GRAHAM BONNET Life over the Rainbow How do you manage to keep your voice in such fantastic shape? What's your secret keeping your voice in such great condition? I don't know. I've just been very lucky I think, I've got a very nice loud speaking voice and a very loud singing voice. Some days it doesn't work like I'd like it to but it's just a matter of if I drink coffee it screws it up, it makes it very gravelly and acidic so all they actually comes out of my stomach and up my vocal cords so I should never do that when I'm singing. I make sure that I don't drink coffee when I record or go on stage, it's okay to drink tea or water but no alcohol of course which I don't do. It's just something... I've just been very lucky. I think what it is, my only sort of early training when I was a kid I was in a dance band and sang every kind of music, swing stuff and all that kind of stuff and had to use my voice in different ways. So I could control everything in here.... the sound that comes out. And also I have very large lungs which I thanked my granddad for because he's built the same as me. He used to have a very large chest and a very slim waiste so it's kind of like... someone said to me once "you had the body like a greyhound", you know the large lungs on the very narrow waist. I've been lucky to have all these things help me along during my singing career so to speak. I have no real answer. I just know I can do it and it's something I've just been very lucky because a lot of my friends have sort of said "oh, I'm too old to sing now" but I've still got some my speaking voice. I don't speak like an old man, it's just lucky and I think also from my family my mom was a singer, my brother used to sing, but it's just one of those things. I interviewed Arthur Brown not so long ago and he still sounds fabulous as well. Yeah yeah, he's one of those guys that has that sort of semi-operetic voice, and you know I can sort of, in a way sing like that, if you will you know... No, it's no real answer. When you do your set, do you actually include any of those old Marbles songs? Yeah! The very first record that brought me and my cousin into view musically was a song called 'Only One Woman' in 1968, which we followed up with a song called 'The Walls Fell Down' both songs written by Barry Gibb. We were very lucky to have to worked with Barry and the Gibb brothers. My cousin... in fact Trevor Gordon was in the Bee Gees when he lived in Australia and he made records with those guys. So that's how I met the Bee Gees, through my cousin, so we had a good run for two years I think. Then we decided to go our separate ways and you know things didn't really happen for a while for me or him. So we were very lucky to have Barry Gibb write this and be the producer on that first record. We did real well and people really liked that song and we still do it live once in a while. How was it working with the Bee Gees? I mean that was quite interesting. oh yeah I mean they put the tracks down for us so on the first on those two records we made there's two records have been made my cousin and I that is the Bee Gees playing on the tracks you know and me and Barry and Maurice were very close to me and my cousin. Robin was more of a you know he was a bit of a loner not more sorry Robin, Maurice and Barry were close to me and my cousin so we see Barry constantly to come around to our house when we all lived in London but of course they moved to America eventually but we were good friends. We'd go out in the evening and go to a club the Speakeasy we used to go to which was a club in London yeah you know which was the one to go to because kind of everyone lived there and there'd be some sometimes a jam at night with the you know Jimi Hendrix or whatever and you know people from bands it was a a good time of course that's gone now it's much harder now to be working on the business it's oversaturated I think you know. I'm an old guy now I was lucky to get success when I did I think people who were trying to do sort of what you call heavier Rock now coming into it are failing because it's been done you know and I think it may happen again I'm not sure if the so-called heavy metal thing will happen again but I think it's been done it's time to move on to something different but that's what I do and that's what a lot of my friends do it's a heavy Rock and we're stuck with that forever you know because that's the best thing we do. Could you not see yourself in The Sweet as you were asked to replace Brian Connolly? My producer one afternoon, he said to me when I was recording with him, do you want to come over to the pub and meet the guys from The Sweet. They asked me to join the band and I said "Well, let me think about it". I didn't really think it was my kind of thing to be honest with you. Their music you know "A Little Willy Willy Will Go Home" and all that stuff you know. "Fox on the Run" whatever they recorded, I didn't feel it was my thing because I wanted to be solo. I wanted to be on my own and I didn't think I wanted to join a band like Sweet. I really didn't see it at all. I wasn't interested but they did really really well but it just wasn't my thing so I turned it down and my manager kind of agreed that. When Peter Gabriel left Genesis were you one of the singers that auditioned for that band? No! Well there you go. That's why I couldn't find anything on the internet about it. Yeah no. I