Blackmore Quotes & Sayings

What's the point of re-releasing an album? The original sounded good, why change something about it? — Ritchie Blackmore

For the planet's sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we're doomed. — Susan Blackmore

I'm very moved by Renaissance music, but I still love to play hard rock - though only if it's sophisticated and has some thought behind it. — Ritchie Blackmore

I'm not good enough, technically, to be a classic musician. I lack discipline. — Ritchie Blackmore

brace covered his neck. Dark, fingerless gloves covered his hands to allow a better grip on his shotgun. An aluminum baseball bat was slung across his back, Samurai-style, in a crude scabbard next to a large backpack He — Keith C. Blackmore

Pete Townshend used to crash chords and let the guitar feed back. He's overrated. — Ritchie Blackmore

I wandered in the streets, what with the noise the people made, the number of the coaches, the running of the footmen, the swaggering of great courtiers, and the thrusting aside of everybody, many a time I longed to be back among the sheep again, for fear of losing my peacefulness of spirit. — R.D. Blackmore

Only a pint at breakfast-time, and a pint and a half at eleven o'clock, and a quart or so at dinner. And then no more till the afternoon; and half a gallon at supper-time. No one can object to that. — R.D. Blackmore

I have not come up with anything original. It needs a better brain than mine! I have done what I can do in taking Dawkins' idea and extending it. — Susan Blackmore

Simplicity is the key. — Ritchie Blackmore

Either love me not at all, or as I love you, for ever. — R.D. Blackmore

When something is not good, it's bad. Period. — Ritchie Blackmore

You own a watch the invention of the mind, though for a single motion 'tis designed, as well as that which is with greater thought with various springs, for various motions wrought. — Richard Blackmore

The sale of sex in modern societies is not about spreading genes. Sex has been taken over by the memes. — Susan Blackmore

I've always played every amp I've ever had full up, because rock and roll is supposed to be played loud. Also, that's how you get your sustain. — Ritchie Blackmore

brought them along nevertheless, remembering the old line, it was better to have and not need, than need and not have. Gus shook his head once, — Keith C. Blackmore

Now let us bandy words no more ... nothing is easier than sharp words, except to wish them unspoken. — R.D. Blackmore

Playing a Fender is an art itself. They're always going out of tune. — Ritchie Blackmore

I however don't go to clubs to show off and to be seen, and certainly not to make statements. I just want to be able to quietly watch a band. — Ritchie Blackmore

They used to complain at school that I looked out of the window for long periods of time - that sums up my life. I like to look out the window, do nothing, daydream. — Ritchie Blackmore

I don't use the twang bar anymore. It's become too popular. — Ritchie Blackmore

It's possible that the reason I've never experienced a ghostly presence is that my temporal lobes aren't wired for it. It could well be that the main difference between skeptics (Susan Blackmore notwithstanding) and believers is the neural structure they were born with. But the question still remains: Are these people whose EMF-influenced brains alert them to "presences" picking up something real that the rest of us can't pick up, or are they hallucinating? Here again, we must end with the Big Shrug, a statue of which is being erected on the lawn outside my office. — Mary Roach

Session work makes you more strict. You can't hit notes all over the place. You've got to make each one really count. — Ritchie Blackmore

If everyone understood evolution, then the tyranny of religious memes would be weakened, and we little humans might find a better way to live in this pointless universe. — Susan Blackmore

I was impressed by Hendrix. Not so much by his playing, as his attitude - he wasn't a great player, but everything else about him was brilliant. — Ritchie Blackmore

pockets, feeling the extra shotgun shells, and then reached over his shoulder and felt the bat, ready to grab if needed. He had combat knives sheathed in both boots, but it was rare that he got to use those. He brought them — Keith C. Blackmore

If we take memetics seriously then the 'me' that could do the choosing is itself a memetic construct: a fluid and ever-changing group of memes installed in a complicated meme machine. — Susan Blackmore

