RITCHIE BLACKMORE: Why I Decided To Abandon Hard Rock

November 19, 2002

Former DEEP PURPLE/RAINBOW guitarist Ritchie Blackmore recently spoke with ClassicRockRevisited.com about his decision to leave behind the hard rock sound of his previous groups and move into a Renaissance direction with his current project BLACKMORE'S NIGHT (which also features Blackmore's longtime companion, Candice Night).

"In 1995, when I reformed RAINBOW and recorded 'Stranger In Us All' — Candice and I had been together since 1989 and I knew that she could sing," Blackmore said. "When we were in the studio with RAINBOW, she helped out a lot by coming up with lyrics for songs and singing background vocals. But even while we were recording 'Stranger In Us All', we were writing songs for our own pleasure. We never thought that we would record them — but they were later the songs that we put on 'Shadow of The Moon'. Actually, 'Ariel' from 'Stranger In Us All' was a song that Candice and I had originally written together as a ballad. We may even re-record that the original way it was written at some point. When we started playing the songs we wrote together at one of our parties for our friends and a neighbor came up to me and said, 'I don't know much about the music that you recorded with DEEP PURPLE or RAINBOW, but if you two recorded this I would buy it.' That's when I started seriously thinking about recording the songs."

To read the entire interview, click here.

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