“There's one little lick which annoyed me for a long, long time”: Deep Purple’s Simon McBride on the Ritchie Blackmore lick he found most difficult to learn

Left-Simon McBride of the English rock band Deep Purple performs in concert during Alma Festival on June 13, 2024 in Madrid, Spain; Right-Ritchie Blackmore of the British band Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow performs live on stage during a concert at the Velodrom on April 18, 2018 in Berlin, Germany.

When Simon McBride joined Deep Purple in 2022, he was tasked with learning all the band's repertoire, including founding Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore's guitar work. McBride has now revealed which Ritchie Blackmore guitar lick he finds most challenging to play.

“Most of it is actually not too bad. There's one little lick which annoyed me for a long, long time, it's in Lazy,” he says in a new interview with Ultimate Guitar. I don't play the same solo he plays in Lazy, but Lazy is one of those songs where I feel I can just improvise a bit more and just have a bit more fun with it.