didn't, no. According to Martin Popoff's book you'd never actually heard any of Rainbow before you actually joined them I had no idea who they were and Roger Glover was working with a friend of mine. We were managed by the same people, Mickey Moody the guitar player, and it was Roger Glover who was producing Mickey Moody's album I think and so what happened was Ritchie Blackmore heard the 'Only One Woman' song a few times and he said where is this guy now and Roger said well I can get hold of them through Mickey Moody. So Mickey gave Roger Glover my phone number. Roger Glover got in touch with me and said will you come over to audition for Rainbow and I said okay but I wasn't sure who they were so I asked my manager who they were. He said "They have sort of a good reputation" as being a heavy rock band. He said "They used to be Deep Purple, a couple of the guys". Oh okay, Deep Purple, Smoke on the Water blah blah blah and so I said but who are they? So what I did was buy the albums, the stuff when Ronnie was singing with them obviously and I said to my manager "I don't think this is the right thing for me, I don't really want to be in the band". He said "Well, go over there do the audition and see what you think". I learned one song called 'Mistreated' and that was my audition piece. I went over there and sang with the band and a couple of times and they gave me the job there and then. I said "Well thank you, can I..." again it was one of those "Can I think about it?". So I went back to London because they were recording in Switzerland and I went back to London and said to my manager "I don't think I'm right for this". I said "They're all the sort of they have the heavy metal look, the spandex pants and all that or whatever they were wearing, I said "I don't look like them for one thing. I have my short hair and I still do have all the rest of it". They weren't like me and I thought I was going to be better off just being a solo artist. He said "No, I think you should really do this, take it seriously and it'd be a good move". And eventually I guess it was because I got involved. I went back to record the album called "Down to Earth" and it did pretty well. We had a song from the album called 'Since You've Been Gone' written by my friend Russ Ballard. Cozy Powell didn't want to record it, did he? No, nobody did. It was all like "Well, we're not going to do that". Cozy was very anti 'Since You've Been Gone' and when I heard the title 'Since You've Been Gone' I thought it was some kind of bluesy thing and then I heard it... we had a copy of the song by a band called Clout which was a girl band doing this song 'Since You've Been Gone'. And I said "No, I see what you mean", it was very poppy but anyway we sort of did it a little bit harder, heavier in a way, and changed it a little bit to the Rainbow style I guess and it did very well. What can I say, you know it did really well for Rainbow because suddenly instead of them being kind of an unknown quantity or underground they became radio friendly with that song and it changed the whole thing for the band. I was very happy to be in that band at the time, it was like amazing because I never thought this record would do what it did and I don't think any of us did. Apparently Ritchie had quite a thing for melodic pop, he loved Abba and didn't you include in the Rainbow set that version 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow' which I think you recorded on one of your solo albums? From my solo album that was his favorite track. He loved that song so he said 'Can we do this'? I said "Alright then". But we didn't do it like every night, some nights... it was we depended on the place, depending how happy the audience was I think. Sometimes you had a great reception... well, we always got a great reception. It's freaking Rainbow for God's sake. On the last night I played with the band, in fact that was Castle Donington, and he started playing the D chord and he looks across at me. He goes are we going to do 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow'? I wasn't ready for that but some nights we would do it, some nights we didn't as it all depended on the audience. How happy they were... or how drunk they were. You mentioned earlier the song 'Mistreated' the Deep Purple number. Was that song an influence on 'Love's No Friend'? Yeah, absolutely! That's Ritchie, he always sticks to if it works once, it'll work again. Don't fix if it ain't broke. It was very similar and that's something what Barry Gibb did with 'Only One Woman' and the second song we did with them, 'The Walls Fell Down'. Parts of the song were the same melody so people like the familiar and that song... I love that song you know. Ritchie Blackmore likes to have a quite a dramatic environment to recording and you start recording the album there at a Chateau in France. Apparently you weren't happy recording there. What was it about the place you didn't like? I don't know. I mean we, me and Roger started recording in the dining room. The place was closed down basically and there was this dusty room with a great big long table I remember, and all these chairs on the table all tipped up upside down, sort of cobwebs everywhere, it was a very depressing place and my room was the chapel. I just didn't like it, it felt like the place was haunted. I know it wasn't but I mean it was just a..... You didn't see anything then? No no no, I don't think