Ritchie Blackmore prefers Blackmore's Night's music to Rainbow and Deep Purple
Ritchie Blackmore says that despite resurrecting Rainbow, Renaissance is still his “main music.”
In an interview with Billboard to promote the ‘Memories In Rock II’ live album recorded at Rainbow’s UK shows last summer, Ritchie admitted that playing with the current incarnation of the band is “good fun” but Blackmore’s Night is where his heart is.
“It's always nice to kind of blast out on the Stratocaster for a while,” Ritchie said. “But I still prefer the music of Blackmore’s Night because it’s so far-reaching and the spectrum of musical stuff is so more vast than being in a rock band.
“But at the same time, I knew there were a lot of fans that wanted to hear the old Rainbow songs, so I did six weeks on the road playing rock n' roll and then did the more classically inclined acoustic music.”
Explaining what inspired him to resurrect Rainbow and assemble an all-new line-up, Ritchie said: “It was kind of like I was 70, and I just felt like playing some rock n' roll on a few dates.
“So, I basically put together the right players to do a few shows, just playing the old rock stuff, Purple stuff and Rainbow. I was doing it, one, for the fans and, two, for the nostalgia, and the singer I found (Ronnie Romero) is very exciting.
“Candice found him on YouTube, so I auditioned him and he passed. He's got a great voice, a cross between, like, Dio meets Freddie Mercury. So this would mean kind of exposing a new singer to the masses, and I'm sure he'll become pretty famous because of his voice, so that was interesting.”
Asked if he’d ever written off playing rock music again, Ritchie commented: “No. I just wanted to pursue other avenues of music, especially Renaissance, which is still my main music that I listen to and play.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Ritchie confirmed that Glenn Hughes did snub rejoining Rainbow in 2016, explaining: “Through a mutual friend, a conversation came up saying it would be good to have him in the band.
“I said, ‘Would he be up for being just the bass player and we would have another singer singing?’ My mutual friend said ‘Of course! I've spoken to him and he's up for it.’ I said, ‘Fine, as long as he knows he isn't the singer, that's great.’
“Fast forward to day before rehearsals and we contacted Glenn to see when he was going to fly in, and he wasn't aware that he wasn't going to be the lead singer at all.
“So, I understood his situation and I told him we would have to get someone else, and he was fine. We ended it amicably before it even started.”
Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow play five shows in Europe this April taking in Mosow, St Petersburg, Helsinki, Berlin and Prague.