Creativity Quote by Ritchie Blackmore

"I feel like I own the stage" is swagger distilled to a single, useful delusion. Coming from Ritchie Blackmore, it reads less like rock-star entitlement and more like a craftsman describing the mental switch that makes performance possible. “Feel like” matters: he’s not filing a deed. He’s naming a state of mind where hesitation gets banned and the guitar becomes a steering wheel. The stage is chaos by default - bad monitors, unpredictable crowds, band chemistry that can curdle mid-song. Claiming ownership is a way to impose order on that mess.

Blackmore’s specific intent is control: not just over his playing, but over the room’s attention. In hard rock’s prime, the guitarist wasn’t background color; he was a lead narrator. Deep Purple’s extended solos and dynamic tempo shifts require the audience to follow long arcs, not just hooks. To “own” the stage is to command those arcs, to make a ten-minute improvisation feel inevitable rather than indulgent.

The subtext carries a sharper edge, too. Ownership implies territory, and Blackmore’s career is famous for tension: lineup changes, strict standards, an allergy to compromise. The line hints at the same impulse that can produce electrifying precision and interpersonal fallout. Culturally, it taps into a pre-digital era when presence was currency. No algorithm could save you; you had to take the room. Blackmore’s sentence is the philosophy of the live act: authority first, permission never.