Ritchie Blackmore’s opinion on Eric Clapton

One of the most influential guitarists of all time, Ritchie Blackmore first gained the “guitar hero” status as a member of Deep Purple and then showed that he could be successful with his own band when he formed Rainbow.

He became a huge inspiration for countless guitar players all over the world during the past decades and was certainly one of the most important musicians of his generation. But what is his opinion on Eric Clapton, another fundamental guitarist from the 60s.

What is Ritchie Blackmore’s opinion on Eric Clapton

Although Ritchie Blackmore has a deep respect for Eric Clapton and already praised him a few times, he did not always have good things to say about the Cream guitarist. More recently, in a video posted on his Youtube page, the guitar player recalled how they first met and called him a brilliant guitar player.

(Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) “I remember Deep Purple was supporting Cream at the Forum in Los Angeles. Funny enough, in the front row I think was Jimi Hendrix and George Harrison sitting right there. Right in front of me, which was kind of strange. Before the show, I think Eric came into the dressing room I was in with Deep Purple. We never met formerly before, so we introduced each other, little bit of small talk. I was always impressed with Eric’s, not only ability to play brilliant guitar playing but I loved his sound.”

“I loved the fat sound he got. So I was questioning him. I said: ‘What strings you were using when you first started playing?’ He said: ‘I was using Clifford Essex strings’. So I went: ‘Wow, Clifford Essex!’ Immediately after the meeting I got Clifford Essex strings, which I played for quite a while. Then he also said that he took up (other brand and I started to use them too). But I was trying to figure out how he got this great sound (…) And all these strings I used for years (were) all because of him,” Ritchie Blackmore said.

The embarrassing moment with Eric Clapton

In the same video, Blackmore recalled a really interesting story about when Deep Purple and Eric Clapton were at the same hotel in Australia. At the time, there was a lot of noise in the hotel early in the morning. So the members of the Hard rock band complained at the front desk. However, nothing was done the next morning to resolve the situation. Then Blackmore came up with the idea to make a lot of noise by playing the guitar. They bought several Marshall amps, and at 3 a.m., a friend of his started playing the guitar quite loudly to drive the hotel managers insane. But what they didn’t know was that Eric Clapton was sleeping in the next room.

“We were in a hotel, I think it was in Melbourne, Australia. What happened was, I knew that Eric was with his band in that hotel. We’d had three days there where we’d been woken up very early with hammering – the usual nonsense that goes on in hotels.”

He continued:

“We were so sick of it we actually threatened the front desk, ‘If you wake us up again tomorrow we will bring all our amplification into a room and play at 3 o’clock in the morning, and see how your patrons like hearing this noise. Which we did. The next day the hammering started as per usual, they took no notice of what we said. So we went ahead and brought in some Marshalls, stacked them, and my friend actually started playing the guitar. He started playing some bad blues, actually.”

“As soon as he started playing we were so loud we got a bang on the door, and it was Eric’s security. Believe it or not, Eric was in the next room to where we were.  The next day we had some words with his security and I said, ‘I’m really sorry, I didn’t realize we were next door.’”

“That was embarrassing, especially to think that Eric might have thought it was me making this racket on the guitar. I was in there having a drink, but I wasn’t playing. That doesn’t get me off the hook – it was really my idea to make all this noise,” Ritchie Blackmore said.

Ritchie Blackmore not always said good things about Clapton

Although Blackmore praised Clapton and called him brilliant, back in 1975 he didn’t have many good things to say about the musician. In an interview with International Musician magazine, he even listed two guitarists that he was not a big fan at the time. One of them was the Cream member, saying that he never understood what people liked in Clapton’s playing.

“I never saw what was in Clapton at all. He’s a good singer”. During that same year he once again criticized the artist. It was in a conversation with the Creem magazine journalist and future movie director Cameron Crowe.

“Couldn’t care less about other guitarists. It’s ridiculous. Everyone plays guitar now. Doctors play guitar now. There are so many guitarists around now it’s unbelievable. I always find it embarrassing when people ask me what I play and I have to admit, ‘Uh, guitar. EVERYBODY plays guitar’.”

“But Hendrix gave me a faith in the music scene. And when Cream came along, I thought ‘Well, it’s all happening again.’ Although I was never knocked out with Eric Clapton’s playing, it was competent, and he was copping a lot of the English blues guitarist, and that was a good sign. He had a good sound, but Hendrix was way ahead of him because he could write, hecould sing, he could perform. He blew it from 1970 onwards, though,” Ritchie Blackmore said.