Ritchie Blackmore has claimed that “most guitarists aren’t nice people”, while naming just one player who bucks the trend.
The former Deep Purple guitarist, who was forced to cut short his tour last year with Blackmore’s Night due to a health scare, is currently recovering at home. Recently, his wife and bandmate Candice Night instigated a surprise Instagram livestream, during which the electric guitar hero fielded questions from his fans.
Blackmore touched on various aspects of his career during the Q&A, and paid particular praise to Tommy Bolin – one of his Deep Purple successors.
“He was such a nice guy that I couldn't believe he was a guitar player, because most guitar players aren't nice people,” Blackmore says.
“I would go around his house, and we'd often have fun just talking to each other. There was never ever any envy, no competition whatsoever.”
Now, Blackmore is well-known for his no-nonsense, matter-of-fact British sense of humor, so we imagine Bolin isn't really the only “nice” guitar player he's come across during his career.
Yet, despite his praise for Bolin, Blackmore did mention one other thing...
“I said to Tommy once, ‘When did you last change your strings?’ ‘cause they were so caked in dirt and grit,” he remembers. “And he looked at me, like, ‘I should change them?’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ And he said, ‘Well, probably about five years ago.’
“He was a brilliant player, a great player, but he never changed his guitar strings!”
In related news, Blackmore once revealed that he very nearly formed a supergroup with Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott, and recently recalled Jeff Beck's imposter syndrome in a revealing interview.
