Guitar World Lands Ritchie Blackmore

Greetings
once again, everyone...sorry it's taken me so long to make another Fine Print
post. We've been a little extra busy these last few weeks between our company
retreat in Monterey, California, an internet outage in the NYC office that
lasted two full days, and just general magazine/CD-ROM/DVD/web site madness.

We've had some interesting visitors the past few weeks, all of which should

amount for some cool content we think you'll enjoy. Earlier this week,
Jeff Loomis,
Ron Thal and
Michael Angelo Batio were
all up here for one reason or another. Loomis, the great shredder from
Nevermore, was here to do an interview and lesson for an upcoming issue of the
mag and an instructional DVD that you'll be able to purchase at the
Guitar World Store
in the near future. Thal, the Guns N' Roses guitarist otherwise known as
Bumblefoot, was here for an interview and photo shoot that will appear in our
February issue, which will be on sale a few weeks after Chinese Democracy
hits stores. In the interview, Thal talks about his guitar work on Chinese
Democracy, his life leading up to joining Guns N' Roses, and something
about Axl Rose being a big-time hamburger connoisseur, but you'll have to wait
until the issue comes out to read that. Batio was here filming a new round of
super-shredderific "Time to Burn" columns for the mag and CD-ROM, so you Batio
fans can look forward to that.

On an unrelated note, I was very pleased that we finally got an extended

interview with the great Ritchie Blackmore! We've made numerous attempts over
the years to pin Ritchie down for an in-depth interview, but always ran into
some sort of roadblock along the way -- but that ended when our own Andy Aledort
was able to spend an entire evening with Ritchie and his wife Candice at a
restaurant on Long Island, NY, to discuss his life, career, and the most recent
Blackmore's Night
album, Secret Voyage. We hope to do even more with Ritchie in 2009, so
stay tuned for some major coverage with the Deep Purple/Rainbow legend!

During the interview, Andy asked Ritchie to sign the Guitar World office

guitar, and he happily obliged. You can see his signature on the black pickguard,
joining the ranks of Slash, Paul Gilbert, Glenn Tipton/K.K. Downing/Rob Halford,
Rudolf Schenker/Matthias Jabs, Yngwie Malmsteen, and all the other signatures
we've collected the past few months. Click the photo to see a larger version. In
any case, thanks to Ritchie and Candice for spending so much time with Andy for
our story. Watch for the piece to appear most likely in the March issue of
Guitar World, on sale in early January.

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