Hearing . It’s like with Zeppelin or with Skynyrd – that’s your starter kit right there. When you think about the architects of our world, you think Cream with , which is probably the first real heavy metal riff, and then Hendrix, then Purple, Zeppelin and Sabbath.
That’s the roots of the genre right there. Yeah, I think so, because you can play it with just four notes on the low E string. I’m pretty sure that and [Black Sabbath’s] were my first two riffs.
For me personally, I was more of a Sabbath guy because there was no keyboards on there and I was all guitar, guitar, guitar...
so I think initially I was listening to friends’ copies of as we were all into our rock. But I know I have a copy somewhere. It’s one of those albums which lays the foundations for your musical education.
Obviously you’ve got Ian Gillan’s amazing vocals, Ritchie is just ripping all over the place on his guitar, Jon Lord is doubling everything on the keyboards with his classical influences and you have that rock solid slamming rhythm section. What’s not to like? Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! Someone asked us to do it and we just Black Label-ized it. Obviously you don’t want to cover the classics note-for-note, you want to put your own spin on it, like Hendrix did with Dylan’s , because you’re never going to top the original anyway.
So we tried to put our own stamp on it by doing an acoustic-type vers.