Deep Purple’s Simon McBride on the Ritchie Blackmore lick he found most difficult to learn

When Simon McBride joined Deep Purple in 2022, he was tasked with learning all the band’s repertoire, including founding Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar work. McBride has now revealed which Ritchie Blackmore guitar lick he finds most challenging to play.

“Most of it is actually not too bad. There’s one little lick which annoyed me for a long, long time, it’s in Lazy,” he says in a new interview with Ultimate Guitar. I don’t play the same solo he plays in Lazy, but Lazy is one of those songs where I feel I can just improvise a bit more and just have a bit more fun with it.