February 1975-November 1978:
Rainbow
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Part 1:
February 1975-July 1975
Members
Ronnie James Dio vocals
Ritchie Blackmore guitars
Craig Gruber bass
Gary Driscoll drums
Mickey Lee Soule piano, mellotron, clavinet, organ
History
Right after the split-up of Elf, four members of Elf and ex-Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore formed band called Rainbow. The name supposedly came from the Rainbow bar located in Los Angeles, where Elf and Ritchie Blackmore used to spend their free time.
This band is also known as Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, as it appears under that name on their first album, but that name was used only to get people to notice the band. Generally, everyone except Blackmore himself felt bad about the name, so on the later albums the band was called simply Rainbow. The band moved from the East Coast of USA to California, USA.
The band went to the Musicland Studios, in Munich, Germany on February 20th and finished the album recording on March 14th. The album was produced by Ritchie Blackmore, Martin Birch and Ronnie James Dio. The album didn't have any special name, it was just called Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow.
Discography
7" singles
LPs
CDs
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Part 2:
July 1975-August 1975
Members
Ronnie James Dio vocals
Ritchie Blackmore guitars
Gary Driscoll drums
Mickey Lee Soule piano, mellotron, clavinet, organ
History
After Gruber was fired, it took about a month to find a new bassist for the band. The departure of the original bassist started the original Rainbow's line-up fall-apart.
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Part 3:
August 1975-October 1975
Members
Ronnie James Dio vocals
Ritchie Blackmore guitars
Jimmy Bain bass
Gary Driscoll drums
Cozy Powell drums
Mickey Lee Soule piano, mellotron, clavinet, organ
History
Ritchie Blackmore fired the rest of the Elf remains except Ronnie James Dio in September 1975, because they didn't fulfill his requirements. Blackmore had seen the drummer Cozy Powell on stage at the last Jeff Beck Group concert in 1972 and remembered him at the time he wanted to change Rainbow's drummer. After getting him in the band, the band kept on searching for a new keyboardist.
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Part 4:
October 1975-January 1977
Members
Ronnie James Dio vocals
Ritchie Blackmore guitars
Jimmy Bain bass
Cozy Powell drums
Tony Carey keyboards
History
After several changes in the band during a relatively short time, the band started touring in November 1975. On this tour the band had only a couple of dates in North America and then went to record a new album. There is some confusion about the first Rainbow show - some claim it was in Heampsted, NY, USA, others claim it was in Montreal, Canada. The Canada date seems to be the correct one. Supposedly band called Argent was supporting them.
The band stayed the same for quite a long time, especially when it is compared to Rainbow's first couple months. They toured in USA, Europe, Japan and Australia. Their stage show featured a huge computer operated rainbow, which supposedly caused lots of problems as it couldn't fit in many concert halls and it broke up every now and then. On their Canadian tour in 1976 Max Webster's band warmed them up, other warming up artists are not known.
One track Rainbow had already on their second album, appeared almost twenty years later in 1995 in a movie called SFW, although the movie's soundtrack doesn't feature it. About 30 seconds of it gets played in the movie itself, and it appeared also on commercials and trailers of the movie.
Source: http://www.dio.net/biography/Rainbow.html |
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