(Credits: Gladstone~dewiki)
Wed 25 March 2026 15:00, UK
It’s always fascinating to consider the different ways artists measure the greatness of another band.
Although the infamously unconventional founding guitarist of Deep Purple was one to say it how it is, it’s curious to imagine what would have convinced Ritchie Blackmore to find the semi-divine Rolling Stones to be “idiots”, or, in this case, how he found a band to be the best, based on their onstage leaps.
While speaking to Martin Webb in the early 1970s about his distaste for yet another of his peers, Blackmore expressed why he doesn’t particularly seek to bound about while performing onstage. “I like leaping around on stage as long as it’s done with class. Like Free. They’re the best band in England,” he said with his customary frankness.
Blackmore then moved on to comparing Free’s frontman with Pete Townshend, guitarist and de facto leader of The Who, for their leaping around: “Paul Rodgers is a good singer and a brilliant mover,” he commented. “None of this jumping up in the air and doing the splits and all that. He just moves with the music. Not like Pete Townshend, who’s gotten to the point that he waits until the photographers are well-aimed before he leaps. He’s not very spontaneous.”
Free’s big hit was ‘I’m a Mover’, a track that does indeed lend itself to testifying this truth, although Townshend didn’t have to be dragged through the mud as evidence. Its suave and seductive guitar alongside Andrew Fraser’s smooth, eclectic bass make for a song that’s easy to bop to, much like most of Free’s music. Any live performance with the band has a strutting Paul Rodgers that undulates along with his singing, in a way that feels unrehearsed, human, and, as Blackmore pointed out, not at all forced.
His spontaneity is contagious, and the whole band moves as an ensemble on stage, easily inviting their audience along. Free’s music is easy to move to, but the band’s assured movements made it natural to join them in dance, making their concerts a unique spectacle of a two-sided performance.
In an interview with Steve Rosen, Blackmore went so far as to give Free credit for one of Deep Purple’s songs, saying that ‘Mistreated’ from Purple’s 1974 album Burn, “Was influenced by ‘Heartbreaker’ by Free. I get inspired by other people’s songs and write something vaguely similar”.
Blackmore’s less orthodox ways called for unhinged commentary as much as they did candid declarations of admiration. During the same conversation, he explained that Rodgers would have almost been strutting to the strumming of his guitar as a possible singer of Deep Purple: “That’s right, he was for about a week. I think somebody was going to chop his legs off if he did leave [Free], so he didn’t”.
The experiment quickly concluded with an amicable parting, also thanks to stark differences in style, as Blackmore explained, “I think he was into a different type of singing. He didn’t want to follow Ian Gillan and all that screaming. Rodgers wasn’t into that, he was more into blues”, and his smooth talking moves are the proof.
