How Ritchie Blackmore rates Jimmy Page as a guitarist

One of the most important British guitarists of all time, Ritchie Blackmore entered Rock history as a member of Deep Purple and Rainbow, becoming an influence on countless musicians worldwide.

He was part of an extraordinary generation of guitar players who gained prominence in the late 60s and early 70s, contributing to the evolution of Hard Rock music. Throughout his career, he commented on and rated many of his peers, including Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page.

How Ritchie Blackmore rates Jimmy Page as a guitarist

Ritchie Blackmore respects Jimmy Page as a guitarist but also criticized him a few times. “I’ve said it before. (Page he’s a strange guitar player. He’s not the type of guy you can say is brilliant! No musical theory, but he has a way of writing good riffs, things like ‘Kashmir’ and some of the other Zeppelin stuff, his riffs were great! He’s not a player I would attack. He puts down a very coloured construction to a song, he’s a very colourful player of the guitar. It’s pleasing to hear because I don’t feel I have to be on my toes all the time and fence with somebody. He’s not the fastest gunslinger in town, you know?

You can get so fast that it gets silly, but Jimmy’s not like that. There are a lot of guys doing that now, though, going berserk on the fretboard and I feel like telling them to settle down, say something, what is all this? It’s like quoting Shakespeare at 100 miles per hour. It’s like having sex for five minutes listening to some of these guys,” Ritchie Blackmore told Kerrang magazine in 1985 after being asked to rate Page’s playing. He was never really a big fan of Led Zeppelin, although he was a good friend of their late drummer John Bonham.

Ritchie said he knew Page would be a star from the moment he saw him play

Curiously, Page and Blackmore were born in the same village, and Clapton was not very far from them either. But Blackmore would only have the chance to meet the future Zeppelin guitarist in 1962 and later take part in a few studio sessions with him, when they were both still session guitarists. “I knew that he was going to be somebody then. Not only he was a good guitar player, he had that star quality there. There was something about him, he was very poised and confident. He was confident but not arrogant. So I thought ‘he’s gonna go somewhere’ that guy, you know. He knows what he is doing.”

“He was way ahead most guitar players, he was really good, he knew he was good too. (Also), he wasn’t arrogant but he was very comfortable within himself. Then 64 or 65, I met up with him, we did a couple of sessions actually with him,” Ritchie Blackmore said in an interview for his documentary “Ritchie Blackmore Story” (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Blackmore thinks Jimmy Page is a great writer and producer

The musician had already said in the 70s that he was not too “struck on Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton.” However, in an interview with Guitar Player, when asked if it bothered him that he was not always placed in the same category as Page, Beck and Clapton, he said that he does not like to promote himself, and that this was one of the reasons why. But he also said that they were all good people and that Page was a great writer and producer.

“No (doesn’t bother me). I’m an introvert, as my father would say. I tend to be very withdrawn, I don’t sell myself. I don’t think Jeff Beck does either, I think Jimmy Page does and Eric does. They tend to push themselves out there a bit more, although they’re all great people. A lot more falls on Eric because he can sing well, and Pagey is such a great writer and producer. Jeff is probably one of my favorite players.”

He continued:

“This man just hits notes and you think, How come that note’s not on my guitar? And he gets this incredible sustain for no reason. He’s so fresh, so un-show business. That’s what I love about Jeff,” Blackmore said. Then he agreed with the interviewer that Zeppelin was not a strong band when playing live because “they didn’t swing”, with Blackmore crediting that to John Bonham’s drum playing.

Talking about how he was one of the first rock guitarists to play “very long lines”, Blackmore recalled a question Jimmy Page asked him. “That’s an interesting point. Pagey once asked me, “Where do you get all those runs from?” I developed it from Les Paul, Jimmy Bryant, Chet Atkins and Wes Montgomery. I wasn’t listening to rock when I started out. The Beatles were around, but no one took that seriously — except for billions of record buyers! They’re still a great band, but you couldn’t learn anything instrumentally from them. Pretty little tunes, though,” he said in 1996.

Blackmore already praised a few Led Zeppelin songs and was influenced by them

Although he already said he was not a big fan of Led Zeppelin, Blackmore admitted he was influenced by what they did and it was the main inspiration for Deep Purple to become heavier. The result was their groundbreaking album “Deep Purple in Rock” (1970), which was the start of their most successful phase. “Zeppelin, I liked their hard approach when they came out and did ‘Whole Lotta Love’. I immediately tuned in with that type of style because before when we were fiddling around with orchestras, I thought: something’s wrong. “I’m not giving all that I can. Thanks to them for the inspiration. They got it from Jeff Beck, who got it from the Small Faces,” Ritchie Blackmore told Trouser Press.

The Deep Purple and Rainbow guitarist also liked “Kashmir”, from their 1975 album “Physical Graffiti”, saying it was incredible and it helped to sophisticate Rock. “I think Van Halen are interesting. I don’t particularly like them as a band. But there is a lot of movement, a lot of colour to the material they produce. Led Zeppelin too, now they probably defined the term ‘sophisticated rock’. Things like ‘Kashmir’, the certain, the certain scales they would hit… that was incredible,” Ritchie Blackmore told Kerrang! in 1984.

Jimmy Page was the reason why Blackmore didn’t play a Les Paul

Curiously, Jimmy Page was the reason why Blackmore didn’t end up playing the Les Paul guitar model. According to him, he always wanted to have a Black Les Paul, just like one he saw the British guitarist Albert Lee playing in the 60s. However, after Led Zeppelin achieved fame, suddenly everyone was buying that model and as he said answering fans’ questions in 1996, he never liked to do what everyone was doing.

“I always wanted a black Les Paul and nobody I knew had one, (they were) very expensive guitars. So I went to London, I was playing with a band called The Savages at the time. I saw this guitarist, he was playing a black Les Paul. He was a brilliant guitar player and his name is Albert Lee. I thought: ‘That’s the guitar for me!’ But unfortunately, Jimmy Page took it up with Led Zeppelin a little bit later and that put me off. Not because Jimmy played it, because it then became the fashionable guitar to play, the Les Paul. I’m really not one to be in cahoots with fashion, if I can help it. But they are very good guitars. It’s pretty heavy, if you got a bad back like I do,” Ritchie Blackmore said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).