so. It was very cold and I just didn't get the vibe. We didn't do anything there because Roger said "I think we should move into a proper studio" because the mobile was outside. It was great for drums and all that kind of thing.... I think it was actually Jethro Tull's mobile you were using. Yes, it was. So we decided that, well Roger really decided, we should go into a studio. A proper studio where it was warmer so we moved from there to the East Coast of America to do the actual vocals. Ritchie Blackmore's generally known as being someone who's interested in the occult and Joe Lynn Turner speaks about seances and things like that well. Did you see any spooky goings on like that when you were with Rainbow? No not at all, I mean I know that Ritchie played tricks on people. The doors in that place, were we started recording, he would put like cotton tied to handles of windows and things like that. I don't know how he did it, he pulled the cotton and we saw the window open by itself and all this kind of stuff. And recorded creepy noises and that kinda shit and played that through the rooms. I think he mainly did that with our crew, they get scared shitless and they went what the hell's that. He never did that with me, I'm glad to say. That was his thing, he would play tricks on people and make people think there was a ghost in the house or whatever. But not really sort of sitting around with a Ouija board and you know calling up the spirits or whatever. Well, I never saw that anyway. Did you get a writing credit on 'All Night Long'? When I made the album with Roger, when we were recording Roger would give me a rough idea of how the melody should go and then I would take it my way and interpret what he's sort of had an idea about and then sing my melody over his lyrics. Roger wrote the words so I'd sing his lyrics but I would change the melody and whatever. It was not just 'All Night Long', it was a lot on all the album. At the end of this, years later, I'm going wait a minute I was songwriting and I didn't know because I was new to the band. I thought it was Ritchie Blackmore, Roger Glover, Cozy Powell and Don Airey, that was it. I thought oh yeah wait a minute, I was song writing but I was so green I didn't know. I really didn't know that I was songwriting but I was... magically. So now I look at that and go oh shit [laughs]. If you ever asked Roger or Ritchie did were those melodies great melodies, they would say yeah. I'm not lying about that. I wish I'd done what I should have done, you know, got my songwriting credit. Why did 'Bad Girl' didn't make it on the album? I don't know... they thought it was a bit of a throwaway track and should be a B side on a single or something like singles in those days where. I like that song. I really like that song. It's good live but it was a throwaway sort of thing. There was another one that was... I can't remember which one it was now. There were a couple of songs that were like "oh, it's okay". 'No Time To Loose' I think it was or something, there is another one on the album and it was like "I'll just do that, it's okay, it's not bad. That'll do, that'll do. Shut up Graham, stop singing". You do it live now, don't you? "Bad Girl"? Yeah yeah, it's great yeah absolutely it's very good live song. Sometimes you know like studio songs they sound great in the studio but they don't translate to live. They don't have the same vibe or whatever or you don't feel like it, whatever it may be. But that one, it's got a lot of energy and at the time we didn't really realize that. You opened for Blue Oyster Cult, I'm interested to know what that was like? I get the impression that Ritchie Blackmore is not so fond of Blue Oyster Cult because when they supported him on the recent Rainbow tour, he wouldn't play on the same stage with them. I'm just wondering if there's any friction between them. Really? They were supposed to be on the stage and then Rainbow after them but they had The Sweet before Rainbow and put them on the smaller stage so I'm just curious whether or not there was any friction all those years ago when you supported them. I don't think so because we only did I think three gigs with them before we went out on our own. Two or three gigs that was like our warm-up to doing our own shows. They were great guys, really nice guys from Long Island as I remember. All little sort of Italian guys and I don't remember any friction between Ritchie or I don't think any anybody was bad mouthing them in any way. They were good guys and they had a great show whether you're like them of not. You were a lot heavier than the Blue Oysters. It sometimes would be rude but you'd hear people in the audience when they were playing falling out for Rainbow which is very... not nice. How involved were you in the writing on the next album 'Difficult To Cure'? Are you on that at all? No, we started rehearsing... well, it should have been rehearsing new songs for the album in Copenhagen I think. We had a rehearsal room which sometimes was like one of us there or two of us there, it was never a group thing. Everybody was going sightseeing or something and nothing was being done, no songs were being written. I had a melody to one song. I remember me and Don doing something one day and I had this melody which we recorded and I think it was used later when Joe came in. I'm not sure but there's one song 'It Can't Happen Here', I think it's called and