Frontiers Records is suing former DEEP PURPLE guitarist Ritchie Blackmore on the grounds that he has not done enough to support All Our Yesterdays, the album he released last year with his Renaissance folk project BLACKMORE’s NIGHT.
According to the New York Post, a lawsuit was filed in a Manhattan federal court alleging that BLACKMORE skipped “dozens of media appearances and interviews.”
This includes six television interviews and between 25 and 30 tabloids in Germany alone. The lawsuit says that his three-year contract with Frontiers stipulates that he make ‘reasonable best efforts” to promote his work.
Frontiers is looking to reclaim a minimum of $150,000, or roughly 68 percent of the $220,000 BLACKMORE received as an advance. BLACKMORE’s lawyer responded to the Post by claiming that the charges are “ludicrous.”
BLACKMORE is set to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with DEEP PURPLE. However, due to his longstanding issues with his former band mates, he will not be attending the ceremony, which will be held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., on April 8.
This summer, BLACKMORE will make a return to rock music after spending nearly 20 years playing folk music with BLACKMORE’s NIGHT. He has two dates booked in Germany on June 17-18, followed by a show in Birmingham, England a week later. Blackmore’s Night will tour Europe in July and the U.S. in August.