{"id":349538,"date":"2026-01-03T07:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T07:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/349538\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T07:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T07:23:09","slug":"the-musician-ritchie-blackmore-was-best-of-friends-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/349538\/","title":{"rendered":"The musician Ritchie Blackmore was “best of friends” with"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ritchie<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Fri 2 January 2026 21:00, UK <\/p>\n

Most musicians who form a close working relationship usually establish common ground or mutual respect from the get-go. Ritchie Blackmore<\/a>, on the other hand, once thought that his future best friend was one bad move away from punching him square in the face.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t all that surprising when you consider Blackmore\u2019s background and the type of environment he built his name in. After all, we\u2019ve all heard the tales of woe that sprung from the scenes of high-energy rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, and often, Blackmore had front-row seats to whatever raucous event would be going down on any given day. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s also always been naturally one of the more outspoken players in the field, never shying away from revealing his honest feelings towards something or someone whenever presented with the question. And while Blackmore\u2019s disdain stretches to some of the more esteemed groups in the business, from The Rolling Stones to Cream, one of the more telling remarks came when he started opening his mouth about the one scene people regard as the most authentic: punk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe editor of Melody Maker, the big paper in England, was saying how wonderful the music was,\u201d Blackmore said in The Ritchie Blackmore Story. \u201cIan [Anderson] was stunned, like, \u2018Are you joking? This is awful. Dreadful stuff.\u2019 And, of course, I tended to agree.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blackmore wasn\u2019t always so cut and dry with his thoughts. He\u2019s always had a little more confidence than many of his peers, but early on, before his stint in Deep Purple, he was a little more conscious of his place, especially when he was around other, more established legends. Back in the 1960s, Jerry Lee Lewis hired the Outlaws for gigs, and while Blackmore had enough talent to be a worthy choice, he was far less established than many of the other guitarists in the room. <\/p>\n

Naturally, therefore, he felt anxious about whether he\u2019d be able to please \u2018The Killer<\/a>\u2018 himself, which was made worse by the fact that, at the time, Lewis\u2019 reputation wasn\u2019t exactly one of someone who had the most patience or treated his collaborators well. In fact, word on the street was that, if you made a mistake, you\u2019d be met with a fist to the face. Of course, Blackmore wanted to avoid that outcome at all costs.<\/p>\n

As he recalled to Guitar Player, \u201cThe first time I played with him I\u2019d just turned 18, and we were supposed to have a week\u2019s rehearsal,\u201d Blackmore explained. \u201cThe week before the tour, he hadn\u2019t turned up. Two days before the tour, still nothing. We were going to open in Birmingham, and he turned up the afternoon of the gig. I was shitting myself because I\u2019d heard from all these bands that if you played a wrong note, Jerry would beat the shit out of you \u2013 he\u2019d punch you in the face. I was a big fan, but I was very frightened of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also recalled a moment in rehearsal when Lewis approached Blackmore, who was playing his guitar, and praised him with a simple, \u201cGood boy\u201d, and he held his hand out, which Blackmore reached out to for a handshake, and the fact that Blackmore could do that while continuing to play his guitar impressed Lewis, who uttered another murmur of praise before turning away, no doubt to find someone else to focus his displeasure on. <\/p>\n

According to Blackmore, everything was alright after that: \u201cWe were best friends after that, and he always called me Johnny Cash, because when I was 18, I looked a bit like [him].\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Fri 2 January 2026 21:00, UK Most musicians who form a close…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,80065,37001,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-349538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-jerry-lee-lewis","11":"tag-ritchie-blackmore","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}