Nearing six decades since the band’s official formation in 1968, Deep Purple has gone through so many stylistic and lineup changes, with Ian Paice remaining the sole original member today. But no matter the era or the lineup, all musicians in Deep Purple were nothing short of impressive. Their newest addition is Simon McBride, who replaced longtime member Steve Morse and is now officially present on the band’s upcoming studio album “=1,” which is being released on July 19.
While waiting for the record, we chatted with Simon and discussed some guitar-related Deep Purple stuff. Among other things, he reflected on the band’s original guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore, and some of the challenging aspects of playing his music.
What is the most difficult Ritchie Blackmore part 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’. 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.”
“But there’s this one lick he does in it, and I said, ‘I have to play that.’ And it’s a bitch of a lick. It’s not ultrafast. It’s just there’s a lot of chromatic stuff in it and slides in a very tight space, within three or four frets, and that’s it. So that, to me, is the hardest thing about playing Purple.”
“Everything else, Ritchie was never really a full technician. So, nothing was really difficult to play technique-wise. Ritchie was more of a creative player.”
“Even ‘Highway Star,’ the fast part in that, it’s fast, but it’s not John Petrucci from Dream Theater or something ridiculously fast. It’s fast, but it fits the song. But everything else that he played was more just melodies. Ritchie played for the song most of the time. But yeah, that lick in ‘Lazy’ — that still haunts me every night when I come up to it. I’m like, ‘Oh shit, don’t screw it up!”
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