Ritchie Blackmore has never been shy about his influences. While his guitar work with Deep Purple helped define the sound of hard rock, he’s always been vocal about the players who shaped his style. Among his favorites, three names stood out—Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen, and Jimi Hendrix—each of whom left a lasting impact on how he approached the instrument.
Blackmore first fell in love with Jeff Beck’s playing after hearing The Yardbirds’ “Shapes of Things.” He was instantly blown away, saying, “My God, who the hell is this? This shouldn’t be allowed, it’s too good.” He admired Beck’s ability to pull out sounds that seemed impossible, joking, “Jeff cheats on the guitar because he has notes that I don’t have on my guitar.”
Eddie Van Halen also left a lasting impression on him, not just for his technical prowess but for his ability to innovate while still crafting great songs.
“Eddie Van Halen was a brilliant guitarist who started a technique of guitar playing which was emulated by a whole generation of guitarists,” Blackmore said. “He was one of the nicest musicians I ever met in the music business. Very shy and not at all conceited about his ability as a guitar player.”
But if there was one guitarist who had the biggest influence on Blackmore’s playing, it was Jimi Hendrix. Unlike Beck and Van Halen, whose styles he admired, Hendrix’s sound directly shaped Deep Purple’s music.
Blackmore admitted that in many ways, his band picked up where Hendrix left off, saying, “We were just taking over, in a way, from someone like Hendrix. Very musical, very bombastic, but we tried to develop certain riffs that we had, and we did borrow from Hendrix a lot.”
This influence is most evident in Deep Purple’s “Speed King,” a blistering track from their In Rock album. Blackmore openly credited Hendrix for inspiring the song’s foundation.
“’Speed King’… That was based on ‘Stone Free,’ Jimi Hendrix,” he revealed. “I really liked his stuff at the time. And it was a little bit of ‘Fire.’ Do you remember ‘Fire’ by Jimi Hendrix?”
Hendrix’s impact wasn’t just about technique—he revolutionized the way people thought about the guitar. When he first arrived in the UK, his approach was like nothing anyone had seen before. His playing was fluid and emotive, his improvisations stretched beyond convention, and his stage presence was mesmerizing. He treated the guitar like an extension of himself, moving in ways that felt entirely alien yet completely natural.
Even Jeff Beck, another one of Blackmore’s idols, was left stunned by Hendrix’s arrival. Recalling the first time he saw Hendrix perform, Beck admitted, “I was embarrassed because I thought, ‘God, that should be me up there.’ I just hadn’t had the guts to come out and do it so flamboyantly, really. He just looked like an animal, played like an animal, and everybody went crazy.”
Blackmore may have had a unique voice on the guitar, but when it came to “Speed King,” there was no hiding where he got his fire from. In Hendrix, he found the spark that helped light Deep Purple’s most explosive moments.
