Rainbow "Memories In Rock" gigs / new music

Deep Purple and family
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Continuing the discussion from Rainbow at Balingen 1996 – A Magical Summer Evening:

I think it is time to pop this up on its own then.

I will say there were (fleeting) moments of glory, especially with the more commercial Rainbow material. Everything else was less convincing. The main offender was playing Mk II Purple songs with that line-up and amount of rehearsals. It was not only unnecessary, but also cruel.

Jens Johansson is usually a consummate professional in everything he does, and responsible for some of the best heavy / power metal keyboard runs. I can totally understand why he took the gig, even if it must have been against his better judgement. Ronnie Romero was and remains a very talented singer who had no reason not to jump in with the sharks - now quite a few people more know he is, even if it wasn’t the best possible publicity. The guys from Ritchie’s backing band, however sympathetic, seemed to be there to collect their paychecks.

And then, the main culprit, Ritchie Blackmore. It was agonizing, mostly because it could have been so much better. I had witnessed him in the early 2000’s with Blackmore’s Night and even if I did not fully appreciate it then, it was great and the playing was top form. Now, it was like he was playing half of the notes and struggling the other half of the time. The curious thing is, as I later watched a covid-era live stream with him on an acoustic guitar, it was his former flawless self again. I think it’s the two hours of electric guitar that is too much for him now, and at that point he had yet to admit it to himself.

In this foray there were certain parallels to what Bob Dylan does, and that is not a compliment. The difference of course is that no one (hopefully) goes to see Dylan to hear a guitar virtuoso do a greatest hits show.

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Yep, the last Rainbow incarnation was a big let down. I’ve flown across the ocean to attend the first two gigs, and in Lorelei I was very close to walking out after the first two songs played. I’ve seen cover bands in their basements doing a much better jobs than that. Next night in (that town in the vicinity of Stuttgart with a tongue twisting for non-natives name) I’ve lowered my expectations significantly and managed to enjoy it for what it is – last Blackmore’s foray into heavy rock.

From what I understand, he has never played Hammond before, hence all the grief. What I don’t understand is why he was offered the job that requires Hammond proficiency.

Yep, playing acoustic and electric are two different things. Having witnessed him with Blackmore’s Night on several occasions over the years, initially I was yearning for that rare appearance of Strat. But as the years progressed, I have noticed that the occasions when he picks up the electric became less and less exciting, and I actually started preferring his acoustic playing. He basically had lost his electric chops somewhere down the road. Use it or lose it concept in all its glory.

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I agree with everything the young guy and the old grizzler write about the Reunionbow debacle, but my question is: Where were you two heroes when I was being hung, drawn and quartered for my same observations in THS? Fine friends you all are!! :rofl:

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Everything has its place and time.

You were hung, drawn and quartered rightfully, and if I may say so, not enough. Because you’ve kept sticking (and still do, btw) your undoubtedly valuable opinions where you were not asked for them and into conversations about completely unrelated things.

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Hasta la Victoria, siempre!

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I think there is a bit more to it than simply saying “he got old”.

Of course age played a role. Arthritis almost certainly played a role as well. But I honestly think many fans overlook something that may have had a huge impact on his playing.

From roughly the late 1990s onwards, Ritchie simply stopped living on the electric guitar.

For almost twenty years his musical world became acoustic guitar, fingerstyle playing, Renaissance music and Blackmore’s Night. That’s a completely different instrument from a Stratocaster, even if both are called guitars.

People who don’t play guitar often think an acoustic guitar is basically an unplugged electric guitar. It really isn’t.

A steel-string acoustic requires much more finger pressure, much more right-hand effort, completely different dynamics and a very different approach to vibrato, bending and picking. Over thousands of hours your hands literally adapt to those movements.

Blackmore himself actually admitted this in Guitar World in 2009. He said something along the lines of:

“I never practice picking anymore because I’m usually playing fingerstyle when I play at home.”

He also said:

“My picking takes a minute to wake up.”

I think those two quotes are incredibly important.

They don’t describe someone who can’t play anymore.

They describe someone whose daily motor skills have shifted over twenty years.

Motor skills are extremely specific.

A concert pianist doesn’t automatically stay at concert level if he spends twenty years mainly playing organ.

A Formula One driver wouldn’t necessarily return after twenty years and immediately drive qualifying laps at his old level.

The brain optimizes for whatever you practice every day.

That’s simply how motor learning works.

