{"id":19572,"date":"2016-06-26T11:47:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T10:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=19572"},"modified":"2016-06-26T11:47:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-26T10:47:00","slug":"ritchie-blackmore-birmingham-genting-arena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=19572","title":{"rendered":"Ritchie Blackmore @ Birmingham Genting Arena"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tickets for this sold out in about five seconds, so I had to use my ticket guy to get me in. He came up trumps, with a second-row VIP ticket (free parking and free meal thrown in).\"Mostly<\/p>\n

The last time Ritchie Blackmore played rock was almost 20 years ago, but up till then he made his reputation as the main man in Deep Purple and Rainbow (they were his<\/strong> bands at the time). Since then, he\u2019s pursued his love of folk and mediaeval type music with his band, Blackmore\u2019s Night.<\/p>\n

No one imagined he\u2019d come back to rock \u2013 always aloof, with a reputation of being difficult to work with, he had always said he never would. Then, last year, he suddenly announced three one-off gigs around Europe (don\u2019t get me started on Europe), one of which was in the UK, nice and central in Birmingham.\"Ritchie<\/p>\n

You have to put this into perspective. Ritchie Blackmore doing this show was pretty much equivalent to Led Zeppelin\u2019s one-off gig in 2007. Perhaps not exactly the same, but definitely up there. The cosmopolitan nature of the crowd showed this, if nothing else: there were Americans, Japanese, and many Europeans present. Deep Purple and Rainbow were<\/strong> that big in the 70s and 80s, and Ritchie Blackmore is considered a guitar-god in the rock world.<\/p>\n

The support band was Mostly Autumn (well, mostly \u2013 four of the six-strong line up). I\u2019ve seen them before, at the Rescue Rooms in Nottingham, but this was a huge step up from the couple of hundred capacity there to a sold-out 15,500+ arena. They did bloody well, too.\"Ronnie<\/p>\n

Ritchie had caused not a little consternation in the music world by refusing to use any of the people who\u2019d been in either Deep Purple or Rainbow in the past in this new incarnation of Rainbow. Some quarters of the music press were suggesting he\u2019d go down like a lead balloon as a result. Ever outspoken \u2013 but logical with it \u2013 Blackmore had explained his reasons, which were sound if you looked at them objectively, objectionable if you hankered after the past. I initially had an open mind on the subject, but sided with Ritchie when I read that he doesn\u2019t like hip hop music (well, not in 1995 he didn\u2019t).\"Ritchie<\/p>\n

It should come as no surprise to learn that the media were wrong. As the band came on stage to the strains of Over the Rainbow, and to rapturous applause and cheers, they burst into Highway Star. In vocalist, Ronnie Romero, there is someone who could match Ian Gillan, David Coverdale, Graham Bonnet,\u00a0 Joe Lynn Turner, or anyone else, note for note. And it quickly became clear that keyboardist, Jens Johansson, they have a player who could definitely do justice to the late, great Jon Lord\u2019s legendary finger work.\"Ritchie<\/p>\n

Over the years, I\u2019ve read a lot about Ritchie Blackmore, and something which always intrigued me was how many previous band members (Deep Purple) have said that Ritchie would go off on lengthy improvised solos, and it became a skill to work out when he had finished and they should come back in. A lot of years have passed since those days, but obviously \u2013 in order to duplicate classic songs \u2013 there had to be some showboating. You could see Ritchie keeping an eye on his band, and then giving them the nod when he was coming to a point where they should continue with the song.\"The<\/p>\n

The full set list was as follows:<\/p>\n