TONY CAREY I Was Happy To get Out We were rehearsing at S.I.R studios in Hollywood, preparing a song to try yet another attempt to get something that we recorded. And Ritchie was two doors down looking to put together Rainbow for the "Rising" lineup and he had everything but a keyboard player. Cozy was there, Ronnie was there, Jimmy and Ritchie. He heard me playing a Hammond, through probably about eight walls, I was not shy [laughs]. He sent actually Jimmy Bain over to ask me if I wanted to audition for the band and I was at a point with my own band that it didn't look like it was going anywhere. Too much politics, too much cocaine, too much everything and I said "Yeah, go for it" and the rest is history. What stage were the band at that point? Everybody was there and I heard stories Ritchie had tried, I didn't know these people but of them I know that, the guy from Vanilla Fudge had audition and the guy from Roxy Music, Eddie Jobson, had audition and some Italian guy but all the Hammond guys had like audition and he didn't like any of them. I had never played hard rock music but I could bluff my way into a convent as a cucumber salesman and I was kind of bluffing but it's loud, it's rough, it's heavy Hammond. I was aware of what Rick Wakeman was doing and yeah obviously aware what Jon had played before, you know "Made in Japan". So I knew what he was kind of looking for like a little bit of fake classical, really loud with a little Prague touch. The first day we were out on the road we rehearsed for a while and we did I think nine or ten shows in America. Not everybody knows this but they are all on YouTube actually. They're all bootlegged. Every single show we ever played... we played in Canada, we played in New York, we played in Detroit, we played in Florida, we played in Texas, I think we played nine shows just to warm up as a band and after which we went to Munich and into Musicland Studios and did "Rainbow Rising" in about 10 minutes. Wow, I love that. Rainbow Rising, one of the greatest albums of all time, still revered today. It's still surprises me. I mean that amazes me the respect that album gets 50 years later, nearly 50 years later, is astonishing to me and that's great. Fantastic! Was it the sort of that Ritchie just came and said this is what we're doing or was it a band process? He never told me what to play, he never told Cozy what to play. I think he sat down with Ronnie, I wasn't there. He did... Ronnie the vocals, he did with just Ronnie and Martin Birch but my keyboard parts it was just me and Martin Birch. Ritchie fucked off and go somewhere else and come back and either like it or not like it. And he liked it, it was no like dictatorial anything and I was on we were on the same page. Everybody Jimmy was kicking ass on the bass, Cozy was a monster, Ronnie was Ronnie, Ritchie was Ritchie, at the top of his game. I was keeping up, nobody ever told me I wasn't and it was like rolling off a log. It was musically speaking getting the music part done was, like I said we made it in 10 minutes. It was no sweat, I heard later that they been discussion about and there always is you know, about the vocal melodies and exactly that. They probably spent the most time getting the vocals right but the bottom tracks would do three a day and I come in and do keyboards he wanted. An intro for 'Tarot woman', I did that in two hours with Martin. And he wanted a solo for 'A Light In The Black'. I did that in two hours with Martin, that was one time he had made a suggestion I'd played it in a high kind of your usual Mini Moog register which is like up at the top register. He said "How about if you do something like a twelve string, something in a lower octave? I said that's great idea so I did and he came back he said "Yeah, like that basically, good to go". So no sweat, the music was not the problem, there were other problems but the music was not the problem. 'Tarot woman' was the opening track. Did they asked you to write something or was it just off the top of your head? Free form of top of my head, the hardest part was I played this impro, Rainbow was all about improvisation. If you've heard the live albums, "On Stage" of course but then there's 80 variations of live recordings from that tour. I never played the same thing twice and I still haven't to this day played the same thing twice in my life I don't learn parts and the tricky bit was getting something that I like. We didn't work like these days you work with a click track or some kind of metronome or a drummer or something. It was just free form, loose time, the tricky part was doubling it because it was two Mini Moogs and that's what took the most time. Getting the first Mini Moog with the little melody and that was easy and then Martin Birch said why don't we do a little... And I said I know what you want. Putting the second one and that took the most time because there was no pattern. I just had to like read my own mind and get it but we got it. It was about two hours. You were in the band for I think about three years, weren't you? The music wasn't the problem but the other side of it, you're a bit younger than the rest of the guys. How was that dynamic? It wasn't really much of a dynamic as long as we were playing everything was cool. If we weren't playing I didn't really have much to say to anybody or except for Jimmy. Jimmy and me were buddies and Ronnie and I got along really well but we're like the Americans and this band was very much Americans against the branch as it were. Cozy and Ritchie were an ultra British, Ronnie is from upstate New York and I knew Ronnie before I met him. This is like American guy and he's older than me but still he like an uncle so we got along fine. The dynamic in the band... I mean show up do your job. I got fired a couple times and then hired back and the third time I had enough of the nonsense. I just left in the middle of the "Long Live Rock'n'Roll" album, there was some shenanigans. I just hit the road in the middle of the night and got out of there. What was Ronnie to work with and what was it like watching him on stage? I think I was there the first time he threw the devil horns, actually I think I was on stage. I'm not sure, a lot of people will say that they were the first person to whatever... I think 40 million people will say that they saw the place hit with the Twin Towers, you know in a city of eight million but whatever I will maintain to this day that I was on stage with the first time Ronnie through the devil horns. He's a great guy if you saw him in interviews that's the way he was. I mean straight ahead, pretty much dead honest, he gave you his opinion the way he called him like he saw him. He could be bitchy like everybody can, mostly really a gentleman, I mean he's an Italian fellow. Italian American from upstate New York, they're very polite and even if he's about to stab you in the back he's not swearing at you. He was always lovely to me and Wendy his wife, she was with him from the from the early days. I don't think they were married at the time but she was with us the whole time, in the studio, on the road, on the "Rising tour" and then in the "Long Live Rock'n'Roll" sessions. Wendy was always there, she was great too, just great people. You mentioned some shenanigans around you leaving. What was it that actually led to you leaving? Was there any regrets afterwards that you'd left? From their side? I think so! They had to look all over the place to get a replacement. Hell no, I was happy to get out of there. There was some crazy shit. All they were in this occult or Ritchie was into this occult thing. He was having seances with Ouija boards and it was getting dangerous, scary and a little bit violent and I thought this time for me to go and I don't want to say much more about it. It's pretty much been documented and I regret anything I might have said about it when I was a lot younger because it's nobody's business. Call it a major personality clash, As one of the only four Rainbow members that ever, I mean, there's 40 of us. There's been quite a series of major personality clashes over the years so I don't want to get into that. The guy is a great guitarplayer. © Vintage Rock Podcast - July 23, 2023