When you're recording, if you're not really clean in your playing, it sounds like a mess. — Ritchie Blackmore

When you've toured for about 10 years like me, you end up feeling like you're always waiting for somebody or something. The whole day is a drag. — Ritchie Blackmore

I feel like I own the stage. — Ritchie Blackmore

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they think about memes is they try to extend on the analogy with genes. That's not how it works. It works by realizing the concept of a replicator. — Susan Blackmore

All things considered, I can see no reason to adopt the afterlife hypothesis. I am sure I shall remain in a minority for a long time to come, especially among experiencers, but for me the evidence and the arguments are overwhelming ... We are biological organisms, evolved in fascinating ways for no purpose at all and with no end in mind. We are simply here and this is how it is. I have no self and "I" own nothing. There is no one to die. There is just this moment, and now this, and now this. — Susan Blackmore

I love collecting guitars, even though I can't play well. My favourite guitarists are Richie Blackmore, Jimmy Paige, and John Mayer. — Kiefer Sutherland

Take male strategies for success in the world. If you've got all the advantages, if you're attractive and clever and all of that, you will generally go for very high quality females. — Susan Blackmore

The self," Blackmore writes, "is just a fleeting impression that arises with each experience and fades away again. . . . There is no inner self," she argues, "only multiple parallel processes that give rise to a benign inner delusion - a useful fiction." She argues that consciousness itself is a fiction. — Sy Montgomery

Because I rant not, neither rave of what I feel, can you be so shallow as to dream that I feel nothing? — R.D. Blackmore

I found the blues too limiting, and classical was too disciplined. — Ritchie Blackmore

If you can play well in the studio, you can play well on stage. — Ritchie Blackmore

In proportion to our body mass, our brain is three times as large as that of our nearest relatives. This huge organ is dangerous and painful to give birth to, expensive to build and, in a resting human, uses about 20 per cent of the body's energy even though it is just 2 per cent of the body's weight. There must be some reason for all this evolutionary expense. — Susan Blackmore

Learning to play with a big amplifier is like trying to control an elephant. — Ritchie Blackmore

I don't put myself on Jeff Beck's level, but I can relate to him when he says he'd rather be working on his car collection than playing the guitar. — Ritchie Blackmore

The only way you can get good, unless you're a genius, is to copy. That's the best thing. Just steal. — Ritchie Blackmore

I can do the old hand vibrato just fine, but I like attacking the strings. — Ritchie Blackmore

'Curio vult advisari,' as the lawyers say; which means, 'Let us have another glass, and then we can think about it.' — R.D. Blackmore

Consciousness is an illusion constructed by the memes. — Susan Blackmore

Hendrix inspired me, but I was still more into Wes Montgomery. I was also into the Allman Brothers around the time of those albums. — Ritchie Blackmore

He drove a kilometer before he pulled over with a curse. — Keith C. Blackmore

I have never met one person who likes Grand Funk. — Ritchie Blackmore

Combing my hair doesn't make me a better musician. — Ritchie Blackmore

Finally, we might decide that civilisation itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and which people would be needed in a drastically reduced population - weighing the value of scientists and musicians against that of politicians, for example. — Susan Blackmore

Humans are often credited with having real foresight, in distinction to the rest of biology which does not. For example, Dawkins compares the 'blind watchmaker' of natural selection with the real human one. 'A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection ... has no purpose in mind'.
I think this distinction is wrong. There is no denying that the human watchmaker is different from the natural one. We humans, by virtue of having memes, can think about cogs, and wheels, and keeping time, in a way that animals cannot. Memes are the mind tools with which we do it. But what memetics shows us is that the processes underlying the two kinds of design are essentially the same. They are both evolutionary processes that give rise to design through selection, and in the process they produce what looks like foresight. — Susan Blackmore

I never work out my leads. Everything I do is usually totally spontaneous. If someone says, 'That was good; play that again,' I'm not able to do it. — Ritchie Blackmore

