Biography
Ritchie Blackmore walked out of Deep Purple in 1975 because he wanted to record a Steve Hammond cover called Black Sheep of the Family and his bandmates told him to kick rocks. That is how Rainbow started. Blackmore hijacked a New York band called Elf, stole their singer—some kid named Ronnie James Dio—and booked time at Musicland Studios in Munich with producer Martin Birch. They tracked the debut in less than a month. It was raw, medieval, and completely divorced from the bloated stadium rock Purple was starting to churn out. Then the rotating door started spinning. Blackmore fired everyone but Dio, brought in Cozy Powell on drums, and went full neoclassical with Rising in '76. It was a masterclass in power metal before the term even existed. But Blackmore got bored of the dragons and wizards shit, pushed Dio out, and went chasing American radio hits with Graham Bonnet and Joe Lynn Turner. That era gets a lot of hate from the purists, but those late-seventies and early-eighties records are slick, heavy, and absolutely packed with hooks.
The Arc of Rain Bow
The pivots — what forced Rain Bow to reinvent.
The Munich Castles and Kings Era
Blackmore wanted a fantasy world and found his perfect foil in Dio's operatic delivery and cosmic lyrics. They holed up in Munich with producer Martin Birch, blending classical minor scales with heavy blues-rock swagger. You hear this raw chemistry on the 1975 debut, where Blackmore's Stratocaster matches Dio's soaring vocals note-for-note. It was a brief, lightning-in-a-bottle moment before Blackmore decided he wanted a bigger, more aggressive sound.
The Rising Masterclass
Blackmore fired the entire backing band and brought in powerhouse drummer Cozy Powell and bassist Jimmy Bain to create the definitive lineup. They recorded Rising in 1976 with Birch back behind the board, laying down the blueprint for symphonic metal on tracks like Stargazer. Powell's thunderous intro on that track changed rock drumming overnight, while the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra added massive, sweeping scale to Blackmore's riffs. This was the peak of the band's heavy-gothic phase before the commercial itch took over.
Chasing the American Dial
Dio left because he refused to sing commercial love songs, prompting Blackmore to pivot hard toward the American pop charts. He hired vocalist Graham Bonnet for Down to Earth in 1979, scoring massive radio hits with Russ Ballard-penned tracks like Since You Been Gone. The sound shifted from fantasy epics to slick, synthesizer-driven hard rock. By the time Joe Lynn Turner took over vocals in 1981, the transition to polished, MTV-ready AOR was complete.
Influences
- Deep Purple — Blackmore co-founded the group and brought his signature neo-classical guitar style directly from their sessions. You hear the speed and aggression of Highway Star all over Rainbow's early material. It served as both the structural foundation and the creative prison Blackmore had to escape.
- Johann Sebastian Bach — Blackmore frequently cited Bach as his primary musical inspiration and integrated classical violin techniques into his guitar solos. You hear the direct influence of Bach's counterpoint and minor-scale progressions in the guitar solos of Stargazer and Sixteenth Century Greensleeves. He essentially modernized Baroque composition for the Marshall stack.
- The Jimi Hendrix Experience — Blackmore was obsessed with Hendrix's stage presence and aggressive use of the Stratocaster whammy bar. The heavy blues-rock riffing on Man on the Silver Mountain is a direct nod to Hendrix's tone and phrasing. Blackmore took the feedback-laden showmanship of Hendrix and applied it to a rigid, classical framework.
- Elf — Blackmore literally hired the entire band Elf—excluding their guitarist—to serve as the backing group for the first Rainbow album. Ronnie James Dio's powerful vocal delivery and bluesy phrasing were already fully formed on Elf's mid-seventies records. Their gritty, boogie-rock groove provided the engine for Rainbow's earliest sessions.
- Russ Ballard — The former Argent guitarist wrote Since You Been Gone and I Surrender, which gave Rainbow their biggest commercial radio hits. Blackmore actively sought out Ballard's pop-oriented songwriting to rescue the band from underground obscurity. You hear his melodic pop sensibilities completely dominate the arrangements of the late-seventies era.
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