On July 21, 1996, Rainbow took the stage at the SWF3 Open Air Festival in Balingen, Germany, during the Stranger in Us All world tour. Sharing the festival bill with artists such as David Bowie and ZZ Top, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow delivered a powerful performance that many fans still consider one of the finest concerts of the band’s 1995–1997 era.
With Doogie White on vocals, Greg Smith on bass, Paul Morris on keyboards, Chuck Burgi on drums and Candice Night providing backing vocals, the band sounded inspired from the very first notes. Although the festival set was shorter than a regular headline show, it featured highlights such as Mistreated, Still I’m Sad, Black Masquerade, Ariel, Perfect Strangers, Burn and Smoke on the Water. Blackmore’s expressive guitar playing, singing sustain and effortless phrasing made this concert a favourite among many Rainbow fans.
What makes Balingen even more special is what happened after the show. Backstage, away from the large festival stage and the thousands of fans, Ritchie Blackmore and Doogie White performed an intimate acoustic session. They played a heartfelt version of “Hey Joe” together with the beautiful traditional melody “Greensleeves.” It was a relaxed and spontaneous moment that perfectly revealed another side of Blackmore’s musicianship—his love for melody, folk music and simple acoustic arrangements.
For many fans, Balingen 1996 represents more than just another Rainbow concert. It captures Ritchie Blackmore at a remarkable point in his career: technically refined, musically inspired and performing with a warm, expressive guitar tone that has become legendary among guitar players. Even today, this concert remains one of the most treasured documents of the Stranger in Us All era.
It was the same in Milan (28 of October, 1995). The arena was charged with adrenaline; the crowd was in a frenzy—you could tell just by watching how they were moving in front of the stage.
Of course I was right there at the front, too. Looking back at it now (it was the last with Ritchie Blackmore concert I ever saw), I still feel that he was the greatest guitarist DP ever had—and one of the greatest in history. An unforgettable night
I caught the Buenos Aires show at the Teatro Opera on June 30th, 1996, an unforgettable evening!
Also bumped into the two rightmost characters in your picture around soundcheck time!
Indeed, at that time Blackers had somehow regained his clean tone and phrasing, which along with the no-longer-tied-to-just-DPMK2 setlist and the younger singer(s) and players made for a magical evening of music.
Thanks for that gig Andrea, I enjoyed watching that a few evenings back, it is quite good quality all things considered. At that point in time, 1995 and I was hoping that Rainbow would drop Downunder, alas they didn’t venture this far out into no man’s land. I have always enjoyed Stranger In Us All as an album, good songs, superbly recorded too. Ritchie had something to say on that album as did his cohorts on Purpendicular. They needed to part ways, life does that at times for many people. Cheers.
AndreA that should be, a genuine typo there and of course I was referring to that Milan concert you were at. The crowd was certainly into it and so was Ritchie. Sort of reminded me of that Germany DP gig in Stuttgart 1993. Ritchie ripped it up with the audience in full support. Cheers.
I saw 90s Rainbow in 1995 in Offenbach and 1996 in Göteborg. The Offenbach gig was spirited by the whole band, the Goteborg showed how quickly Blackers tires of things, he was in a bad/uninspired/lackluster mood and that brought the whole band down. Even the singing Scotsman was dejected and there was no rapport between him and Ritchie. I stood with a couple of Swedish fans and we all agreed after the gig that Rainbow’s future wasn’t a bright one, the writing was already on the wall.
Blackmore always started his Rainbow ventures very enthusiastically, only to learn every time that his drawing power by himself is nowhere near DP’s. Then frustration sets in - Stranger In Us All sold extremely poorly - and Blackmore disbands the band again.
And of course there was Candice cooing into his ear: Honey, we really should be doing something different altogether …
Uwe, so why won’t you tell in such detail why and how the 1995 Offenburg was great? What fine adlibs or extended tracks they played? Let’s exchange and nurture the good memories. Grumpy was patented some 25 years ago by Rick Wakeman.
When Blackmore plays DP without either IG or DC/GH singing and IP drumming, the result is to me often banal/travelling juke box, I don’t think he “owns” those songs. Blackmore outside of DP is to me similar to meeting an old middle aged friend who has separated from his same-age wife and now shows up with an Eastern European mail order trophy bride the age of his daughter for dinner. You show friendly hospitality, but at the end of the evening you ask yourself: Is he really serious about this?
And that is like it is for me with Rainbow, I can’t really take it serious, it was Ritchie’s pastime and he paid for it, but the history of rock music need not be rewritten without it.
The Offenbach gig had four musicians on stage who were very chuffed to play with Blackmore and who showed, youthful enthusiasm and Ritchie bathed in it. I didn’t think there was anything noteworthy about the setlist, pretty much what AI would compile if asked to compile a set list of DP and old Rainbow chestnuts plus a few tracks from the mediocre SIUA. Has Blackmore ever played a DP song outside of DP that he did not play with DP? I can’t think of one. Ritchie is very predictable in his song choices.
I fear I’m just not a Blackmore fan enough to be a committed Rainbow fan. It was always more of the same to me, only less.
Ok, so more hit to the head Was Mistreated part of the set then already? I remember we were raving about having Burn as a permanent fixture of the set in the PL fan club, but this came in later and became quite a staple the closer the time was to the fateful winter of 1997 in US.
I don’t remember Rainbow playing Mistreated in Offenbach, I think it was the exact same Black Masquerade set known from the Düsseldorf Rockpalast gig.
They played Mistreated in Göteborg, but seriously, Doogie White singing that David Coverdale song is like Adam Sandler taking Clint Eastwood’s role in a remake of The Good, the Bad & the Ugly. That incongruous, yes.
