Ritchie Blackmore Quotes

These days I don't look to other people with the objective of trying to steal their licks, although I've got no objections to stealing them if that seems like a good idea. I'm sure that I'm still influenced by Mark Knopfler and Eddie Van Halen as well......I can't play like Eddie Van Halen. I wish I could. I sat down to try some of those ideas and can't do it. I don't know if I could ever get any of that stuff together. Sometimes I think I should work at the guitar more.

Charlie Christian had no more impact on my playing than Django Reinhardt or Lonnie Johnson. I just wanted to play like him. I wanted to play like all of them. All of these people were important to me. I couldn't play like any of them, though.

Jeff Beck is compelled by his inner artistic drive to keep evolving the instrument. He'll use the whammy bar with the volume knob and the tone control all at the same time - creating harmonics that no human being should be able to hit.

I suppose when I started playing guitar, it was the means to an end. I never thought of myself as a fully fledged guitar instrumentalist. And my early excursions on the electric guitar were curtailed when Eric Clapton came on the scene, and I decided I was never going to be in the same arena as a Clapton or a Peter Green.

Mention Hubert Sumlin, as well, because Hubert's a great man, and again, you know, I don't play the guitar very good, but when I'm playing this kind of music, I always have him in my mind. I wish I could play like Hubert.

I decided early on that I wanted to be Michael Bloomfield, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton - not George Harrison.

If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolate certain elements of great potency which were to nourish the art of music for decades, if not centuries.

Whenever I hear my playing, I can't detach from my influences: there's my Jeff Beck, there's the Clapton bit, the Eric Johnson bit, the Birelli Lagrene bit, the Billy Gibbons.

As far as actual playing, Clapton - by far - is my biggest influence, and you can tuck Jeff Beck underneath that.

So everybody is trying to play like Eddie Van Halen. I think it's rubbish. I think Eddie's great, but everyone's trying to do what he does and it doesn't make for a lot of interesting music.

There are more inspirational people in music than there are in politics.

I've always played a lot of Spanish music, but not as much as most guitarists do.

I was raised by my father, who was a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and bass player. His brothers all did the same thing, so I was kind of always raised around the music.

I was lucky to start playing guitar in the Eighties when so many great players were around to inspire me, like Yngwie Malmsteen, Van Halen and especially Dave Murray and Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden.

I'm not capable of wielding the guitar like Jimmy Page, one of my all-time favorite guitarists. My skill set is more based on the grinding, sort of human heartbeat - almost playing the guitar more like a drum.

Santana is the reason I play guitar - I studied his style so much, I actually wore out the video tapes.

I started playing guitar because of seeing Steve Vai.

I'll never forget when I heard Steve Morse and the Dixie Dregs for the first time. I was just blown away, and it changed my whole approach to guitar.

Just based on the primary adage of the necessity breeding innovation, it was just like 'Well, what makes me the guitar player that I am?' and I feel like I listen to so much different music, and I'm a student of so many genres of music, and I feel like it's fun to apply those things and anything super applicable to any type of music.

You can't help but have ideas when you're inspired musically.

Hip-hop influences my talent, but I think that punk and everything else I listened to growing up was who my idols were.

Hearing Jimi Hendrix as a little kid and falling in love with everything that he did on guitar rewired my basic nature. To me, that was a normal thing that you should do: you should strive to be as innovative as Hendrix.

In my world, before I knew about Eddie Van Halen, I was playing piano, and at that point in my teenage life, I thought he was just a guitar player.

I have seen Tommy Emanuel play; my wife and I went to see him and he just melted my face off. How do you play guitar like that? There are so many people that play at a ridiculous level and I sit there watching them and I'm like, 'Wow, wish I could do that.'

Tony MacAlpine not only plays guitar, but is a stunning classical piano player, so he can show how that influence molded his guitar playing.