Ritchie Blackmore's "Pictures of Home" solo - most technical guitar solo recorded up to that point?

More utter nonsense.

Have you ever heard of a guy named John McLaughlin?

Maybe you should check him out....

 

In 1978 Ritchie said (in Guitar Player?) that Pictures of Home and Gates of Babylon was his favorite solos (not counting Highway Star)

I also like the second solo from the 1997 remix

 

McLaughlin is in my opinion very fast and has very nice melodies and phrasing but I don't recall him doing a lot of bends?

 

In terms of rock guitar he was pretty much at the top of the pile, but bringing in other genres there would be more complex guitar pieces without doubt . I put Machine Head on after work today. Not listened to it for a while . Great album , with the song in question being a great piece of music for the whole band to showcase their skills .

 

Most technical solo up to that point? Blackmore himself had already recorded a handful of blinders before Pictures Of Home. And there's Highway Star on that same album.

Unless you've come up with a new definition of the word 'technical'.

Unison bend. He picks alternating both strings, adding his lovely and quick finger vibrato on the bent string.

 

There is, in fact, a lot of bends.

 

Terry Kath's solo on "25 or 6 to 4" (from 1969) needs to be in the conversation as far as a dazzling ahead-of-its-time rock guitar solo.

Kath just kills it on this live version from 1970.

 

This solo is clearly more technical than "Highway Star". The fast part is mostly just repeated ascending four-note figures played on the top string. The part that follows that, with open string pull-offs, is IMO more challenging than the preceding part, but still not as challenging as the most technical parts of the "Pictures of Home" solo.

Thanks. Sounds very challenging to play at that speed.

 

Even Ritchie might have struggled to play the solo on this track

 

The solo in "April" off the self-titled album gets my vote for Blackmore's best (starts at 11:10).

 

After a few more listens I find the guitar solo more exciting and musical than intially, but again what impresses me, as on the Burn album, is the tone, the precise strikes, or picks, of notes, or strings, distinctly, as well as his timing and tone. So, really, the solo playing has everthing right going for it. I feel like its not just the rising range of the solo that intensifies its climax, but also the attack in his playing it seems to intesify some too. It's impressive how he gets the left and right hand, and fingers, working so well together, especially during those parts where he's 'squeezing' and manipulating the strings on the fretboard while maintaining synchronized and clean pickings. It's a tasty slice. Well pieced together, in the right place and style. Musical and perfectly executed.

 

I'm a huge fan of that song, but I actually don't care for the guitar solo as much. Relies too much on bends and sounds kind of ugly to me. I prefer the guitar work on Highway Star.

 

Wow, that's just unbelievable for 1971. Clearly faster than both Blackmore and Akkerman. I need to check out more of Ollie Halsall's work.

I will add one thing though, it seems to me that there are certain parts on the "Pictures of Home" solo where it's almost like nobody could reproduce them.

 

Incredible dexterity, speed and clearly defined notes.
Not sure what you mean by "technical".
The solo is pretty straightforward rock/blues scales and not outside the box like some of his exotic "snake charmer" and Neo-classical solos.
The solo seems to be mostly improvised with a couple of key phrases figured out beforehand.

Ole Ritchie sure loved those repeated riffs and the whammy bar used as an exclamation point. A friend used to call his use of the whammy bar as putting on the brakes at the end of a solo.

Fripp, McLaughlin and Howe were probably playing more technically difficult stuff at the time but never as exciting as the stuff Ritchie was playing.
There have been imitators but there really has never been anyone like Ritchie.

 

At the risk of being a curmudgeon I don't hear anything special in the solo. As others have said, McLaughlin J was doing some crazy stuff in the same period.

Another name to think about is Leslie West, he had some incredible solos.

But as for technical? The solo starts around 3.51 and about 4.10 you see Mr Hackett tapping, which not many other people were doing. Or you could just watch and enjoy the whole thing - and yes that is a young Phil Collins.

 

Blackmore has gone on record saying he found some of Fripps stuff difficult to master. He blows them away for excitement though. Such a clean crisp sound, where you can hear every note perfectly .

