RITCHIE BLACKMORE: 'The Crap That They're Playing On The Radio Today Is Bloody Awful'

Ritchie Blackmore's official YouTube channel has shared a new video in which the legendary DEEP PURPLE and RAINBOW guitarist discusses his passion for music and what excites him musically.

Ritchie says (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): " I retain my passion for music by listening to old music from the 15[00s] and 1400s, listening to a few bands that I've become friends with in Germany, Czech, Finland and Sweden. They're still playing the music that really excites me. I'm obsessed with that stuff. It was so organic. That music just grabs me. I obviously don't listen to the radio in America where they're playing the latest, whatever it is.

"I suppose as we progress and change generations, I cannot relate to what they would play on the radio," he continues. "And I don't listen to rock and roll so much anymore. I listen to the old rock from the '50s, when it was fresh — Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore playing James Burton with Ricky Nelson, THE EVERLY BROTHERS; [I] love all that stuff. Buddy Holly being my favorite at the time.

"I feel like an old granddad complaining about the music they're playing on the radio at the moment. I feel that back in the '70s, when Eric Clapton was playing CREAM and that stuff, it was thoughtful music. You would listen to 'White Room' or something, you didn't need that [chest-thumping drum beat]. You didn't have to hear that [same beat]. You could actually go, "Wow, that's a great song, 'White Room'. Fantastic.' We love CREAM. Eric, of course, great. He started the whole thing.

"There are so many types of music that I like, but very rarely do I hear it on the radio," Ritchie adds. "I'd rather hear talk radio about who's the latest president and stuff like that, that bores people to death.

"I don't hear good music — from my point of view. It might be good music, but it's not something I wanna hear. When the family all get into the truck and we go on a bit of a holiday, which probably is like 20 miles down the road, because I don't like to travel, all I hear is maybe Taylor Swift or something. I find it hard to relate to that. But it's not wrong. It's the new generation wanting to hear that. That's probably as great to them as THE BEATLES and CREAM was and Jimi Hendrix was to me. So I can't really complain, but I do like to complain, and I will complain. And I think the crap that they're playing on the radio today is bloody awful."

Blackmore is a co-founder of DEEP PURPLE and wrote many of their most memorable riffs, including "Smoke On The Water", but he has not played with the group since his 1993 departure.

During his time away from PURPLE, Blackmore established the neo-classical band called RAINBOW, which fused baroque music influences elements with hard rock before gradually progressing to catchy pop-style hard rock.

Three years ago, DEEP PURPLE drummer Ian Paice told Darren Paltrowitz, host of the "Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz", that "the only time" he and his bandmates "got concerned" about the group's future "was towards the end of Ritchie's tenure with the band, as he was losing interest and the performances from the band were not great because you need everybody helping each other out; you can't be a passenger. And we just saw the audiences getting smaller and less impressed, and that was worrying," he admitted. "And when Ritchie decided to leave, that was pretty traumatic, because [we didn't] know what to do then. And had we not been contracted to have to go to Japan, it might all have fallen to bits then. But we had to go to Japan, with the wonderful Joe Satriani [filling in], and it proved that there is life after even somebody as great as Ritchie is. He didn't wanna be there, but it was just as much our band as it was his. And we were still having fun. We started to have fun again when Joe turned up and just became a fifth member of the band, pulling his weight. So that was the light at the end of the tunnel."

Paice's comments echo those made by DEEP PURPLE bassist Roger Glover, who told U.K.'s Planet Rock in a September 2020 interview that it was a "turbulent time" for him and his bandmates when Blackmore left the group for the final time in November 1993 after a concert in Finland. "It was surprise to me when Ritchie handed in his notice and said he didn't wanna play any more gigs after Helsinki," he said. "And we were on tour at the time. It was so difficult to take in. Somehow we were determined to carry on, if he was gonna do that. Joe Satriani was a temporary replacement, which did show us the way that we could exist without Ritchie. But I felt very strongly that you can't replace Ritchie. He is who he is, and there's no way you can replace him."

He continued: "If you get someone to play like him or similar or something like that, it would have been a horrible comparison. We needed something different. And to me, the character of PURPLE always was Ritchie and Jon [Lord, late PURPLE keyboardist] as instrumentalists, and they're both virtuosos. So you've gotta have a virtuoso. There's thousands of guitarists who can play, but there's very few who stand out as being very individual and different to everyone else. And I felt Steve [Morse, longtime PURPLE guitarist] presented that. He asked me when we first met, he said, 'What do you want from me?' I said, 'I want you to be yourself. You can't be in the band unless you're yourself, a hundred percent.' And he said, 'So I can play anything?' I said, 'Yeah. Anything will do. We'll let you know if we want it or not.'"

According to Glover, the lineup change had an immediate effect on the band morale.

"'Purpendicular' was one of the happiest albums I've ever made, because suddenly we found ourselves writing songs we could never have written before," Roger said, referring to DEEP PURPLE's first LP with Morse.

Blackmore, 79, quit rock and roll in 1997 to form BLACKMORE'S NIGHT with then-girlfriend Night. Since then, BLACKMORE'S NIGHT has released 11 studio albums.

Blackmore stepped away from his Renaissance-inspired brand of music with BLACKMORE'S NIGHT in 2016 to perform a handful of shows with a brand-new lineup of RAINBOW.

In addition to Blackmore and Night (backing vocals),the most recent incarnation of RAINBOW included singer Ronnie Romero, STRATOVARIUS keyboardist Jens Johansson, BLACKMORE'S NIGHT drummer David Keith, bassist Bob Nouveau (a.k.a. Robert "Bob" Curiano, ex-BLACKMORE'S NIGHT),and backing singer Lady Lynn.

The two shows RAINBOW played in Germany in June 2016 were caught on camera to produce "Memories In Rock - Live In Germany", which was released in November 2016 via Eagle Rock Entertainment on DVD+2CD, Blu-ray+2CD, and digital formats.

After Ritchie left DEEP PURPLE for the final time in 1993, he reformed RAINBOW for one album (1995's "Stranger In Us All") and one tour, ending things in Denmark in 1997.