“I thought, Why do they want me in the front row?” Ritchie Blackmore on Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the time Ian Anderson pranked him at a Jethro Tull concert

Ritchie Blackmore has never been shy in his regard for his fellow musicians. And not surprisingly, some of his comments have been highly controversial.

In 1991, he raised a stink with his appraisal of Jimi Hendrix. “I was impressed by Hendrix,” he told Guitar World in 1991. “Not so much by his playing as his attitude. He wasn’t a great player, but everything else about him was brilliant. Even the way he walked was amazing. His guitar playing, though, was always a little bit weird.”

In that same interview, Blackmore offered an uncomplimentary view of another Fender Stratocaster player. "Stevie Ray Vaughan was very intense. Maybe that's what caught everybody's attention,” he suggested. “As a player, he didn't do anything amazing."

Which raises the question, what musical artist does impress the erstwhile Deep Purple/Rainbow guitarist?

If it’s not obvious, think for a moment about the music he makes now with his Renaissance folk-rock act Blackmore’s Night. What other band in rock history comes close?

If you guessed Jethro Tull, you’re correct. In fact, in Blackmore's and Tull’s heyday, the guitarist would catch the band every chance he had. Blackmore admired music built on originality and complexity, and he was impressed by Anderson's flair for crafting highly intricate baroque-flavored rock in convoluted meters.

“Ian Anderson is a genius, especially with his later stuff,” Blackmore told Guitar Player writer Steven Rosen for his cover story in the December 1977 issue. “It's horrifying to think how he wrote that stuff. But if you talk to him, he goes, ‘Oh, I just count two.’ But you can't count two over that — it's 9 over 5 1/2! Martin Barre and the rest of the group must have memories like computers to remember that.

“Admittedly I wouldn't like to be in that band playing the same thing every night," he added. "But I love to go and see them. I see them at least four times a year."

Blackmore — who was known to have Tull's "SeaLion" playing in venues prior to his shows — admitted that he’d become such a fan boy, Ian Anderson once decided to take the piss out of him in front of a packed theater.

"In fact the last time I went and saw them was in Paris, and they put me right in the front row," he said. "I thought, "Why do they want me in the front row right in front of Ian Anderson?"

“So it came to the last number and Ian leaps off the stage and lands in my lap and starts singing to me. The spotlight is on me and I'm trying to act cool because my girlfriend was there."

Although he was less than thrilled at having his tough-guy public persona messed with, Blackmore was charmed by the episode and continued to to love Anderson's work. “Whenever he brings out a new LP, I say I hope it's not as good as the rest of them, because then I'll feel a little bit better that I can't write like that," he said. "And sure enough, he comes out with another blinder. He gets so involved he writes a symphony.”

Blackmore was somewhat less enthused about Tull guitarist Martin Barre, and shared some blunt opinions that, while fair, weren’t the kind of thing to win him any favor.

“Martin is fun, he's got a great memory, but he hasn't learned to improvise too well I think,” Blackmore said. “He's got a problem there with his fingers, but he's still great. You can't say anything against him because he's such a nice guy.”

As we reported here recently, Blackmore was highly complimentary about former Beatle George Harrison when the two greats teamed up in 1984 during an Australian tour in support of Deep Purple MkII's album Perfect Strangers. But it seems he was more impressed by George’s feet than his playing.

“George was very modest,” he concludes. “A very quiet man. I noticed onstage that he had big feet, because he was tapping out the rhythm. I looked down at one point and thought, My god, he has big feet!”