After a 13-year hiatus, guitar legend Ritchie Blackmore has revived Rainbow and is touring in support.

After a 13-year hiatus, guitar legend Ritchie Blackmore has revived Rainbow and is touring in support of the band’s latest release, Stranger in Us All. Ritchie, who plied his trade in Deep Purple from 1968 to 1975, went out on his own in Rainbow from that year through ‘84, and then rejoined Deep Purple for Perfect Strangers and stayed till ’93. He’s now recommitted to Rainbow and plans to stay on the road with the group through the year. Richie talked about his plans and more in a recent telephone interview.

I left because I didn’t like working with a band that was corporate rock, I didn’t think they were going anywhere. Too much nostalgia. I was concerned with the way the singer was not singing. The rest of the band weren’t particularly bothered by that but it really got to me. We were doing very good business but I didn’t feel what we were playing was honest.

That’s right. People ask me how it feels to play smaller places. I don’t mind at all as long as the music’s honest and there are some people there to watch. And I make more money. With this lineup I’m very lucky to have Doogie White, he knows exactly what I want in a singer and combines all the good points of all the old singers as well as having his own style. He’s so on the ball with knowledge of the old stuff.

I think so. I think the grunge thing was okay for a while but there were too many bands suddenly becoming grunge bands and it was dishonest. It was saturation. Everybody is rebelling against everybody else and it doesn’t mean anything anymore. I think it might go the full circle. It would be nice to see hard rock bands back with melodic content. What bothered me about the grunge bands was the dissonance coming from the singer. I always found that hard to take. I love melodies. What I’m doing now is very melodic. It’s an acoustic project that involves my fiancée Candice and myself. It’s loosely based on the music of the 1500s. Guitar, vocals, keyboards, and all sorts of strange instruments.

Not as many as people think. I have about 12. I don’t go endorsing everybody. I endorse Fender and Washburn and that’s enough. My main one is Fender which I’ve played for 25 years. The others are acoustic. I’m a bit against that musical snobbery where people say, “The early Fenders are the best.” I don’t agree, some of the early Fenders had terrible necks. Fender made some excellent guitars in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Yeah, that’s when I’d start drinking. I still get nervous, as to whether I can pull out the sounds I want to hear and I get aggravated sometimes if we’re playing places where the acoustics aren’t right or the band isn’t playing well. It’s very hard for me to say, “another dollar, another day,” unlike some people I know. You can only just cross your fingers and hope for the best. You never get a perfect show. You can come close, but there are too many variables. The electricity can go off or a string will break. But the audience is a lot more tolerant than I would think.

I used to play a thing called a dog box, in a local skiffle band. It’s a piece of string on a broom handle that goes into a tea chest. I played in Chislehurst Caves, it’s 22 miles of underground caves near London. I had the guitar then but I wasn’t good enough to play so I played the dog box. I also had a washboard I played with thimbles.

No, I sold it to buy my second, and sold that to buy my third. I love to go to guitar shops and look in the windows. I love the Gretsch Duo Jet. Now I could go and buy all the guitars I used to stare at when I was 15 but I’d rather stare through the window and take myself back to the feeling I had in the old days. I don’t want to buy everything I’d like. I probably wouldn’t play it. It would be on the shelf.

Listen to everybody and steal from everybody and get your own style. Don’t steal from just one person. State your case in one area. That’s important. If you become a jack of all trades you don’t usually succeed.