Rainbow (also known as Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow or Blackmore's Rainbow) were a British hard rock band formed in Hertford in 1975 by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. Established in the aftermath of Blackmore's first departure from Deep Purple, Rainbow originally featured four members of the American rock band Elf, including their singer Ronnie James Dio, but after their self-titled debut album, Blackmore fired these members, except Dio, recruiting drummer Cozy Powell, bassist Jimmy Bain, and keyboardist Tony Carey. This line-up recorded the band's second album Rising (1976), while Long Live Rock 'n' Roll (1978) saw Bob Daisley and David Stone replace Bain and Carey, respectively. Long Live Rock 'n' Roll was also the last album with Dio before he left the band to join Black Sabbath in 1979.
Rainbow's early work primarily used mystical lyrics in a hard rock/heavy metal style, then moved in a more pop-rock direction following Dio's departure from the group. In 1979, Blackmore and Powell revamped the group, recruiting three new members—singer Graham Bonnet, keyboardist Don Airey and another then-former Deep Purple member, bassist Roger Glover—and this line-up gave the band their commercial breakthrough with the single "Since You Been Gone" from their fourth studio album Down to Earth. With Joe Lynn Turner, who replaced Bonnet in 1980, Rainbow recorded three more albums—Difficult to Cure (1981), Straight Between the Eyes (1982), and Bent Out of Shape (1983)—that had commercial success similar to the band's previous albums. Other members of the band during this period were drummers Bobby Rondinelli and Chuck Burgi and keyboardist David Rosenthal. The band split in 1984, when Blackmore and Glover re-joined Deep Purple.
In 1993, after quitting Deep Purple for good, Blackmore reformed Rainbow with a new line-up, fronted by Doogie White, which recorded their eighth studio album Stranger in Us All (1995). In 1997, Blackmore broke up the band again to start fresh with Blackmore's Night, a collaboration with his wife, Candice Night, on vocals. Blackmore revived the band once again in 2016,, and they performed tours in Europe over the next few years. Rainbow thought about continuing to play live, but those plans were scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the band on hiatus since their last tour in 2019.
Over the years Rainbow went through many personnel changes, with each studio album recorded with a different line-up, leaving Blackmore as the band's only constant member. Their longest serving line-up—which featured Blackmore on guitar, Blackmore's wife Candice Night on backing vocals, Ronnie Romero on lead vocals, Bob Nouveau on bass, David Keith on drums and Jens Johansson on keyboards—lasted from 2015 to 2019. Rainbow were ranked No. 90 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. The band has sold over 28 million records worldwide.
History Formation (1975)
In 1973, Blackmore steered Deep Purple through a significant personnel change, with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover being replaced by David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes. However, the new members were keen to add their own musical influences into the band's sound, some of which were not to Blackmore's taste. During the sessions for the 1974 album Stormbringer, Blackmore found his request to record the Steve Hammond-penned "Black Sheep of the Family" turned down by the band. On the subsequent tour, Deep Purple were supported by American band Elf, with Blackmore being especially impressed by their singer Ronnie James Dio. Still wishing to put his interpretation of "Black Sheep of the Family" to record, he decided to record the song as a single, accompanied by four members of Elf, Dio, bassist Craig Gruber, drummer Gary Driscoll, and keyboardist Mickey Lee Soule. The sessions went so well that a full album began to take shape, with Blackmore and Dio collaborating on original songs. The album, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, was recorded between February and March 1975 at Musicland Studios in Munich, Germany. The band name was inspired by the Rainbow Bar and Grill in West Hollywood, California.
The style was partly inspired by classical music since Blackmore had started playing cello to help him construct interesting chord progressions, and Dio's lyrics reflected medieval themes and imagery. Dio possessed a powerful and versatile vocal range that encompassed hard rock and lighter ballads. Blackmore commented that when he heard Dio sing, "I felt shivers down my spine." Although Dio never played a musical instrument on any Rainbow album, he is credited with writing and arranging the music with Blackmore, in addition to writing all the lyrics. Blackmore and Dio also found a common ground in their sense of humour. The band, said the singer, "was my opportunity to show my wares. I thank Ritchie for that all the time. Ritchie Blackmore is the one who gave me my opportunity to show what I was worth."Ronnie James Dio interview with Tommy Vance for BBC Radio 1's Friday Rock Show; broadcast 21 August 1987; transcribed by editor Peter Scott for Sabbath fanzine Southern Cross #11, October 1996, p27
Following the positive experience of recording with Dio, Blackmore decided to leave Deep Purple, playing his last show with them in Paris in April 1975. Blackmore's departure from Deep Purple was announced on 21 June. Released in September 1975, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow met a positive critical reception and was a top 20 UK and top 30 US hit.
First world tour and initial success (1975–1978)
The album line-up never played live together as Blackmore was unhappy with Driscoll's R&B influenced style of drumming and the funky bass playing of Gruber. While rehearsing for the tour, Blackmore decided to fire Gruber and bring in Jimmy Bain on bass, and after that he also fired Driscoll. As a consequence of that, Soule decided to quit the band to play on Elements (1978) by Roger Glover and tour with the Ian Gillan Band.
