10 Rock Stars That Completely Changed Their Genre

It's almost impossible to capture an audience's attention without having some sort of gimmick to your sound. Unless you're a band like the Beatles where you can just rely on the best melodies on Earth, there needs to be something else that hooks you into a certain band's style beyond just a catchy tune. Though Deep Purple had their style down in spades with their outlandish live shows and eclectic influences, Ritchie Blackmore may have been a bit too eclectic for his own good.

Across his stints in Purple and Rainbow, Blackmore was always experimenting with different styles, going from classical runs to down and dirty blues licks within the span of a single song. Once Rainbow started to take off though, you could hear bits and pieces of medieval influences seeping in through the cracks. So when Rainbow broke up, Ritchie did the most logical thing and....put his guitar down.

In the years since the dissolution of Rainbow and a one-off Purple reunion, Blackmore has been at work working with Blackmore's Night, with influences that are taken more from the 16th century than Eric Clapton. Compared to the hard rock crowd, this is the kind of stuff that you would hear in the days of jousting and jesters than a packed arena of adoring fans. Then again, if you need something to be the soundtrack to your next D&D session, you can certainly do a lot worse than this.