Quotes By Ritchie Blackmore

When something is not good, it's bad. Period.

Pete Townshend used to crash chords and let the guitar feed back. He's overrated.

If you can play well in the studio, you can play well on stage.

I like leaping around on stage as long as it's done with class. None of this jumping up in the air and doing the splits.

Johnny Winter is one of the best blues players in the world. He's very underrated.

I can do the old hand vibrato just fine, but I like attacking the strings.

I have never met one person who likes Grand Funk.

I found the blues too limiting, and classical was too disciplined.

I'm not into that Keith Richard trip of having all those guitars in different tunings. I never liked the Rolling Stones much anyway.

I'm not good enough, technically, to be a classic musician. I lack discipline.

I don't put myself on Jeff Beck's level, but I can relate to him when he says he'd rather be working on his car collection than playing the guitar.

Session work makes you more strict. You can't hit notes all over the place. You've got to make each one really count.

Simplicity is the key.

I was impressed by Hendrix. His attitude was brilliant. Even the way he walked was amazing.

Everything I do is usually totally spontaneous.

The cello is such a melancholy instrument, such an isolated, miserable instrument.

When you're around someone good, your own standards are raised.

I can turn on some jazz guitarist, and he won't do a thing for me, if he's not playing electrically. But Jeff Beck's great to listen to.

When I was 20, I didn't give a damn about song construction. I just wanted to make as much noise and play as fast and as loud as possible.

I was impressed by Hendrix. Not so much by his playing, as his attitude - he wasn't a great player, but everything else about him was brilliant.

Combing my hair doesn't make me a better musician.

The only way you can get good, unless you're a genius, is to copy. That's the best thing. Just steal.

I'm very moved by Renaissance music, but I still love to play hard rock - though only if it's sophisticated and has some thought behind it.

What's the point of re-releasing an album? The original sounded good, why change something about it?

I was always stuck in a musical no man's land.

When you're recording, if you're not really clean in your playing, it sounds like a mess.

But you have to give your whole life to a cello. When I realized that, I went back to the guitar and just turned the volume up a bit louder.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was very intense. Maybe that's what caught everybody's attention. As a player, he didn't do anything amazing.

I don't see myself as such an important guitarist.

I can imagine that Rod Stewart likes giving autographs because he's pure showbusiness.