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Ritchie Blackmore on his first meeting with Jimmy Page, and early recording sessions with Jeff Beck
Phil Weller
Tue, April 15, 2025 at 5:41 PM GMT+1
4 min read
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LEFT: Jeff Beck performs with a Fender Stratocaster circa 1975. CENTER: Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore of rock band Deep Purple performs with a red Gibson ES-335, 1969. RIGHT: Jimmy Page- performs in California in 1977.
Credit: Beck: Brian Rasic/Getty Images | Blackmore: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images | Page: Jeffrey Mayer/Rock Negatives/MediaPunch
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There’s a great deal of symmetry to be found in the early years of Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore. Both would leave behind their small village of Heston in Middlesex to become two of British rock and roll’s most prolific guitar players.
Once they’d mastered their craft enough to join bands, each cut his teeth in similar circles. And as Blackmore reveals, he knew Page was destined for greatness when they met some seven years before Led ZeppDiscussing their shared early influences in the 2015 documentary The Ritchie Blackmore Story, Blackmore says it was the guitar-wielding sidemen, rather than the star singers, who grabbed their attention from the very beginning.
“When I was 11 it was about Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly,” he says, “and they had brilliant guitar players. You had Scotty Moore [in Elvis’s band], Buddy Holly played, and you had Cliff Gallup playing for Gene Vincent. We all idolized them. It was a very exciting time.
“I think at the age of 11 or 12 we all had first our acoustic guitars and then later on we got our electrics that we’d plug into the back of a two-watt radio,” he recalls.
“But it is strange how we all come from a similar area. Jimmy Page was from the same village, it wasn’t even a town, and Clapton was a few more miles out.”elin’s 1969 debut album.
