Creativity Quote by Ritchie Blackmore

Blackmore is doing something musicians do when they want to praise a rival without surrendering their own mythology: he moves the compliment off the fretboard and onto the larger stage. Saying Hendrix wasn’t “a great player” is the provocation, the little grenade lobbed into rock’s sacred narrative. But the second clause tells you the real point: “attitude” is where the revolution happened, and Blackmore is admitting it.

The subtext is less about technique than about what counted as technique in 1967. Hendrix didn’t just play notes; he played volume, feedback, posture, risk. His “attitude” folded showmanship into sound - turning the guitar into a theatrical object, a weapon, a sacrament. For a British virtuoso like Blackmore, trained in precision and hierarchy, that’s both a challenge and a kind of liberation. He’s implying that Hendrix’s genius was conceptual: he expanded the job description.

There’s also a defensive edge. Blackmore came up in an era of guitarist one-upmanship, where “great” usually meant clean execution and control. By downplaying Hendrix’s “playing,” he protects the old scoring system while still acknowledging that Hendrix changed the game so completely the score hardly mattered. “Everything else” is a grudging, almost jealous respect for charisma, sonic imagination, and the permission Hendrix gave rock musicians to be messy, dangerous, and unforgettable.