Richard Hugh Blackmore

Ritchie Blackmore is an English rock musician, one of the most respected and influential guitarists in the world. He belongs to those genius musicians who turn everything they touch into gold. At the dawn of the 70s, together with Deep Purple, he opened hard rock to people, became the founder of the legendary rock group Rainbow. And in 1997 he became one of the most popular folk musicians in the Blackmore's Night collective.

The full name of the musician sounds like Richard Hugh Blackmore, the nickname Richie appeared later. A boy was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. When he was 2 years old, his parents decided to move to Heston. Violet Short's mother kept the store, and Lewis Jay Blackmore's father worked at the airport.

Richard grew up an introverted child. One day, the parents decided to arrange a happy birthday for their son, invited guests, but he immediately fled from the celebration to the attic, from where he left only when everyone left.

He did not like studying at school, he could not find a language with teachers, and he did not please with grades. As a child, he admired Gene Vincent, Tommy Steele and Hank Marvin. At the age of 11, he received his first guitar from his father, but with one condition: Richie had to learn to play the guitar correctly, so his father paid him classical guitar lessons for a whole year.

In addition to music, Blackmore devoted time to sports. He achieved results in football, swimming, javelin throwing - he won competitions more than once.

Richie failed the final exam that enabled him to move to high school. He dropped out of school at 15 and began working as an assistant mechanic at an airport radio. In his spare time, he studied electric guitar with Jimmy Sullivan.

In the 60s, Ritchie Blackmore changed more than one musical group. But the first recognition came to him in the group "The Savages". He soon moved to The Outlaws. The group was distinguished by its recklessness, they behaved defiantly and more than once ended up in the police station for hooliganism.

For some time, the band accompanied Gene Vincent, and it was then that Richie first visited Germany, touring with the singer. From that moment on, this country became his favorite. But the guitarist was not satisfied with the role of an accompanist, he dreamed of his own team.

In 1968, Blackmore joined the group that Chris Curtis was putting together. True, Curtis left the team even before the group was formed. Richie came up with the name Deep Purple. The band was doomed to success and became the "pioneer" of hard rock.

At first, they sang covers of already popular compositions, but since 1970 the group has been recording successful albums one after another, shooting videos, which allows them to become one of the leading groups of that time. Then they release their most famous hits - "Smoke On The Water", "Highway Star", "Child in Time".

In 1974, Richie became a participant in a scandalous situation that occurred at a rock festival in California. At that time, "Deep Purple" was so popular that at any concert they were the headliners and performed last. And this time their performance was scheduled for the "after sunset" time. The group had a laser show and fireworks prepared.

However, for some reason, the number of speakers was reduced, and the team needed to come out earlier. Richie flatly refused and just locked himself in the dressing room. To drag him onto the stage, the organizers of the festival called the police and used force.

It was then that a frustrated Blackmore shattered not only his guitar, but also the cameraman's camera. In the end, the show still succeeded. But due to disagreements in the further direction of the group, Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple in 1975. A year later, the team broke up.

In the same year, the musician moved to America and there he assembled a new team - "Rainbow". They performed music in the style of heavy metal and hard rock. Richie, as the leader of the group, changed members more than once. During the existence of the collective, 8 albums were recorded, and each with a new composition.

In 1984, the "classic" lineup of Deep Purple reunited. The musicians have recorded two studio albums and one live album. The group's fans compared the band's new work to "Rainbow". Despite everything, Deep Purple went on a successful tour in support of Perfect Strangers.

But, as before, Richie and vocalist Gillan did not find a common language, Blackmore invited the vocalist of "Rainbow" to replace him, but such a replacement was disapproved by the other members. As a result, Richie left Deep Purple for good in 1993. And recreated "Rainbow" again.

In the late 80s, Richie met the vocalist, as well as his future wife, Candice Knight. In 1997, Richie, together with Candice, formed the Blackmore's Night group, which was radically different from Blackmore's past projects. These were acoustic lyric ballads, folk and classical instruments were present in the compositions. The most popular among listeners are “Wish You Were Here”, “Under a Violet Moon”, “Ghost of a Rose”.

