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Creativity Quote by Ritchie Blackmore

"I don't put myself on Jeff Beck's level, but I can relate to him when he says he'd rather be working on his car collection than playing the guitar"

About this Quote

Rock guitar mythology runs on the idea that the instrument is destiny: once you have “the gift,” you’re obligated to worship it in public forever. Ritchie Blackmore slips a wrench into that story. By name-checking Jeff Beck, he invokes a patron saint of taste and technique, then immediately refuses the pedestal: “I don’t put myself on Jeff Beck’s level.” It’s modesty, sure, but it’s also a preemptive defense against the fandom’s most exhausting demand - that virtuosity must equal devotion.

The revealing turn is the analogy of labor. Playing guitar, for these titans, isn’t framed as pure expression; it’s work. The car collection is the fantasy of leisure: tactile, private, and gloriously nonperformative. There’s no audience policing your phrasing, no legacy discourse, no expectation to recreate 1972 every night on tour. In that sense, cars become a stand-in for control. You tinker, you improve, you walk away when you’re bored. Rock stardom rarely grants that option.

Context matters: Blackmore’s career is a long series of pivots and evasions - leaving Deep Purple, resisting nostalgia circuits, retreating into Renaissance-folk with Blackmore’s Night. This quote reads like an honest admission that the classic-rock machine turns art into repetitive labor, and that even the most iconic players sometimes crave a hobby that doesn’t clap back. It’s not a rejection of music so much as a rejection of being permanently on-call for other people’s memories.

Quote Details

TopicMusic
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Blackmore, Ritchie. (2026, January 16). I don't put myself on Jeff Beck's level, but I can relate to him when he says he'd rather be working on his car collection than playing the guitar. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-put-myself-on-jeff-becks-level-but-i-can-105900/

Chicago Style
Blackmore, Ritchie. "I don't put myself on Jeff Beck's level, but I can relate to him when he says he'd rather be working on his car collection than playing the guitar." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-put-myself-on-jeff-becks-level-but-i-can-105900/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I don't put myself on Jeff Beck's level, but I can relate to him when he says he'd rather be working on his car collection than playing the guitar." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-put-myself-on-jeff-becks-level-but-i-can-105900/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Ritchie Blackmore (born April 14, 1945) is a Musician from England.

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