Rainbow Live 1976

Redlester

Well, after a rather hard and stressful week, I have just spent a relaxing Sunday afternoon reading a book and listening to Rainbow live in 1976. I feel a lot better. 

As I never tire of saying, Dio- what a set of pipes on that lad. And as for Blackmore, at that stage he had reached that very rare level of probably being able to 'say' exactly what he wanted to on the guitar, when he wanted and how he wanted. A precious gift (see also Django, Beck, McLaughlin, Stevie Ray, Richard Thompson, Hendrix, and a few others). 

That is all. Enjoy your Sunday. 

ICBM

The Dio-era Rainbow were a phenomenal band. I've recently re-acquired the first two albums on CD, and I'd almost forgotten how great they sound. Blackmore was pretty much at his peak then, for sure. Must get LLRnR as well...

The slightly silly lyrics which I might have found too embarrassing to admit to listening to in my twenties are now rather amusing and take me back to when I first heard them as a teenager .

Redlester

@icbm Yes, the words are daft most of the time, but to be honest they're just musically arranged vocal sounds to me. I will always love the line "my eyes are bleeding" from Stargazer though. Christopher Marlowe would have loved that line. It is genuinely berserk.  

I've got the Live in Germany 1977 album too, but the 76 stuff is that little but more raw and aggressive. 

viz

Redlester said:

@icbm Yes, the words are daft most of the time, but to be honest they're just musically arranged vocal sounds to me. I will always love the line "my eyes are bleeding" from Stargazer though. Christopher Marlowe would have loved that line. It is genuinely berserk.  

I've got the Live in Germany 1977 album too, but the 76 stuff is that little but more raw and aggressive. 

Remember trying to work out those words before tinternet. What’s the line after that? And my heart is leading in? Or something?

Hootsmon

Is it the Germany album?

viz

Hootsmon said:

Is it the Germany album?

Who, me? No I meant the studio version. Just looked it up - “my heart is leaving here”. Never knew it was that!

Hootsmon

Googling live in 76 and the germany thing comes up...

viz

Hootsmon said:

Googling live in 76 and the germany thing comes up...

Ah. Soz, thought you were referring to that lyric. Yep the 76 gig is Germany. Well that’s the one I’ve got. 

merlin

Oh yes, the famous "truss-rod free" instruments. 
I saw hms smash one up at a Rainbow gig with Dio in the Capitol Cinema in Cardiff in 1977. 

You could see run behind his stack to hide and and take off his proper guitar and sling on a smash-able piece of shit without a truss rod and then break the neck over a monitor.... then after the macho fun he went behind his stack and put his real guitar back on. 

ICBM

Redlester said:

@icbm Yes, the words are daft most of the time, but to be honest they're just musically arranged vocal sounds to me. I will always love the line "my eyes are bleeding" from Stargazer though. Christopher Marlowe would have loved that line. It is genuinely berserk.

Me too. I always liked "crossbows in the firelight" from Sixteenth Century Greensleeves as well... so evocative.

viz said:

Remember trying to work out those words before tinternet. What’s the line after that? And my heart is leading in? Or something?

"My heart is leaving here", I think.

CaseOfAce

Phenomenal player. To have seen him in his mid-70s heyday must have been quite an experience- not to say deafening - 
I've heard it mentioned more than once his stage volume using 200+ watt Marshall Majors at the time was colossal.

Definitely a player who created his own world on the instrument using some very basic ingredients? 
Scalloped neck '70s (post CBS? you're kdding ?!) bullet truss rod Fender strat with bridge and neck pickups used only, into a tape machine being used to overload the preamp of his Marshalls that he'd wanted voiced to match his Vox AC30s...
He wanted the purity of the note to come out without the distortion?

That's before you come to his mastery of the instrument. Jaw dropping - and yet so very very melodic.
He has this thing of flicking back and forth on the pickup selector and constant fiddling with volume and tone knobs...

I think he's hugely underrated - I wonder if in part due to Malmsteen who took some of his basic ingredients and went on to do his thing with them (and that's not a diss on Malmsteen who is similarly incredible).

bazxkr

I saw them a couple of times on the 76 tour... epic with that huge Rainbow light show curved over the stage

Cozy Epic, Dio is just Dio... Blackmore... still the only guitarist to lift the hairs on the back of my neck. And yes the Marshall Majors were brutal. There is a guy on youtube who does a fantastic cover of the Blackmore Made In Japan Tone on Majors. As close as you can get I reckon... check it out 

1972 200W Marshall Major with "Ritchie Blackmore" Mods Sound Sample - YouTube

He has a ton of other Blackmore covers and really nails it... can play a bit obviously

Grunfeld

Blimey.  Just played Rainbow Rising for the first time in decades.  Incredible.  Also just the sheer fun of connecting with this again. 

