By Martin Popoff
"I got into this about six years ago I would say. But I've been listening to this music ever since I heard David Munrow. He recorded with The Early Music Consort of London. He recorded some music for Henry VIII, a TV program on BBC which I saw in 1972, and I loved the music. Ever since I heard it I've been hooked on it, but more from the point of view of listening for pleasure. I very seldom listen to rock at all. I would only listen to this other stuff, and then I would play it around the house. About six years ago Candy started singing it around the house. And I suddenly noticed and realized that it was working in the context of the melodies being so good from those days, the 1500's. She would interpret those melodies and put lyrics to them, and that was the way we put the songs together."
Going into Deep Purple in the late '60s, were you aware that you were one of the first incorporating classical music into the context of electric guitar?
"I suppose I was in a way. There was another band out at the time called The Nice, Keith Emerson's band, and they were doing similar stuff to what we were doing; they were doing classical music rocked up. So I suppose the music I'm doing now is not so different from the music I was doing then. It's just that now I'm not doing it with such a loud lead guitar, mostly acoustic. But the progressions are very similar and the arrangements are similar to what we would have done back in those days. But I've always been impressed with the classics. They have a sense of drama, a sense of depth that rock 'n' roll doesn't have for me so much."
BLACKMORE'S NIGHT - Ablaze On Long Island Page 5