that was my part of that was my melody that I remember, I didn't have any lyrics or anything. Ritchie was never there, we started rehearsing on our own. Roger, me and Don and our new drummer. It was like "well, what the hell, we've got nothing here, so what do we do?" Don said "Well, I'm gonna go home, there's no point hanging out here and nothing is happening. I can't see this band going anywhere, I think it's come to an end". I thought the same damn thing I thought it was all done with and that the band was just going to split up and do other things. So Don said he was going to go home. I actually did go home, I went back to LA. And I got a phone call from Bruce Payne, the manager, saying "Are you going to come back?" I said "What do you mean? We don't have anything to come back for. We have no songs". And he said to me "Well, we've got some songs happening now with another singer and if you you can sing the songs you like and he can sing the songs he likes". Whatever! And I said "I don't see me happening with another singer. I don't want to do that". So I just left, I just said "No, thanks!" So Joe Lynn came along, did a great job, and they had a good album. I just didn't see me going on anymore with that because Cozy was gone then, it didn't have the same sort of family feeling. I mean I know that sounds stupid but it wasn't as happy as it was. We got a new drummer and everybody's losing interest I think. When Joe came along, they were very much in the Foreigner vibe because that's a band that I think Ritchie wanted to sort of emulate a little bit. Foreigner or Toto or something like that you know. Why did you choose not to audition for Black Sabbath? Did you not like their type of music? Again I didn't think I was right, I mean do I look like a Black Sabbath guy? When you think about Rainbow with Dio at the time, you didn't particularly look like a Rainbow guy either. Brilliant! [laughs] Not at all, not at all. But Black Sabbath have the hair and the mustaches and... I mean I didn't see that and I didn't really like their music. There was nothing that attracted me to that at all, not that they're not good at what they do. All these bands are so great but I just didn't like music and my taste was elsewhere and when Ronnie came along and joined them it was fantastic for them. They did three albums I think which Ronnie was singing on it and it turned that band around. It was great, he really did, and so I admire him for doing that and I think Black Sabbath improved. "Assault Attack" is one of the best 80s hard rock albums. Do you wish there'd been a bit more with the Michael Schenker Group? Yeah! I tell you how I got into that. I went to see the Michael Shenker Band play in LA because Cozy was in the band. Afterwards I was watching the other band that was on with them onstage and Cozy came up to me and said "What do you think about the band" and I thought I said "It's fuckin' great!" He said "Yeah, it is good isn't it?" or whatever. And he said "How would you like to sing in this band?" I said "What do you mean? You've got a great singer, it sounds great. What are you talking about". He says "Well, we'd like you to sing with us" and so that was kind of how that happened. Because I've been in Rainbow I now know how to handle this kind of music. In Rainbow I learned how to sing a certain part and whatever because I thought well where's the verse come, where's the middle bit, it's very sort of semi-classical music, and so I knew how to handle that kind of rock or roll better. I thought well it's a great band and if you're losing Gary Barden, okay! I think they went back to England and then I got some stuff in the mail from Michael, cassette tapes, when cassette tapes were used in those days and he said on it "Urgent, please write new songs". So I had three songs to write and then suddenly I found myself back in England and rehearsing with the Michael Schenker Band. Cozy was in the band at the time but there was an argument between him and Michael and Cozy was gone. They had a fight, they had a terrible fight and anyway then Ted McKenna came in, bless him, I loved him, and that was it. So I started writing songs with the Michael Shenker Group and it was my first real attempt at writing all the words and all the melodies. I knew what I was doing. Now I knew I was a songwriter in this band. I didn't go "handle all the royalties over to this guy, okay". One of the first songs we did was a song called 'Desert Song', so I said to Michael "What you want me to write on this?" He said "Anything you like Graham. So I did. I remember I was sitting in the rehearsal room while they were playing it and I wrote the words to it and very quick. I don't know how I did it but then I did all the other songs. I went to stay at Roger Glover's house and I wrote all the rest of the songs with the arrangements on tape and that was it. It took a while because I wanted it really to sound good, the words just sound right, etc. I really enjoyed making that album, it was great fun because we have Michael, guitar player and then of course the production. Goddamn it was fantastic and you know again we're losing everybody. I know he's gone now, you know our producer. We had so much fun. I love that album. I'm very proud of it. What was it like going on the stage at Donington in 1980? It was amazing, I went down in the afternoon to see what the setup was I remember and they expect to get, somebody