Creativity Quote by Ritchie Blackmore

Blackmore’s line reads like a technical tip disguised as a manifesto, which is exactly how rock mythology reproduces itself: half craft, half dare. “Full up” isn’t just a volume setting; it’s an ethos of commitment. The implied sneer is that polite, controlled sound is for people who want rock’s posture without its consequences. Loudness becomes authenticity by ordeal: you earn the tone by risking the neighbors, the venue manager, your own hearing.

Then he slips in the engineer’s justification: sustain. That last sentence is the tell, grounding the swagger in physics. Cranking a tube amp pushes the power section into compression and saturation; the guitar starts to feel “alive,” notes bloom, feedback becomes playable, and the instrument turns into a feedback loop you can ride. It’s not only louder, it’s more responsive. Blackmore is staking a claim that the famous voice of hard rock isn’t primarily in the fingers or the pedals but in the amp being pushed to its limit.

The context matters: this is a player forged in the late-60s/70s arms race where bands competed on volume, and where PAs weren’t always built to carry guitars delicately. Loud was practical and theatrical. Subtextually, it’s also a quiet flex: sustain isn’t magic, it’s control under pressure. Blackmore frames extremity as discipline, making volume sound less like ego and more like the price of admission to a particular kind of sound and identity.