Personally, I’ve experienced something similar myself (obviously on a much smaller scale). I once spent several months almost exclusively playing acoustic guitar. When I picked up my Strat again afterwards, it honestly felt strange. Fast electric phrases weren’t gone, but they definitely weren’t as automatic anymore. After a few weeks they came back, but it really showed me how instrument-specific these skills are.

Now imagine not three months, but nearly twenty years.

Then add arthritis.

Then add the fact that you’re over seventy.

Suddenly his Rainbow playing makes much more sense to me.

Also, I think many fans compare 2016 directly to 1993, which was arguably one of his greatest electric periods. By then he had been playing electric guitar almost every day for over thirty years. His picking, vibrato and phrasing were unbelievably automatic.

By contrast, the Ritchie who returned with Rainbow wasn’t trying to be the 48-year-old virtuoso from The Battle Rages On…. He was a musician who had spent almost two decades immersed in acoustic music.

To my ears, the “voice” was still there. His phrasing, his note choices, his vibrato and his dynamics were unmistakably Blackmore.

What changed wasn’t his musical identity.

It was the fluency and automaticity of movements that only come from maintaining electric guitar at the highest level over many years.

I honestly don’t see the reunion as evidence that he “lost it”.

I see it as the natural result of twenty years of playing a different instrument, natural aging, arthritis and changing musical priorities.

That’s a very different thing.

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Newbie BlackBoots has a point with everything he says, of course Ritchie didn’t turn dumb on his Strat overnight or forget how to play. As an acoustic guitarist he has actually improved in the last decades with BN, I’ve never denied that, practice and full immersion makes perfect.

BUT - and it is a BIG BUT - no one forced him to embarrass himself. He could have said “The Strat isn’t my musical home base anymore.” Or “I know people want to hear me play the old stuff, but I need a year to readjust to playing electric again, I want this to be good.” Or alternatively: “I can’t imagine going out with the Strat again, but old fans will be able to hear acoustic reinterpretations of selected Rainbow songs, they don’t need the volume and an always buzzing :rainbow: lighting rig to work, my gigs will prove that.” That would have even been daring.

Instead he did it on the cheap and lazy. And he didn’t learn from his mistake, but repeated it two years later. By then the band was somewhat tighter (if still far from tight) and Romero’s Eengleesh somewhat less horreeble, but what would a 30-year-old Ritchie watching in the audience have said about the spectacle? I remember him being not all that lenient with people who were beyond their prime when he was still a young man. He was more the “Move over!” type.

As for the arthritis argument: I wouldn’t have said a word had he put some young gun on the stage to play those parts he could no longer do himself and restrict himself to throwing in licks and elongated solos (he doesn’t have to play fast to impress me). I prefer hearing the songs done properly by an unknown to being performed beyond his current abilities by a legend. A good man knows his limits and acts accordingly. Ritchie was either delusional, cynical or didn’t really care. Astounding for someone with a reputation of zero tolerance for musicians not cutting the mustard.

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I actually understand your point, especially considering Ritchie’s own famously high standards in the past.

Where we differ is the conclusion.

I don’t think there were only two options: either play exactly as he did in 1977 or not play at all.

To me, an ageing musician doesn’t lose the right to perform simply because his technique has changed.

Yes, his electric playing wasn’t as fluent as it had been after almost twenty years of focusing almost exclusively on acoustic guitar. But I still heard phrasing, note choices and musical ideas that immediately said “Ritchie Blackmore” to me.

Would another year of preparation have helped? Probably.

But I don’t see the reunion as an embarrassment. I see it as an ageing musician revisiting a part of his musical past, with all the limitations that naturally come with age.

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But Ritchie isn’t the only “old guitarist” I’ve seen, I’ve been to gigs with an aged Mark Knopfler, an aged Carlos Santana, an aged David Gilmour, an aged Francis Rossi and an aged Peter Frampton.

You will counter: “But they were in constant electric training!” Fine, then Ritchie should have put more time aside to regain his electric chops. And Herr MacGregor will claim: “Totally different guitarists, Ritchie’s style is much more demanding!” To which I say: Fine, then get a young guy to do the difficult parts for you.

I don’t deny Ritchie’s right to play his old music, if it was for me he could be performing in a wheelchair and I’d still go see him. But I would like him to do it with Würde. The Reunionbow affair was ill-prepared and damaged his legacy. You should have read the German Gitarre & Bass lukewarm review of the ensuing live release where they scoffed about his diminished guitar skills - I squirmed when I read it. Rainbow albums had seen bad reviews in the past too, but never had his skill as a guitarist been questioned like that. Painful.

