Just wondering how many band or musician threads there are in the history of this forum where Uwe does not slip in a mention Blackmore in some context. Must be a short list. 
Sigh. I know I'm preaching the gospel to cannibal heathens here. As a style creator (not that he didn't steal when convenient too), I believe he is is up there with the holy Yardbirds trinity of Clapton, Beck and Page. I've seen him countless times live, he can be a genius improviser and I rate that highest with any lead guitarist. I'm old-fashioned in that way, if you can't improvise as a lead guitarist and if you're solos are 90% the same every night, you've missed your calling and should have taken up drums or bass.
And nofi is right, I (over-)analyze while enjoying music. I commute in the car by myself and always have a CD running. Currently, about 50 CDs are scattered in my car (it's an I-Pod free zone, I nearly strangled the car dealer when he asked whether having an I-Pod in the car wouldn't make more sense "than all these CDs"), I go from The Damned to Kate Bush to Heather Finlay of Mostly Autumn to the new Saga to Gaslight Anthem to Aldo Nova's Debut to Rober Cray to Lita Ford to Glenn Frey lounge music to the new Ultravox to the Bellamy Brothers to an Al di Meola 5 CD set (that is a lot of Aldi, let me tell you, but his palm muted picking technique always draws a smile on my face, plus how he goes from the most banal melodies into a flurry of notes to something really original and tasteful).
I'm an omnivorous music junkie who can actually concentrate on complex legal texts better with music running than without, Pavlov's dog alright. And while I enjoy almost all music, I do dissect it while listening, it trains my mind and if I'm one thing then it is probably a good arranger, I believe that comes from hearing music like I do. So when I hear the new Lita Ford and hear her phrasing in her solos and I scan it against what I have previously heard - all while driving a 300 hp Volvo at 230 km/h on the Autobahn, not bad, eh? -, I hear more Blackmorisms in her playing than, say, Jimmy Page or Tommy Bolin or Hendrix. And since my weird memory tends to remember little snippets, I then think of a teenage Lita naming Blackmore as one of her favorites. She might have been Ms Iommi for a while, but I believe she shunned the left hand digits chopping part to emulate his idiosyncratic bending and vibrato even more closely!
Edith always says, you're so caught up in your music while driving, one day you're gonna crash. And the 300 hp of the Volvo aren't that important. The 4x100 watt Dolby stereo plus the 1x150 watt subwoofer are.
