In a recent interview that surfaced on the Ritchie Blackmore Channel on YouTube, Ritchie Blackmore discussed Joe Satriani, and his successor in Deep Purple, Steve Morse. You can read excerpts of what...
In a recent interview that surfaced on the Ritchie Blackmore Channel on YouTube, Ritchie Blackmore discussed Joe Satriani, and his successor in Deep Purple, Steve Morse. You can read excerpts of what Blackmore had to say about the guitarists, and their styles, below.
"Joe Satriani is a brilliant player, but I never see him really searching for notes; I never hear him playing a wrong note. Jimi Hendrix used to play lots of wrong notes because he was searching all the time—'Where the hell is that correct note?!' And when he did find that right note—wow, that was incredible.
"If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong—you're not searching, you're not reaching for anything. But that's not to say that he isn't a very brilliant player. Same thing with Steve Morse—fantastic player.
"I'm just glad they [Deep Purple] found a guitar player to carry on because I thought I was going to be shackled to this band for the rest of my life. It was like a ball-and-chain thing, and luckily they said, 'Well, we found someone.' 'Thank God, I can get out!'
"I haven't listened much, I just know that Joe Satriani and Steve Morse are brilliant players. I remember Steve Morse with the Dixie Dregs, they're fantastic.
"I think what you mean is that certain people play from the heart and other people play from the head. I prefer a heart player, I prefer someone like a blues player, like Jeff Healey. Jeff Healey I think is tremendous.
"If I hear someone really technical running up and down a fingerboard, I can hear that for a couple of minutes and then I start to kind of get bored and think of other things like playing football or something. But I do like to