ew interview with Made In Metal, DEEP PURPLE singer Ian Gillan was asked how he feels about the band’s current guitarist Simon McBride performing songs that were originally written and recorded by Ritchie Blackmore. Ian responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Oh, first of all, Simon is a genius. He’s absolutely fantastic. He’s got all the energy and articulation and musical skills and creative skills that you could ever dream of. You can’t compare Ritchie with Simon or with [former DEEP PURPLE guitarist] Steve Morse or with [ex-PURPLE touring guitarist] Joe Satriani, the players that we’ve had in a band. And I think that Ritchie has to have all the credit in the world. He’s a genius. He was fantastic. I thought he was brilliant. And he was my roommate and we partnered and we shared a lot together. And then things, for some reason, went wrong later on. And I’m sure half of it was my fault, so those days were dim and distant. But as far as the guitar is concerned, Simon interprets these songs very, very brilliantly.”
He continued: “For a start-off, when you’re playing… Steve Morse had this same difficulty. When you’re playing a well-known solo or a well-known guitar part, or any part for that matter, the thing you have to do, the trick is to play the recognizable parts, the parts that everyone knows that are significant in that solo, and then you can freeform in between. But you’ve gotta pick up and show respect for the song and the original record, because that’s how people like it. If you meander around a bit in the solo, that’s also fine, but you’ve gotta start and end and do the bits that people know. Apart from that, Simon’s approach to every song has just been to throw himself at it.