 

Regarding Ollie Halsall - I've noticed that he plays in a style reminiscent of Allan Holdsworth and Eddie Van Halen. And Holdsworth has mentioned Halsall as an influence, plus Eddie has mentioned Holdsworth as an influence. And in addition to all of this, there's some definite Blackmore influence in Eddie's playing.

Some really interesting connections among these four players

 

Peter Frampton just off the top of my head. He was doing the pentatonic mixed with blues scale and Dorian scale type solos before this Blackmore solo.
However, Blackmore's solo is great and in his trademark style the way he uses triplet rhythms and with three and four notes. His quarter tone bends are great as well. Just enough repetition.
Go to 4:54 to hear a solo that is IMO more "technical" than Blackmore's solo. More vertical playing, etc etc

 

I actually mentioned Halsell first in this thread. Ollie was more of a contemporary of Allan and they shared some ideas though Holdsworth developed them (and many other things) to unimaginable levels. They also briefly played together in Tempest.

I don't see much connection to EVH from Halsell besides some legato technique more generally perhaps but EVH was definitely impacted by Allan quite a bit and even played a very Allan inspired lick from the Tempest days on the Ice Cream Man lead break.

EVH also used to cover Rainbow's Man on a Silver Mountain in the early days too for that matter.

To get back to the technique discussion about Blackmore, one of the things which stands out early on is that he's using gain and distortion while picking cleanly quite quickly. Akkerman for example could play quickly as well but didn't have that kind of control and is a lot more approximate with his technique with any kind of gain.

Holdsworth was incredibly smooth with it and you can hear that in Tempest in particular but he's not picking all that often though a lot more than he would later go on to do. McLaughlin was also a beast and tremendously agile and inventive but it's a different bag as well.

The first rock players to follow along with more picking chops and playing reasonably cleanly with gain in the 70s at different points are Gary Moore, Michael Schenker, Uli (Ulrich) Roth, Steve Lukather, Neal Schon and Steve Morse.

The other fusion players who deserve a mention in this context are Ray Gomez, Al Di Meola and early Mike Stern from the 70s.

Blackmore really was the first prominent player in rock to have control of gain and his right hand to the extent he did early on but these and many others would soon emerge.

It's also helpful to know Ritchie was a fan, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, of players like Django, Les Paul and country phenom, Jimmy Bryant. Ritchie also knew Big Jim Sullivan and John McLaughlin personally.

Check out Bryant here and think how this might sound with gain and a Hammond alongside it:

 

I would not call that technical playing and if by 'vertical playing' you mean that Peter is addressing the harmony, I don't think that's accurate. It's appropriate blues-rock playing for sure but he's not outlining the harmony particularly.

Pete was famously a fan of Benson but he didn't really get very far into playing anything more than the garden variety modal and pentatonic moves.

 

Sorry, but I don't hear either of those two solos as being more technical than the "Pictures of Home" solo. He's clearly playing slower than Blackmore is, and those fast ultra-difficult bends are nowhere to be found.

 

Yeah, uh, thanks, I just watched and listened to the whole thing. Epic as in its entiretly. Visually, structurally, musically dynamically.

Agree on Leslie West.

 

Little sloppy, but...

 

If you had narrowed it down to Rock Guitarists you might almost, kinda, maybe had a point.
Grant Green (a monster), Wes Montgomery, Tal Farlow, Jimmy Bryant, a young George Benson, Joe Pass etc etc, were all doing things waaaay more technically advanced than Blackmore.
The "Pictures of Home" solo is based on pretty simple rock scales albeit all done expertly.

Something guitarists have noticed about Blackmore is his extensive use of his left hand pinky finger.
Clapton, Leslie West, in fact most rock guitarists when playing lead stick to the index, middle and ring finger on the left hand when playing lead.
Clapton is almost Django like in his ability to get a lot of music out using very few left hand fingers.
Blackmore is one of the few who uses his pinky to full advantage.

He truly is great.
The "Pictures of Home" solo is a physical marvel but not that musically technically advanced ...
(says me, the guy who has been playing for half a century and wishes he could play with half the ability of Blackmore)