Blackmore vs Page

Over on the Reddit r/HeavyMetal sub, a discussion about the merits of Ritchie Blackmore has been rumbling on.

I stated that I thought Blackmore was (and still is) “A better player with a better track record of innovation, originality and consistency than Jimmy Page, yet somehow Page is the one lauded“.  A couple of people agreed.  Then, as usual, a Page-fluffer came back with, “But Jimmy Page was a superior songwriter and producer. Let’s not forget his favorite project, Blackmore’s Ego“.

This was my response:

Name some successful songs Page has written outside Led Zeppelin.

You can’t because he’s not written anything of note outside one band that only lasted 10 years (give or take). He’s spent the last 30-40 years remixing the Led Zeppelin albums. He didn’t produce them either, he just keeps remixing them, tinkering with what Andy Johns did.

Yes, Ritchie Blackmore has an ego, but he’s earned it with the likes of Black Night, Smoke On The Water, Mistreated, Stormbringer, Burn, Pictures Of Home, Speed King, Highway Star, Stargazer, Since You Been Gone, I Surrender… the solo he just played off the cuff during the live recording of Concerto For Group and Orchestra…(he didn’t even want to be there and made his displeasure well known, and channelled that annoyance to do… that piece of sublime genius). With the different eras of both Deep Purple, Rainbow and Blackmore’s Night, he’s effectively modified his style six times (Deep Purple Mks I-III, shifting from Psychedelic Rock to Proto Metal/Progressive Rock (as Jon Lord called it) to Blues Rock, then Heavy Metal for the first incarnation of Rainbow to Hard Rock for the post-Dio era and to Medieval for Blackmore’s Night, whilst still being recognisably Ritchie Blackmore.

Oh yeah… and successfully fusing Baroque music with electric guitar playing – he was literally the first person to do that. Unfortunately, that paved the way for the likes of Yngwie Malmsteen and the worst excesses of the graduates of the Guitar Institute Of Technology, but you can’t have everything.

Unlike Page consistently and constantly re-releasing Led Zeppelin songs that had their riffs appropriated from Blues guitarists (so much so that those Blues guitarists have, because of legal action, been credited on Zeppelin’s albums), Blackmore has kept pushing forward and writing and performing new music.

I’m not saying Jimmy Page wasn’t a decent player in his time. He was. He wouldn’t have got so much session work if he was crap. But he fell on his feet when The Yardbirds split up and Peter Grant helped him put together The New Yardbirds (Page didn’t even come up with the name – that distinction belongs to Keith Moon who told him his new band would go down like “a lead zeppelin”), then changed the name.

If it hadn’t been for Peter Grant, Jimmy Page would have faded into obscurity, earning his living as a session guitarist in Blues Rock bands and playing residencies with more famous musicians at Ronnie Scott’s, lagging behind Jeff Beck (who really was a genius and is criminally underrated outside a select few) and Eric Clapton (the racist one-trick pony who couldn’t keep it in his pants).

Page just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right manager. Blackmore, even now in his 80’s, can still play rings round him. He proved that when he got up on stage with Deep Purple back in August to play Smoke On The Water one more time.