BLACKMORE'S NIGHT
Interview from promotional set 1997
Ter gelegenheid van het (eerste) album Shadow Of The Moon van Blackmore’s Night deden Ritchie Blackmore en Candice Night een interview voor een promotiepakket voor de pers. Hierbij de letterlijke Engelstalige tekst.
Fotografie: Henry
Knegt
You named it ‘Blackmore’s
Night’, and your name has to do with black, it’s not only black, it’s more
than black, it’s Blackmore. You prefer the colour black. What’s so fascinating
about black?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
Black - you can’t say black in America any more, ‘cause you get into trouble.
You know that?
CANDICE NIGHT: Answer
the question!
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
Black, yes, is a very dark, moody kind of colour. I do tend to like dark
rooms like we’re in at the moment. I don’t like light too much although
I believe in light. But I do like dark moody atmosphere.That’s about it.
Why don’t you
like the light?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
I like the light. I like the normal daylight. But I don’t like lights as
in a place, a bar or wherever, I prefer it to be darker. I feel that once
the sun has gone down we shouldn’t be lighting things up, we should just
light a candle maybe, and that’s it, and then wait for the sun to rise
the next day. We have enough sun all day. But in America sometimes everything
is lit up so much, so, you go into a store and it’s like going on stage.
There’s a million lights on, just being wasted when one would be sufficient.
Do you believe
you are a man born at the wrong time with the right aches?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
Yes I’d like to think that, because I love to complain. So there would
be yet one more thing I could complain about. I could alway plead: Well,
nobody understands me, so I’m living in the wrong time. Although, seriously,
I refer back to the, the sixteen hundreds is my favourite time. Obviously
I wouldn’t like to have caught some of the diseases they had then, but
I do, I absolutely adore that period of time. You might have noticed I’m
dressed up at the moment for some strange reason. And I just love the music
from that period, the sixteen hundreds are my favourite time. Although
of course they didn’t have the electrical guitar then, so they tell us,
but you never know, that might be a political thing.
RITCHIE BLACKMORE: I think it’s more or less the music. As soon as the fifteen hundreds came around, the Reformation time. I’m not too keen on the music from the fourteen hundreds, the Gregorian chants, Ambrosian chants, it’s okay, but it doesn’t stir anything up. But as soon as I hear a Krummhorn, that’s it, my life is full. I think I would probably have lived in the woods or something, I can relate to just being very simple, living in the woods, chopping wood for a living.
But you couldn’t
afford to live with such a beautiful lady.You had to become a landlord
or something like that.
CANDICE NIGHT: I
relate to being a peasant girl at that same time period. Not, if somebody
was to ask me I wouldn’t think automatically of living back in a castle
dressed in incredible, elegant robes. I would automatically think of being
dressed in a peasant gown, living outside, sleeping on straw and probably
singing for him playing the lute.
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
I’m getting excited.
Do you believe
that you maybe are reincarnated?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
Could be. Or maybe there was something that was not finished or - I don’t
know. It would be very easy for me to say yes, I’ve been reincarnated.
But there again, why would I be the same thing in this life as I was in
that. Maybe I wasn’t, maybe I truly want to live that life but I never
did live it, maybe there is a reverse psychology involved. I really don’t
know. I don’t know the answer to that.
What’s the reason
for the LP „BLACKMORE’s NIGHT’? Because the last thing you did was, and
the beautiful lady she sang the background, was on your Rainbow-Tour, and
then turning that tremendously away from your heavy metal field.
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
It was always my intention. For the last 20 years people would say to me,
please do an acoustic thing, and I went why, everybody is doing the acoustic
thing. Especially the last ten years everything was unplugged. That got
a little bit too fashionable to me, the unplugged stuff. And now that it
is not fashionable to be unplugged I’m unplugged. But I’ve wanted it for
the last 20 years, and I have been playing this at home for 20 years, 25
years. And I think Candy is the one that brought it out in me to actually
put it on record. I would never have actually done this record, had it
not been for her singing along at home and bringing some of these ideas
to fruition with her interpretation. Right, Candy?
CANDICE NIGHT: That
was nice.
You always played
the Stratocaster. I’m not sure if you ever played a Gibson, but you do
now...
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
the Strat(ocaster) had more of a cut for rock and roll, the Gibson is more
of a jazzy guitar, is a very mellow sound, full sound, great sound. But
I wanted, when I heard Hendrix, I liked the way he cut through the notes,
so I wanted to try and reach that more. I first got my Strat indirectly
through Eric Clapton. He gave his roady, who was my friend, a guitar, a
Strat that he didn’t want, and he gave it to me, and that’s when I started
playing with Strat, so thanks to Eric Clapton.
