In which Ritchie Blackmore gives no fucks

I’m going through some old recordings of Rage to pick out music videos for the video collection, and the one I’m editing just now featured this here TV performance of “Fireball” by Deep Purple. Or should I say “performance”, cos whatever show this was done for clearly adhered to the common practice of bands miming (I think Gillan’s voice is the only actual live element). And there’s always been a sort of kayfabe thing about this, the audience knows what they’re listening to is playback but we never talk about that fact, but there have been some notable instances of miming musicians making it obvious…

…but I was particularly struck by this Deep Purple TV clip, cos near the end the camera captures R. Blackmore “playing” the back of his guitar. As being blatant about miming goes, this is kind of magnificent in its contempt. Paice doesn’t look like he’s putting in much effort on the drums either, but to be honest I can’t tell for sure and I may well be wrong; he’s certainly not as obvious as Blackmore if he is pretending…