Каковы истиные причины инцидента, произошедшего во время вступительного номера концерта, снятого на видео "Come Hell Or High Water"?

Stuart Smith
Guitarist, Ritchie's guitar technician and pal
(alt.music.deep-purple, 08.03.97)

       As a lot of you have been asking me the reasons for what happened regarding the water throwing incident on the CHOHW video. When Ritchie phoned tonight I asked him if he wanted to answer this himself. This is his reply:

      "The incident was in no way directed towards any member of the band & certainly not towards the audience. I had already made my mind up to leave Deep Purple for reasons of my own & I was told by my management at the time that BMG wanted to film the show at the NEC. I agreed to this providing there would be NO cameramen on the side of the stage, (I find they put me off my performance & many of you that are paying your hard earned money should not have to put up with this). I would have thought I had made my point clear enough at the California Jam. I was quite categorically told, "Don't worry Ritchie, they won't be there". As the intro to Highway Star started I walked out only to trip over one right in my way. I pushed him off the stage he should never have been on in the first place & then told the people working for us who had lied to me rather than discuss the whole thing, to get him off the stage. At this point they snuck him around to the other side, which, had they done this in the first place wouldn't have bothered me, but by then my temper was up & I threw the water.
       It is very nerve wracking experience to play a show like this & I feel I have earned the right to have a set-up which will enable me to give my best to everybody."

      Позднее Блэкмор дал более развернутое объяснение:

Ritchie Blackmore
("The Prince Of Darkness" interview by Stig Myhre, 2003)

       "There is a long story about that. What happened was that BMG, the record company, wanted to do a video in Birmingham. We were on tour for like two and a half months and I said to them 'Look if you want to promote a tour, then you have to do it at the beginning of the tour', and they are like 'Why?'. I said 'because Ian Gillan loses his voice after four days and if you want us to be in our best light, get in there early because Ian Gillan's voice will be good and then we'll be right on top of selling what we're promoting at that time'. You want to promote it at the beginning. I said 'Why can't we do the video in the first four days?' and they were like 'No, we can't do that, we have to wait until you're playing in Birmingham.' I'm like 'Why?', Nobody else was asking questions. Everybody else said 'Who Cares?'. I'm like 'Well, I care because what is the point of doing a video six weeks into a tour when the record that your promoting is already dead'. They didn't take any notice. They said 'Were gonna do Birmingham'. I said 'You know what?, if you do Birmingham then you can count me out, you can take long shots of me but if I see any cameras near me there's going to be trouble'. These guys come along with like six cameras and the fans have paid a lot of money to the show, all they see is the back of someone's head and a camera. I said 'If there are cameras obstructing the fans from seeing us there's going to be problems, there is going to be problems as far as I'm going not going to play'. That was my point. That was my way of saying' If BMG doesn't care about what I think I don't care about what they think'.
       I came to the show and I said to my roadie' Are all the cameras off stage?' I noticed there was some blocking the view of fans. He said 'Oh yes, they're all off stage'. I said 'Okay'. I walked on stage and what do I see?, a camera right in front of the people, so I walked off. I told them 'Until you get that camera off I won't play'. The band was thinking what the hell is Ritchie doing? I felt sorry for some of the band members. To their credit, they had no idea about what was going on. The crews roadie Colin Hart knew exactly what was going on. I said 'Colin, you just told me that those cameras were gone' and he said 'Oh, I'll get them off stage'. I said' I've now walked on stage, I had to walk off to get them off stage so please do something'. I walked on the second time and they are still there and I'm like 'What is going on here?'. At this point I'm starting to get really annoyed. To add to this, the night before I had fallen off stage in Hammersmith and sprained my ankle. My ankle was all wound up by the doctor. The doctor told me 'you can't play'. I said 'I have to play'. I thought that gesture of me not wanting to kind of stop the show would be more appreciated rather than going on stage and argue with all these camera people and BMG, so I thought I know what I'm going to do. I knew what would move them, so I just grabbed some water and I went over to the camera and threw it at the lince. If you're going to knock that camera they get nervous and then they fall back. By this time I was so angry that I had to absorb to all this childish nonsense that I couldn't play for like two songs.
      Ian Gillan was told that I was throwing beer over his wife because what happened was that when I threw water at the camera. it hit the camera, came off and went over his wife, who was standing there, so she's saying 'Ritchie just threw beer on me'. I'm like 'What', I heard that and then Ian came on stage and he was very good about it. He didn't make any trouble about it, but whoever told him that I threw beer over her was trying to cause trouble. If I want to throw beer over her I would go and throw it over her. It could have caused big trouble, it could have caused a fight on stage. It's typical of people who would like to see trouble, they say something and sit back and watch."
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