple and Rainbow albums.