ICBM

CaseOfAce said:

That's before you come to his mastery of the instrument. Jaw dropping - and yet so very very melodic.
He has this thing of flicking back and forth on the pickup selector and constant fiddling with volume and tone knobs...

It's the incredible use of slide that really gets me. It was years before I realised just how much of his playing at that time was with it - his pitch accuracy is phenomenal.

prowla

All of Dio’s backing bands were good.

Redlester

@ICBM Yes, a hugely underrated slide player. Like George Harrison. George took the slide and made it part of his soloing 'voice' giving a whole new vocal quality to his lovely guitar solos. Whereas Blackmore takes it to open up a whole new melodic and dynamic range. Plus to make sound effects and weird noises! As you say, the pitch control is fabulous. Like George though, the slide opens up a whole different personality of his playing: slower, more deliberate, and with a bit more of the lyrical side. He essentially approaches the long section on Stargazer like a great jazz player- it's one long vamp where the focus is completely on him.

I love the videos of Blackmore around that period too- all the hand signals to the rhythm section to indicate when to come in, when to play out, when to come to the bridge etc. Total control. 

@CaseOfAce There used to be rumours that he had the guts of AC30s put into Marshall heads. -Or maybe they were Marshall voiced as Voxes- either way the tone is phenomenal. The version of Man on the Silver Mountain on my live album is like the recorded version, and I think that's a Vox on the studio album. 

By the way, the album I was listening to was Rainbow- Live in Germany, 1976 from 1990 on the Connoisseur Collection label. 

Caffeine_Vampire

I'm ashamed to admit that I prefer Candice Night singing 16th Century Greensleeves on that live album they did.

ICBM

Redlester said:

@CaseOfAce There used to be rumours that he had the guts of AC30s put into Marshall heads. -Or maybe they were Marshall voiced as Voxes- either way the tone is phenomenal. The version of Man on the Silver Mountain on my live album is like the recorded version, and I think that's a Vox on the studio album.

Not into heads as far as I know - although Status Quo did! At the time when Marshall were making the 'Korg Reissue' AC30s - but I think he did have a Marshall combo with an AC30 amp section fitted into it. A lot of the early Deep Purple studio recordings are definitely AC30, so it wouldn't surprise me if he carried on using them. It may have just been for practical reasons - even in the 1970s the volume of a cranked Major would have seemed excessive in a studio.

bazxkr

ICBM said:

CaseOfAce said:

That's before you come to his mastery of the instrument. Jaw dropping - and yet so very very melodic.
He has this thing of flicking back and forth on the pickup selector and constant fiddling with volume and tone knobs...

It's the incredible use of slide that really gets me. It was years before I realised just how much of his playing at that time was with it - his pitch accuracy is phenomenal.

I don't know much about slide playing but Blackmore seems to hold the slide in a completely way to most players I've seen videos of.ICBM said:

Redlester said:

@CaseOfAce There used to be rumours that he had the guts of AC30s put into Marshall heads. -Or maybe they were Marshall voiced as Voxes- either way the tone is phenomenal. The version of Man on the Silver Mountain on my live album is like the recorded version, and I think that's a Vox on the studio album.

Not into heads as far as I know - although Status Quo did! At the time when Marshall were making the 'Korg Reissue' AC30s - but I think he did have a Marshall combo with an AC30 amp section fitted into it. A lot of the early Deep Purple studio recordings are definitely AC30, so it wouldn't surprise me if he carried on using them. It may have just been for practical reasons - even in the 1970s the volume of a cranked Major would have seemed excessive in a studio.

For Blackmore I think the idea of using a Major in the studio would not be excessive at all if the speakers were pointed at one Ian Gillan LOL

ICBM

bazxkr said:

For Blackmore I think the idea of using a Major in the studio would not be excessive at all if the speakers were pointed at one Ian Gillan LOL

Tea on screen incident .

axisus

Rainbow On Stage is one of my fave live albums. To me that is exactly how to play live if you are a rock band. Take the songs and breath new life and energy into them, don't play note for note copies of the original, but go with the flow on the night. Blackmore was masterful back then, to me there was power and almost some kind sexual magnetism to his playing, he was 'at one' with his guitar and coaxing the maximum out of it. Ronnie was such a superb vocalist as well of course.