Ritchie Blackmore is a brilliant English musician, multi-instrumental guitarist. This person is able to play absolutely any object that has strings. He is included in the list of the best guitarists of the 20th century. For a long time he was a member of the cult group Deep Purple.
Biography
The talented guitarist was born in a small resort town in England in mid-April 1945. When the boy was two years old, the family went to Heston, where they opened a small shop run by his mother, Violet Short. My father worked as a simple worker at a local airport. Richard was an extremely withdrawn and uncommunicative child.
He hated school, made new acquaintances with great difficulty and often quarreled with teachers. One day, his parents decided to arrange a surprise for him and invited all the children they knew to celebrate his next birthday. Upon learning of this, little Richie locked himself in the attic and spent the whole day there - until everyone left.
Due to his bad temper and a complete reluctance to study, Blackmore had big problems with grades at school. When it came time for exams and then transfer to high school, Richie failed and failed his tests. Then he finally dropped out of school and got a job as a mechanic. In his spare time, he learned the basics of improvisation on the electric guitar at a music school.
Career
The first glory to Ritchie Blackmore came in the early 1960s. Having changed more than one team, he joined the The Savages team. But he did not stay there for a long time, in his searches he also was for some time in the team of The Outlaws. This team was notable for its shocking behavior and defiant behavior, for which the participants were regularly arrested.
In 1968, a truly significant event took place in Blackmore's life - his familiar drummer gathered a group and offered a place to a talented guitarist, the team planned to be called Roundabout, but later Chris Curtis abandoned this idea and left his friends. The idea to name the group Deep Purple came from Richie himself.
The team became the pioneer and then the flagship of hard rock. The first albums were released in the same year, the unusual team quickly gained popularity and began to actively tour the country. For seven years of fruitful work, Deep Purple has accumulated a large baggage of ten albums and a huge number of hits. But within the team of ambitious musicians, problems were brewing, which ultimately resulted in a big scandal. In 1975, after touring in support of their next album, the band announced their disbandment.
At the same time, Ritchie Blackmore gathered his own team, which he called Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, but the name did not catch on and later turned into a laconic Rainbow. The group was a great success and in the entire history of its existence has created 8 numbered albums and acquired their own hits.
In 1997, Blackmore decided to move away from the canons of hard rock and created the Blackmore's Night team with his beloved Candice Knight, the main direction of which is folk rock. The group exists to this day, periodically releases new songs and gives concerts. Since 2015, Blackmore has reassembled Rainbow and is working on two fronts.
Personal life
Richie's first two marriages were with German women, Margrit Wolkmar and Barbel. Both women left a bright mark on the musician's life - his first wife gave birth to his son Jurgen, who followed in his father's footsteps, and both of them taught him to speak fluent German. In 1974, Richie left Europe and took refuge from taxes in the United States, where he lived with the opera diva Shoshana for a year, and then switched to other women, until he met the one that became his last love. Model Candice Knight became Richie's co-author and muse and gave birth to the famous guitarist's son and daughter.
