Meaning, you didn't like it? I founf the solo in Knockin' At Your Back Door so delightfully askew that I almost crashed my car when I heard it.
>Fwiw, I haven't even given Blackmore a second thought since "Perfect Strangers" dropped in 1984.<
Meaning, you didn't like it? I founf the solo in Knockin' At Your Back Door so delightfully askew that I almost crashed my car when I heard it.
>Fwiw, I haven't even given Blackmore a second thought since "Perfect Strangers" dropped in 1984.<
So, unless you are trying to say that I'm on the minority here I didn't fully get your point. Of course there is no objectivity on most of these sorts of discussions these days. Nonetheless it's undoubtedly dangerous to state that 'WE are most likely to connect to music we heard in our teens'. Most of my fave music (Classical) that I listen to today I've been connected to it just since my 30's-40's (I'm 51 now), music that I hardly heard in my teens.
"Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth. ". Ludwig van Beethoven
"Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth. ". Ludwig van Beethoven
More importantly, who gives a fuck if Ritchie Blackmore is a prog rock guitarist? Whatever you call him, he plays what he plays. And trust me, nobody considered "prog" walks around saying "hey, I'm a prog musician". To them it's just music.
Music fans are too stupid to take. Put me on an island to do my thing, and you all can stay the fuck away, and have your silly little slap fights over shit that doesn't matter.
And, oh yeah: "Mine shipped".
The story goes that when they were putting Achilles Last Stand together, there was a bit where Page had intended to solo, and John Paul Jones said something like, "There's no scale that will go over that chord sequence you've got", and Page simply told him something like, "Trust me, I've got it planned out". So yeah, he definitely used unconventional scales and such.
The thing I find mind boggling about something like The Rain Song is, it's an unusual guitar tuning (DGCGCD, on the studio version, EADADE on the live version). Now, I wonder if Page had the piece in his head, and developed the tuning to make it playable, or did he come up with the tuning first and noodle around and come up with the piece as we know it.
The Zeppelin tab book that came out in the early 90s with the boxset, gave the tabs to "Rain Song" in standard tuning and was virtually impossible to play. I came up with a similar tuning to the first one you mentioned(strummed open stringed it sounds like the final chord of the song)and I figured out the notes instead of the tabs,and it all fell into place.
I would guess that Page was probably just foolng around with the tuning and slowly developed the music. Beautiful song and very fun to play.
I would suggest that posting in a forum where you have such little regard for the other posters would in itself qualify for any one of several psychological disorders, particularly since you seem to wish to make yourself sound superior while depersonalizing and demeaning the whole in one broad stroke.
"And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision."
Occasional musical musings on https://darkelffile.blogspot.com/
I admire Blackmore, Page and Iommi pretty much equally. They all do things the others can't, and they all do things that I've only come to truly understand as I've hopefully become a bit better musician myself.
Since this thread is about Blackmore ...
The notion that Blackmore left blues influence behind is simply untrue. Blues remained a huge influence on his playing throughout his career. Even when he went modal with what was arguably prog-metal in Rainbow, this guy had such an amazing ability to throw in blues phrasings and make it all work. It's really a lost art. So many of the 80s "shredders" who were influenced by him, Schenker and Roth just did not have the ability to mix things up like that. They focused on learning patterns and became very adept at playing them quickly, whereas Blackmore was an astonishing improviser of a completely different breed and could just sit there and pull from an endless array of ideas and mix them up with amazing intelligence. He also could really build a solo and conclude it with a skill that was met by few peer. His vibrato technique while soloing was impeccable and full of finesse. IMO, he was not the rhythm player that Iommi was and he couldn't play full chords with that kind of precise vibrato, but since he always played with prominent keyboard players it didn't really matter because gaps were filled and perhaps it wasn't an approach with which he was concerned. He also played with a lot of humor, which I'm not sure I've seen mentioned.
As a soloist, he was probably the best of the three. As s songwriter, perhaps the least interesting of the three but that's not a criticism because that is some serious company. Arguably, he did "sell out" more than the others because from about '79-'84 he was involved in some pretty damned commercial stuff. It was well put together, but come on ... Rainbow sounded like Foreigner in the early 80s and I would think that everybody who is honest knows it. Yes, he still did some remarkable work during that period that harkened back to how Rainbow was conceived, but he was cranking out the AOR. He was also in Deep Purple while Joe Lynn Turner was in Deep Purple. This knocks him down one more point.
From what I've heard of Blackmore's Night, I think it's nice that he has been able to do music with his wife and presumably music for which he has a passion.
I couldn't really care less whether or not he was ever "prog" and I don't think whether he is thought of in that way is really that historically relevant. But I do think Deep Purple were very influential on a segment of bands that are regarded as "progressive rock." Like Uriah Heep, that organ/guitar sound found its way into onto the turntables of a lot of musicians who adapted that approach and with Purple's sometimes classically-influenced arrangements, I think there is no question that they were far more influential upon progressive rock than either Sabbath or Zeppelin *in the 70s*. Not talking about the influence that has transpired since with many "prog" musicians becoming more aware of the extent to which the Sabs and Zep dabbled in compositional approaches that were not unlike some of the things going on in so-called "prog" of the time. But keep in mind that Dio-era Rainbow and especially Rising is also very influential amongst the prog-metal community.
As far as whether Blackmore would be regarded as a great prog guitarist if he played with ... say ... Chris Squire and Bill Bruford? I don't know. Would Steve Hackett be considered a great "metal" guitarist had he joined Iron Maiden? These just aren't questions I ask myself.
I heard The Rain Song live at Knebworth Festival in England, 1979, where John Paul Jones played that Yamaha GX-1 instead of Mellotron. The Rain Song is a great Rock ballad which have nothing to do with Prog. The use of 'tron (or a synth) and a guitar noodling doesn't make - in itself - a song to be prog. For example, The Who's Quadrophenia is full of synths / orchestration like LZ never did but it's not a prog album.
On other side, Rainbow's Stargazer is a prog metal song that was recorded a lot of years before the genre was established.
Last edited by Svetonio; 08-20-2016 at 01:24 AM.
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