The Ritchie Blackmore Story Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

The Ritchie Blackmore Story Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 27, 2016

The Ritchie Blackmore Story begins with one of the most iconic guitar riffs of all time, that fuzzy, forceful opening to Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”, a riff which Total Guitar once named as the fourth greatest ever in the entire history of rock. And yet how many casual fans of rock, and maybe even this tune itself, know that Blackmore was responsible for it? That’s one of the kind of weird disconnects that informs this standard but highly enjoyable biographical documentary, one which perhaps elides a bit too much of Blackmore’s early life to get to “the good stuff”, but which provides a compelling overview of one of the more underappreciated “guitar gods” of contemporary music.

While there’s typical rock star drama at play at various moments throughout The Ritchie Blackmore Story, at least some of which will already be familiar to Deep Purple aficionados, what really informs this piece is the deep regard that other musicians in general and guitarists in particular obviously feel for Blackmore. There are a number of prominent talking heads scattered throughout the documentary proclaiming Blackmore is “the white Hendrix”, and as evidenced by the ubiquitous archival clips featured, it’s an accurate statement.

Deep Purple fans may want to make this documentary a double feature paired with the similarly interesting Jon Lord: Concerto for Group and Orchestra, especially since Blackmore discusses his dissatisfaction with the “orchestral” tendencies of Lord and some early Deep Purple records.

The Ritchie Blackmore Story Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Ritchie Blackmore Story is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Music Group and Eagle Vision with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The contemporary footage is often incredibly sharp and well detailed, and even long sequences where Blackmore is interviewed in what looks like a neighborhood pub offer excellent detail and shadow definition despite and overall kind of dim setting. Unfortunately few of the archival segments fare as well, and many of these older video elements offer overwhelming roll and aliasing, as well as fringing, ghosting and other anomalies that accompanied their original broadcast iterations. A few have been anamorphically stretched to match the 1.78:1 aspect ratio.

The Ritchie Blackmore Story Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Ritchie Blackmore Story features both DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 tracks, with surround activity gaining almost all of its power from the snippets of music which are included. This documentary actually does feature longer snippets of tunes than many similar outings, but they're snippets nonetheless, and so the need for a boisterous surround track may be questionable. One way or the other, both tracks offer excellent fidelity with no issues other than a few transitory problems related to older archival footage.

The Ritchie Blackmore Story Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Bonus Interviews (1080p; 43:48) feature a lot of additional comments from Blackmore.

The Ritchie Blackmore Story Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Ritchie Blackmore Story is a fairly standard portrait of a decidedly unique individual, one whose contributions to the pantheon of modern rock has often been strangely underappreciated. While there's not much here that diehard Deep Purple fans won't already know, the documentary is well assembled and features excellent interviews and some really fun archival footage. Recommended.