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I think we’ve probably reached the point where our expectations simply differ, and that’s perfectly fine.

I actually agree with you that more preparation would most likely have benefited the reunion. After spending almost two decades playing predominantly acoustic music, another year of intensive electric playing would probably have made his return smoother.

Where I see it differently is the question of legacy.

To me, Ritchie’s legacy wasn’t created in 2016. It was created between the late 60s and the mid 90s. Nothing that happened during the reunion can erase or fundamentally change what he achieved with Deep Purple, Rainbow or even Stranger In Us All.

I also think the comparisons with Knopfler, Gilmour, Santana or Rossi are difficult. They’re all wonderful guitarists, but they never stepped away from electric guitar for nearly twenty years. Ritchie did. As guitarists we know that motor skills are very specific. Acoustic and electric playing overlap, but they’re certainly not identical. That’s not an excuse—just part of the context.

As for bringing in a younger guitarist to play the demanding parts… I honestly can’t imagine Ritchie ever doing that. Whether that’s pride, artistic integrity or stubbornness is open to debate, but it simply wouldn’t have been in character. He has always been someone who either plays it himself or not at all.

Finally, I think “dignity” is a very personal concept. For you, dignity would have meant waiting longer—or perhaps not returning at all. I can understand that point of view.

For me, dignity can also mean accepting that you’re no longer 30 years old, going on stage anyway, and sharing the music with the audience despite those limitations. I don’t expect a 70-year-old musician to compete with his younger self. What I hope to hear is his musical personality, and for me that was still very much there.

So I completely understand why the reunion disappointed you. It simply didn’t disappoint me to the same extent.

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nick, I personally think Jens Johansson is, in the end, one of those probably thousands and thousands of professional musicians who, when getting a call from Ritchie Blackmore saying “would you like to play in Rainbow”, simply aren’t going to decline, the circumstances be damned, Hammond background or not.

TheBlackBoots, while I share the basic feeling with Uwe, I can also see where you are coming from. Part of my disappointment was that from many of the songs Ritchie chose to play, I had somewhat recently (as in, in the past twenty years) heard better versions of, with the original singer no less. I would have probably best welcomed a “Blackmore’s Night plays Rainbow” show where Ritchie could have played the songs to his strengths and they would have been that much different to avoid comparison. A bit later on we did get “Rainbow plays Blackmore’s Night”, in The Storm, which was an interesting curiosity in itself.

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Thanks, I think that’s a very fair point.

I can absolutely understand why someone who had recently seen Deep Purple with Gillan would inevitably compare those performances with the Rainbow reunion.

I actually like your idea of a “Blackmore’s Night plays Rainbow” show. Looking back, that might have been the most natural transition after so many years away from electric guitar. It would also have avoided many of the inevitable comparisons with the classic Rainbow performances.

At the same time, I can also understand why Ritchie chose to revisit Rainbow in its original format. Those songs were such an important part of his musical identity that I don’t think he wanted to reinterpret them just yet.

Maybe that’s why The Storm worked so well. It showed that the worlds of Rainbow and Blackmore’s Night weren’t actually as far apart as many people had assumed.

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Sure. As I put it at the time to a friend of mine:

Imagine you’re sitting at home, the phone rings, it’s Ritchie and he’s asking if you want the job in Rainbow. What would be your first question: “What will I have to do?”, “How much are you gonna pay me?” or “When do I start?”

That’s why I’m saying it is probably not Jens’ fault, but somebody else’s (cough, the instigator, cough). Either he knew beforehand that he needed a Hammond player, and offered the job to Jens without due diligence, or hired him first and when in rehearsals (lack of) Hammond proficiency showed up, decided that “ah, fuck it, it’ll do”. Either way points to a half arsed approach to the whole venture.

