I once saw a vid of him, from the early DP days with Evans and Simper, reeling off staccato single string runs interspersed with wild arpeggios on the 335. Certainly not as controlled in the arpeggiating as guys like Uli Roth etc (and Ritchie himself) would later evolve, but he was doing it long before virtually any other rock guitarist. Carlo Little even mentions him doing that stuff onstage in the early 1960s.
When I got to where I could play Gates of Babylon accurately for audiences was when I said "yeah, I don't suck" lol