"When you're around someone good, your own standards are raised"
About this Quote
Blackmore’s line lands like a backstage truth masquerading as a life tip: excellence is contagious, and mediocrity is expensive. Coming from a guitarist whose career was built on near-mythic standards of precision and control, “around someone good” isn’t about moral virtue or pleasant company. It’s a practical statement about craft. Proximity to real skill recalibrates what you’ll tolerate in your own playing, writing, rehearsing, even your tone.
The phrasing is telling. “Raised” suggests your standards aren’t purely self-generated; they’re socially set, negotiated in rehearsal rooms and studio takes where someone else’s competence quietly makes your excuses sound thin. Blackmore never says you’ll feel inspired. He says your standards change. That’s a colder, more accurate mechanism: not motivation, but measurement. When you’ve heard a drummer lock in perfectly or watched a singer nail a take without drama, your internal definition of “good enough” gets overwritten.
There’s also an edge of selective elitism in it, very rock-band Darwinism. Being “around someone good” implies you choose your ecosystem. Blackmore’s own history of lineup changes and restless reinvention shadows the quote: if the room isn’t raising you, it’s lowering you. In a music culture that romanticizes raw feeling, he’s arguing for apprenticeship by osmosis - not in a classroom, but in the brutal honesty of performance. The subtext is blunt: talent matters, but your environment decides whether it sharpens into discipline or dulls into habit.
The phrasing is telling. “Raised” suggests your standards aren’t purely self-generated; they’re socially set, negotiated in rehearsal rooms and studio takes where someone else’s competence quietly makes your excuses sound thin. Blackmore never says you’ll feel inspired. He says your standards change. That’s a colder, more accurate mechanism: not motivation, but measurement. When you’ve heard a drummer lock in perfectly or watched a singer nail a take without drama, your internal definition of “good enough” gets overwritten.
There’s also an edge of selective elitism in it, very rock-band Darwinism. Being “around someone good” implies you choose your ecosystem. Blackmore’s own history of lineup changes and restless reinvention shadows the quote: if the room isn’t raising you, it’s lowering you. In a music culture that romanticizes raw feeling, he’s arguing for apprenticeship by osmosis - not in a classroom, but in the brutal honesty of performance. The subtext is blunt: talent matters, but your environment decides whether it sharpens into discipline or dulls into habit.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Improvement |
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