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BN and Rainbow are only superficially far apart, but in actual fact there is a lot of commonality between the two. That is why I have always shaken my head at people who love Rainbow, but are adamant in rejecting BN. Strip away the medieval garb and the armada of acoustic instruments purloined from a raid of the closest music museum, and Blackmore is still there filling the same role he did in Rainbow, just before the backdrop of a fake forest rather than a carnival-lit :rainbow: lighting rig. And Candice’s vocal lines are closer to what Dio, Bonnet and Turner sang as melodies than to the off-the-wall stuff Gillan does (and which Blackers grew to detest because his musical tastes are inherently conservative). Even Blackmore’s lamentable penchant for silly singalong chorus parts is nothing new, it doesn’t take much to imagine Candice skipping about with a tambourine (btw: her tambourine technique is actually really good and she is skilled with a lot of instruments in a naturally gifted manner) exhorting a BN audience to sing Since You’ve Been Gone’s childlike chorus vocal melody/lullaby. La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la - la-la-la! :expressionless_face:

BlackBoots, you make a good case for Ritchie in the face of our onslaught. Let’s accept the arthritis, his laziness in rehearsing and the long electric hiatus. But, why oh why, if being the weakest link was his choice, didn’t he then not at the very least surround himself with top notch, heavy music-experienced cracks who could have camouflaged some of his deficiencies? I dearly hope it wasn’t just the impetus to save money, somehow him not giving a damn (anymore) is more agreeable to me.

Re the legacy: Ritchie’s Purple legacy from Shades of to Stormbringer and then again from Perfect Strangers to Slaves & Masters … don’t mention The Battle Rages On with me, I react like Steve Martin reacts to cleaning woman here …

… is in my eyes and ears indestructible. Maybe in a way I’m more of a Blackmore fan than all those Über-Rainbownistas put together, I think Ritchie inflicted his greatest self-damage when he failed to see what a superior platform he had with Purple (any line-up with him really). Rather than being a (very prominent and vital) part of something great, he chose to create something less where he wielded total control. People often do that in all realms of life, but I don’t have to applaud it.

Anyway, I enjoy your arguments and the thoughtful way you put them forward, welcome to the forum!

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Thank you, Uwe, I appreciate that.

I suspect we’ll continue to disagree on certain aspects of Rainbow, but discussions like this are exactly why I joined the forum. Different perspectives, well argued and respectful, are always worth reading.

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I said pretty much the opposite with that of what I meant to say, namely wielded total control! :rofl:

Thanks for understanding my waffling nonetheless!

Englische Sprache ist schwere Sprache.

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Jens played Hammond when he was young and has said that it was Yngwie who steered him away from the Hammond. Later in his career, Swedish bassist Jonas Hellborg made him go back to the Hammond and in 1993 they did an entire album with Johansson playing Hammond:

Johansson knows his DP and Rainbow in and out so his work with this version of Rainbow was really weird. Maybe he realised how bad it all was and lost the mojo, but it was too late to quit?

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In 2019, Rainbow played Sweden Rock Festival. So did Joe Lynn Turner, who did a set mainly of Rainbow material backed by Swedish band Dynazty. The JLT set sounded very much more Rainbow than Blackmore’s.

With a different drummer and bass player, I think this version of Rainbow could have worked, despite Ritchie’s performance. In fact, had RB simply joined JLT and his Swedish band - including the guitar player - it could have been a stellar celebration of the Ritchie’s rock career.

https://youtu.be/xcJ4O9zwtL0

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Public service announcement: you can edit your posts for 24 hours after the fact. Triple dots at the bottom of the post open some new possibilities:

tripledot

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Continuing the discussion from Rainbow “Memories In Rock” gigs / new music:

The only person who has an agenda here says that Ritchie destroys his legacy, yeah right. Shouldn’t that be, Uwe Hornung wants Ritchie’s ‘legacy’ destroyed, with all his negativity, resentment and bitterness toward Rainbow, in any form. Uwe WILL go to his grave with all this, he is incapable of letting it go, simple really. Poor sod, fancy letting a musician and the music created get to you like that. Let it go Uwe, impossible as it does appear, but surely there is still some hope for you, even if just a minuscule amount, somewhere over that Rainbow. Ritchie Blackmore’s ‘legacy’ remains totally intact, no denying that Uwe, you have failed in your ‘mission’ to attempt to convince anyone else of this. We must be over the Rainbow…This line here from Uwe says it all, utter nonsense created by an individual with more than chip on his shoulder. “I think Ritchie inflicted his greatest self-damage when he failed to see what a superior platform he had with Purple (any line-up with him really).” Self damage, ha ha ha ha ha, fair dinkum, you really are totally out of touch. Thanks to TheBlackBoots for his comments in the real world and a few others here who obviously are not about to jump off a cliff because of ‘Rainbow’ 2016. As for Mr ‘Excessive Compulsive’ the less said there the better eh? Cheers.