Ritchie Blackmore’s opinion on Queen’s Brian May

One of the most talented and influential guitarists of his generation, Ritchie Blackmore was a huge inspiration for many British musicians who were about to embark on their own successful careers.

One of them was Brian May, who, when Deep Purple was rising to stardom, was still an aspiring musician. A few years later, he would become one of Britain’s most important guitarists through his work with Queen. Over the decades, Blackmore has shared his honest opinion on many of his peers, including Brian May.

What is Ritchie Blackmore’s opinion on Queen’s Brian May

Ritchie Blackmore is a big fan of Queen and in his opinion, Brian May is a “one of the nicest guys in the business” and a “brilliant guitar player to boot”. “Queen, I first heard them doing a song about a train, this is about 1974 or 1975. I can’t remember the title but I was very impressed with the guitar playing and of course the singing. I’ve noticed that Freddie Mercury has a cross between Ronnie Dio and almost like an opera operatic type of voice. To me he was a true star, he knew exactly how to milk an audience, what a musician.”

Blackmore and Brian had the chance to play on the same track back in 1988. A group of Rock stars got together that year for the humanitarian effort called Live Aid Armenia, organized by the British music industry to raise money to help people affected in that country after a big earthquake.

The project is best known for the all-star version of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”, which, besides May and Blackmore, also featured artists like Bruce Dickinson, Ian Gillan, Paul Rodgers, Bryan Adams, Tony Iommi, David Gilmour, Alex Lifeson, Chris Squire, Keith Emerson, Geoff Downes, and Roger Taylor.

Ritchie remains a good friend of Brian May and congratulated him and Queen on their biographical movie “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Back in 2019, when the movie was awarded at the Golden Globes, he wrote: “Congratulations to Brian May and all in Queen for their brilliant film Bohemian Rhapsody and their accolades at the Golden Globes. Well deserved.”

Brian May has always been a big fan of Ritchie Blackmore since the early days of his career. “Another great hero of mine. He’s crazy. I mean, yeah, it was extraordinary watching him. I think he’s one of the most dangerous guitar players ever. And I mean that is in the best possible way. Beautiful! He was there way ahead of any of us,” he told Guitar World in 2020. He first heard Deep Purple while he was still a student at Imperial College London in the late 1960s. However, he was already familiar with Blackmore’s name, as his friend and future bandmate Roger Taylor had spoken about the guitarist before.

“(I was first aware of Deep Purple) when I was at University, I was at Imperial College in the early days. I was very much aware of their first album with ‘Hush’ and everything on it. Ritchie Blackmore already was a legend, I was together with Roger (Taylor) by that time, our Queen drummer. Roger had worked alongside Ritchie before that in his previous group down in Cornwall and Ritchie was a figure of mystery and wonder already, you know. Ritchie Blackmore was something incredible, I mean, nobody could play like that in those days.”

“It’s hard going back to… You know, I’m an old man, I can talk about these things. It’s like going back to before the time there were wheels. People did not play like that in those days. (There were) people who played sort of Jazz, very kind of safe, rather mellow and apart from Django Reinhardt, rather slow. But Ritchie came along and he’s a fireball. He really is beyond belief, his technique, I don’t know from where it comes.”

He continued:

“He’s able to play very fast, very accurate and very passionate. He’s wailing the guitar all over the place, he’s using his tremolo bar. (Blackmore’s) making the whole thing into a completely different instrument. This is before Hendrix, you know. So Ritchie is a great originator and creator of the wild electric guitar,” Brian May said in an interview in the documentary Ritchie Blackmore Story (2015) – (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

After Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple in the mid-1970s, Brian May remained a big fan of his work. He has praised Rainbow over the years and, interestingly, even named the cover of “Since You Been Gone’, from the band’s more commercial era as one of his all-time favorites.

After being asked to pick a really good guitar track, he said: “Okay, what has opped into my head is ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’. Because I think is a quintessential. I suppose you call it Pop Rock in a sense, you know. But it’s uncompromising, it’s a great song and it’s brilliantly played. I mean, the drums, my dear friend Cozy Powell of course, long gone. I worked with him and it was a wonderful experience working with that guy.”

Brian May continued:

“He had Rock all the way through him, an amazing guy. And of course Ritchie Blackmore playing guitar, who is extraordinary. People don’t talk about Ritchie Blackmore enough. I don’t know why. But he was such a trailblazer and technically incredible, unpredictable in every possible way which is great. I mean, that’s what you love isn’t?”

“You go to a gig and you want see something which is not predictable, not like just reproducing something. You never knew what you were gonna see when you went to see Purple when Blackmore was in it, but also Rainbow. This (Rainbow) was his own thing and it was wild and dangerous. This is a good Pop record but that doesn’t take away from the fact that is great Rock music in my opinion. I think it’s perfect,” Brian May said in an interview with My Planet Rock‘s  in 2013 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).