Creativity Quote by Ritchie Blackmore

Blackmore is puncturing the romance of “serious” musicianship with a grin and a fader. The cello, in his telling, isn’t just an instrument; it’s a monastic vocation. “Give your whole life” carries the whiff of classical discipline: years of posture, bowing, repertoire, audition culture, and the quiet moral hierarchy that treats volume as vulgar and dedication as virtue. He’s not denying the cello’s beauty. He’s rejecting its terms.

The pivot is the punchline: he returns to guitar and turns the volume up. That’s not only a practical choice, it’s a cultural one. Electric guitar offers a different kind of authority - not earned through institutional approval, but asserted through amplification, attitude, and immediacy. Where the cello demands submission to tradition, the guitar (especially in Blackmore’s orbit of Deep Purple-era hard rock) rewards invention, swagger, and the ability to command a room. Volume becomes a democratic shortcut: if you can move people, you don’t need a conservatory to certify you.

The subtext is Blackmore staking out rock’s core argument against “proper” musicianship. He’s admitting the classical world might be deeper, harder, maybe even nobler - then choosing the art form where obsession can be loud, playful, and public. It’s also a quiet flex: he didn’t fail the cello; he outgrew the bargain. He found a medium that let him keep intensity without surrendering his whole life to someone else’s definition of devotion.