What’s so fascinating
to turn towards a more acoustic sound?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
I always thought playing the acoustic was kind of easy, was just a case
of strumming a few chords, and I really didn’t see the point. But in the
last five years I have seen some amazing guitar players like Gordon Guiltrap,
Leo Kottke, and they make the acoustic guitar sing, and that really fascinated
me, that they could play with that much dexterity on something like an
acoustic. So now I’m kind of trying to follow them by trying to play something,
trying to get something out of an acoustic, which is not easy in the beginning.
Because obviously the size of strings, and you can’t bend the strings,
I’m used to doing that. So consequently I’m suffering a little bit of arthritis
in one of my fingers because I’m trying to play these heavy strings. But
the acoustic has opened up a whole new avenue of thought that I didn’t
think was there. I’m very happy to just play the acoustic because the acoustic
is a reflection of someone’s soul, it’s a woddy feeling.You could
be in a room and the most natural thing to do is play a wooden instrument
that’s not plugged in. Once you plug the instrument in to an amplifier
then you’re getting into the electrics, then you’re getting into the business,
then you’re getting into demographics and marketing, and hit parades, and
radio play and radio interviews which really has nothing to do with music.
Candice, do you
feel as his muse for guitar player or for the creative human being, the
man.
CANDICE NIGHT: The
creative human being, definitely. More so than the player. I’m a fan of
Ritchie’s as a person inside.
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
What is the first thing I do in morning?
CANDICE NIGHT: Bring
me coffee in bed?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
Before that.
CANDICE NIGHT: What
do you do first thing in the morning? I don’t know. Is there something
you wanted to say?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
No, no, it’s what you complain about.
CANDICE NIGHT: I’m
not a fan of that. I’m a fan of Ritchie’s as a person. I like the way he
has a different stance on things, he sees things in a different way, he
explains something differently, he’s very honest, very open and very sensitive.
And there is a lot of people out there who aren’t, they’ll tell you what
you want to hear. And that’s not what being a real person is all about.
And I think he is very real and very honest about things and I’m a big
fan of that. Just all this is pretty impressive. But of course I’m in love
with the way he plays the guitar as well.
And what about
Ritichie playing Rock’n’Roll?
CANDICE NIGHT: I
love that too. It’s different sides of me. I love rock and roll and I love
acoustic. And it depends on how I feel at that time of day. What I’m in
the mood for, if I want to get out there and drive my car really fast or
if I want to sit outside and watch the sun go down. It’s all different
sides of me.
Who’s the ‘Ocean
Gipsy’?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
We did not write that song. That’s a song that was written back in 1975
by another group called Renaissance. We’ve always loved that track. We
used to play it around the house just for fun. Most of these songs that
are on this LP, CD, we played in the beginning for fun which is the best
way I think of approaching music. It wasn’t hard work. It was very easy
to make this CD. Because we knew these songs we played them to our friends,
we had good fun playing them. And ‘Ocean Gipsy’ was one of our favourite
songs. As well as, there was another one, is it ‘Wish You Were Here’ we
did, we did ‘Wish You Were Here’, too, that was a song that we liked very
much. We also do things like ‘Mister Tambourine Man’ which are not on the
LP. However, notwithstanding, speaking for myself by and large personally,
CANDICE NIGHT: ‘Ocean
Gipsy’ was a song that was given to us on a tape by Annie Haslam who used
to sing for Renaissance, and Ritchie went to see her with a friend of his
one night in a club and she was performing. And he brought home all these
little tapes that she had given him and we played them when we were living
in Connecticut, we don’t live there anymore. We were sitting outside one
day just listening to the tapes, and Ocean Gipsy was one song that stuck
in my mind. And then we moved and we packed the tapes and we didn’t see
those tapes for years. And I always remembered, Ocean Gipsy was always
in my head. And then one day I just started humming it around the kitchen
and Ritchie picked up playing it and we had to go and find the tape and
rampage through all our tapes so that we could find out what the words
were and what the rest of the chords were. But that was just one of those
haunting melodies that sticks in your head.
What could someone
expect if entering your castle the ‘Minstrel Hall’?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
I like to play practical jokes on people. So the first thing they do is
when they knock on my door they will get an electric shock. But that’s
my way of saying, hello, you’re welcome, come on in. Of course we have,
if they sit down, they are glued to the seat. We play a lot of tricks on
people, we have lots of ghosts in the house. We do lots of séances.
We are very serious about the paranormal side of life, too.
CANDICE NIGHT: Our
house is very dark also. It is lit up by very very dim lights. When you
come in, we have a big tapestry room, a medieval room where we usually
have our singalongs in.
