One of the biggest guitar heroes of his generation, Ritchie Blackmore made his name in Rock and Roll history with amazing guitar riffs and solos that influenced countless generations of musicians. It’s really difficult to choose which are the best guitar solos of his career, but he once revealed which two are among his favorites, and both were from albums he made with his own band, Rainbow.
2 of his guitar solos Ritchie Blackmore said are among his favorites
“Gates of Babylon”
The first one mentioned by Ritchie Blackmore, in an interview with Hit Parader in 1985, is “Gates of Babylon,” from Rainbow’s third studio album, “Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll” (1978). Although he loves both the song and its guitar solo, the band performed it live only once because he couldn’t remember how to play it after the album was recorded.
“(We didn’t play) because I couldn’t remember how to play the damn thing. I wrote it, and when we recorded it, we inverted the riff a few times to make it even more complicated. So, when it came to rehearsals, we rehearsed it a few times, and I couldn’t (remember). Cozy (Powell), would tell me, ‘You’re playing it wrong!’ And I go, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘No, it’s not the way you’ve played it.'”
Ritchie Blackmore continued:
“So, in the end, I said, ‘Look, Cozy, I can’t even play this tune anymore. The riff changes so much.’ So, instead of trying to learn it properly, I just thought, ‘I can’t play this. Let’s forget this.’ I wrote it on the cello, the riff. But if you listen, the riff changes every time it’s played. And I couldn’t remember which way the riff was supposed to be played. So, in the end, I thought it was better to leave it alone than try and play it. I still love it as one of my favorite tunes,” Ritchie Blackmore said during a livestream in 2026.
Rainbow also never performed the song during its reunion shows from 2015 to 2019, but many other artists have covered it live over the decades. Ronnie James Dio, who sang on the original recording, performed the song 86 times with his own band during his 2004 and 2005 tours. Guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen also featured the track in his live shows, performing it 78 times, the most recent one in 2015. He had previously recorded the song for his 1996 covers album “Inspiration”.
The supernatural experiences Rainbow had recording “Gates of Babylon”
Besides struggling to perform the song live, Rainbow also had to battle what Ronnie James Dio described as a spirit or demon while recording it. “Well we had some séances because we had some problems in the studio. We were in France in a studio called Chateau. We would go into the studio and the tape machine would be running and no-one would be there. So we had one song – ‘Gates of Babylon’. We couldn’t finish; we just couldn’t finish it no matter how we tried.”
“The tape would break, the machine would stop, we’d get close to it but just couldn’t finish it. One day we had a séance in the studio and contacted the spirit who said he was Baal. His opening line was always, “I am Baal, I create chaos. You will never leave here.”That was what he always said. So after a while you got kind of, “Oh Baal again. Hey Baal, how you doing mate? We weren’t afraid of him anymore until he started doing things like taking glasses and sending them all the way through the table. Then making it come under the table all by itself and coming back up to the top, or flowing down the end of the table and smashing against the wall. Or a piano playing when there was no one there playing it.”
He continued:
“We eventually went to the local priest there and told him we wanted to have an exorcism. He threw us out! He said, ‘I won’t go to that place. That place is horrible.’ We said, ‘We know!’ He wouldn’t come. We found a big cross, we had a cross made and we put it up in the studio. The next time we had a séance Baal said, “I am Baal, I create chaos. You will never leave here. What’s that stupid thing doing on the wall? We said, ‘Do you believe in Christ?'”
“He said, ‘Ha, Christ, he was only a man. I’m not afraid of anything.’ So we knew we had some troubles here. We finally were able to finish the song and as we were leaving, we were going down this winding stone stairway leading from the sleeping areas down to the cars to leave the Chateau. My wife was in front of me and we had just bought some antique china. Luckily she had the box in her hand.”
“I was perhaps five feet away from her. She was five feet in front of me. Cozy Powell was behind me. Suddenly she pitched right off the stairs and fell to the bottom of the stairs. (She) fell on the china- luckily because it broke her fall. She turned to me and said, ‘YOU BASTARD (shouts)! Why did you push me?’ ‘Cozy, did I push her?’ He said, ‘You weren’t even close to her.’ Guess who did that one! So that was Baal’s final parting thrust for us. So yeah, that’s a strange thing that happened there. Since that time, only once have I been talked into doing that again in a haunted castle. (It was) just outside of Newcastle.”
Dio continued:
“Do you know the one I mean? Whatever it’s called. (Most probably Lumley Castle, one of Ritchie’s favourites. Ed) Ask Willy because he usually knows these things but didn’t this time. The guys in the band who knew about the Baal thing said, ‘Will you please do a séance?’. I said, ‘No, I don’t want to do this anymore. Because once you invite them in, they don’t ever go away.’ They said, ‘Ah no, it’ll be okay.’ I said, ‘I’m telling ya. I don’t want to do this.'”
“So they talked me into it and I said, ‘Okay I’ll do it for you.’ So we set up the séance and got on the glass. The first thing it said was, ‘I am Baal, I create chaos. You will never leave here.’ I went, ‘Bye guys, I told you I don’t want to have anything to do with this anymore.’ So that’s the last time I took part in it,” Dio said in an interview with Michael Eriksson in 2001.
“Weiss Heim”
The second solo mentioned by the guitarist is in “Weiss Ham”, which was originally released as the b-side of “All Night Long”, track part of the 1979 album “Down to Earth”, the first one without Dio and the only with Graham Bonnet on vocals. Curiously, the title of the song is also the name Ritchie Blackmore gave to his home on Long Island, New York, where he has lived for the past few decades. Translated from German, it means “White House”.
Down to Earth, on which the track was included as a bonus track on later reissues, was recorded at Château Pelly de Cornfeld in France and Kingdom Sound Studios on Long Island, New York. However, “Weiss Heim” was recorded at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Interestingly, the song includes a nod to Johann Sebastian Bach’s First Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 846). That highlights the profound influence that classical music has had on Ritchie Blackmore’s playing. During his time with Deep Purple, there was not much room for instrumental tracks after 1970, but after forming Rainbow, he had the opportunity to record several, including “Weiss Heim”, “I’m Still Sad” (a cover of The Yardbirds), “Vielleicht Das Nächste Zeit (sic) (Maybe Next Time)”, “Difficult to Cure (Beethoven’s Ninth)”, “Anybody There” and “Snowman”.
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