Later, parts for the electric guitar began to appear in the group's repertoire. And sometimes at concerts the musicians performed the songs "Deep Purple" and "Rainbow".

Ritchie Blackmore has never lacked female attention. Therefore, it is not surprising that he was married four times. His first wife was a German woman, Margrit Wolkmar. They got married in 1964 and lived in Germany. Soon the couple had their first-born son, Jurgen Blackmore. By the way, he also devoted his life to music.

In 1969, Richie and Margrit divorced, but the man did not stay as bachelors. He married the German dancer Barbel Hardy. But their marriage broke up the next year. Thanks to these two marriages, the musician is fluent in German.

After moving to America, in 1978 Blackmore met Amy Rothman. They got married in 1981 and divorced in 1983.

His fourth wife, Candice Knight, was a Rainbow fan and, upon meeting Ritchie Blackmore at a football game, decided to ask the musician for an autograph. As the musician himself says, he immediately liked the girl. In 1991, they began to live together, in 1993 they got engaged, and officially married only in 2008.

They had two children - in 2010, daughter Autumn Esmeralda, and in 2012 - son Rory D'Artagnan.

In 2018, the musician announced the reunion of the Rainbow group. He decided to do this in order to put the final chord in the career of a hard rock musician.

In April 2018, the guitarist gave concerts in Russia. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, he presented a new program - Memories in Rock 2018. In addition to the popular hits "Rainbow", they sang their favorite songs of the group "Deep Purple".

At the moment, Richie lives with his family on Long Island, USA.

As part of "Deep Puple":

1968 - "Shades of Deep Purple" 1974 - "Stormbringer" 1984 - "Perfect Strangers" 1987 - "The House of Blue Light" 1993 - "The Battle Rages on ..."

As part of "Rainbow":

1975 - "Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow" 1978 - "Long Live Rock'n'Roll" 1982 - "Straight Between the Eyes" 1983 - "Bent out of Shape" 1995 - "Stranger in Us All"

As part of "Blackmore's Night":

1997 - "Shadow of the Moon" 1999 - "Under a Violet Moon" 2003 - "Ghost of a Rose" 2010 - "Autumn Sky" 2015 - "All Our Yesterdays"

Richard Hugh Blackmore 's estimated Net Worth, Salary, Income, Cars, Lifestyles & many more details have been updated below.

Let's check, How Rich is Richard Hugh Blackmore in 2020?

Richard Hugh Blackmore Net Worth 2021

Richard Hugh Blackmore 's revenue is $1M in 2021. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Hugh Blackmore and could vary in the range between $555.3K - $2M.

Richard Hugh Blackmore Net Worth 2020

Richard Hugh Blackmore 's revenue is $1.3M in 2020. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Hugh Blackmore and could vary in the range between $598K - $1.4M.

Richard Hugh Blackmore Net Worth 2019

Richard Hugh Blackmore 's revenue is $1.1M in 2019. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Hugh Blackmore and could vary in the range between $674K - $1.9M.

Richard Hugh Blackmore Net Worth 2018

Richard Hugh Blackmore 's revenue is $1.6M in 2018. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Hugh Blackmore and could vary in the range between $665K - $1.6M.

Richard Hugh Blackmore Net Worth 2017

Richard Hugh Blackmore 's revenue is $1.5M in 2017. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Hugh Blackmore and could vary in the range between $612.7K - $1.9M.

Richard Hugh Blackmore Net Worth 2016

Richard Hugh Blackmore 's revenue is $1.4M in 2016. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Hugh Blackmore and could vary in the range between $575K - $1.8M.

Richard Hugh Blackmore Net Worth 2015

Richard Hugh Blackmore 's revenue is $1.9M in 2015. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Richard Hugh Blackmore and could vary in the range between $517.9K - $1.7M.

It is an overall forecast for the net worth of Richard Hugh Blackmore. The evaluation covers the latest 5 years and an approximation for next year. See above to learn how much money does Richard Hugh Blackmore make a year.

The range above shows an estimation based on evaluation generated by public information about sponsorships or other sources found on the internet. It's summarized data from Richard Hugh Blackmore' projects existing in AidWiki's repository. It's an approximation of the revenue compiled by AidWiki and may not correspond with the real amount.