Ritchie Blackmore: 'I try not to have fun. I work very hard at not having fun.'

Quizzed by The Guardian about why Rainbow has featured more than twenty members over the decades, in keeping with his reputation, the septuagenarian rock legend was brutally honest in his response.

“I’ve been told it’s because I don’t pay anybody,” Ritchie explained. “I don’t see why that should make a difference. If you’re into music, you should do it for nothing. In fact, that’s the way the music business is going, isn’t it? I thought artists were expected to play for nothing.”

After the interviewer told Ritchie that being in Rainbow doesn’t sound like too much fun, Ritchie responded: “I try not to have fun. I work very hard at not having fun.”

He continued: “I don’t think the world is a fun place. I’m very content in my own mind, in a way, but fun, I’m not too sure about. I don’t quite know what fun is. I don’t know why I should walk around with a perpetual grin on my face, saying everything’s wonderful.

“I just don’t fit into the ‘fun’ area. A lot of musicians go: ‘Oh, that was fun.’ Well, I like to think that music is very serious, and it’s not fun.

“I’m not one of these guys that likes jamming with people and having fun; music is too serious, and I don’t feel like I can relate if I’m having fun. It’s hard work and it’s really gratifying to do, but fun? Fun is something where someone tells a joke and they laugh for 10 seconds. Music’s much deeper than that.”

Elsewhere, Ritchie spoke about his relationship with Graham Bonnet and how he feuded with the ‘Since You Been Gone’ and ‘All Night Long’ singer over his hair.

“We were a long-hair band,” Ritchie told The Guardian. “In 79, everybody wore denim and had straggly hair. But he looked like a Las Vegas casino man. He had such a great voice, we thought: ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. We’ll rough him up a bit round the edges.’ But he never took to that.”

After Graham reluctantly refrained from having his haircut for several months, on the day of their first UK gig together Ritchie says he did all within his powers to stop the singer visiting a hairdressers.

“We had a roadie guarding his dressing room, to stop him getting out, because he was threatening to have his hair cut,” Ritchie said. “It was very petty, but it had become an obsession with me. But he got out of the back window and went and got his hair cut. I didn’t see him until we went on stage, and, sure enough, he’d had his hair cut really short. He was doing it just to annoy me.

“I took it as an insult. I don’t think I spoke to him again after that.”

The current incarnation of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow release the new single ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ today (26th May) together with a new version of ‘I Surrender.’

The artwork looks like this:

Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow play the following UK shows next month:

JUNE 2017
London The O2 @ Stone Free Festival – Sat 17th
Manchester Arena – Thu 22nd
Glasgow The SSE Hydro – Sun 25th
Birmingham Genting Arena – Wed 28th