“This Shouldn’t Be Allowed”: Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore’s Favorite Guitarist

Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore was an integral part of the 1960s rock scene, creating some of the most iconic riffs of all time (i.e., “Smoke On The Water”) and keeping his finger on the pulse of the scene and its members—except for one notable player who slipped under Blackmore’s radar and later became the musician’s favorite guitar player.

Blackmore has never been one to mince his words about his fellow rock and rollers of that era, and that includes his complimentary opinions, too (even if his favorite guitar player in question refuses to accept the praise).

Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore’s Favorite Guitar Player

Although some discrepancies in dates make it difficult to ascertain when, exactly, Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore first met the man who would become his favorite guitarist, we know it was somewhere in the early 1960s. According to Blackmore in a later interview, he was first taken aback by Jeff Beck’s playing on the Yardbirds’ 1966 track “Shapes of Things.”

“I thought, ‘My God, who the hell is this?’” Blackmore said. “This shouldn’t be allowed. It’s too good. I’ve been a fan of theirs ever since. [The Yardbirds] were way ahead of all the other bands. They were fantastic.”

“He knows how to ring a note,” the Deep Purple guitarist continued. “His soul comes through his tone as well as his notes. Every time I tell him that, he’ll say, ‘Oh, Blackmore, come on. Stop bulls****ing.’ I go, ‘Jeff, you can never take a compliment. He’s kind of an introverted guy. He loves his cars. But what a natural, fantastic player.”

The Two Musicians Riffed Off One Another

Jeff Beck might have felt too awkward to take a compliment from Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore, but he certainly wasn’t averse to razzing him a bit. According to that same interview with Blackmore, the musicians met at a studio session where Jimmy Page worked as the producer. Blackmore recalled introducing himself to Beck before saying, “I’ve never heard of you. I should have heard of you because you’re so good.”

“About three years later, I saw him somewhere else, and he was a very big name at that point,” Blackmore said. “He came up to me and said, ‘What was your name?’ I said, ‘Well, Ritchie.’ He said, ‘No, I’ve never heard of you.’ So, he paid me back. But I didn’t mean it as an insult. For someone to be that good, for me not to have heard of them on the circuit in ‘63, ‘64, was unusual.”

In a 1975 interview with International Musician and Recording World, Blackmore said, “Whenever I watch Beck, I think, ‘How the hell is he doing that?’ Echoes suddenly come from nowhere. He can play a very quiet passage with no sustain, and in the next second suddenly race up the fingerboard with all the sustain coming out.”

“After you’ve been playing a certain amount of time, it’s nice to be able to think about the guitar,” he continued. “I know he does by the choice of notes he plays. Some guitarists only play what the hands want to play. They don’t play what the head wants to play. Your head should tell your hands where to go” (via Classic Rock).