Ritchie Blackmore Caricature

Ritchie Blackmore Caricature, illustrated here in Los Angeles, in June of 1974, age 29 with his legendary 1968 Fender Stratocaster (given to him by Eric Clapton).

Richard Hugh Blackmore is an English guitarist and songwriter. He was one of the founding members of Deep Purple in 1968, playing jam-style hard rock music which mixed guitar riffs and organ sounds. Blackmore is prolific in creating guitar riffs and is often noted for his classically influenced solos.

During his solo career, Blackmore established the heavy metal band Rainbow in 1975, which fused baroque music influences and elements of hard rock.

In early December 1971, Deep Purple traveled to Switzerland to record the album “Machine Head”. It was due to be recorded at the Montreux Casino using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, but a fire during a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention concert, caused by a man firing a flare gun into the ceiling, burned down the Casino. This incident famously inspired the song “Smoke on the Water” as smoke poured over Lake Geneva.
The album was later recorded in a corridor at the nearby empty Grand Hotel, with the exception of the music track to “Smoke on the Water”. That was recorded at a local theatre called The Pavilion, before the band was asked to leave.

On recording “Smoke on the Water”, Blackmore stated to BBC Radio 2: “We did the whole thing in about four takes because we had to. The police were banging on the door. We knew it was the police, but we had such a good sound in this hall. We were waking up all the neighbors for about five miles in Montreux, because it was echoing through the mountains.
I was just getting the last part of the riff down, we’d just finished it, when the police burst in and said ‘you’ve got to stop’. We had the track down.”

Continuing from where both previous albums left off, “Machine Head” was released in late March 1972 and became one of the band’s most famous releases. It was the band’s second No. 1 album in the UK while re-establishing them in North America, hitting No. 7 in the US and No. 1 in Canada.
It included tracks that became live classics, such as “Highway Star”, “Space Truckin'”, “Lazy” and “Smoke On The Water”, for which Deep Purple are most famous.

A Japan tour in August of 1972 led to a double-vinyl live release, “Made in Japan”. Originally intended as a Japan-only record, its worldwide release saw the double LP become an instant hit. It remains one of rock music’s most popular and highest selling live-concert recording.

The classic Deep Purple Mark II line-up continued to work, and released the album Who Do We Think We Are in 1973. Spawning the hit single “Woman from Tokyo”.

As a member of Deep Purple, Blackmore was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2016.