70s and 80s Rainbow was already bad enough, must you really torture me with questions about the 90s fan club edition?
Yes Uwe, I must.You were there and we from behind the Iron Curtain - couldn’t. Your grumping on Rainbow makes you sound like a boy who had too many toys in his childhood to the point that he couldn’t enjoy them anymore. We were never able to achieve that, sorry. Fate did us in as early as 1945. But this is an end to your torture, worry not. Maybe other, more willing and approving witnesses will share more insight into that period. 1995 part of STIUA is rather poorly covered by available bootlegs, hence my putting the clawed fingers among your tired ribs. Oh well, Saturday’s alright for fighting isn’t it?
Thorsun, you darn little Commie brat, while you and your KOMINTERN buddies were training to break through the —> Fulda Gap and liberate us from the chains of exploitative capitalism, weren’t those Puhdys and Omega gigs from your socialist brother countries good enough for you?! With you guys, everything was always just a few hours’ tank ride away anyway, so stop your sobbin’!
PS: As for the spoiled brat thing, can I help it if I have seen so many brilliant Status Quo, Slade, J. Geils Band, Whitesnake, GILLAN, Billy Squier, Rory Gallagher, Judas Priest, Night Ranger, Deep Purple, Peter Frampton, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Ian Hunter, David Gilmour, Van Halen, Toto, The Darkness, Sparks and Velvet Revolver gigs that most of my - all in all eleven - Rainbow gigs pale in comparison? The only Rainbow gigs I saw and would regard as absolutely killer/excellent were the Munich 1977 Rockplast one and the Down To Earth gig in Frankfurt a few years later. I know it’s an unpopular thing to say here, but not all of the many members of Rainbow were musically in the league of DP musicians. And if some people don’t hear the difference between the sublimely funky groove of Glenn Hughes playing the backing to Mistreated and Jimmy Bain’s bricklayer’s approach to the same song - I do!
I love DP and I can just about bear Rainbow. But I would have preferred an Mk IV gig to any Rainbow gig at any time, even with Tommy and Glenn drugged out of their minds. To me, most of Rainbow‘s music is einfältig and one-dimensional, something I would never accuse DP of.
When I joined THS, I made a conscious decision for a Deep Purple site, you wouldn‘t have seen me near this place if it had been monikered “Rainbow Rising“ or - groan - “A Light In The Black“ or somesuch nonsense. I still get nightmares from having to wade through “More Black Than Purple” issues in the 90s. Ritchie was important to Purple no doubt but in my book he lost more by leaving them than they did by losing him. My god, the last good studio album he played on was Slaves & Masters, that was more than 35 years ago!
Uwe, I love Pretenders, Chrissie and Stop your sobbing, so if you wanted to punish me with this clip, you actually did otherwise!
The list of the gigs you put out certainly puts things into perspective, but you’re hard damn wrong about being “just hours away”. Like the Berlin Wall never existed! It really didn’t? Come on.
We shouldn’t be dragging our precious Folks here into historians discussion here, it’s pretty futile. We can’t applaud anything Nazis did up to 1945, but if you were deeply read into the details of history of Schlessien, you’d knew that what Germans did during the war was still a tad less frightening to what marching hordes of Red Army could do to civilians. Who knows - maybe you know. No use dragging the line over that - I think that Sacred Land from the new album pretty much sums up the idiocy of wars and fights, no matter which side you’re on. I’ve been to Würzburg and Nürnberg in 2024 and learning of what Aliants’ bombings did to these historic sites doesn’t make me feel more like a winner just because it helped to install Yalta in. We lost a huge amount of Karl the Great Empire legacy with that, and that’s where we all in this region come from. Had the Austrian landscapist been a happy lovingly brought up kid in late 1800s and Poland be Lutheran since 1600s, all could have been so much different. But it wasn’t to be like that. And so we are where we are.
And I guess you can guess one thing! I wish I could see many of the live acts you did, but I didn’t (I would bring up Gillan and Rory Gallagher to the fore of the wishlist). If you say that in this mass Rainbow was less than anything fancy - it’s yours, have it, grump over it, or even justify it with clear analysis of facts. I would still love to hear Catch The Rainbow in it’s full throttled glory somewhere between 1976-1980. That’s me and that’s it.
In an attempt to move the focus from German history back to Rainbow, here’s a cool clip I hadn’t seen before of 1995 rehearsals.
Uwe, time to re-evaluate your claim about RB not being a fine rhythm player. The way he plays here makes the whole groove. I am glad you got to experience that and him live. Gothenburg 1996 was the last chance I had. Got to see him with BN later on but it wasn’t the same, obviously. Also saw him once with “Rainbow” but it was family entertainment by then.
I concur Daniel. Just as I wrote, these discussions can go on between me and Uwe only, he has my address. Thanks for the clip and getting us back on the traction.
Was Mistreated part of the set then already? I remember we were raving about having Burn as a permanent fixture of the set in the PL fan club, but this came in later and became quite a staple the closer the time was to the fateful winter of 1997 in US.
You were there and we from behind the Iron Curtain - couldn’t. Your grumping on Rainbow makes you sound like a boy who had too many toys in his childhood to the point that he couldn’t enjoy them anymore. We were never able to achieve that, sorry. Fate did us in as early as 1945. But this is an end to your torture, worry not. Maybe other, more willing and approving witnesses will share more insight into that period. 1995 part of STIUA is rather poorly covered by available bootlegs, hence my putting the clawed fingers among your tired ribs. Oh well, Saturday’s alright for fighting isn’t it? 