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
So we’re either playing with the cats, doing séances or playing
music - or out of the house playing soccer.
What’s so fascinating
about occultism and spirituality?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
Well, it’s just all that really means is hidden, it’s not done on an everyday
basis and of course religion, I’m not a religious man, I’m a spiritual
man but not religious, because religion usually revolves around money.
And why we’re involved in the so-called occult, is because it’s just a
hidden, traditional, it’s something that, back in the pagan times people
would appreciate nature. Of course today it has changed a lot. But I also
see changing today. I think we’re all going back to appreciating nature
and more the pagan style of worship. We get involved in séances,
for instance, we communicate with other entities, other realms, that to
me is absolutely fascinating, it’s a way of explaining life to me, because
I can’t sometimes, like everybody else I would hope, I sit there sometimes
and think, what is this all about, why are we here, and this communication
to me helps me over that why we are here. I’m still searching. And I haven’t
found the answer in books. I don’t think the answer lies in books which
a lot of people think it does, personally I don’t. I like first-hand experience,
I want to find out for myself. I don’t want to read a book that someone
else has written a long time ago and say oh, this is what’s going on. There’s
something wrong with that. Personally. And that we have communication,
we have had phantastic communication. I have written lots of books about
it actually. I haven’t published them. It’s all locked. One day maybe we’ll
publish and take it from there. What would you think?
CANDICE NIGHT: I
don’t think we’re so much into occultism as we are into.
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
but all that means is something that is not done every day
CANDICE NIGHT: Yes,
but as much as into nature appreciation and into supernatural fascination,
really, paranormal, other realms of searching, constantly searching, always
searching, and trying to, almost like escapism, this sort of realm and
this sort of world where everything is so physical. Everything is about
how good you look, or how fast you can play or how much money you’re making.
And down deep inside none of that matters at all. And I think that’s why
people like us or a lot of people that we’ve met are telling to get back
to nature and realizing there is so much more out there than just going
to the office and see if you can beat what the other person is doing. And
that’s very important for spiritual growth.
What do you think
about the today world?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
It’s got totally out of hand, there is so much stress in this world, from
the competitive side. Everybody is working for money.
CANDICE NIGHT: Right,
but I think doing that searching also lends itself to creativity. And I
think if we were so wrapped up in the physical run we wouldn’t be able
to create anything, he wouldn’t be able to write songs or play as well
as he could and I wouldn’t be, if I was doing business all the time I know
I wouldn’t be able to think of lyrics ‘cause I’d be thinking of money or
thinking of how to get ahead in the world.
But creating something,
such things together, I mean you as a guitar player, the moment you touch
your strings, the moment you open your mouth and start singing, is it like
entering a state of meditation?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
Yes, it is. In a way, yes, you do, it is. It is the same as a séance,
you do. It’s like astral projection. You do. You leave the body slightly.
And - it’s not always great, but we try to make it good. But you do leave
your body in a way.
Ritchie, what
was the reason for leaving Deep Purple during the last tour?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
Well, I have two sides of me. One is, yes, I’m very sensitive and I can
be very quiet and polite. There is another side of me. If I’m put under
stress, if I’m put in a bad situation, I will fight, and certain people
in bands don’t like that when you talk back to managements and record companies
and say, I will not do this. Then you’re labelled ‘difficult’. Because
you don’t do what they want you to do. The Purple situation was I was coerced
into going back with Ian in the same band. I really don’t get along with
Ian. But the record company thought it was good for business. Okay, so
we tried it. And about three weeks into the tour I said no, I can’t do
this, this is not for me. And it’s not so much a personal thing. It’s more
that I don’t like his singing. And I said well, I’ll finish the tour and
then maybe we’ll find another guitar player. We’ll carry on. I’m not gonna
stop the show here. And it was not for me to say I’m leaving, so the whole
thing is over. I think they thought that when I first said, I’m leaving.
But after a while they got another guitar player, Joe Satriani, and everything
was great. I left and I really fealt good. I felt very good that I was
out. It really didn’t have much to do with music. Although they’re very
good musicians. It was more of an armchair kind of band, with Deep Purple
we can make an excellent amount of money, go round just playing and we’ll
all have big cars and wonderful. That only last for me for a while. There
has to be a reason why I’m playing the guitar. It’s not just for money.
It’s got to be that inner fulfilment. I had no fulfilment in that band
whatsoever other than just money.
