Ritchie Blackmore may be the link between the great blues-based rockers of the '60s and the diatonic shredders of the '80s. The unique hybrid of blues rock idioms and quasi-classical modal and harmonic minor sounds he developed during his years with Deep Purple and Rainbow grew out of Hendrix, Page, and Beck while anticipating Van Halen and Malmsteen, and their countless imitators. 

Influenced by Big Jim Sullivan, Scotty Moore, James Burton, Duane Eddy, and Les Paul, Blackmore started out as a session player with the Outlaws and Screaming Lord Sutch before joining the original Deep Purple lineup in 1968. The band's early-70s incarnation may have been the prototype heavy metal band. The band's albums In Rock, Fireball, Machine Head and Made in Japan, all recorded between '70 and '73, remain landmarks of the genre, epitomized to this day by the Blackmore power chords that open "Smoke on the Water".

Long identified as a Strat cat, Blackmore actually used a Gibson ES-335 on the first two Purple albums before making the switch midway through the third and embarking on his radical tremolo bar approach. He also switched from Vox AC30 amps to customized Marshalls that he claimed pushed 500-plus watts. Blackmore says a year of early classical training influenced his compositional sense and contributed to the extraordinary dexterity of his left-hand pinky. But structured study never diminished Blackmore's penchant for musical risk-taking. "The art of chance music is knowing what to do if you don't get what you first tried for," he told Guitar Player back in 1972. "That's what interests me-playing with electricity."

By Melanie Bradley