6. Taking the Lead: Ritchie Blackmore and Tommy Bolin (re)shape Heavy rock virtuosity
Who Do We Think They Are? - Deep Purple and Metal Studies - Andy R. Brown
Kevin Fellezs [+]
Columbia University
Description
Part One ends with a detailed and thought-provoking comparative discussion by Kevin Fellezs that seeks to compare the guitar virtuosity of Blackmore with that of Tommy Bolin. Fellezs begins by contrasting the reputation of the two guitarists in respect of the legacy of the Mk2 Made in Japan (1972) ‘live’ album, considered one of the best hard rock ‘live’ recordings of the 1970s, with Mk4’s Last Concert in Japan (1977), considered one of the most critically ‘panned’ Purple ‘live’ recordings, even by bandmembers themselves. He then discusses what happened in the five years between the two recordings and why it matters? Of course, what he is alluding to here is that Bolin, from joining Deep Purple as the chosen replacement (by the band) for Blackmore, had a very short career that ended in tragedy due to his drug addiction.17 But what Bolin brought to the Mk4 band was a jazz and funk style of virtuosity that decidedly contrasted with Blackmore’s hard rock and neo-classical style. By offering a detailed overview of the musical trajectory of both guitarists – Blackmore in terms of the studio and ‘live’ performances of his Purple career, and Bolin in terms of his jazz-rock career prior to joining Mk4, as well as his innovative contribution to Come Taste The Band (1975) – Fellezs seeks to ‘think through’ the changing role of the lead guitarist in 1970s rock, particularly in the way their contrasting modes of virtuosity transformed ideas about rock music at the time. Placing the work of Blackmore and Bolin within Deep Purple against the work both guitarists produced outside of the band, he argues that their respective approaches to hard rock lead guitar broadly speaks to the ways in which early heavy metal was already revealing trends that would appear much later, such as symphonic metal, in the case of Blackmore, and ‘nu-metal’, in the case of Bolin – to say nothing of their role in the rise of the shred, or virtuoso, metal guitarist. In this respect, the chapter seeks to analyse their respective aesthetic approaches – Blackmore’s interest in European medieval music and Bolin’s interest in music styles such as jazz and funk – as indicative of the directions their work would pull metal guitarists in their wake. In this respect, their divergent musical interests made for distinct versions of Deep Purple, repositioning the band as foundational in ways that recalibrates the way we have come to understand heavy metal history and its technical development.