Rainbow

Blackmore leaves Deep Purple

Rainbow was formed in 1975 in Hertford, Hertfordshire by the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore after he left Deep Purple, and was first billed as Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow. The name came from the Rainbow Bar and Grill in West Hollywood. The first line-up was Blackmore with four members of the American band Elf: the singer Ronnie James Dio, the bassist Craig Gruber, the drummer Gary Driscoll and the keyboardist Mickey Lee Soule. Dio wrote the lyrics and, with Blackmore, the music, though he never played an instrument on a Rainbow album.

The debut was recorded in February and March 1975 at Musicland in Munich and released that September. The first world tour began in Montreal on November 10, 1975, with a computer-controlled rainbow of about 3,000 bulbs, forty feet wide, as the centerpiece of the stage.

The Dio albums

Only Blackmore and Dio remained for Rising, recorded in February 1976 at Musicland with Jimmy Bain on bass, Tony Carey on keyboards and Cozy Powell on drums, and released on May 17, 1976. The band shortened its name to Rainbow. The live On Stage came out in July 1977, and Long Live Rock 'n' Roll in April 1978 was the last with Dio, who left in 1979 for Black Sabbath. Ultimate Classic Rock reports that Dio disliked the commercial direction and Blackmore's control, and left when Tony Iommi approached him.

The line-up changed constantly: David Stone played keyboards from 1977, the bassist Mark Clarke was dismissed and replaced by Bob Daisley, and Blackmore played much of the bass himself on Long Live Rock 'n' Roll.

Bonnet, Turner and the end of the first run

Down to Earth (1979) brought in Graham Bonnet, Don Airey and Roger Glover, who also produced; it included "All Night Long" and "Since You Been Gone", written by Russ Ballard. On August 16, 1980 Rainbow headlined the first Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington, Powell's last Rainbow show. Joe Lynn Turner then sang on Difficult to Cure (1981, with "I Surrender", number three in the United Kingdom), Straight Between the Eyes (1982, with "Stone Cold" at number one on Billboard's Rock Tracks chart) and Bent Out of Shape (1983). After a March 1984 tour of Japan, Blackmore and Glover rejoined Deep Purple and Rainbow ended.

Wikipedia states that Rainbow sold 28 million records worldwide and VH1 ranked them number 90 among the greatest hard rock artists.

Returns

Blackmore revived the band in 1993 with the singer Doogie White and released Stranger in Us All in 1995; a Düsseldorf show on October 9, 1995 was filmed for Rockpalast and released in 2013 as Black Masquerade. The last concert of that period was in Esbjerg, Denmark in 1997, after which Blackmore formed Blackmore's Night. A line-up with Ronnie Romero singing and Jens Johansson on keyboards was announced on November 6, 2015, and played its first show at Loreley, Germany on June 17, 2016 before about 15,000 people and 30,000 the next day at Bietigheim-Bissingen. It made Memories in Rock (2016) and Memories in Rock II (2018) and toured until 2019. Romero said in October 2023 that Rainbow was not his place anymore.