In March 1975, Ritchie Blackmore realised he’d be better off without Deep Purple. The guitarist was working on his debut solo album at Musicland studios in Munich with singer Ronnie James Dio and three other members of Dio’s band Elf. Blackmore would recall: “Halfway through the LP, I decided I was more excited about playing with Ronnie than I was with Purple.”
The funk and soul flavours in Purple’s 1974 albums Burn and Stormbringer had not been to Blackmore’s taste. More significantly, he and Dio struck gold with the very first song they wrote together: Sixteenth Century Greensleeves, a dramatic, riff-driven number with a chainmailrattling storyline.
“We wanted a song about castles and crossbows,” Blackmore said, “and I was pleased that we were able to keep that hard rock thing within a classical mode.” In that one song, the foundation was laid for the album and the band of the same name: Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow.
This new box set features that debut album and its more celebrated follow-up, Rising. The remaining seven discs are of live recordings from three shows in Germany in 1976 (never before released in full outside of Japan), plus other rare tracks including four previously unreleased takes from tour rehearsals.
The first Rainbow album is one of the most underrated debuts in rock history, so long overshadowed by what followed on Rising. Man On The Silver Mountain is similar in power and aura to Sixteenth Century Greensleeves, while Catch The Rainbow and The Temple Of The King are the two most beautiful pieces that Blackmore and Dio created together.
Ruthlessly, ahead of Rising Blackmore overhauled the band line-up, retaining only singer Dio. Of the new arrivals, drummer Cozy Powell was pivotal, his thunderous attack at its most potent in the intro to Stargazer, the most revered of Rainbow’s epic tracks – in essence, their answer to Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. From portentous opener Tarot Woman to explosive finale A Light In The Black, the sound of Rising is monumental.
The tour rehearsal material, for all its historical value, is ruined by too much bass and distortion. But across six live discs – with just a little overlap with the band’s 1977 album On Stage – there is much for Rainbow connoisseurs to savour, including stunning performances of Stargazer and Do You Close Your Eyes.
As Dio himself said, with some satisfaction: “Ritchie and I wrote some really wonderful things”.