told 8.000 people. That's all they expected, the people that were it was their land and the rest of it, the people were putting on the show and it turned out to be almost a 100.000 I think or something like that. It was incredible because we had this quadrophonic sound setup so everybody could hear it. The Sound was coming from the back and the front and the sides and everything and I thought "Oh my God, this is going to sound incredible" and that night I remember saying to Don, "We've been on tour for a while, God damn, I'm tired". He said "Sorry, so am I". I hope tonight goes well, because we're going to lose Cozy tonight, he's leaving the band so it's kind of a sad happy moment. It's a big show and fuckin' more than 8.000 turn up. It was an amazingly large audience, we went on stage feeling like crap but after the show was finished I said to Don "It wasn't very good, was it?" but now I see it was good. It was great, it was one of our best shows. When I walked on stage with Rainbow that night, it was just like walking into a warm living room. Everybody was happy and the audience were like... it was incredible. The sound was like a jet plane landing when they cheered, when we all came on. Ritchie comes on and starts playing "The Eyes of the World" thing. It was just amazing and I'll never have that experience again. It was the most amazing night and I was so happy that my family was there, my mum and dad were there, my brother, my nieces and nephews and they all came back after the show and it was marvelous, absolutely marvelous but unfortunately we lost Cozy. Cozy left the band that day and I think I said something in the show somewhere about Cozy and how much we loved him and wish them best of luck. And as I said we were all like "Oh God, I'm not feeling on top of the world." I thought oh my voice is gone or something because we've had this long tour but it was all right. It wasn't bad at all It was marvellous. I've got one more question for you and that is why did you reunite the Graham Bonnet Band for "Day Out In Nowhere"? It's all up to Beth-Ami Heavenstone. She decided to sit me down and say "Look Graham, let's do something with the band again". With the three of us, which is me, Beth-Ami and Conrad Pesinato. We started doing something a long time ago and it didn't work out as being a trio, so we thought well it better be something else which turned into a band eventually. I was recording and doing sessions and she said to me "You've got to do something with us again". We've got to get together with Conrad and me and so Beth-Ami put me back in on the map again basically. She worked very hard at getting stuff together for me, all the business stuff, she's just amazing. If it wasn't for her I probably wouldn't have the band. I'd probably be doing sessions for the rest of my life or something. She was very determined to make sure that I did what I really love and this has turned into a beautiful baby, this band is... I'm very very proud of it we just did some gigs a little while ago and I'm very proud of how it turned out the reception from the audience was marvelous and when you see those smiley faces you go "Yeah, we've done it, tonight we were good". It's good to be back and I thank Beth-Ami with all my heart. I really do, I love it to death and in many ways she's my heroine.... not that heroine, she's my hero, heroine... When will we see you again in the UK when do you think you'll come back for some dates? I won't be long, I don't think. We're working on going to Japan. We're just fixing up how we're going to do that with no new management and it's going to be more personal management. What's gonna happen is we have a guy that we know who is a really really business savvy. It's gonna change, anyway I won't talk about that right now because we have plans and I don't exactly know how we're going to do things. We've got some good things going and we want to do it the right way so when we come back to play it's going to be something more than just singing and playing, we want to put a show together. This has nothing to do with this but we went to see Iron Maiden and fuckin' hell... but we're not going to be that but their show is just like it's theater, I mean it's great, it's so much fun and we went backstage after to see Bruce but it was great and what a night that was and that was just a while back. A couple of months ago. Beth-Ami and I just went "Oh God, what a great show". I saw that show in London about a year ago I think. They've been touring it for a while now but it's a great show. Yeah, it is theater, it's like The Rocky Horror show or something but it was incredible. I didn't expect that the giants and all the stuff, all those things coming out the wall and whatever. It was just amazing, great fuckin' band. I'll certainly be interested to see what show you bring to the UK. I'll try and catch that. As I said we're going to try to get a bit more than just doing the songs if we can, but it depends where we're playing. If we're playing a theater or a pub, we won't be playing pubs but it depends on the place and how we actually get this thing together. At the moment it's just in our heads about what we want to do because we have ideas that are kind of interesting. A little bit different and if that works that would be fantastic. We're going to play in England soon we hope, but first it'll be Japan. © Classic Album Review - February 22, 2023