Knowing Master Huckaback to be a man of his word, as well as one who would have others so, I was careful to be in good time the next morning ... — R.D. Blackmore

Too bad a person couldn't pick whom they shared the apocalypse with. — Keith C. Blackmore

Johnny Winter is one of the best blues players in the world. He's very underrated. — Ritchie Blackmore

I replaced Walsh, I replaced Blackmore, now I just gotta be me. — Tommy Bolin

The dark leaden mask hides the devil with a soul of deceit, with his warm syrupy vacuous words coercing, enticing and grasping with exposed sharpened claws, scratching slow at his prey's surface with bullet pointed precision, inserting the slow hot mercurial poison of falsification of love straight into the flowing veins of the succumbing vulnerable heart. The prey's wanton escape futile, isolated & drawn into the hot fiery abyss. — Alison Blackmore

Imagine a world full of brains, and far more memes than can possibly find homes. Which memes are more likely to find a safe home and get passed on again? — Susan Blackmore

When I was 20, I didn't give a damn about song construction. I just wanted to make as much noise and play as fast and as loud as possible. — Ritchie Blackmore

night. It was too dangerous. He drove in silence, struggling to keep his attention on the black — Keith C. Blackmore

Certainly almost everything we do and think is colored in some way by memes, but it is important to realize that not everything we experience is a meme. If I walk down the street and see a tree, the basic perception that's going on is not memetic. — Susan Blackmore

Memetics provides a new approach to the evolution of language in which we apply Darwinian thinking to two replicators, not one. On this theory, memetic selection, as well as genetic selection, does the work of creating language. — Susan Blackmore

When you're around someone good, your own standards are raised. — Ritchie Blackmore

Parapsychology seems to be growing further away from the progress and excitement of the rest of consciousness studies. — Susan Blackmore

When I say that consciousness is an illusion I do not mean that consciousness does not exist. I mean that consciousness is not what it appears to be. If it seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed experiences, happening one after the other to a conscious person, this is the illusion. — Susan Blackmore

Listening to as many guitar solos as possible is the best method for someone in the early stages. But saxophone solos can be helpful. They're interesting because they are all single notes, and therefore can be repeated on the guitar. If you can copy a sax solo you're playing very well, because the average saxophonist can play much better than the average guitarist. — Ritchie Blackmore

We are now becoming, by Blackmore's estimation, teme machines - servants to the evolution of our own technologies. — Michael Harris

I can imagine that Rod Stewart likes giving autographs because he's pure showbusiness. — Ritchie Blackmore

I think a lot about death more than life, because we're going towards death. — Ritchie Blackmore

A lot of blues guitarists play with only three fingers, and they can't figure out certain runs that require the use of their little fingers. Classical training is good for that. — Ritchie Blackmore

The sun was directly overhead, but blotted out by low storm clouds as depressing as suicide. — Keith C. Blackmore

I like leaping around on stage as long as it's done with class. None of this jumping up in the air and doing the splits. — Ritchie Blackmore

Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and I wanted to be a hard rock band - we wanted to play rock and roll only. — Ritchie Blackmore

I criticize my own work pretty harshly. — Ritchie Blackmore

'Temes' [technology-enhanced memes] don't care about us - they simply want to create more of themselves. Don't think we created the internet for our own benefit - think about temes spreading for themselves because they must. — Susan Blackmore

Poof," Ross said. "I'm still here." "You smell something?" Kirk asked. "Smell what? My fuckin' nostrils froze up long ago. — Keith C. Blackmore

When Debbie was fourteen, she felt "impressed by the Lord" to marry Ray Blackmore, the community leader. Debbie asked her father to share her divine impression with Prophet LeRoy Johnson, who would periodically travel to Bountiful from Short Creek to perform various religious duties. Because Debbie was lithe and beautiful, Uncle Roy approved of the match. A year later the prophet returned to Canada and married her to the ailing fifty-seven-year-old Blackmore. As his sixth wife, Debbie became a stepmother to Blackmore's thirty-one kids, most of whom were older than she was. And because he happened to be the father of Debbie's own stepmother, Mem, she unwittingly became a stepmother to her stepmother, and thus a step grandmother to herself. — Jon Krakauer

