I’m one of the people that have no qualms about Romero’s performance. In fact, I think he was the only one who took the whole thing very professionally and did a good job. Yep, he did better on Dio and Coverdale numbers than on Gillan’s, but that’s the limitation of his voice.
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Daniel, does one song really determine whether reunion DP still worked as a collective or not in the same way they did on like, say, In Rock, Fireball and MH?
Romero’s got talent, no doubt, and he gave all.
But he also spoke substandard English, would you have cast him as the new James Bond if he had been an actor?
Blackmore was wealthy enough to afford him theater speech and language training, just like any hopeful Brit actrice gets “Valley Girl” speech training (vocal fry and all) when she is cast as a Yank. It’s not undoable, but falls into the category of “due preparation” which wasn’t Ritchie’s (or Candice’s - she really should have anticipated what was coming being around him 24/7, I co-blame her, no joke) strong point in the Reunionbow fiasco.
The Loreley Amphitheater is btw a Nazi creation, that the RAF and USAAF bomber fleets unfortunately missed in their daylight and night raids over Germany. Its architecture oozes totalitarianism.
The Nazis erected it as one of their mock-Germanic Thingstätten to hold their obscene party rallies. It is in the middle of a wine region and vintners, it has to be said, were among the most faithful and fervent NSDAP clientele.
It’s all good that it is now used mostly for music the Nazis would have regarded as entartet
but it’s not really a place I like staying at, its history weighs on me. Though I’m scheduled to be there again end of August when Herr Halford and his leathür minstrels prowl the stage there. Reliably well-rehearsed for the metal sermon as the Priest always is.
Would you prefer Sean Connery fronting Rainbow then?
If he could sing, yes.
So you think it’s irrelevant if a foreign speaker can neither pronounce nor understand the English lyrics (s)he sings?
I applaud 
your tolerance on the matter! 
A “Godness” on a (silver) mountain (top) alright then!
But also Under The Gun 
Big effin’ deal! They’ve been doing that in opera for centuries. The wrinkled nose Elizabeth even has a video on her channel explaining why accents don’t matter in singing.
Any given track on that album shows the same team spirit. There is no filler. To me, their most spirited album.
A Spanish accent for Rainbow’s songs? It becomes karaoke for me at least. And then there was the rhythm section…
Regardless of his diction, Romero was still too young a singer to play in Rainbow with Ritchie alongside him. I’m sorry, he’s an honest singer but in terms of charisma on stage he couldn’t even compete with Doogie, not to mention his predecessors… and above all he had an anonymous timbre like many contemporary metal singers… they should have hired another singer.
an example of a great singer:
Romero was 34 in 2016. Glenn was 21 at Cal Jam. Either you’ve got the goods or you don’t?
the singer is one thing, the bassist is another.
in any case Glenn at 75 sings even better than Romero.
and in any case the level required of musicians by Ritchie was evidently lower in 2016 than in 1973.
Uwe’s comment -"I had paid a four digit amount for tickets for my wider family circle, wishing to introduce them to “Blackmore the Phenomenon”. And you have the audacity to criticise other people for ‘worshipping’ Blackmore? Enough said there. I don’t mock you for going to a concert Uwe, I have a dig at you for your attitude after the fact. As others rightfully do also. The incessant negative criticism, not letting it go that you felt let down by your expectations, which sounded totally unrealistic at that time. I get the excitement and enthusiasm at going to a show, we all do it. Well most of us. Some people get dragged to a show by another follower of that music. A lot of people also experience a disappointing performance. Do they go on about it repeatedly, forever and ever? Not likely. It makes you feel slightly better within yourself and in a public place to mock, put down, insult even. Get over it. The Man in Black that other people ‘worship’ according to your negative attitude, he did let you down didn’t he. And it isn’t as if certain people who followed the rock news etc had an inkling about who the other musicians in the band were, and how long it was since Ritchie has performed live playing that music. I don’t mind other disappointed fans talking about it, I don’t get off on them being disappointed or yourself. I do wish you all had a better experience etc. Anyway, it happened, for good or bad. Most people have moved on and many more at the gigs more than likely still enjoyed it at the time. That’s showbiz. Cheers.
Sigh. I‘ve never worshipped Ritchie, I don‘t really think that he is that nice or fair a person. Nor do our general views on people and society align very much.
But I did see him as a guarantee for a at the very least solid performance. Which as I have now learned from Herr MacGregor, who must have seen Ritchie much more often than just the roughly 30 times I did with DP, real Rainbow, fan club edition Rainbow, BN and Reunionbow, was of course a folly. I should have asked him first whether it was safe to go. My bad, sorry.
The Tasmanian life coach is right, I really should get over it and impress upon myself that Ritchie played plenty fine and did not deliver performances fluttering like a wounded bird the four times I saw him with Los Rainbows.
Incidentally, I have seen quite a few artists with a longer performance hiatus than Ritchie who did better. It’s about how much work you put in.
I don’t think it’s about how much work you put in, not in this case. Too much time had passed for Ritchie, who’d almost lost his chops on the electric altogether. That Pat Boone solo was recorded in 1996 and there is simply no comparison. He shouldn’t have gone through with the reunion, plain and simple.
Ritchie’s name was always synononymous with quality control (BN excepted), so even though the announcement of players with medieval stage names was worrying, indicating that things would be done on the cheap, I never thought Ritchie would take the same approach with his own playing. That was naive thinking. Ritchie took BN out billed as Rainbow and managed to take arena sized crowds along for the ride.
And how exactly is Glaswegian, upstate NY, or NJ accents are better for Rainbow songs?
They understand what the lyrics mean for starters, even Glaswegians if properly instructed.
But then lyrical content was never that high on Rainbow fans’ agenda so maybe you’re right.
Now I neet a sssürtün sssong …
Daniel, it’s not fair to say that BN musicians lacked quality for what they had to do there - it is a very narrow concept. Randomly picked, I believe Cozy Powell, Ian Paice, Glenn Hughes and Jon Lord would have all found it difficult to fit into BN.
The same of course applied vice versa, the BN rhythm section was out of its stylistic depth playing heavy music.
But if you ask me, I think the BN keyboard guy would have likely done a better job than Jens J, and if only because he was more familiar with Ritchie’s style.
I don’t think David Keith is a threat to IP in or outside of BN.
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