Blackmore would continue to dictate personnel for the remainder of the band's lifetime, with drummer and former bandmate Ricky Munro remarking "he was very difficult to get on with because you never knew when he would turn around and say 'You're sacked'." Blackmore recruited bassist Jimmy Bain, keyboard player Tony Carey and drummer Cozy Powell, who had previously worked with Jeff Beck and had some solo success. Powell also greatly appealed to Blackmore in their mutual fondness for practical jokes.
This line-up commenced the first world tour for the band, with the first date in Montreal on 10 November 1975. The centrepiece of the band's live performance was a computer-controlled rainbow including 3,000 lightbulbs, which stretched 40 feet across the stage. In 1976, the band's name was shortened to Rainbow, and a second album, Rising, was recorded in February at Musicland. The band added Deep Purple's "Mistreated" to their setlist, and song lengths were stretched to include improvisation, as displayed on the live album On Stage, released in the summer of 1977. Carey recalls rehearsing the material was fairly straightforward, saying "We didn't work anything out, except the structure, the ending ... very free-form, really progressive rock." The album art was designed by American fantasy artist Ken Kelly, who had drawn Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian.
In August 1976, following a gig at Newcastle City Hall, Blackmore decided to fire Carey, believing his playing style to be too complicated for the band. Unable to find a suitable replacement on such short notice, Carey was quickly reinstated, but as the world tour progressed on to Japan, he found himself regularly being the recipient of Blackmore's pranks and humour. Blackmore subsequently decided that Bain was substandard and fired him in January 1977. Carey quit the band shortly after, after getting tired of Blackmore's pranks. Blackmore, however, had difficulty finding replacements he liked. On keyboards, after auditioning several high-profile artists, including Vanilla Fudge's Mark Stein, Procol Harum's Matthew Fisher and ex-Curved Air and Roxy Music man Eddie Jobson, Blackmore finally selected Canadian David Stone, from the little-known band Symphonic Slam. For a bass player, Blackmore initially chose Mark Clarke, formerly of Jon Hiseman's Colosseum and Uriah Heep, but once in the studio for the next album, Long Live Rock 'n' Roll, Blackmore disliked Clarke's fingerstyle method of playing so much that he fired him on the spot and played bass himself on all but three songs: "Gates of Babylon", "Kill the King", and "Sensitive to Light". Former Widowmaker bassist Bob Daisley was hired to finish the album, completing the band's next line-up.
After the release of Long Live Rock 'n' Roll and its extensive world tour in 1978, Blackmore decided that he wanted to take the band in a new, more mainstream direction, away from the "sword and sorcery" themes. Dio did not agree with this change and left the band.
In a 1979 interview with Sounds,Sounds, 15 December 1979 Blackmore said:
Commercial success (1978–1984)
Blackmore asked Ian Gillan, also formerly of Deep Purple, to replace Dio, but Gillan turned him down. After a series of auditions, Graham Bonnet, former singer/guitarist of The Marbles, was recruited. Powell stayed, but Daisley was fired, and Stone quit the band to be replaced by Powell's former bandmate Don Airey. At first the band auditioned bass players, rehearsing with Clive Chaman when Stone was still in the band, and later with Jack Green, but, at Cozy Powell's suggestion, Blackmore hired another former Deep Purple member, Roger Glover, as a producer, bassist and lyricist. The resulting album, Down to Earth, featured the band's first major singles chart successes, "All Night Long" and the Russ Ballard-penned "Since You Been Gone". In 1980, the band headlined the inaugural Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington in England. However, this was Powell's last Rainbow gig: he had already given his notice to quit, disliking Blackmore's increasingly pop rock direction. Then, after numerous fallouts with Blackmore, Bonnet resigned to pursue a solo project.
For the next album, Bonnet and Powell were replaced by Americans Joe Lynn Turner and Bobby Rondinelli, respectively. The title track from Difficult to Cure was a version of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The album spawned their most successful UK single, "I Surrender" (another Ballard song), which reached No.3. After the supporting tour, Don Airey quit over musical differences and was replaced by David Rosenthal.
The band attained significant airplay on Album-oriented rock radio stations in the US with the track "Jealous Lover", reaching No. 13 on Billboard Magazine's Rock Tracks chart. Originally issued as the B-side to "Can't Happen Here", "Jealous Lover" subsequently became the title track to an EP issued in the US that featured similar cover art to Difficult to Cure.
Rainbow's next studio album was Straight Between the Eyes. The album was more cohesive than Difficult to Cure, and had more success in the United States. The band, however, was alienating some of its earlier fans with its more AOR sound. The single "Stone Cold" was a ballad that had chart success (No. 1 on Billboard Magazine's Rock Tracks chart) and its video received heavy airplay on MTV. The successful supporting tour skipped the UK completely and focused on the American market. A date in San Antonio, Texas on this tour was filmed, and the resulting Live Between the Eyes also received repeated showings on MTV, and was released on home video.