Where do you see
the difference between a skillful player and a very innovative guitar player?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
To me, listen to Joe Satriani, he is a brilliant player. But I never see
him, I never really hear him searching for notes. I never hear him playing
maybe a wrong note. Jimi Hendrix used to play lots of wrong notes. ‘Cause
he was searching all the time. Where the hell is that correct note. And
when he did find that right note, well, that was incredible. But if you’re
always playing the correct notes, there is something wrong. You are not
searching, you are not reaching for anything. But that is not to say that
- he is a very brilliant player, say Steve Morse, phantastic player. I’m
just glad they found a guitar player to carry on. Because I thought I was
going to be ordered to be with this band for the rest of my life. That
was like a ball and chain thing. And luckily they said oh, we’ve found
someone. And I said, thank God, I can get out.
There are different
kinds of guitarplayers, some are technically perfect, some are very emotional.
Are there some around, you find fascinating?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
I think that I don’t really listen much. I just know that Joe Satriani
and Steve Morse are brilliant players that they play fantastic. I think
what you mean is, maybe, some people play from the heart and other people
play from the head. I prefer a heart player. I prefer someone like a blues
player with the guy who plays, Jeff Healey, I think, is tremendous. I think
the John Mayall-guy is great, too. People like that I prefer. If I hear
someone really technical running up and down the fingerboard I can hear
that for a couple of minutes, then I start to get bored and I’m thinking
of other things like playing football or something. But I do like to hear
someone reaching for something. Not quite making it, sometimes they do
make it. They are very polished, like Joe Satriani, he is a very polished
player, almost too polished. That’s what worries me sometimes. But it’s
a different strokes with different folks as an enemy of mine used to say.
Which is such a corny saying. Some people are into the head music, the
head technique, some people are into the heart technique, some people
are into the blues technique. I personally am into the minstrel technique.
If I hear someone playing a lute or playing a Krummhorn it just moves me,
I don’t know why. Guitar players I find kind of boring. And that’s not
meant as a dig. If I’m myself boring then I have to go and lock myself
away. It’s the guitar is a wonderful instrument in certain ways of life,
if you are listening to someone like John Williams play, then you know
the man can play. And he will play a fast piece, a slow piece, he will
emote, he has a doubt, That’s just all inspiring to hear someone like that.
I think the main objective is to move, make people think in the heart.
I personally, I’m not interested in appealing to other musicians. To me
it’s more inspiring to move someone who doesn’t know anything about music
but has a feeling. They can say, I don’t know what you’re doing but I just
feel that’s something there. That to me is an incredible compliment. As
opposed to, well, you just run up and down the fingerboard, it’s wonderful,
very fast, really what that means is I’ve just practised the hell out of
the guitar. I’m not really saying anything. I’m going from A to B but not
seeing anything on the way. Like that train I can hear.
If being asked
which solo you prefer out of your Deep Purple time, maybe that on ‘Flight
of the Red’ or ‘Child in Time’?
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
I don’t like either one of them particularly. ‘Child in Time’ is a bit
of boy’s job, I was fooling over myself there, and that wasn’t particularly
good so. It was okay at the time. ‘Flight of the Red’ I can’t even remember.
I haven’t heard that in 25 years. Although I like the LP. ‘Deep Purple
In Rock’ was great. ‘Machine Head’, I thought Gillan was singing great.
And the band was playing great. Two great LPs. I think ‘In Rock’ was underestimated,
especially in America. They only know ‘Machine Head’. And I think ‘In Rock’
had the edge on ‘Machine Head’. And I think we did it very quickly, very
naturally. And that was fun to make those two LPs.
Candice, how did
it become that you, a background singer, turned into a lead singer?
CANDICE NIGHT: At
the very beginning Ritchie and I we were not pulled together because of
music, as a matter of fact we met on a soccer field and had nothing to
do with music at all. It was all about soccer, always. But we’ve been together
for about eight years now, and in the first couple of years of our relationship
Ritchie has never even heard me sing the first couple of years. And a friend
of his kept saying, yes, she’s a good singer, and he never really took
any notice until we maybe started singing Christmas songs at a parties
that we were having at Christmas time. But I really started singing with
Deep Purple on the 1993 tour and he had me doing ahhhs over the Beethoven
part when he did the guitar solo and then he brought me into the Rainbow
project when he was having a hard time having to sing the lyrics that he
liked, and he would call me up on the phone and play the song to me over
the phone and say, put something to it, see what you can do. And so then
he turned up and he liked my writing technique, and then he asked me to
go to the studio and sing, and than it just took of from now. And here
we are.
RITCHIE BLACKMORE:
That’s right. She has a great identity to her voice. She has a sound to
it hat you can always identify with. And your interpretations are excellent.
CANDICE NIGHT: Thank
you.
Official website:
http://www.blackmoresnight.com
Dutch fanclub:
http://www.blackmoresnight.nl