Be always adventurous in the creating and sharing of your art in any form. Take risks and do not settle for playing safe. If you hesitate you are restraining your creativity. Some will appreciate your creative work and others will not. Just be free in expressing the creative you! — Alison Blackmore

Jimi ... He was the gov'nor and that's it. He was brilliant, wasn't he? — Ritchie Blackmore

In my early days, I never used finger vibrato at all. I originally carved my reputation as one of the 'fast' guitar players. — Ritchie Blackmore

Everything I do is usually totally spontaneous. — Ritchie Blackmore

But you have to give your whole life to a cello. When I realized that, I went back to the guitar and just turned the volume up a bit louder. — Ritchie Blackmore

But whatever lives or dies, business must be attended to; and the principal business of good Christians is, beyond all controversy, to fight with one another. — R.D. Blackmore

If you found a mammal with feathers, then you'd know that Darwin was wrong. Well, it's rather the same with memes. — Susan Blackmore

Stevie Ray Vaughan was very intense. Maybe that's what caught everybody's attention. As a player, he didn't do anything amazing. — Ritchie Blackmore

Science has, after all, made some colossal blunders in the past ... Our current materialism and its rejection of the idea of a spirit or soul might be just another great falsity. — Susan Blackmore

I would just like to say that Ritchie Blackmore did a bunch of great stuff guitar - wise. I'm happy to play the solo from 'Highway Star'. I always thought it was one of the most exciting guitar solos I'd ever played ... — Steve Morse

May be we are not such fools as we look. But though we be, we are well content, so long as we may be two fools together. — R.D. Blackmore

I had given up the guitar between '75 and '78. I completely lost interest. I was sick of hearing other guitar players and I was tired of my tunes. — Ritchie Blackmore

It is sweet to see how soon a spring becomes a rill, and a rill runs on into a rivulet, and a rivulet swells into a brook; and before one has time to say 'what are you at?' - before the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the first hill it ever ran down has turned blue, here we all have airs and graces, demands and assertions of a full grown river. — R.D. Blackmore

It seemed to me that if the lawyers failed to do their duty, they ought to pay people for waiting upon them, instead of making them pay for it. — R.D. Blackmore

I was always stuck in a musical no man's land. — Ritchie Blackmore

Those record companies don't know what's happening at all. — Ritchie Blackmore

being critical is more than just doing critique, as social change that leads to equity also requires informing policy and practice through advocacy and activism — Jill Blackmore

Free will and consciousness is an illusion, and the self is a complex of memes. — Susan Blackmore

Ritchie Blackmore was a huge early influence on me, but after that I had to find my own way ... Johann Sebastian Bach was probably the most influential guy ever on me ... Vivaldi, Beethoven and eventually Paganini ... all of a sudden I was thinking in all these other areas, instead of blues riffs ... — Yngwie Malmsteen

Had Kurt Cobain not committed suicide in 1994, would his genius have survived the continuous incisions of a media that was only too proud of its ability to chisel away at his fragile psyche in the years before he decided that he'd had enough off their invasions? And, had Jimi Hendrix not passed way in 1970, would he, too have eventually fallen into decline, first equalled, then eclipsed by the brilliant wave of new guitarists: Robin Trower, Ritchie Blackmore, Mick Ronson, who emerged during the early 1970s? In death, Hendrix led by example: in life he could have been left for the dead. — Dave Thompson

I can turn on some jazz guitarist, and he won't do a thing for me, if he's not playing electrically. But Jeff Beck's great to listen to. — Ritchie Blackmore

If a ballet dancer falls over, it's knowing how to get out looking clumsy that counts. — Ritchie Blackmore

Take to the study of the law. Possession is nine points of it, which thou hast of me. Self-possession is the tenth ... — R.D. Blackmore